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+Project Gutenberg's Mr. Crewe's Career, Book III., by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mr. Crewe's Career, Book III.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2004 [EBook #3683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. CREWE'S CAREER, BOOK III. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CREWE'S CAREER
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ST. GILES OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE
+
+The burden of the valley of vision: woe to the Honourable Adam B. Hunt!
+Where is he all this time? On the porch of his home in Edmundton, smoking
+cigars, little heeding the rising of the waters; receiving visits from
+the Honourables Brush Bascom, Nat Billings, and Jacob Botcher, and
+signing cheques to the order of these gentlemen for necessary expenses.
+Be it known that the Honourable Adam was a man of substance in this
+world's goods. To quote from Mr. Crewe's speech at Hull: "The
+Northeastern Railroads confer--they do not pay, except in passes. Of late
+years their books may be searched in vain for evidence of the use of
+political funds. The man upon whom they choose to confer your
+governorship is always able to pay the pipers." (Purposely put in the
+plural.)
+
+Have the pipers warned the Honourable Adam of the rising tide against
+him? Have they asked him to gird up his loins and hire halls and smite
+the upstart hip and thigh? They have warned him, yes, that the expenses
+may be a little greater than ordinary. But it is not for him to talk, or
+to bestir himself in any unseemly manner, for the prize which he was to
+have was in the nature of a gift. In vain did Mr. Crewe cry out to him
+four times a week for his political beliefs, for a statement of what he
+would do if he were elected governor. The Honourable Adam's dignified
+answer was that he had always been a good Republican, and would die one.
+Following a time-honoured custom, he refused to say anything, but it was
+rumoured that he believed in the gold standard.
+
+It is August, and there is rejoicing in--Leith. There is no doubt now
+that the campaign of the people progresses; no need any more for the true
+accounts of the meetings, in large print, although these are still
+continued. The reform rallies resemble matinees no longer, and two real
+reporters accompany Mr. Crewe on his tours. Nay, the campaign of
+education has already borne fruit, which the candidate did not hesitate
+to mention in his talks Edmundton has more trains, Kingston has more
+trains, and more cars. No need now to stand up for twenty miles on a hot
+day; and more cars are building, and more engines; likewise some rates
+have been lowered. And editors who declare that the Northeastern gives
+the State a pretty good government have, like the guinea pigs, long been
+suppressed.
+
+In these days were many councils at Fairview and in the offices of the
+Honourable Hilary Vane at Ripton; councils behind closed doors, from
+which the councillors emerged with smiling faces that men might not know
+the misgivings in their hearts; councils, nevertheless, out of which
+leaked rumours of dissension and recrimination conditions hitherto
+unheard of. One post ran to meet another, and one messenger ran to meet
+another; and it was even reported--though on doubtful authority--after
+the rally in his town the Honourable Jacob Botcher had made the remark
+that, under certain conditions, he might become a reformer.
+
+None of these upsetting rumours, however, were allowed by Mr. Bascom and
+other gentlemen close to the Honourable Adam B. Hunt to reach that
+candidate, who continued to smoke in tranquillity on the porch of his
+home until the fifteenth day of August. At eight o'clock that morning the
+postman brought him a letter marked personal, the handwriting on which he
+recognized as belonging to the Honourable Hilary Vane. For some reason,
+as he read, the sensations of the Honourable Adam were disquieting; the
+contents of the letter, to say the least, were peculiar. "To-morrow, at
+noon precisely, I shall be driving along the Broad Brook road by the
+abandoned mill--three miles towards Edmundton from Hull. I hope you will
+find it convenient to be there."
+
+These were the strange words the Honourable Hilary had written, and the
+Honourable Adam knew that it was an order. At that very instant Mr. Hunt
+had been reading in the Guardian the account of an overflow meeting in
+Newcastle, by his opponent, in which Mr. Crewe had made some particularly
+choice remarks about him; and had been cheered to the echo. The
+Honourable Adam put the paper down, and walked up the street to talk to
+Mr. Burrows, the postmaster whom, with the aid of Congressman Fairplay,
+he had had appointed at Edmundton. The two racked their brains for three
+hours; and Postmaster Burrows, who was the fortunate possessor of a pass,
+offered to go down to Ripton in the interest of his liege lord and see
+what was up. The Honourable Adam, however, decided that he could wait for
+twenty-four hours.
+
+The morning of the sixteenth dawned clear, as beautiful a summer's day
+for a drive as any man could wish. But the spirit of the Honourable Adam
+did not respond to the weather, and he had certain vague forebodings as
+his horse jogged toward Hull, although these did not take such a definite
+shape as to make him feel a premonitory pull of his coat-tails. The
+ruined mill beside the rushing stream was a picturesque spot, and the
+figure of the Honourable Hilary Vane, seated on the old millstone, in the
+green and gold shadows of a beech, gave an interesting touch of life to
+the landscape. The Honourable Adam drew up and eyed his friend and
+associate of many years before addressing him.
+
+"How are you, Hilary?"
+
+"Hitch your horse," said Mr. Vane.
+
+The Honourable Adam was some time in picking out a convenient tree. Then
+he lighted a cigar, and approached Mr. Vane, and at length let himself
+down, cautiously, on the millstone. Sitting on his porch had not improved
+Mr. Hunt's figure.
+
+"This is kind of mysterious, ain't it, Hilary?" he remarked, with a tug
+at his goatee.
+
+"I don't know but what it is," admitted Mr. Vane, who did not look as
+though the coming episode were to give him unqualified joy.
+
+"Fine weather," remarked the Honourable Adam, with a brave attempt at
+geniality.
+
+"The paper predicts rain to-morrow," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"You don't smoke, do you?" asked the Honourable Adam.
+
+"No," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+A silence, except for the music of the brook over the broken dam.
+
+"Pretty place," said the Honourable Adam; "I kissed my wife here once
+--before I was married."
+
+This remark, although of interest, the Honourable Hilary evidently
+thought did not require an answer:
+
+"Adam," said Mr. Vane, presently, "how much money have you spent so far?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Hunt, "it has been sort of costly, but Brush and the
+boys tell me the times are uncommon, and I guess they are. If that crazy
+cuss Crewe hadn't broken loose, it would have been different. Not that
+I'm uneasy about him, but all this talk of his and newspaper advertising
+had to be counteracted some. Why, he has a couple of columns a week right
+here in the Edmundton Courier. The papers are bleedin' him to death,
+certain."
+
+"How much have you spent?" asked the Honourable Hilary.
+
+The Honourable Adam screwed up his face and pulled his goatee
+thoughtfully.
+
+"What are you trying to get at, Hilary," he inquired, sending for me to
+meet you out here in the woods in this curious way? If you wanted to see
+me, why didn't you get me to go down to Ripton, or come up and sit on my
+porch? You've been there before."
+
+"Times," said the Honourable Hilary, repeating, perhaps unconsciously,
+Mr. Hunt's words, "are uncommon. This man Crewe's making more headway
+than you think. The people don't know him, and he's struck a popular
+note. It's the fashion to be down on railroads these days."
+
+"I've taken that into account," replied Mr. Hunt.
+
+"It's unlucky, and it comes high. I don't think he's got a show for the
+nomination, but my dander's up, and I'll beat him if I have to mortgage
+my house."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and ruminated.
+
+"How much did you say you'd spent, Adam?"
+
+"If you think I'm not free enough, I'll loosen up a little more," said
+the Honourable Adam.
+
+"How free have you been?" said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+For some reason the question, put in this form, was productive of
+results.
+
+"I can't say to a dollar, but I've got all the amounts down in a book. I
+guess somewhere in the neighbourhood of nine thousand would cover it."
+
+Mr. Vane grunted again.
+
+"Would you take a cheque, Adam?" he inquired.
+
+"What for?" cried the Honourable Adam.
+
+"For the amount you've spent," said the Honourable Hilary, sententiously.
+
+The Honourable Adam began to breathe with apparent difficulty, and his
+face grew purple. But Mr. Vane did not appear to notice these alarming
+symptoms. Then the candidate turned about, as on a pivot, seized Mr. Vane
+by the knee, and looked into his face.
+
+"Did you come up here with orders for me to get out?" he demanded, with
+some pardonable violence. "By thunder, I didn't think that of my old
+friend, Hilary Vane. You ought to have known me better, and Flint ought
+to have known me better. There ain't a mite of use of our staying here
+another second, and you can go right back and tell Flint what I said.
+Flint knows I've been waiting to be governor for eight years, and each
+year it's been just a year ahead. You ask him what he said to me when he
+sent for me to go to New York. I thought he was a man of his word, and he
+promised me that I should be governor this year."
+
+The Honourable Hilary gave no indication of being moved by this righteous
+outburst.
+
+"You can be governor next year, when this reform nonsense has blown
+over," he said. "You can't be this year, even if you stay in the race."
+
+"Why not?" the Honourable Adam asked pugnaciously.
+
+"Your record won't stand it--not just now," said Mr. Vane, slowly.
+
+"My record is just as good as yours, or any man's," said the Honourable
+Adam.
+
+"I never run for office," answered Mr. Vane.
+
+"Haven't I spent the days of my active life in the service of that road
+--and is this my reward? Haven't I done what Flint wanted always?"
+
+"That's just the trouble," said the Honourable Hilary; too many folks
+know it. If we're going to win this time, we've got to have a man who's
+never had any Northeastern connections."
+
+"Who have you picked?" demanded the Honourable Adam, with alarming
+calmness.
+
+"We haven't picked anybody yet," said Mr. Vane, "but the man who goes in
+will give you a cheque for what you've spent, and you can be governor
+next time."
+
+"Well, if this isn't the d-dest, coldest-blooded proposition ever made, I
+want to know!" cried the Honourable Adam. "Will Flint put up a bond of
+one hundred thousand dollars that I'll be nominated and elected next
+year? This is the clearest case of going back on an old friend I ever
+saw. If this is the way you fellows get scared because a sham reformer
+gets up and hollers against the road, then I want to serve notice on you
+that I'm not made of that kind of stuff. When I go into a fight, I go in
+to stay, and you can't pull me out by the coat-tails in favour of a saint
+who's never done a lick of work for the road. You tell Flint that."
+
+"All right, Adam," said Hilary.
+
+Some note in Hilary's voice, as he made this brief answer, suddenly
+sobered the Honourable Adam, and sent a cold chill down his spine. He had
+had many dealings with Mr. Vane, and he had always been as putty in the
+chief counsel's hands. This simple acquiescence did more to convince the
+Honourable Adam that his chances of nomination were in real danger than a
+long and forceful summary of the situation could have accomplished. But
+like many weak men, the Honourable Adam had a stubborn streak, and a
+fatuous idea that opposition and indignation were signs of strength.
+
+"I've made sacrifices for the road before, and effaced myself. But by
+thunder, this is too much!"
+
+Corporations, like republics, are proverbially ungrateful. The Honourable
+Hilary might have voiced this sentiment, but refrained.
+
+"Mr. Flint's a good friend of yours, Adam. He wanted me to say that he'd
+always taken care of you, and always would, so far as in his power. If
+you can't be landed this time, it's common sense for you to get out, and
+wait--isn't it? We'll see that you get a cheque to cover what you've put
+out."
+
+The humour in this financial sacrifice of Mr. Flint's (which the unknown
+new candidate was to make with a cheque) struck neither the Honourable
+Adam nor the Honourable Hilary. The transaction, if effected, would
+resemble that of the shrine to the Virgin built by a grateful Marquis of
+Mantua--which a Jew paid for.
+
+The Honourable Adam got to his feet.
+
+"You can tell Flint," he said, "that if he will sign a bond of one
+hundred thousand dollars to elect me next time, I'll get out. That's my
+last word."
+
+"All right, Adam," replied Mr. Vane, rising also.
+
+Mr. Hunt stared at the Honourable Hilary thoughtfully; and although the
+gubernatorial candidate was not an observant man, he was suddenly struck
+by the fact that the chief counsel was growing old.
+
+"I won't hold this against you, Hilary," he said.
+
+"Politics," said the Honourable Hilary, "are business matters."
+
+"I'll show Flint that it would have been good business to stick to me,"
+said the Honourable Adam. "When he gets panicky, and spends all his money
+on new equipment and service, it's time for me to drop him. You can tell
+him so from me."
+
+"Hadn't you better write him?" said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+The rumour of the entry of Mr. Giles Henderson of Kingston into the
+gubernatorial contest preceded, by ten days or so, the actual event. It
+is difficult for the historian to unravel the precise circumstances which
+led to this candidacy. Conservative citizens throughout the State, it was
+understood, had become greatly concerned over the trend political affairs
+were taking; the radical doctrines of one candidate--propounded for very
+obvious reasons--they turned from in disgust; on the other hand, it was
+evident that an underlying feeling existed in certain sections that any
+candidate who was said to have had more or less connection with the
+Northeastern Railroads was undesirable at the present time. This was not
+to be taken as a reflection on the Northeastern, which had been the chief
+source of the State's prosperity, but merely as an acknowledgment that a
+public opinion undoubtedly existed, and ought to be taken into
+consideration by the men who controlled the Republican party.
+
+This was the gist of leading articles which appeared simultaneously in
+several newspapers, apparently before the happy thought of bringing
+forward Mr. Giles Henderson had occurred to anybody. He was mentioned
+first, and most properly, by the editor of the "Kingston Pilot;" and the
+article, with comments upon it, ran like wildfire through the press of
+the State,--appearing even in those sheets which maintained editorially
+that they were for the Honourable Adam B. Hunt first and last and, all
+the time. Whereupon Mr. Giles Henderson began to receive visits from the
+solid men--not politicians of the various cities and counties. For
+instance, Mr. Silas Tredway of Ripton, made such a pilgrimage and, as a
+citizen who had voted in 1860 for Abraham Lincoln (showing Mr. Tredway
+himself to have been a radical once), appealed to Mr. Henderson to save
+the State.
+
+At first Mr. Henderson would give no ear to these appeals, but shook his
+head pessimistically. He was not a politician--so much the better, we
+don't want a politician; he was a plain business man exactly what is
+needed; a conservative, level-headed business man wholly lacking in those
+sensational qualities which are a stench in the nostrils of good
+citizens. Mr. Giles Henderson admitted that the time had come when a man
+of these qualities was needed--but he was not the man. Mr. Tredway was
+the man--so he told Mr. Tredway; Mr. Gates of Brampton was the man--so he
+assured Mr. Gates. Mr. Henderson had no desire to meddle in politics; his
+life was a happy and a full one. But was it not Mr. Henderson's duty?
+Cincinnatus left the plough, and Mr. Henderson should leave the ledger at
+the call of his countrymen.
+
+Mr. Giles Henderson was mild-mannered and blue-eyed, with a scanty beard
+that was turning white; he was a deacon of the church, a member of the
+school board, president of the Kingston National Bank; the main business
+of his life had been in coal (which incidentally had had to be
+transported over the Northeastern Railroads); and coal rates, for some
+reason, were cheaper from Kingston than from many points out of the State
+the distances of which were nearer. Mr. Henderson had been able to sell
+his coal at a lower price than any other large dealer in the eastern part
+of the State. Mr. Henderson was the holder of a large amount of stock in
+the Northeastern, inherited from his father. Facts of no special
+significance, and not printed in the weekly newspapers. Mr. Henderson
+lived in a gloomy Gothic house on High Street, ate three very plain meals
+a day, and drank iced water. He had been a good husband and a good
+father, and had always voted the Republican ticket. He believed in the
+gold standard, a high tariff, and eternal damnation. At last his
+resistance was overcome, and he consented to allow his name to be used.
+
+It was used, with a vengeance. Spontaneous praise of Mr. Giles Henderson
+bubbled up all over the State, and editors who were for the Honourable
+Adam B. Hunt suddenly developed a second choice. No man within the
+borders of the commonwealth had so many good qualities as the new
+candidate, and it must have been slightly annoying to one of that
+gentleman's shrinking nature to read daily, on coming down to breakfast,
+a list of virtues attributed to him as long as a rate schedule. How he
+must have longed for the record of one wicked deed to make him human!
+
+Who will pick a flaw in the character of the Honourable Giles Henderson?
+Let that man now stand forth.
+
+The news of the probable advent of Mr. Giles Henderson on the field, as
+well as the tidings of his actual consent to be a candidate, were not
+slow in reaching Leith. And--Mr. Crewe's Bureau of Information being in
+perfect working order--the dastardly attempt on the Honourable Adam B.
+Hunt's coat-tails was known there. More wonders to relate: the Honourable
+Adam B. Hunt had become a reformer; he had made a statement at last, in
+which he declared with vigour that no machine or ring was behind him; he
+stood on his own merits, invited the minutest inspection of his record,
+declared that he was an advocate of good government, and if elected would
+be the servant of no man and of no corporation.
+
+Thrice-blessed State, in which there were now three reform candidates for
+governor!
+
+All of these happenings went to indicate confusion in the enemy's camp,
+and corresponding elation in Mr. Crewe's. Woe to the reputation for
+political sagacity of the gentleman who had used the words "negligible"
+and "monumental farce"! The tide was turning, and the candidate from
+Leith redoubled his efforts. Had he been confounded by the advent of the
+Honourable Giles? Not at all. Mr. Crewe was not given to satire; his
+methods, as we know, were direct. Hence the real author of the following
+passage in his speech before an overflow meeting in the State capital
+remains unknown:
+
+"My friends," Mr. Crewe had said, "I have been waiting for the time when
+St. Giles of the Blameless Life would be pushed forward, apparently as
+the only hope of our so-called 'solid citizens.' (Prolonged laughter, and
+audible repetitions of Mr. Henderson's nickname, which was to stick.) I
+will tell you by whose desire St. Giles became a candidate, and whose
+bidding he will do if he becomes governor as blindly and obediently as
+the Honourable Adam B. Hunt ever did. (Shouts of "Flint!" and, "The
+Northeastern!") I see you know. Who sent the solid citizens to see Mr.
+Henderson? ("Flint!") This is a clever trick--exactly what I should have
+done if I'd been running their campaign--only they didn't do it early
+enough. They picked Mr. Giles Henderson for two reasons: because he lives
+in Kingston, which is anti-railroad and supported the Gaylord bill, and,
+because he never in his life committed any positive action, good or
+bad--and he never will. And they made another mistake--the Honourable
+Adam B. Hunt wouldn't back out." (Laughter and cheers.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+IN WHICH EUPHRASIA TAKES A HAND
+
+Austen had not forgotten his promise to Euphrasia, and he had gone to
+Hanover Street many times since his sojourn at Mr. Jabe Jenney's. Usually
+these visits had taken place in the middle of the day, when Euphrasia,
+with gentle but determined insistence, had made him sit down before some
+morsel which she had prepared against his coming, and which he had not
+the heart to refuse. In answer to his inquiries about Hilary, she would
+toss her head and reply, disdainfully, that he was as comfortable as he
+should be. For Euphrasia had her own strict ideas of justice, and to her
+mind Hilary's suffering was deserved. That suffering was all the more
+terrible because it was silent, but Euphrasia was a stern woman. To know
+that he missed Austen, to feel that Hilary was being justly punished for
+his treatment of her idol, for his callous neglect and lack of
+realization of the blessings of his life--these were Euphrasia's grim
+compensations.
+
+At times, even, she had experienced a strange rejoicing that she had
+promised Austen to remain with his father, for thus it had been given her
+to be the daily witness of a retribution for which she had longed during
+many years. Nor did she strive to hide her feelings. Their intercourse,
+never voluminous, had shrunk to the barest necessities for the use of
+speech; but Hilary, ever since the night of his son's departure, had read
+in the face of his housekeeper a knowledge of his suffering, an
+exultation a thousand times more maddening than the little reproaches of
+language would have been. He avoided her more than ever, and must many
+times have regretted bitterly the fact that he had betrayed himself to
+her. As for Euphrasia, she had no notion of disclosing Hilary's torture
+to his son. She was determined that the victory, when it came, should be
+Austen's, and the surrender Hilary's.
+
+"He manages to eat his meals, and gets along as common," she would reply.
+"He only thinks of himself and that railroad."
+
+But Austen read between the lines.
+
+"Poor old Judge," he would answer; "it's because he's made that way,
+Phrasie. He can't help it, any more than I can help flinging law-books on
+the floor and running off to the country to have a good time. You know as
+well as I do that he hasn't had much joy out of life; that he'd like to
+be different, only he doesn't know how."
+
+"I can't see that it takes much knowledge to treat a wife and son like
+human beings," Euphrasia retorted; "that's only common humanity. For a
+man that goes to meetin' twice a week, you'd have thought he'd have
+learned something by this time out of the New Testament. He's prayed
+enough in his life, goodness knows!"
+
+Now Euphrasia's ordinarily sharp eyes were sharpened an hundred fold by
+affection; and of late, at odd moments during his visits, Austen had
+surprised them fixed on him with a penetration that troubled him.
+
+"You don't seem to fancy the tarts as much as you used to," she would
+remark. "Time was when you'd eat three and four at a sittin'."
+
+"Phrasie, one of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy."
+
+"You ain't yourself," said Euphrasia, ignoring this pleasantry, "and you
+ain't been yourself for some months. I've seen it. I haven't brought you
+up for nothing. If he's troubling you, don't you worry a mite. He ain't
+worth it. He eats better than you do."
+
+"I'm not worrying much about that," Austen answered, smiling. "The Judge
+and I will patch it up before long--I'm sure. He's worried now over these
+people who are making trouble for his railroad."
+
+"I wish railroads had never been invented," cried Euphrasia. "It seems to
+me they bring nothing but trouble. My mother used to get along pretty
+well in a stage-coach."
+
+One evening in September, when the summer days were rapidly growing
+shorter and the mists rose earlier in the valley of the Blue, Austen, who
+had stayed late at the office preparing a case, ate his supper at the
+Ripton House. As he sat in the big dining room, which was almost empty,
+the sense of loneliness which he had experienced so often of late came
+over him, and he thought of Euphrasia. His father, he knew, had gone to
+Kingston for the night, and so he drove up Hanover Street and hitched
+Pepper to the stone post before the door. Euphrasia, according to an
+invariable custom, would be knitting in the kitchen at this hour; and at
+the sight of him in the window, she dropped her work with a little,
+joyful cry.
+
+"I was just thinking of you!" she said, in a low voice of tenderness
+which many people would not have recognized as Euphrasia's; as though her
+thoughts of him were the errant ones of odd moments! "I'm so glad you
+come. It's lonesome here of evenings, Austen."
+
+He entered silently and sat down beside her, in a Windsor chair which had
+belonged to some remote Austen of bygone days.
+
+"You don't have as good things to eat up at Mis' Jenney's as I give you,"
+she remarked. "Not that you appear to care much for eatables any more.
+Austen, are you feeling poorly?"
+
+"I can dig more potatoes in a day than any other man in Ripton," he
+declared.
+
+"You'd ought to get married," said Euphrasia, abruptly. "I've told you
+that before, but you never seem to pay any attention to what I say."
+
+"Why haven't you tried it, Phrasie?" he retorted.
+
+He was not prepared for what followed. Euphrasia did not answer at once,
+but presently her knitting dropped to her lap, and she sat staring at the
+old clock on the kitchen shelf.
+
+"He never asked me," she said, simply.
+
+Austen was silent. The answer seemed to recall, with infinite pathos,
+Euphrasia's long-lost youth, and he had not thought of youth as a quality
+which could ever have pertained to her. She must have been young once,
+and fresh, and full of hope for herself; she must have known, long ago,
+something of what he now felt, something of the joy and pain, something
+of the inexpressible, never ceasing yearning for the fulfilment of a
+desire that dwarfed all others. Euphrasia had been denied that
+fulfilment. And he--would he, too, be denied it?
+
+Out of Euphrasia's eyes, as she gazed at the mantel-shelf, shone the
+light of undying fires within--fires which at a touch could blaze forth
+after endless years, transforming the wrinkled face, softening the
+sterner lines of character. And suddenly there was a new bond between the
+two. So used are the young to the acceptance of the sacrifice of the old
+that they lose sight of that sacrifice. But Austen saw now, in a flash,
+the years of Euphrasia's self-denial, the years of memories, the years of
+regrets for that which might have been.
+
+"Phrasie," he said, laying a hand on hers, which rested on the arm of the
+chair, I was only joking, you know."
+
+"I know, I know," Euphrasia answered hastily, and turned and looked into
+his face searchingly. Her eyes were undimmed, and the light was still in
+them which revealed a soul of which he had had no previous knowledge.
+
+"I know you was, dear. I never told that to a living being except your
+mother. He's dead now--he never knew. But I told her--I couldn't help it.
+She had a way of drawing things out of you, and you just couldn't resist.
+I'll never forget that day she came in here and looked at me and took my
+hand--same as you have it now. She wasn't married then. I'll never forget
+the sound of her voice as she said, 'Euphrasia, tell me about it.'" (Here
+Euphrasia's own voice trembled.) "I told her, just as I'm telling
+you,--because I couldn't help it. Folks, had to tell her things."
+
+She turned her hand and clasped his tightly with her own thin fingers.
+
+"And oh, Austen," she cried, "I want so that you should be happy! She was
+so unhappy, it doesn't seem right that you should be, too."
+
+"I shall be, Phrasie," he said; "you mustn't worry about that."
+
+For a while the only sound in the room was the ticking of the old clock
+with the quaint, coloured picture on its panel. And then, with a movement
+which, strangely, was an acute reminder of a way Victoria had, Euphrasia
+turned and searched his face once more.
+
+"You're not happy," she said.
+
+He could not put this aside--nor did he wish to. Her own confidence had
+been so simple, so fine, so sure of his sympathy, that he felt it would
+be unworthy to equivocate; the confessions of the self-reliant are sacred
+things. Yes, and there had been times when he had longed to unburden
+himself; but he had had no intimate on this plane, and despite the great
+sympathy between them--that Euphrasia might understand had never occurred
+to him. She had read his secret.
+
+In that instant Euphrasia, with the instinct which love lends to her sex,
+had gone farther; indignation seized her--and the blame fell upon the
+woman. Austen's words, unconsciously, were an answer to her thoughts.
+
+"It isn't anybody's fault but my own," he said.
+
+Euphrasia's lips were tightly closed. Long ago the idol of her youth had
+faded into the substance of which dreams are made--to be recalled by
+dreams alone; another worship had filled her heart, and Austen Vane had
+become--for her--the fulness and the very meaning of life itself; one to
+be admired of all men, to be desired of all women. Visions of Austen's
+courtship had at times risen in her mind, although Euphrasia would not
+have called it a courtship. When the time came, Austen would confer; and
+so sure of his judgment was Euphrasia that she was prepared to take the
+recipient of the priceless gift into her arms. And now! Was it possible
+that a woman lived who would even hesitate? Curiosity seized Euphrasia
+with the intensity of a passion. Who was this woman? When and where had
+he seen her? Ripton could not have produced her--for it was
+characteristic of Euphrasia that no girl of her acquaintance was worthy
+to be raised to such a height; Austen's wife would be an unknown of ideal
+appearance and attainments. Hence indignation rocked Euphrasia, and
+doubts swayed her. In this alone she had been an idealist, but she might
+have known that good men were a prey to the unworthy of the opposite sex.
+
+She glanced at Austen's face, and he smiled at her gently, as though he
+divined something of her thoughts.
+
+"If it isn't your fault, that you're not happy, then the matter's easily
+mended," she said.
+
+He shook his head at her, as though in reproof.
+
+"Was yours--easily mended?" he asked.
+
+Euphrasia was silent a moment.
+
+"He never knew," she repeated, in a low voice.
+
+"Well, Phrasie, it looks very much as if we were in the same boat," he
+said.
+
+Euphrasia's heart gave a bound.
+
+"Then you haven't spoke!" she cried; "I knew you hadn't. I--I was a
+woman--but sometimes I've thought I'd ought to have given him some sign.
+You're a man, Austen; thank God for it, you're a man. If a man loves a
+woman, he's only got to tell her so."
+
+"It isn't as simple as that," he answered.
+
+Euphrasia gave him a startled glance.
+
+"She ain't married?" she exclaimed.
+
+"No," he said, and laughed in spite of himself.
+
+Euphrasia breathed again. For Sarah Austen had had a morality of her own,
+and on occasions had given expression to extreme views.
+
+"She's not playin' with you?" was Euphrasia's next question, and her tone
+boded ill to any young person who would indulge in these tactics with
+Austen.
+
+He shook his head again, and smiled at her vehemence.
+
+"No, she's not playing with me--she isn't that kind. I'd like to tell
+you, but I can't--I can't. It was only because you guessed that I said
+anything about it." He disengaged his hand, and rose, and patted her on
+the cheek. "I suppose I had to tell somebody," he said, "and you seemed,
+somehow, to be the right person, Phrasie."
+
+Euphrasia rose abruptly and looked up intently into his face. He thought
+it strange afterwards, as he drove along the dark roads, that she had not
+answered him.
+
+Even though the matter were on the knees of the gods, Euphrasia would
+have taken it thence, if she could. Nor did Austen know that she shared
+with him, that night, his waking hours.
+
+The next morning Mr. Thomas Gaylord, the younger, was making his way
+towards the office of the Gaylord Lumber Company, conveniently situated
+on Willow Street, near the railroad. Young Tom was in a particularly
+jovial frame of mind, despite the fact that he had arrived in Ripton, on
+the night express, as early as five o'clock in the morning. He had been
+touring the State ostensibly on lumber business, but young Tom had a
+large and varied personal as well as commercial acquaintance, and he had
+the inestimable happiness of being regarded as an honest man, while his
+rough and genial qualities made him beloved. For these reasons and others
+of a more material nature, suggestions from Mr. Thomas Gaylord were apt
+to be well received--and Tom had been making suggestions.
+
+Early as he was at his office--the office-boy was sprinkling the floor
+--young Tom had a visitor who was earlier still. Pausing in the doorway,
+Mr. Gaylord beheld with astonishment a prim, elderly lady in a stiff,
+black dress sitting upright on the edge of a capacious oak chair which
+seemed itself rather discomfited by what it contained,--for its
+hospitality had hitherto been extended to visitors of a very different
+sort.
+
+"Well, upon my soul," cried young Tom, "if it isn't Euphrasia!"
+
+"Yes, it's me," said Euphrasia; "I've been to market, and I had a notion
+to see you before I went home."
+
+Mr. Gaylord took the office-boy lightly by the collar of his coat and
+lifted him, sprinkling can and all, out of the doorway and closed the
+door. Then he drew his revolving chair close to Euphrasia, and sat down.
+They were old friends, and more than once in a youth far from model Tom
+had experienced certain physical reproof at her hands, for which he bore
+no ill-will. There was anxiety on his face as he asked:--"There hasn't
+been any accident, has there, Euphrasia?"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"No new row?" inquired Tom.
+
+"No," said Euphrasia. She was a direct person, as we know, but true
+descendants of the Puritans believe in the decency of preliminaries, and
+here was certainly an affair not to be plunged into. Euphrasia was a
+spinster in the strictest sense of that formidable and highly descriptive
+term, and she intended ultimately to discuss with Tom a subject of which
+she was supposed by tradition to be wholly ignorant, the mere mention of
+which still brought warmth to her cheeks. Such a delicate matter should
+surely be led up to delicately. In the meanwhile Tom was mystified.
+
+"Well, I'm mighty glad to see you, anyhow," he said heartily. "It was
+fond of you to call, Euphrasia. I can't offer you a cigar."
+
+"I should think not," said Euphrasia.
+
+Tom reddened. He still retained for her some of his youthful awe.
+
+"I can't do the honours of hospitality as I'd wish to," he went on; "I
+can't give you anything like the pies you used to give me."
+
+"You stole most of 'em," said Euphrasia.
+
+"I guess that's so," said young Tom, laughing, "but I'll never taste pies
+like 'em again as long as I live. Do you know, Euphrasia, there were two
+reasons why those were the best pies I ever ate?"
+
+"What were they?" she asked, apparently unmoved.
+
+"First," said Tom, "because you made 'em, and second, because they were
+stolen."
+
+Truly, young Tom had a way with women, had he only been aware of it.
+
+"I never took much stock in stolen things," said Euphrasia.
+
+"It's because you never were tempted with such pie as that," replied the
+audacious Mr. Gaylord.
+
+"You're gettin' almighty stout," said Euphrasia.
+
+As we see her this morning, could she indeed ever have had a love affair?
+
+"I don't have to use my legs as much as I once did," said Tom. And this
+remark brought to an end the first phase of this conversation,--brought
+to an end, apparently, all conversation whatsoever. Tom racked his brain
+for a new topic, opened his roll-top desk, drummed on it, looked up at
+the ceiling and whistled softly, and then turned and faced again the
+imperturbable Euphrasia.
+
+"Euphrasia," he said, you're not exactly a politician, I believe."
+
+"Well," said Euphrasia, "I've be'n maligned a good many times, but nobody
+ever went that far."
+
+Mr. Gaylord shook with laughter.
+
+"Then I guess there's no harm in confiding political secrets to you," he
+said. "I've been around the State some this week, talking to people I
+know, and I believe if your Austen wasn't so obstinate, we could make him
+governor."
+
+"Obstinate?" ejaculated Euphrasia.
+
+"Yes," said Tom, with a twinkle in his eye, "obstinate. He doesn't seem
+to want something that most men would give their souls for."
+
+"And why should he dirty himself with politics?" she demanded. "In the
+years I've lived with Hilary Vane I've seen enough of politicians,
+goodness knows. I never want to see another."
+
+"If Austen was governor, we'd change some of that. But mind, Euphrasia,
+this is a secret," said Tom, raising a warning finger. "If Austen hears
+about it now, the jig's up."
+
+Euphrasia considered and thawed a little.
+
+"They don't often have governors that young, do they?" she asked.
+
+"No," said Tom, forcibly, "they don't. And so far as I know, they haven't
+had such a governor for years as Austen would make. But he won't push
+himself. You know, Euphrasia, I have always believed that he will be
+President some day."
+
+Euphrasia received this somewhat startling prediction complacently. She
+had no doubt of its accuracy, but the enunciation of it raised young Tom
+in her estimation, and incidentally brought her nearer her topic.
+
+"Austen ain't himself lately," she remarked.
+
+"I knew that he didn't get along with Hilary," said Tom, sympathetically,
+beginning to realize now that Euphrasia had come to talk about her idol.
+
+"It's Hilary doesn't get along with him," she retorted indignantly. "He's
+responsible--not Austen. Of all the narrow, pig-headed, selfish men the
+Lord ever created, Hilary Vane's the worst. It's Hilary drove him out of
+his mother's house to live with strangers. It's Austen that comes around
+to inquire for his father--Hilary never has a word to say about Austen."
+A trace of colour actually rose under Euphrasia's sallow skin, and she
+cast her eyes downward. "You've known him a good while, haven't you,
+Tom?"
+
+"All my life," said Tom, mystified again, "all my life. And I, think more
+of him than of anybody else in the world."
+
+"I calculated as much," she said; "that's why I came." She hesitated.
+Artful Euphrasia! We will let the ingenuous Mr. Gaylord be the first to
+mention this delicate matter, if possible. "Goodness knows, it ain't
+Hilary I came to talk about. I had a notion that you'd know if anything
+else was troubling Austen."
+
+"Why," said Tom, "there can't be any business troubles outside of those
+Hilary's mixed up in. Austen doesn't spend any money to speak of, except
+what he gives away, and he's practically chief counsel for our company."
+
+Euphrasia was silent a moment.
+
+"I suppose there's nothing else that could bother him," she remarked. She
+had never held Tom Gaylord's powers of comprehension in high estimation,
+and the estimate had not risen during this visit. But she had undervalued
+him; even Tom could rise to an inspiration--when the sources of all other
+inspirations were eliminated.
+
+"Why," he exclaimed, with a masculine lack of delicacy, "he may be in
+love--"
+
+"That's struck you, has it?" said Euphrasia.
+
+But Tom appeared to be thinking; he was, in truth, engaged in collecting
+his cumulative evidence: Austen's sleigh-ride at the capital, which he
+had discovered; his talk with Victoria after her fall, when she had
+betrayed an interest in Austen which Tom had thought entirely natural;
+and finally Victoria's appearance at Mr. Crewe's rally in Ripton. Young
+Mr. Gaylord had not had a great deal of experience in affairs of the
+heart, and he was himself aware that his diagnosis in such a matter would
+not carry much weight. He had conceived a tremendous admiration for
+Victoria, which had been shaken a little by the suspicion that she might
+be intending to marry Mr. Crewe. Tom Gaylord saw no reason why Austen
+Vane should not marry Mr. Flint's daughter if he chose--or any other
+man's daughter; partaking, in this respect, somewhat of Euphrasia's view.
+As for Austen himself, Tom had seen no symptoms; but then, he reflected,
+he would not be likely to see any. However, he perceived the object now
+of Euphrasia's visit, and began to take the liveliest interest in it.
+
+"So you think Austen's in love?" he demanded.
+
+Euphrasia sat up straighter, if anything.
+
+"I didn't say anything of the kind," she returned.
+
+"He wouldn't tell me, you know," said Tom; "I can only guess at it."
+
+"And the--lady?" said Euphrasia, craftily.
+
+"I'm up a tree there, too. All I know is that he took her sleigh-riding
+one afternoon at the capital, and wouldn't tell me who he was going to
+take. And then she fell off her horse down at East Tunbridge Station--"
+
+"Fell off her horse!" echoed Euphrasia, an accident comparable in her
+mind to falling off a roof. What manner of young woman was this who fell
+off horses?
+
+"She wasn't hurt," Tom continued, "and she rode the beast home. He was a
+wild one, I can tell you, and she's got pluck. That's the first time I
+ever met her, although I had often seen her and thought she was a stunner
+to look at. She talked as if she took an interest in Austen."
+
+An exact portrayal of Euphrasia's feelings at this description of the
+object of Austen's affections is almost impossible. A young woman who was
+a stunner, who rode wild horses and fell off them and rode them again,
+was beyond the pale not only of Euphrasia's experience but of her
+imagination likewise. And this hoyden had talked as though she took an
+interest in Austen! Euphrasia was speechless.
+
+"The next time I saw her," said Tom, "was when she came down here to
+listen to Humphrey Crewe's attacks on the railroad. I thought that was a
+sort of a queer thing for Flint's daughter to do, but Austen didn't seem
+to look at it that way. He talked to her after the show was over."
+
+At this point Euphrasia could contain herself no longer, and in her
+excitement she slipped off the edge of the chair and on to her feet.
+
+"Flint's daughter?" she cried; "Augustus P. Flint's daughter?"
+
+Tom looked at her in amazement.
+
+"Didn't you know who it was?" he stammered. But Euphrasia was not
+listening.
+
+"I've seen her," she was saying; "I've seen her ridin' through Ripton in
+that little red wagon, drivin' herself, with a coachman perched up beside
+her. Flint's daughter!"  Euphrasia became speechless once more, the
+complications opened up being too vast for intelligent comment.
+Euphrasia, however, grasped some of the problems which Austen had had to
+face. Moreover, she had learned what she had come for, and the obvious
+thing to do now was to go home and reflect. So, without further ceremony,
+she walked to the door and opened it, and turned again with her hand on
+the knob. "Look here, Tom Gaylord," she said, "if you tell Austen I was
+here, I'll never forgive you. I don't believe you've got any more sense
+than to do it."
+
+And with these words she took her departure, ere the amazed Mr. Gaylord
+had time to show her out. Half an hour elapsed before he opened his
+letters.
+
+When she arrived home in Hanover Street it was nine o'clock--an hour well
+on in the day for Euphrasia. Unlocking the kitchen door, she gave a
+glance at the stove to assure herself that it had not been misbehaving,
+and went into the passage on her way up-stairs to take off her gown
+before sitting down to reflect upon the astonishing thing she had heard.
+Habit had so crystallized in Euphrasia that no news, however amazing,
+could have shaken it. But in the passage she paused; an unwonted, or
+rather untimely, sound reached her ears, a sound which came from the
+front of the house--and at nine o'clock in the morning! Had Austen been
+at home, Euphrasia would have thought nothing of it. In her remembrance
+Hilary Vane, whether he returned from a journey or not, had never been
+inside the house at that hour on a week-day; and, unlike the gentleman in
+"La Vie de Boheme," Euphrasia did not have to be reminded of the Sabbath.
+
+Perhaps Austen had returned! Or perhaps it was a burglar! Euphrasia,
+undaunted, ran through the darkened front hall to where the graceful
+banister ended in a curve at the foot of the stairs, and there, on the
+bottom step, sat a man with his head in his hands. Euphrasia shrieked. He
+looked up, and she saw that it was Hilary Vane. She would have shrieked,
+anyway.
+
+"What in the world's the matter with you?" she cried.
+
+"I--I stumbled coming down the stairs," he said.
+
+"But what are you doing at home in the middle of the morning?" she
+demanded.
+
+He did not answer her. The subdued light which crept under the porch and
+came in through the fan shaped window over the door fell on his face.
+
+"Are you sick?" said Euphrasia. In all her life she had never seen him
+look like that.
+
+He shook his head, but did not attempt to rise. A Hilary Vane without
+vigour!
+
+"No," he said, "no. I just came up here from the train to--get somethin'
+I'd left in my room."
+
+"A likely story!" said Euphrasia. "You've never done that in thirty
+years. You're sick, and I'm a-going for the doctor."
+
+She put her hand to his forehead, but he thrust it away and got to his
+feet, although in the effort he compressed his lips and winced.
+
+"You stay where you are," he said; "I tell you I'm not sick, and I'm
+going down to the square. Let, the doctors alone--I haven't got any use
+for 'em."
+
+He walked to the door, opened it, and went out and slammed it in her
+face. By the time she had got it open again--a crack--he had reached the
+sidewalk, and was apparently in full possession of his powers and
+faculties.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A FALLING-OUT IN HIGH PLACES
+
+Although one of the most exciting political battles ever fought is fast
+coming to its climax, and a now jubilant Mr. Crewe is contesting every
+foot of ground in the State with the determination and pertinacity which
+make him a marked man; although the convention wherein his fate will be
+decided is now but a few days distant, and everything has been done to
+secure a victory which mortal man can do, let us follow Hilary Vane to
+Fairview. Not that Hilary has been idle. The "Book of Arguments" is
+exhausted, and the chiefs and the captains have been to Ripton, and
+received their final orders, but more than one has gone back to his fief
+with the vision of a changed Hilary who has puzzled them. Rumours have
+been in the air that the harmony between the Source of Power and the
+Distribution of Power is not as complete as it once was. Certainly,
+Hilary Vane is not the man he was--although this must not even be
+whispered. Senator Whitredge had told--but never mind that. In the old
+days an order was an order; there were no rebels then. In the old days
+there was no wavering and rescinding, and if the chief counsel told you,
+with brevity, to do a thing, you went and did it straightway, with the
+knowledge that it was the best thing to do. Hilary Vane had aged
+suddenly, and it occurred for the first time to many that, in this
+utilitarian world, old blood must be superseded by young blood.
+
+Two days before the convention, immediately after taking dinner at the
+Ripton House with Mr. Nat Billings, Hilary Vane, in response to a
+summons, drove up to Fairview. One driving behind him would have observed
+that the Honourable Hilary's horse took his own gaits, and that the
+reins, most of the time, drooped listlessly on his quarters. A September
+stillness was in the air, a September purple clothed the distant hills,
+but to Hilary the glories of the day were as things non-existent. Even
+the groom at Fairview, who took his horse, glanced back at him with a
+peculiar expression as he stood for a moment on the steps with a
+hesitancy the man had never before remarked.
+
+In the meantime Mr. Flint, with a pile of letters in a special basket on
+the edge of his desk, was awaiting his counsel; the president of the
+Northeastern was pacing his room, as was his wont when his activities
+were for a moment curbed, or when he had something on his mind; and every
+few moments he would glance towards his mantel at the clock which was set
+to railroad time. In past days he had never known Hilary Vane to be a
+moment late to an appointment. The door was open, and five and twenty
+minutes had passed the hour before he saw the lawyer in the doorway. Mr.
+Flint was a man of such preoccupation of mind that he was not likely to
+be struck by any change there might have been in his counsel's
+appearance.
+
+"It's half-past three," he said.
+
+Hilary entered, and sat down beside the window.
+
+"You mean that I'm late," he replied.
+
+"I've got some engineers coming here in less than an hour," said Mr.
+Flint.
+
+"I'll be gone in less than an hour," said Hilary.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Flint, "let's get down to hardtack. I've got to be frank
+with you, Vane, and tell you plainly that this political business is all
+at sixes and sevens."
+
+"It isn't necessary to tell me that," said Hilary.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I know it."
+
+"To put it mildly," the president of the Northeastern continued, "it's
+the worst mixed-up campaign I ever knew. Here we are with the convention
+only two days off, and we don't know where we stand, how many delegates
+we've got, or whether this upstart at Leith is going to be nominated over
+our heads. Here's Adam Hunt with his back up, declaring he's a reformer,
+and all his section of the State behind him. Now if that could have been
+handled otherwise--"
+
+"Who told Hunt to go in?" Hilary inquired.
+
+"Things were different then," said Mr. Flint, vigorously. "Hunt had been
+promised the governorship for a long time, and when Ridout became out of
+the question--"
+
+"Why did Ridout become out of the question?" asked Hilary.
+
+Mr. Flint made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"On account of that foolishness in the Legislature, of course."
+
+"That foolishness in the Legislature, as you call it, represented a
+sentiment all over the State," said Hilary. "And if I'd been you, I
+wouldn't have let Hunt in this year. But you didn't ask my opinion. You
+asked me when you begged me to get Adam out, and I predicted that he
+wouldn't get out."
+
+Mr. Flint took a turn up and down the room.
+
+"I'm sorry I didn't send for him to go to New York," he said.  "Well,
+anyway, the campaign's been muddled, that's certain,--whoever muddled
+it." And the president looked at his counsel as though he, at least, had
+no doubts on this point. But Hilary appeared unaware of the implication,
+and made no reply.
+
+"I can't find out what Bascom and Botcher are doing," Mr. Flint went on;
+"I don't get any reports--they haven't been here. Perhaps you know.
+They've had trip passes enough to move the whole population of Putnam
+County. Fairplay says they're gettin' delegates for Adam Hunt instead of
+Giles Henderson. And Whitredge says that Jake Botcher is talking reform."
+
+"I guess Botcher and Bascom know their business," said Mr. Vane. If Mr.
+Flint had been a less concentrated man, he might have observed that the
+Honourable Hilary had not cut a piece of Honey Dew this afternoon.
+
+"What is their business?" asked Mr. Flint--a little irrelevantly for him.
+
+"What you and I taught 'em," said Mr. Vane.
+
+Mr. Flint considered this a moment, and decided to let it pass. He looked
+at the Honourable Hilary more closely, however.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Vane? You're not sick, are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mr. Flint took another turn.
+
+"Now the question is, what are we going to do? If you've got any plan, I
+want to hear it."
+
+Mr. Vane was silent.
+
+"Suppose Crewe goes into the convention with enough delegates to lock it
+up, so that none of the three has a majority?"
+
+"I guess he'll do that," said Mr. Vane. He fumbled in his pocket, and
+drew out a typewritten list. It must be explained that the caucuses, or
+primaries, had been held in the various towns of the State at odd dates,
+and that the delegates pledged for the different candidates had been
+published in the newspapers from time to time--although very much in
+accordance with the desires of their individual newspapers. Mr. Crewe's
+delegates necessarily had been announced by what is known as political
+advertising. Mr. Flint took the Honourable Hilary's list, ran his eye
+over it, and whistled.
+
+"You mean he claims three hundred and fifty out of the thousand."
+
+"No," said Hilary, "he claims six hundred. He'll have three hundred and
+fifty."
+
+In spite of the 'Book of Arguments,' Mr. Crewe was to have three hundred!
+It was incredible, preposterous. Mr. Flint looked at his counsel once
+more, and wondered whether he could be mentally failing.
+
+"Fairplay only gives him two hundred."
+
+"Fairplay only gave him ten, in the beginning," said Hilary.
+
+"You come here two days before the convention and tell me Crewe has three
+hundred and fifty!" Mr. Flint exclaimed, as though Hilary Vane were
+personally responsible for Mr. Crewe's delegates. A very different tone
+from that of other times, when conventions were mere ratifications of
+Imperial decrees. "Do you realize what it means if we lose control?
+Thousands and thousands of dollars in improvements--rolling stock, better
+service, new bridges, and eliminations of grade crossings. And they'll
+raise our tax rate to the average, which means thousands more. A new
+railroad commission that we can't talk to, and lower dividends--lower
+dividends, do you understand? That means trouble with the directors, the
+stockholders, and calls for explanations. And what explanations can I
+make which can be printed in a public report?"
+
+"You were always pretty good at 'em, Flint," said Hilary.
+
+This remark, as was perhaps natural, did not improve the temper of the
+president of the Northeastern.
+
+"If you think I like this political business any better than you do,
+you're mightily mistaken," he replied. "And now I want to hear what plan
+you've got for the convention. Suppose there's a deadlock, as you say
+there will be, how are you going to handle it? Can you get a deal through
+between Giles Henderson and Adam Hunt? With all my other work, I've had
+to go into this myself. Hunt hasn't got a chance. Bascom and Botcher are
+egging him on and making him believe he has. When Hunt gets into the
+convention and begins to fall off, you've got to talk to him, Vane. And
+his delegates have all got to be seen at the Pelican the night before and
+understand that they're to swing to Henderson after two ballots. You've
+got to keep your hand on the throttle in the convention, you understand.
+And I don't need to impress upon you how grave are the consequences if
+this man Crewe gets in, with public sentiment behind him and a
+reactionary Lower House. You've got to keep your hand on the throttle."
+
+"That's part of my business, isn't it?" Hilary asked, without turning his
+head.
+
+Mr. Flint did not answer, but his eye rested again on his counsel's face.
+
+"I'm that kind of a lawyer," Hilary continued, apparently more to himself
+than to his companion. "You pay me for that sort of thing more than for
+the work I do in the courts. Isn't that so, Flint?"
+
+Mr. Flint was baffled. Two qualities which were very dear to him he
+designated as sane and safe, and he had hitherto regarded his counsel as
+the sanest and safest of men. This remark made him wonder seriously
+whether the lawyer's mind were not giving away; and if so, to whom was he
+to turn at this eleventh hour? No man in the State knew the ins and outs
+of conventions as did Hilary Vane; and, in the rare times when there had
+been crises, he had sat quietly in the little room off the platform as at
+the keyboard of an organ, and the delegates had responded to his touch.
+Hilary Vane had named the presidents of conventions, and the committees,
+and by pulling out stops could get such resolutions as he wished--or as
+Mr. Flint wished. But now?
+
+Suddenly a suspicion invaded Mr. Flint's train of thought; he repeated
+Hilary's words over to himself. "I'm that kind of a lawyer," and another
+individuality arose before the president of the Northeastern. Instincts
+are curious things. On the day, some years before, when Austen Vane had
+brought his pass into this very room and laid it down on his desk, Mr.
+Flint had recognized a man with whom he would have to deal,--a stronger
+man than Hilary. Since then he had seen Austen's hand in various
+disturbing matters, and now it was as if he heard Austen speaking. "I'm
+that kind of a lawyer." Not Hilary Vane, but Hilary Vane's son was
+responsible for Hilary Vane's condition--this recognition came to Mr.
+Flint in a flash. Austen had somehow accomplished the incredible feat of
+making Hilary Vane ashamed--and when such men as Hilary are ashamed,
+their usefulness is over. Mr. Flint had seen the thing happen with a
+certain kind of financiers, one day aggressive, combative, and the next
+broken, querulous men. Let a man cease to believe in what he is doing,
+and he loses force.
+
+The president of the Northeastern used a locomotive as long as possible,
+but when it ceased to be able to haul a train up-grade, he sent it to the
+scrap-heap. Mr. Flint was far from being a bad man, but he worshipped
+power, and his motto was the survival of the fittest. He did not yet feel
+pity for Hilary--for he was angry. Only contempt,--contempt that one who
+had been a power should come to this. To draw a somewhat far-fetched
+parallel, a Captain Kidd or a Caesar Borgia with a conscience would never
+have been heard of. Mr. Flint did not call it a conscience--he had a
+harder name for it. He had to send Hilary, thus vitiated, into the
+Convention to conduct the most important battle since the founding of the
+Empire, and Austen Vane was responsible.
+
+Mr. Flint had to control himself. In spite of his feelings, he saw that
+he must do so. And yet he could not resist saying: "I get a good many
+rumours here. They tell me that there may be another candidate in the
+field--a dark horse."
+
+"Who?" asked Hilary.
+
+"There was a meeting in the room of a man named Redbrook during the
+Legislature to push this candidate," said Mr. Flint, eyeing his counsel
+significantly, "and now young Gaylord has been going quietly around the
+State in his interest."
+
+Suddenly the listless figure of Hilary Vane straightened, and the old
+look which had commanded the respect and obedience of men returned to his
+eye.
+
+"You mean my son?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Flint; "they tell me that when the time comes, your, son
+will be a candidate on a platform opposed to our interests."
+
+"Then," said Hilary, "they tell you a damned lie."
+
+Hilary Vane had not sworn for a quarter of a century, and yet it is to be
+doubted if he ever spoke more nobly. He put his hands on the arms of his
+chair and lifted himself to his feet, where he stood for a moment, a tell
+figure to be remembered. Mr. Flint remembered it for many years. Hilary
+Vane's long coat was open, and seemed in itself to express this strange
+and new-found vigour in its flowing lines; his head was thrown back, and
+a look on his face which Mr. Flint had never seen there. He drew from an
+inner pocket a long envelope, and his hand trembled, though with seeming
+eagerness, as he held it out to Mr. Flint.
+
+"Here!" he said.
+
+"What's this?" asked Mr. Flint. He evinced no desire to take it, but
+Hilary pressed it on him.
+
+"My resignation as counsel for your road."
+
+The president of the Northeastern, bewildered by this sudden
+transformation, stared at the envelope.
+
+"What? Now--to-day?" he said.
+
+"No," answered Hilary; "read it. You'll see it takes effect the day after
+the State convention. I'm not much use any more you've done your best to
+bring that home to me, and you'll need a new man to do--the kind of work
+I've been doing for you for twenty-five years. But you can't get a new
+man in a day, and I said I'd stay with you, and I keep my word. I'll go
+to the convention; I'll do my best for you, as I always have. But I don't
+like it, and after that I'm through. After that I become a
+lawyer--lawyer, do you understand?"
+
+"A lawyer?" Mr. Flint repeated.
+
+"Yes, a lawyer. Ever since last June, when I came up here, I've realized
+what I was. A Brush Bascom, with a better education and more brains, but
+a Brush Bascom--with the brains prostituted. While things were going
+along smoothly I didn't know--you never attempted to talk to me this way
+before. Do you remember how you took hold of me that day, and begged me
+to stay? I do, and I stayed. Why? Because I was a friend of yours.
+Association with you for twenty-five years had got under my skin, and I
+thought it had got under yours." Hilary let his hand fall. "To-day you've
+given me a notion of what friendship is. You've given me a chance to
+estimate myself on a new basis, and I'm much obliged to you for that. I
+haven't got many years left, but I'm glad to have found out what my life
+has been worth before I die."
+
+He buttoned up his coat slowly, glaring at Mr. Flint the while with a
+courage and a defiance that were superb. And he had picked up his hat
+before Mr. Flint found his tongue.
+
+"You don't mean that, Vane," he cried. "My God, think what you've said!"
+
+Hilary pointed at the desk with a shaking finger.
+
+"If that were a scaffold, and a rope were around my neck, I'd say it over
+again. And I thank God I've had a chance to say it to you." He paused,
+cleared his throat, and continued in a voice that all at once had become
+unemotional and natural. "I've three tin boxes of the private papers you
+wanted. I didn't think of 'em to-day, but I'll bring 'em up to you myself
+on Thursday."
+
+Mr. Flint reflected afterwards that what made him helpless must have been
+the sudden change in Hilary's manner to the commonplace. The president of
+the Northeastern stood where he was, holding the envelope in his hand,
+apparently without the power to move or speak. He watched the tall form
+of his chief counsel go through the doorway, and something told him that
+that exit was coincident with the end of an era.
+
+The end of an era of fraud, of self-deception, of conditions that
+violated every sacred principle of free government which men had shed
+blood to obtain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+AN ADVENTURE OF VICTORIA'S
+
+Mrs. Pomfret was a proud woman, for she had at last obtained the consent
+of the lion to attend a lunch party. She would have liked a dinner much
+better, but beggars are not choosers, and she seized eagerly on the
+lunch. The two days before the convention Mr. Crewe was to spend at
+Leith; having continual conferences, of course, receiving delegations,
+and discussing with prominent citizens certain offices which would be in
+his gift when he became governor. Also, there was Mr. Watling's
+nominating speech to be gone over carefully, and Mr. Crewe's own speech
+of acceptance to be composed. He had it in his mind, and he had decided
+that it should have two qualities: it should be brief and forceful.
+
+Gratitude, however, is one of the noblest qualities of man, and a
+statesman should not fail to reward his faithful workers and adherents.
+As one of the chiefest of these, Mrs. Pomfret was entitled to high
+consideration. Hence the candidate had consented to have a lunch given in
+his honour, naming the day and the hour; and Mrs. Pomfret, believing that
+a prospective governor should possess some of the perquisites of royalty,
+in a rash moment submitted for his approval a list of guests. This
+included two distinguished foreigners who were staying at the Leith Inn,
+an Englishman and an Austrian, and an elderly lady of very considerable
+social importance who was on a visit to Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+Mr. Crewe had graciously sanctioned the list, but took the liberty of
+suggesting as an addition to it the name of Miss Victoria Flint,
+explaining over the telephone to Mrs. Pomfret that he had scarcely seen
+Victoria all summer, and that he wanted particularly to see her. Mrs.
+Pomfret declared that she had only left out Victoria because her presence
+might be awkward for both of them, but Mr. Crewe waved this aside as a
+trivial and feminine objection; so Victoria was invited, and another
+young man to balance the table.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, as may have been surmised, was a woman of taste, and her
+villa at Leith, though small, had added considerably to her reputation
+for this quality. Patterson Pomfret had been a gentleman with red cheeks
+and an income, who incidentally had been satisfied with both. He had
+never tried to add to the income, which was large enough to pay the dues
+of the clubs the lists of which he thought worthy to include his name;
+large enough to pay hotel bills in London and Paris and at the baths, and
+to free the servants at country houses; large enough to clothe his wife
+and himself, and to teach Alice the three essentials of music, French,
+and deportment. If that man is notable who has mastered one thing well,
+Patterson Pomfret was a notable man: he had mastered the possibilities of
+his income, and never in any year had he gone beyond it by so much as a
+sole d vin blanc or a pair of red silk stockings. When he died, he left a
+worthy financial successor in his wife.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, knowing the income, after an exhaustive search decided upon
+Leith as the place to build her villa. It must be credited to her
+foresight that, when she built, she saw the future possibilities of the
+place. The proper people had started it. And it must be credited to her
+genius that she added to these possibilities of Leith by bringing to it
+such families as she thought worthy to live in the neighbourhood
+--families which incidentally increased the value of the land. Her villa
+had a decided French look, and was so amazingly trim and neat and
+generally shipshape as to be fit--for only the daintiest and most
+discriminating feminine occupation. The house was small, and its
+metamorphosis from a plain wooden farm-house had been an achievement that
+excited general admiration. Porches had been added, and a coat of
+spotless white relieved by an orange striping so original that many
+envied, but none dared to copy it. The striping went around the white
+chimneys, along the cornice, under the windows and on the railings of the
+porch: there were window boxes gay with geraniums and abundant awnings
+striped white and red, to match the flowers: a high, formal hemlock hedge
+hid the house from the road, through which entered a blue-stone drive
+that cut the close-cropped lawn and made a circle to the doorway. Under
+the great maples on the lawn were a tea-table, rugs, and wicker chairs,
+and the house itself was furnished by a variety of things of a design not
+to be bought in the United States of America: desks, photograph frames,
+writing-sets, clocks, paperknives, flower baskets, magazine racks,
+cigarette boxes, and dozens of other articles for the duplicates of which
+one might have searched Fifth Avenue in vain.
+
+Mr. Crewe was a little late. Important matters, he said, had detained him
+at the last moment, and he particularly enjoined Mrs. Pomfret's butler to
+listen carefully for the telephone, and twice during lunch it was
+announced that Mr. Crewe was wanted. At first he was preoccupied, and
+answered absently across the table the questions of the Englishman and
+the Austrian about American politics, and talked to the lady of social
+prominence on his right not at all; nor to Mrs. Pomfret'--who excused
+him. Being a lady of discerning qualities, however, the hostess remarked
+that Mr. Crewe's eyes wandered more than once to the far end of the oval
+table, where Victoria sat, and even Mrs. Pomfret could not deny the
+attraction. Victoria wore a filmy gown of mauve that infinitely became
+her, and a shadowy hat which, in the semi-darkness of the dining room,
+was a wondrous setting for her shapely head. Twice she caught Mr. Crewe's
+look upon her and returned it amusedly from under her lashes,--and once
+he could have sworn that she winked perceptibly. What fires she kindled
+in his deep nature it is impossible to say.
+
+She had kindled other fires at her side. The tall young Englishman had
+lost interest in American politics, had turned his back upon poor Alice
+Pomfret, and had forgotten the world in general. Not so the Austrian, who
+was on the other side of Alice, and who could not see Victoria. Mr.
+Crewe, by his manner and appearance, had impressed him as a person of
+importance, and he wanted to know more. Besides, he wished to improve his
+English, and Alice had been told to speak French to him. By a lucky
+chance, after several blind attempts, he awakened the interest of the
+personality.
+
+"I hear you are what they call reform in America?"
+
+This was not the question that opened the gates.
+
+"I don't care much for the word," answered Mr. Crewe, shortly; "I prefer
+the word progressive."
+
+Discourse on the word "progressive" by the Austrian almost a monologue.
+But he was far from being discouraged.
+
+"And Mrs. Pomfret tells me they play many detestable tricks on you--yes?"
+
+"Tricks!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, the memory of many recent ones being fresh
+in his mind; "I should say so. Do you know what a caucus is?"
+
+"Caucus--caucus? It brings something to my head. Ah, I have seen a
+picture of it, in some English book. A very funny picture--it is in fun,
+yes?"
+
+"A picture?" said Mr. Crewe. "Impossible!"
+
+"But no," said the Austrian, earnestly, with one finger to his temples.
+"It is a funny picture, I know. I cannot recall. But the word caucus I
+remember. That is a droll word."
+
+"Perhaps, Baron," said Victoria, who had been resisting an almost
+uncontrollable desire to laugh, "you have been reading 'Alice in
+Wonderland.'"
+
+The Englishman, Beatrice Chillingham, and some others (among whom were
+not Mr. Crewe and Mrs. Pomfret) gave way to an extremely pardonable
+mirth, in which the good-natured baron joined.
+
+"Ach!" he cried. "It is so, I have seen it in 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
+Here the puzzled expression returned to his face, "But they are birds,
+are they not?"
+
+Men whose minds are on serious things are impatient of levity, and Mr.
+Crewe looked at the baron:
+
+"No," he said, "they are not birds."
+
+This reply was the signal for more laughter.
+
+"A thousand pardons," exclaimed the baron. "It is I who am so ignorant.
+You will excuse me--yes?"
+
+Mr. Crewe was mollified. The baron was a foreigner, he had been the
+object of laughter, and Mr. Crewe's chivalrous spirit resented it.
+
+"What we call a caucus in the towns of this State," he said, "is a
+meeting of citizens of one party to determine who their candidates shall
+be. A caucus is a primary. There is a very loose primary law in this
+State, purposely kept loose by the politicians of the Northeastern
+Railroads, in order that they may play such tricks on decent men as they
+have been playing on me."
+
+At this mention of the Northeastern Railroads the lady on Mr. Crewe's
+right, and some other guests, gave startled glances at Victoria. They
+observed with surprise that she seemed quite unmoved.
+
+"I'll tell you one or two of the things those railroad lobbyists have
+done," said Mr. Crewe, his indignation rising with the subject, and still
+addressing the baron. "They are afraid to let the people into the
+caucuses, because they know I'll get the delegates. Nearly everywhere I
+speak to the people, I get the delegates. The railroad politicians send
+word to the town rings to hold snap caucuses' when they hear I'm coming
+into a town to speak, and the local politicians give out notices only a
+day before, and only to the voters they want in the caucus. In Hull the
+other day, out of a population of two thousand, twenty men elected four
+delegates for the railroad candidate."
+
+"It is corruption!" cried the baron, who had no idea who Victoria was,
+and a very slim notion of what Mr. Crewe was talking about.
+
+"Corruption!" said Mr. Crewe. "What can you expect when a railroad owns a
+State? The other day in Britain, where they elect fourteen delegates, the
+editor of a weekly newspaper printed false ballots with two of my men at
+the top and one at the bottom, and eleven railroad men in the middle.
+Fortunately some person with sense discovered the fraud before it was too
+late."
+
+"You don't tell me!" said the baron.
+
+"And every State and federal office-holder has been distributing passes
+for the last three weeks."
+
+"Pass?" repeated the baron. "You mean they fight with the fist--so? To
+distribute a pass--so," and the baron struck out at an imaginary enemy.
+"It is the American language. I have read it in the prize-fight. I am
+told to read the prize-fight and the base-ball game."
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it obviously useless to continue this conversation.
+
+"The railroad," said the baron, "he is the modern Machiavelli."
+
+"I say," Mr. Rangely, the Englishman, remarked to Victoria, "this is a
+bit rough on you, you know."
+
+"Oh, I'm used to it," she laughed.
+
+"Mr. Crewe," said Mrs. Pomfret, to the table at large, "deserves
+tremendous credit for the fight he has made, almost single-handed. Our
+greatest need in this country is what you have in England, Mr. Rangely,
+--gentlemen in politics. Our country gentlemen, like Mr. Crewe, are now
+going to assume their proper duties and responsibilities." She laid her
+napkin on the table and glanced at Alice as she continued: "Humphrey, I
+shall have to appoint you, as usual, the man of the house. Will you take
+the gentlemen into the library?"
+
+Another privilege of celebrity is to throw away one's cigar, and walk out
+of the smoking room if one is bored. Mr. Crewe was, in a sense, the host.
+He indicated with a wave of his hand the cigars and cigarettes which Mrs.
+Pomfret had provided, and stood in a thoughtful manner before the empty
+fireplace, with his hands in his pockets, replying in brief sentences to
+the questions of Mr. Chillingham and the others. To tell the truth, Mr.
+Crewe was bringing to bear all of his extraordinary concentration of mind
+upon a problem with which he had been occupied for some years past. He
+was not a man, as we know, to take the important steps of life in a
+hurry, although; like the truly great, he was capable of making up his
+mind in a very brief period when it was necessary to strike. He had now,
+after weighing the question with the consideration which its gravity
+demanded, finally decided upon definite action. Whereupon he walked out
+of the library, leaving the other guests to comment as they would; or not
+comment at all, for all he cared. Like all masterful men, he went direct
+to the thing he wanted.
+
+The ladies were having coffee under the maples, by the tea-table. At some
+little distance from the group Beatrice Chillingham was walking with
+Victoria, and it was evident that Victoria found Miss Chillingham's
+remarks amusing. These were the only two in the party who did not observe
+Mr. Crewe's approach. Mrs. Pomfret, when she saw the direction which he
+was taking, lost the thread of her conversation, and the lady who was
+visiting her wore a significant expression.
+
+"Victoria," said Mr. Crewe, "let's go around to the other side of the
+house and look at the view."
+
+Victoria started and turned to him from Miss Chillingham, with the fun
+still sparkling in her eyes. It was, perhaps, as well for Mr. Crewe that
+he had not overheard their conversation; but this might have applied to
+any man.
+
+"Are you sure you can spare the time?" she asked.
+
+Mr. Crewe looked at his watch--probably from habit.
+
+"I made it a point to leave the smoking room early," he replied.
+
+"We're flattered--aren't we, Beatrice?"
+
+Miss Chillingham had a turned-up nose, and a face which was apt to be
+slightly freckled at this time of year; for she contemned vanity and
+veils. For fear of doing her an injustice, it must be added that she was
+not at all bad-looking; quite the contrary All that can be noted in this
+brief space is that Beatrice Chillingham was herself. Some people
+declared that she was possessed of the seven devils of her sex which Mr.
+Stockton wrote about.
+
+"I'm flattered," she said, and walked off towards the tea-table with a
+glance in which Victoria read many meanings. Mr. Crewe paid no attention
+either to words, look, or departure.
+
+"I want to talk to you," he said.
+
+"You've made that very plain, at least," answered Victoria. "Why did you
+pretend it was the view?"
+
+"Some conventionalities have to be observed, I suppose," he said. "Let's
+go around there. It is a good view."
+
+"Don't you think this is a little--marked?" asked Victoria, surveying him
+with her hands behind her back.
+
+"I can't help it if it is," said Mr. Crewe. "Every hour is valuable to
+me, and I've got to take my chances when I get 'em. For some reason, you
+haven't been down at Leith much this summer. Why didn't you telephone me,
+as I asked you."
+
+"Because I've suddenly grown dignified, I suppose," she said. "And then,
+of course, I hesitated to intrude upon such a person of importance as you
+have become, Humphrey."
+
+"I've always got time to see you," he replied. "I always shall have. But
+I appreciate your delicacy. That sort of thing counts with a man more
+than most women know."
+
+"Then I am repaid," said Victoria, "for exercising self-control."
+
+"I find it always pays," declared Mr. Crewe, and he glanced at her with
+distinct approval. They were skirting the house, and presently came out
+upon a tiny terrace where young Ridley had made a miniature Italian
+garden when the Electric dividends had increased, and from which there
+was a vista of the shallows of the Blue. Here was a stone garden-seat
+which Mrs. Pomfret had brought from Italy, and over which she had
+quarrelled with the customs authorities. Mr. Crewe, with a wave of his
+hand, signified his pleasure that they should sit, and cleared his
+throat.
+
+"It's just as well, perhaps," he began, "that we haven't had the chance
+to see each other earlier. When a man starts out upon an undertaking of
+the gravest importance, wherein he stakes his reputation, an undertaking
+for which he is ridiculed and reviled, he likes to have his judgment
+justified. He likes to be vindicated, especially in the eyes of--people
+whom he cares about. Personally, I never had any doubt that I should be
+the next governor, because I knew in the beginning that I had estimated
+public sentiment correctly. The man who succeeds in this world is the man
+who has sagacity enough to gauge public sentiment ahead of time, and the
+courage to act on his beliefs." Victoria looked at him steadily. He was
+very calm, and he had one knee crossed over the other.
+
+"And the sagacity," she added, "to choose his lieutenants in the fight."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Crewe. "I have always declared, Victoria, that you
+had a natural aptitude for affairs."
+
+"I have heard my father say," she continued, still maintaining her steady
+glance, "that Hamilton Tooting is one of the shrewdest politicians he has
+ever known. Isn't Mr. Tooting one of your right-hand men?"
+
+"He could hardly be called that," Mr. Crewe replied. "In fact, I haven't
+any what you might call 'right-hand men.' The large problems I have had
+to decide for myself. As for Tooting, he's well enough in his way; he
+understands the tricks of the politicians--he's played 'em, I guess. He's
+uneducated; he's merely a worker. You see," he went on, "one great reason
+why I've been so successful is because I've been practical. I've taken
+materials as I've found them."
+
+"I see," answered Victoria, turning her head and gazing over the terrace
+at the sparkling reaches of the river. She remembered the close of that
+wintry afternoon in Mr. Crewe's house at the capital, and she was quite
+willing to do him exact justice, and to believe that he had forgotten it
+--which, indeed, was the case.
+
+"I want to say," he continued, "that although I have known and--ahem
+--admired you for many years, Victoria, what has struck me most forcibly
+in your favour has been your open-mindedness--especially on the great
+political questions this summer. I have no idea how much you know about
+them, but one would naturally have expected you, on account of your
+father, to be prejudiced. Sometime, when I have more leisure, I shall go
+into them, fully with you. And in the meantime I'll have my secretary
+send you the complete list of my speeches up to date, and I know you will
+read them carefully."
+
+"You are very kind, Humphrey," she said.
+
+Absorbed in the presentation of his subject (which chanced to be
+himself), Mr. Crewe did not observe that her lips were parted, and that
+there were little creases around her eyes.
+
+"And sometime," said Mr. Crewe, when all this has blown over a little, I
+shall have a talk with your father. He undoubtedly understands that there
+is scarcely any question of my election. He probably realizes, too, that
+he has been in the--wrong, and that railroad domination must cease--he
+has already made several concessions, as you know. I wish you would tell
+him from me that when I am governor, I shall make it a point to discuss
+the whole matter with him, and that he will find in me no foe of
+corporations. Justice is what I stand for. Temperamentally, I am too
+conservative, I am too much of a business man, to tamper with vested
+interests."
+
+"I will tell him, Humphrey," said Victoria.
+
+Mr. Crewe coughed, and looked at his watch once, more. "And now, having
+made that clear," he said, "and having only a quarter of an hour before I
+have to leave to keep an appointment, I am going to take up another
+subject. And I ask you to believe it is not done lightly, or without due
+consideration, but as the result of some years of thought."
+
+Victoria turned to him seriously--and yet the creases were still around
+her eyes.
+
+"I can well believe it, Humphrey," she answered. "But--have you time?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have learned the value of minutes."
+
+"But not of hours, perhaps," she replied.
+
+"That," said Mr. Crewe, indulgently, "is a woman's point of view. A man
+cannot dally through life, and your kind of woman has no use for a man
+who dallies. First, I will give you my idea of a woman."
+
+"I am all attention," said Victoria.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, putting the tops of his fingers together, "she
+should excel as a housewife. I haven't any use for your so-called
+intellectual woman. Of course, what I mean by a housewife is something a
+little less bourgeoise; she should be able to conduct an establishment
+with the neatness and despatch and economy of a well-run hotel. She
+should be able to seat a table instantly and accurately, giving to the
+prominent guests the prestige they deserve. Nor have I any sympathy with
+the notion that makes a married woman a law unto herself. She enters
+voluntarily into an agreement whereby she puts herself under the control
+of her husband: his interests, his career, his--"
+
+"Comfort?" suggested Victoria.
+
+"Yes, his comfort--all that comes first. And his establishment is
+conducted primarily, and his guests selected, in the interests of his
+fortunes. Of course, that goes without saying of a man in high place in
+public life. But he must choose for his wife a woman who is equal to all
+these things,--to my mind her highest achievement,--who makes the most of
+the position he gives her, presides at his table and entertainments, and
+reaches such people as, for any reason, he is unable to reach. I have
+taken the pains to point out these things in a general way, for obvious
+reasons. My greatest desire is to be fair."
+
+"What," asked Victoria, with her eyes on the river, "what are the wages?"
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed. Incidentally, he thought her profile very fine.
+
+"I do not believe in flattery," he said, "but I think I should add to the
+qualifications personality and a sense of humour. I am quite sure I could
+never live with a woman--who didn't have a sense of humour."
+
+"I should think it would be a little difficult," said Victoria, "to get a
+woman with the qualifications you enumerate and a sense of humour thrown
+in."
+
+"Infinitely difficult," declared Mr. Crewe, with more ardour than he had
+yet shown. "I have waited a good many years, Victoria."
+
+"And yet," she said, "you have been happy. You have a perpetual source of
+enjoyment denied to some people."
+
+"What is that?" he asked. It is natural for a man to like to hear the
+points of his character discussed by a discerning woman.
+
+"Yourself," said Victoria, suddenly looking him full in the face. "You
+are complete, Humphrey, as it is. You are happily married already.
+Besides," she added, laughing a little, "the qualities you have
+mentioned--with the exception of the sense of humour--are not those of a
+wife, but of a business partner of the opposite sex. What you really want
+is a business partner with something like a fifth interest, and whose
+name shall not appear in the agreement."
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed again. Nevertheless, he was a little puzzled over this
+remark.
+
+"I am not sentimental," he began.
+
+"You certainly are not," she said.
+
+"You have a way," he replied, with a shade of reproof in his voice, "you
+have a way at times of treating serious things with a little less gravity
+than they deserve. I am still a young man, but I have seen a good deal of
+life, and I know myself pretty well. It is necessary to treat matrimony
+from a practical as well as a sentimental point of view. There wouldn't
+be half the unhappiness and divorces if people took time to do this,
+instead of rushing off and getting married immediately. And of course it
+is especially important for a man in my position to study every aspect of
+the problem before he takes a step."
+
+By this time a deep and absorbing interest in a new aspect of Mr. Crewe's
+character had taken possession of Victoria.
+
+"And you believe that, by taking thought, you can get the kind of a wife
+you want?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly," he replied; "does that strike you as strange?"
+
+"A little," said Victoria. "Suppose," she added gently, "suppose that the
+kind of wife you'd want wouldn't want you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed again.
+
+"That is a contingency which a strong man does not take into
+consideration," he answered. "Strong men get what they want. But upon my
+word, Victoria, you have a delicious way of putting things. In your
+presence I quite forget the problems and perplexities which beset me.
+That," he said, with delicate meaning, "that is another quality I should
+desire in a woman."
+
+"It is one, fortunately, that isn't marketable," she said, "and it's the
+only quality you've mentioned that's worth anything."
+
+"A woman's valuation," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"If it made you forget your own affairs, it would be priceless."
+
+"Look here, Victoria," cried Mr. Crewe, uncrossing his knees, "joking's
+all very well, but I haven't time for it to-day. And I'm in a serious
+mood. I've told you what I want, and now that I've got to go in a few
+minutes, I'll come to the point. I don't suppose a man could pay a woman
+a higher compliment than to say that his proposal was the result of some
+years of thought and study."
+
+Here Victoria laughed outright, but grew serious again at once.
+
+"Unless he proposed to her the day he met her. That would be a real
+compliment."
+
+"The man," said Mr. Crewe, impatiently, "would be a fool."
+
+"Or else a person of extreme discernment," said Victoria. "And love is
+lenient with fools. By the way, Humphrey, it has just occurred to me that
+there's one quality which some people think necessary in a wife, which
+you didn't mention."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Love," said Victoria.
+
+"Love, of course," he agreed; "I took that for granted."
+
+"I supposed you did," said Victoria, meekly.
+
+"Well, now, to come to the point--" he began again.
+
+But she interrupted him by glancing at the watch on her gown, and rising.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, with some annoyance.
+
+"The fifteen minutes are up," she announced. "I cannot take the
+responsibility of detaining you."
+
+"We will put in tantalizing as another attractive quality," he laughed.
+"I absolve you of all responsibility. Sit down."
+
+"I believe you mentioned obedience," she answered, and sat down again at
+the end of the bench, resting her chin on her gloved hand, and looking at
+him. By this time her glances seemed to have gained a visibly disturbing
+effect. He moved a little nearer to her, took off his hat (which he had
+hitherto neglected to do), and thrust his hands abruptly into his
+pockets--as much as to say that he would not be responsible for their
+movements if they were less free.
+
+"Hang it all, Victoria," he exclaimed, "I'm a practical man, and I try to
+look at this, which is one of the serious things in life, in a practical
+way."
+
+"One of the serious things," she repeated, as though to herself.
+
+"Yes," he said, "certainly."
+
+"I merely asked to be sure of the weight you gave it. Go on."
+
+"In a practical way, as I was saying. Long ago I suspected that you had
+most of those qualities."
+
+"I'm overwhelmed, Humphrey," she cried, with her eyes dancing.  "But--do
+you think I could cultivate the rest?"
+
+"Oh, well," said Mr. Crewe, I put it that way because no woman is
+perfect, and I dislike superlatives."
+
+"I should think superlatives would be very hard to live with," she
+reflected. "But--dreadful thought!--suppose I should lack an essential?"
+
+"What--for instance?"
+
+"Love--for instance. But then you did not put it first. It was I who
+mentioned it, and you who took it for granted."
+
+"Affection seems to be a more sensible term for it," he said. "Affection
+is the lasting and sensible thing. You mentioned a partnership, a word
+that singularly fits into my notion of marriage. I want to be honest with
+you, and understate my feelings on that subject."
+
+Victoria, who had been regarding him with a curious look that puzzled
+him, laughed again.
+
+"I have been hoping you haven't exaggerated them," she replied.
+
+"They're stronger than you think," he declared. "I never felt this way in
+my life before. What I meant to say was, that I never understood running
+away with a woman."
+
+"That does not surprise me," said Victoria.
+
+"I shouldn't know where to run to," he proclaimed.
+
+"Perhaps the woman would, if you got a clever one. At any rate, it
+wouldn't matter. One place is as good as another. Some go to Niagara, and
+some to Coney Island, and others to Venice. Personally, I should have no
+particular preference."
+
+"No preference!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I could be happy in Central Park," she declared.
+
+"Fortunately," said Mr. Crewe, "you will never be called upon to make the
+trial."
+
+Victoria was silent. Her thoughts, for the moment, had flown elsewhere,
+but Mr. Crewe did not appear to notice this. He fell back into the
+rounded hollow of the bench, and it occurred to him that he had never
+quite realized that profile. And what an ornament she would be to his
+table.
+
+"I think, Humphrey," she said, "that we should be going back."
+
+"One moment, and I'll have finished," he cried. "I've no doubt you are
+prepared for what I am going to say. I have purposely led up to it, in
+order that there might be no misunderstanding. In short, I have never
+seen another woman with personal characteristics so well suited for my
+life, and I want you to marry me, Victoria. I can offer you the position
+of the wife of a man with a public career--for which you are so well
+fitted."
+
+Victoria shook her head slowly, and smiled at him.
+
+"I couldn't fill the position," she said.
+
+"Perhaps," he replied, smiling back at her, "perhaps I am the best judge
+of that."
+
+"And you thought," she asked slowly, "that I was that kind of a woman?"
+
+"I know it to be a practical certainty," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Practical certainties," said Victoria, "are not always truths. If I
+should sign a contract, which I suppose, as a business man, you would
+want, to live up to the letter of your specifications,--even then I could
+not do it. I should make life a torture for you, Humphrey. You see, I am
+honest with you, too--much as your offer dazzles me." And she shook her
+head again.
+
+"That," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, impatiently, "is sheer nonsense. I want you,
+and I mean to have you."
+
+There came a look into her eyes which Mr. Crewe did not see, because her
+face was turned from him.
+
+"I could be happy," she said, "for days and weeks and years in a but on
+the side of Sawanec. I could be happy in a farm-house where I had to do
+all the work. I am not the model housewife which your imagination
+depicts, Humphrey. I could live in two rooms and eat at an Italian
+restaurant--with the right man. And I am afraid the wrong one would wake
+up one day and discover that I had gone. I am sorry to disillusionize
+you, but I don't care a fig for balls and garden-parties and salons. It
+would be much more fun to run away from them to the queer places of the
+earth--with the right man. And I should have to possess one essential to
+put up with--greatness and what you call a public career."
+
+"And what is that essential?" he asked.
+
+"Love," said Victoria. He heard the word but faintly, for her face was
+still turned away from him. "You've offered me the things that are
+attainable by taking thought, by perseverance, by pertinacity, by the
+outwitting of your fellow-men, by the stacking of coins. And I want--the
+unattainable, the divine gift which is bestowed, which cannot be
+acquired. If it could be acquired, Humphrey," she added, looking at him,
+"I am sure you would acquire it--if you thought it worth while."
+
+"I don't understand you," he said,--and looked it.
+
+"No," said Victoria, "I was afraid you wouldn't. And moreover, you never
+would. There is no use in my trying to make myself any clearer, and
+you'll have to keep your appointment. I hesitate to contradict you, but I
+am not the kind of woman you want. That is one reason I cannot marry you.
+And the other is, that I do not love you."
+
+"You can't be in love with any one else?" he cried.
+
+"That does seem rather preposterous, I'll admit," she answered. "But if I
+were, it wouldn't make any difference."
+
+"You won't marry me?" he said, getting to his feet. There was incredulity
+in his voice, and a certain amount of bewilderment. The thing was indeed
+incredible!
+
+"No," said Victoria, "I won't."
+
+And he had only to look into her face to see that it was so. Hitherto nil
+desperandum had been a good working motto, but something told him it was
+useless in this case. He thrust on his hat and pulled out his watch.
+
+"Well," he said, "that settles it. I must--say I can't see your point of
+view--but that settles it. I must say, too, that your refusal is
+something of a shock after what I had been led to expect after the past
+few years."
+
+"The person you are in love with led you to expect it, Humphrey, and that
+person is--yourself. You are in love temporarily with your own ideal of
+me."
+
+"And your refusal comes at an unfortunate tune for me," he continued, not
+heeding her words, "when I have an affair on my hands of such magnitude,
+which requires concentrated thought. But I'm not a man to cry, and I'll
+make the best of it."
+
+"If I thought it were more than a temporary disappointment, I should be
+sorry for you," said Victoria. "I remember that you felt something like
+this when Mr. Rutter wouldn't sell you his land. The lady you really
+want," she added, pointing with her parasol at the house, "is in there,
+waiting for you."
+
+Mr. Crewe did not reply to this prophecy, but followed Victoria around
+the house to the group on the lawn, where he bade his hostess a somewhat
+preoccupied farewell, and bowed distantly to the guests.
+
+"He has so much on his mind," said Mrs. Pomfret. "And oh, I quite
+forgot--Humphrey!" she cried, calling after him, "Humphrey!"
+
+"Yes," he said, turning before he reached his automobile. "What is it?"
+
+"Alice and I are going to the convention, you know, and I meant to tell
+you that there would be ten in the party--but I didn't have a chance."
+Here Mrs. Pomfret glanced at Victoria, who had been joined at once by the
+tall Englishman.  "Can you get tickets for ten?"
+
+Mr. Crewe made a memorandum.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I'll get the tickets--but I don't see what you want to
+go for."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+MORE ADVENTURER
+
+Victoria had not, of course, confided in Beatrice Chillingham what had
+occurred in the garden, although that lady had exhibited the liveliest
+interest, and had had her suspicions. After Mr. Crewe's departure Mr.
+Rangely, the tall young Englishman, had renewed his attentions
+assiduously, although during the interval in the garden he had found Miss
+Chillingham a person of discernment.
+
+"She's not going to marry that chap, is she, Miss Chillingham?" he had
+asked.
+
+"No," said Beatrice; "you have my word for it, she isn't."
+
+As she was leaving, Mrs. Pomfret had taken Victoria's hand and drawn her
+aside, and looked into her face with a meaning smile.
+
+"My dear!" she exclaimed, "he particularly asked that you be invited."
+
+"Who?" said Victoria.
+
+"Humphrey. He stipulated that you should be here."
+
+"Then I'm very much obliged to him," said Victoria, "for I've enjoyed
+myself immensely. I like your Englishman so much."
+
+"Do you?" said Mrs. Pomfret, searching Victoria's face, while her own
+brightened. "He's heir to one of the really good titles, and he has an
+income of his own. I couldn't put him up here, in this tiny box, because
+I have Mrs. Fronde. We are going to take him to the convention--and if
+you'd care to go, Victoria--?"
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"It isn't as serious as that," she said. "And I'm afraid I can't go to
+the convention--I have some things to do in the neighbourhood."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret looked wise.
+
+"He's a most attractive man, with the best prospects. It would be a
+splendid match for you, Victoria."
+
+"Mrs. Pomfret," replied Victoria, wavering between amusement and a desire
+to be serious, "I haven't the slightest intention of making what you call
+a 'match.'" And there was in her words a ring of truth not to be
+mistaken.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret kissed her.
+
+"One never can tell what may happen," she said. "Think of him, Victoria.
+And your dear mother--perhaps you will know some day what the
+responsibility is of seeing a daughter well placed in life."
+
+Victoria coloured, and withdrew her hand.
+
+"I fear that time is a long way off, Mrs. Pomfret," she replied.
+
+"I think so much of Victoria," Mrs. Pomfret declared a moment later to
+her guest; "she's like my own daughter. But at times she's so hopelessly
+unconventional. Why, I believe Rangely's actually going home with her."
+
+"He asked her to drop him at the Inn," said Mrs. Fronde. "He's head over
+heels in love already."
+
+"It would be such a relief to dear Rose," sighed Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"I like the girl," replied Mrs. Fronde, dryly. "She has individuality,
+and knows her own mind. Whoever she marries will have something to him."
+
+"I devoutly hope so!" said Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+It was quite true that Mr. Arthur Rangely had asked Victoria to drop him
+at the Inn. But when they reached it he made another request.
+
+"Do you mind if I go a bit farther, Miss Flint?" he suggested. "I'd
+rather like the walk back."
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"Do come," she said.
+
+He admired the country, but he looked at Victoria, and asked a hundred
+exceedingly frank questions about Leith, about Mrs. Pomfret, whom he had
+met at his uncle's seat in Devonshire, and about Mr. Crewe and the
+railroads in politics. Many of these Victoria parried, and she came
+rapidly to the conclusion that Mr. Arthur Rangely was a more astute
+person than--to a casual observer he would seem.
+
+He showed no inclination to fix the limits of his walk, and made no
+protest as she drove under the stone archway at the entrance of Fairview.
+Victoria was amused and interested, and she decided that she liked Mr.
+Rangely.
+
+"Will you come up for tea?" she asked. "I'll send you home."
+
+He accepted with alacrity. They had reached the first turn when their
+attention was caught by the sight of a buggy ahead of them, and facing
+towards them. The horse, with the reins hanging loosely over the shafts,
+had strayed to the side of the driveway and was contentedly eating the
+shrubbery that lined it. Inside the vehicle, hunched up in the corner of
+the seat, was a man who presented an appearance of helplessness which
+struck them both with a sobering effect.
+
+"Is the fellow drunk?" said Mr. Rangely.
+
+Victoria's answer was a little cry which startled him, and drew his look
+to her. She had touched her horse with the whip, and her eyes had widened
+in real alarm.
+
+"It's Hilary Vane!" she exclaimed. "I--I wonder what can have happened!"
+
+She handed the reins to Mr. Rangely, and sprang out and flew to Hilary's
+side.
+
+"Mr. Vane!" she cried. "What's the matter? Are you ill?"
+
+She had never seen him look so. To her he had always been as one on whom
+pity would be wasted, as one who long ago had established his credit with
+the universe to his own satisfaction. But now, suddenly, intense pity
+welled up within her, and even in that moment she wondered if it could be
+because he was Austen's father. His hands were at his sides, his head was
+fallen forward a little, and his face was white. But his eyes frightened
+her most; instead of the old, semi-defiant expression which she
+remembered from childhood, they had in them a dumb suffering that went to
+her heart. He looked at her, tried to straighten up, and fell back again.
+
+"N--nothing's the matter," he said, "nothing. A little spell. I'll be all
+right in a moment."
+
+Victoria did not lose an instant, but climbed into the buggy at his side
+and gathered up the reins, and drew the fallen lap-robe over his knees.
+
+"I'm going to take you back to Fairview," she said. "And we'll telephone
+for a doctor."
+
+But she had underrated the amount of will left in him. He did not move,
+though indeed if he had seized the reins from her hands, he could have
+given her no greater effect of surprise. Life came back into the eyes at
+the summons, and dominance into the voice, although he breathed heavily.
+
+"No, you're not," he said; "no, you're not. I'm going to Ripton--do you
+understand? I'll be all right in a minute, and I'll take the lines."
+
+Victoria, when she got over her astonishment at this, reflected quickly.
+She glanced at him, and the light of his expression was already fading.
+There was some reason why he did not wish to go back to Fairview, and
+common sense told her that agitation was not good for him; besides, they
+would have to telephone to Ripton for a physician, and it was quicker to
+drive there. Quicker to drive in her own runabout, did she dare to try to
+move him into it. She made up her mind.
+
+"Please follow on behind with that trap," she called out to Rangely; "I'm
+going to Ripton."
+
+He nodded understandingly, admiringly, and Victoria started Hilary's
+horse out of the bushes towards the entrance way. From time to time she
+let her eyes rest upon him anxiously.
+
+"Are you comfortable?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said, "yes. I'm all right. I'll be able to drive in a minute."
+
+But the minutes passed, and he made no attempt to take the reins.
+Victoria had drawn the whalebone whip from its socket, and was urging on
+the horse as fast as humanity would permit; and the while she was aware
+that Hilary's look was fixed upon her--in fact, never left her. Once or
+twice, in spite of her anxiety to get him home, Victoria blushed faintly,
+as she wondered what he was thinking about.
+
+And all the while she asked herself what it was that had brought him to
+this condition. Victoria knew sufficient of life and had visited
+hospitals enough to understand that mental causes were generally
+responsible for such breakdowns--Hilary had had a shock. She remembered
+how in her childhood he had been the object of her particular animosity;
+how she used to put out her tongue at him, and imitate his manner, and
+how he had never made the slightest attempt to conciliate her; most
+people of this sort are sensitive to the instincts of children; but
+Hilary had not been. She remembered--how long ago it seemed now!--the day
+she had given him, in deviltry, the clipping about Austen shooting Mr.
+Blodgett.
+
+The Hilary Vane who sat beside her to-day was not the same man. It was
+unaccountable, but he was not. Nor could this changed estimate of him be
+attributed to her regard for Austen, for she recalled a day only a few
+months since--in June--when he had come up to Fairview and she was
+standing on the lawn, and she had looked at him without recognition; she
+had not, then, been able to bring herself to bow to him; to her childhood
+distaste had been added the deeper resentment of Austen's wrongs. Her
+early instincts about Hilary had been vindicated, for he had treated his
+son abominably and driven Austen from his mother's home. To misunderstand
+and maltreat Austen Vane, of all people Austen, whose consideration for
+his father had been what it had! Could it be that Hilary felt remorse?
+Could it be that he loved Austen in some peculiar manner all his own?
+
+Victoria knew now--so strangely--that the man beside her was capable of
+love, and she had never felt that way about Hilary Vane. And her mind was
+confused, and her heart was troubled and wrung. Insight flashed upon her
+of the terrible loneliness of a life surrounded by outstretched, loving
+arms to which one could not fly; scenes from a famous classic she had
+read with a favourite teacher at school came to her, and she knew that
+she was the witness of a retribution, of a suffering beyond conception of
+a soul prepared for suffering,--not physical suffering, but of that
+torture which is the meaning of hell.
+
+However, there was physical suffering. It came and went, and at such
+moments she saw the traces of it in the tightening of his lips, and
+longed with womanly intuition to alleviate it. She had not spoken
+--although she could have cried aloud; she knew not what to say. And then
+suddenly she reached out and touched his hand. Nor could she have
+accounted for the action.
+
+"Are you in much pain?" she asked.
+
+She felt him tremble.
+
+"No," he said; "it's only a spell--I've had 'em before. I--I can drive in
+a few minutes."
+
+"And do you think," she asked, "that I would allow you to go the rest of
+the way alone?"
+
+"I guess I ought to thank you for comin' with me," he said.
+
+Victoria looked at him and smiled. And it was an illuminating smile for
+her as well as for Hilary. Suddenly, by that strange power of sympathy
+which the unselfish possess, she understood the man, understood Austen's
+patience with him and affection for him. Suddenly she had pierced the
+hard layers of the outer shell, and had heard the imprisoned spirit
+crying with a small persistent voice,--a spirit stifled for many years
+and starved--and yet it lived and struggled still.
+
+Yes, and that spirit itself must have felt her own reaching out to it
+--who can, say? And how it must have striven again for utterance--
+
+"It was good of you to come," he said.
+
+"It was only common humanity," she answered, touching the horse.
+
+"Common humanity," he repeated. "You'd have done it for anybody along the
+road, would you?"
+
+At this remark, so characteristic of Hilary, Victoria, hesitated. She
+understood it now. And yet she hesitated to give him an answer that was
+hypocritical.
+
+"I have known you all my life, Mr. Vane, and you are a very old friend of
+my father's."
+
+"Old," he repeated, "yes, that's it. I'm ready for the scrap-heap
+--better have let me lie, Victoria."
+
+Victoria started. A new surmise had occurred to her upon which she did
+not like to dwell.
+
+"You have worked too hard, Mr. Vane--you need a rest. And I have been
+telling father that, too. You both need a rest."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'll never get it," he said. "Stopping work won't give it to me."
+
+She pondered on these words as she guided the horse over a crossing. And
+all that Austen had said to her, all that she had been thinking of for a
+year past, helped her to grasp their meaning. But she wondered still more
+at the communion which, all at once, had been established between Hilary
+Vane and herself, and why he was saying these things to her. It was all
+so unreal and inexplicable.
+
+"I can imagine that people who have worked hard all their lives must feel
+that way," she answered, though her voice was not as steady as she could
+have wished. "You--you have so much to live for."
+
+Her colour rose. She was thinking of Austen--and she knew that Hilary
+Vane knew that she was thinking of Austen. Moreover, she had suddenly
+grasped the fact that the gentle but persistently strong influence of the
+son's character had brought about the change in the father. Hilary Vane's
+lips closed again, as in pain, and she divined the reason.
+
+Victoria knew the house in Hanover Street, with its classic porch, with
+its certain air of distinction and stability, and long before she had
+known it as the Austen residence she remembered wondering who lived in
+it. The house had individuality, and (looked at from the front) almost
+perfect proportions; consciously--it bespoke the gentility of its
+builders. Now she drew up before it and called to Mr. Rangely, who was
+abreast, to tie his horse and ring the bell. Hilary was already feeling
+with his foot for the step of the buggy.
+
+"I'm all right," he insisted; "I can manage now," but Victoria seized his
+arm with a firm, detaining hand.
+
+"Please wait,--Mr. Vane," she pleaded.
+
+But the feeling of shame at his helplessness was strong.
+
+"It's over now. I--I can walk. I'm much obliged to you, Victoria--much
+obliged."
+
+Fortunately Hilary's horse showed no inclination to go any farther--even
+to the stable. And Victoria held on to his arm. He ceased to protest, and
+Mr. Rangely quickly tied the other horse and came to Victoria's aid.
+Supported by the young Englishman, Hilary climbed the stone steps and
+reached the porch, declaring all the while that he needed no assistance,
+and could walk alone. Victoria rang the bell, and after an interval the
+door was opened by Euphrasia Cotton.
+
+Euphrasia stood upright with her hand on the knob, and her eyes flashed
+over the group and rested fixedly on the daughter of Mr. Flint.
+
+"Mr. Vane was not very well," Victoria explained, "and we came home with
+him."
+
+"I'm all right," said Hilary, once more, and to prove it he stepped--not
+very steadily--across the threshold into the hall, and sat down on a
+chair which had had its place at the foot of the stairs from time
+immemorial. Euphrasia stood still.
+
+"I think," said Victoria, "that Mr. Vane had better see a doctor. Have
+you a telephone?"
+
+"No, we haven't," said Euphrasia.
+
+Victoria turned to Mr. Rangely, who had been a deeply interested
+spectator to this scene.
+
+"A little way down the street, on the other side, Dr. Tredway lives. You
+will see his sign."
+
+"And if he isn't in, go to the hospital. It's only a few doors farther
+on."
+
+"I'll wait," said Victoria, simply, when he had gone; "my father will
+wish to know about Mr. Vane."
+
+"Hold on," said Hilary, "I haven't any use for a doctor--I won't see one.
+I know what the trouble is, and I'm all right."
+
+Victoria became aware--for the first time that Hilary Vane's housekeeper
+had not moved; that Euphrasia Cotton was still staring at her in a most
+disconcerting manner, and was paying no attention whatever to Hilary.
+
+"Come in and set down," she said; and seeing Victoria glance at Hilary's
+horse, she added, "Oh, he'll stand there till doomsday."
+
+Victoria, thinking that the situation would be less awkward, accepted the
+invitation, and Euphrasia shut the door. The hall, owing to the fact that
+the shutters of the windows by the stairs were always closed, was in
+semidarkness. Victoria longed to let in the light, to take this strange,
+dried-up housekeeper and shake her into some semblance of natural
+feeling. And this was Austen's home! It was to this house, made gloomy by
+these people, that he had returned every night! Infinitely depressed, she
+felt that she must take some action, or cry aloud.
+
+"Mr. Vane," she said, laying a hand upon his shoulder, "I think you
+ought, at least, to lie down for a little while. Isn't there a sofa in
+--in the parlour?" she asked Euphrasia.
+
+"You can't get him to do anything," Euphrasia replied, with decision;
+"he'll die some day for want of a little common sense. I shouldn't wonder
+if he was took on soon."
+
+"Oh!" cried Victoria. She could think of no words to answer this remark.
+
+"It wouldn't surprise me," Euphrasia continued. "He fell down the stairs
+here not long ago, and went right on about his business. He's never paid
+any attention to anybody, and I guess it's a mite late to expect him to
+begin now. Won't you set down?"
+
+There was another chair against the low wainscoting, and Victoria drew it
+over beside Hilary and sat down in it. He did not seem to notice the
+action, and Euphrasia continued to stand. Standing seemed to be the
+natural posture of this remarkable woman, Victoria thought--a posture of
+vigilance, of defiance. A clock of one of the Austen grandfathers stood
+obscurely at the back of the hall, and the measured swing of its pendulum
+was all that broke the silence. This was Austen's home. It seemed
+impossible for her to realize that he could be the product of this
+environment--until a portrait on the opposite wall, above the stairs,
+came out of the gloom and caught her eye like the glow of light. At
+first, becoming aware of it with a start, she thought it a likeness of
+Austen himself. Then she saw that the hair was longer, and more wavy than
+his, and fell down a little over the velvet collar of a coat with a wide
+lapel and brass buttons, and that the original of this portrait had worn
+a stock. The face had not quite the strength of Austen's, she thought,
+but a wondrous sweetness and intellect shone from it, like an expression
+she had seen on his face. The chin rested on the hand, an intellectual
+hand,--and the portrait brought to her mind that of a young English
+statesman she had seen in the National Gallery in London.
+
+"That's Channing Austen,--he was minister to Spain."
+
+Victoria started. It was Euphrasia who was speaking, and unmistakable
+pride was in her voice.
+
+Fortunately for Victoria, who would not in the least have known what to
+reply, steps were heard on the porch, and Euphrasia opened the door. Mr.
+Rangely had returned.
+
+"Here's the doctor, Miss Flint," he said, "and I'll wait for you
+outside."
+
+Victoria rose as young Dr. Tredway came forward. They were old friends,
+and the doctor, it may be recalled, had been chiefly responsible for the
+preservation of the life of Mr. Zebulun Meader.
+
+"I have sent for you, Doctor," she said, "against instructions and on my
+own responsibility. Mr. Vane is ill, although he refuses to admit it."
+
+Dr. Tredway had a respect for Victoria and her opinions, and he knew
+Hilary. He opened the door a little wider, and looked critically at Mr.
+Vane.
+
+"It's nothing but a spell," Hilary insisted. "I've had 'em before. I
+suppose it's natural that they should scare the women-folks some."
+
+"What kind of a spell was it, Mr. Vane?" asked the doctor.
+
+"It isn't worth talking about," said Hilary. "You might as well pick up
+that case of yours and go home again. I'm going down to the square in a
+little while."
+
+"You see," Euphrasia put in, "he's made up his mind to kill himself."
+
+"Perhaps," said the doctor, smiling a little, "Mr. Vane wouldn't object
+to Miss Flint telling me what happened."
+
+Victoria glanced at the doctor and hesitated. Her sympathy for Hilary,
+her new understanding of him, urged her on--and yet never in her life had
+she been made to feel so distinctly an intruder. Here was the doctor,
+with his case; here was this extraordinary housekeeper, apparently ready
+to let Hilary walk to the square, if he wished, and to shut the door on
+their backs; and here was Hilary himself, who threatened at any moment to
+make his word good and depart from their midst. Only the fact that she
+was convinced that Hilary was in real danger made her relate, in a few
+brief words, what had occurred, and when she had finished Mr. Vane made
+no comment whatever.
+
+Dr. Tredway turned to Hilary.
+
+"I am going to take a mean advantage of you, Mr. Vane," he said, "and sit
+here awhile and talk to you. Would you object to waiting a little while,
+Miss Flint? I have something to say to you," he added significantly, "and
+this meeting will save me a trip to Fairview."
+
+"Certainly I'll wait," she said.
+
+"You can come along with me," said Euphrasia, "if you've a notion to."
+
+Victoria was of two minds whether to accept this invitation. She had an
+intense desire to get outside, but this was counter-balanced by a sudden
+curiosity to see more of this strange woman who loved but one person in
+the world. Tom Gaylord had told Victoria that. She followed Euphrasia to
+the back of the hall.
+
+"There's the parlour," said Euphrasia; "it's never be'n used since Mrs.
+Vane died,--but there it is."
+
+"Oh," said Victoria, with a glance into the shadowy depths of the room,
+"please don't open it for me. Can't we go," she added, with an
+inspiration, "can't we go into--the kitchen?" She knew it was Euphrasia's
+place.
+
+"Well," said Euphrasia, "I shouldn't have thought you'd care much about
+kitchens." And she led the way onward; through the little passage, to the
+room where she had spent most of her days. It was flooded with level,
+yellow rays of light that seemed to be searching the corners in vain for
+dust. Victoria paused in the doorway.
+
+"I'm afraid you do me an injustice," she said. "I like some kitchens."
+
+"You don't look as if you knew much about 'em," was Euphrasia's answer.
+With Victoria once again in the light, Euphrasia scrutinized her with
+appalling frankness, taking in every detail of her costume and at length
+raising her eyes to the girl's face. Victoria coloured. On her visits
+about the country-side she had met women of Euphrasia's type before, and
+had long ago ceased to be dismayed by their manner. But her instinct
+detected in Euphrasia a hostility for which she could not account.
+
+In that simple but exquisite gown which so subtly suited her, the
+creation of which had aroused the artist in a celebrated Parisian
+dressmaker, Victoria was, indeed, a strange visitant in that kitchen. She
+took a seat by the window, and an involuntary exclamation of pleasure
+escaped her as her eyes fell upon the little, old-fashioned flower garden
+beneath it. The act and the exclamation for the moment disarmed
+Euphrasia.
+
+"They were Sarah Austen's--Mrs. Vane's," she explained, "just as she
+planted them the year she died. I've always kept 'em just so."
+
+"Mrs. Vane must have loved flowers," said Victoria.
+
+"Loved 'em! They were everything to her--and the wild flowers, too. She
+used to wander off and spend whole days in the country, and come back
+after sunset with her arms full."
+
+"It was nature she loved," said Victoria, in a low voice.
+
+"That was it--nature," said Euphrasia. "She loved all nature. There
+wasn't a living, creeping thing that wasn't her friend. I've seen birds
+eat out of her hand in that window where you're settin', and she'd say to
+me, 'Phrasie, keep still! They'd love you, too, if they only knew you,
+but they're afraid you'll scrub 'em if you get hold of them, the way you
+used to scrub me.'"
+
+Victoria smiled--but it was a smile that had tears in it. Euphrasia
+Cotton was standing in the shaft of sunlight at the other window, staring
+at the little garden.
+
+"Yes, she used to say funny things like that, to make you laugh when you
+were all ready to cry. There wasn't many folks understood her. She knew
+every path and hilltop within miles of here, and every brook and spring,
+and she used to talk about that mountain just as if it was alive."
+
+Victoria caught her breath.
+
+"Yes," continued Euphrasia, "the mountain was alive for her. 'He's angry
+to-day, Phrasie. That's because, you lost your temper and scolded
+Hilary.' It's a queer thing, but there have been hundreds of times since
+when he needed scoldin' bad, and I've looked at the mountain and held my
+tongue. It was just as if I saw her with that half-whimsical,
+half-reproachful expression in her eyes, holding up her finger at me. And
+there were other mornings when she'd say, 'The mountain's lonesome today,
+he wants me.' And I vow, I'd look at the mountain and it would seem
+lonesome. That sounds like nonsense, don't it?" Euphrasia demanded, with
+a sudden sharpness.
+
+"No," said Victoria, "it seems very real to me."
+
+The simplicity, the very ring of truth, and above all the absolute lack
+of self-consciousness in the girl's answer sustained the spell.
+
+"She'd go when the mountain called her, it didn't make any difference
+whether it was raining--rain never appeared to do her any hurt. Nothin'
+natural ever did her any hurt. When she was a little child flittin' about
+like a wild creature, and she'd come in drenched to the skin, it was all
+I could do to catch her and change her clothes. She'd laugh at me. 'We're
+meant to be wet once in a while, Phrasie,' she'd say; 'that's what the
+rain's for, to wet us. It washes some of the wickedness out of us.' It
+was the unnatural things that hurt her--the unkind words and makin' her
+act against her nature. 'Phrasie,' she said once, 'I can't pray in the
+meeting-house with my eyes shut--I can't, I can't. I seem to know what
+they're all wishing for when they pray,--for more riches, and more
+comfort, and more security, and more importance. And God is such a long
+way off. I can't feel Him, and the pew hurts my back.' She used to read
+me some, out of a book of poetry, and one verse I got by heart--I guess
+her prayers were like that."
+
+"Do you--remember the verse?" asked Victoria.
+
+Euphrasia went to a little shelf in the corner of the kitchen and
+produced a book, which, she opened and handed to Victoria.
+
+"There's the verse!" she said; "read it aloud. I guess you're better at
+that than I am."
+
+And Victoria read:--
+
+     "Higher still and higher
+      From the earth thou springest
+     Like a cloud of fire;
+      The blue deep thou wingest,
+     And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest."
+
+Victoria let fall the volume on her lap.
+
+"There's another verse in that book she liked," said Euphrasia, "but it
+always was sad to me."
+
+Victoria took the book, and read again:--
+
+     "Weary wind, who wanderest
+      Like the world's rejected guest,
+     Hast thou still some secret nest
+      On the tree or billow?"
+
+Euphrasia laid the volume tenderly on the shelf, and turned and faced
+Victoria.
+
+"She was unhappy like that before she died," she exclaimed, and added,
+with a fling of her head towards the front of the house, "he killed her."
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Victoria, involuntarily rising to her feet. "Oh, no! I'm
+sure he didn't mean to. He didn't understand her!"
+
+"He killed her," Euphrasia repeated. "Why didn't he understand her? She
+was just as simple as a child, and just as trusting, and just as loving.
+He made her unhappy, and now he's driven her son out of her house, and
+made him unhappy. He's all of her I have left, and I won't see him
+unhappy."
+
+Victoria summoned her courage.
+
+"Don't you think," she asked bravely, "that Mr. Austen Vane ought to be
+told that his father is--in this condition?"
+
+"No," said Euphrasia, determinedly. "Hilary will have to send for him.
+This time it'll be Austen's victory."
+
+"But hasn't he had--a victory?" Victoria persisted earnestly. "Isn't
+this--victory enough?"
+
+"What do you mean?" Euphrasia cried sharply.
+
+"I mean," she answered, in a low voice, "I mean that Mr. Vane's son is
+responsible for his condition to-day. Oh--not consciously so. But the
+cause of this trouble is mental--can't you see it? The cause of this
+trouble is remorse. Can't you see that it has eaten into his soul? Do you
+wish a greater victory than this, or a sadder one? Hilary Vane will not
+ask for his son--because he cannot. He has no more power to send that
+message than a man shipwrecked on an island. He can only give signals of
+distress--that some may heed. Would She have waited for such a victory as
+you demand? And does Austen Vane desire it? Don't you think that he would
+come to his father if he knew? And have you any right to keep the news
+from him? Have you any right to decide what their vengeance shall be?"
+
+Euphrasia had stood mute as she listened to these words which she had so
+little expected, but her eyes flashed and her breath came quickly. Never
+had she been so spoken to! Never had any living soul come between her and
+her cherished object the breaking of the heart of Hilary Vane! Nor,
+indeed, had that object ever been so plainly set forth as Victoria had
+set it forth. And this woman who dared to do this had herself brought
+unhappiness to Austen. Euphrasia had almost forgotten that, such had been
+the strange harmony of their communion.
+
+"Have you the right to tell Austen?" she demanded.
+
+"Have I?" Victoria repeated. And then, as the full meaning of the
+question came to her; the colour flooded into her face, and she would
+have fled, if she could, bud Euphrasia's words came in a torrent.
+
+"You've made him unhappy, as well as Hilary. He loves you--but he
+wouldn't speak of it to you. Oh, no, he didn't tell me who it was, but I
+never rested till I found out. He never would have told me about it at
+all, or anybody else, but that I guessed it. I saw he was unhappy, and I
+calculated it wasn't Hilary alone made him so. One night he came in here,
+and I knew all at once--somehow--there was a woman to blame, and I asked
+him, and he couldn't lie to me. He said it wasn't anybody's fault but his
+own--he wouldn't say any more than that, except that he hadn't spoken to
+her. I always expected the time was coming when there would be--a woman.
+And I never thought the woman lived that he'd love who wouldn't love him.
+I can't see how any woman could help lovin' him.
+
+"And then I found out it was that railroad. It came between Sarah Austen
+and her happiness, and now it's come between Austen and his. Perhaps you
+don't love him!" cried Euphrasia. "Perhaps you're too rich and high and
+mighty. Perhaps you're a-going to marry that fine young man who came with
+you in the buggy. Since I heard who you was, I haven't had a happy hour.
+Let me tell you there's no better blood in the land than the Austen
+blood. I won't mention the Vanes. If you've led him on, if you've
+deceived him, I hope you may be unhappy as Sarah Austen was--"
+
+"Don't!" pleaded Victoria; "don't! Please don't!" and she seized
+Euphrasia by the arms, as though seeking by physical force to stop the
+intolerable flow of words. "Oh, you don't know me; you can't understand
+me if you say that. How can you be so cruel?"
+
+In another moment she had gone, leaving Euphrasia standing in the middle
+of the floor, staring after her through the doorway.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE FOCUS OF WRATH
+
+Victoria, after leaving Euphrasia, made her way around the house towards
+Mr. Rangely, who was waiting in the runabout, her one desire for the
+moment being to escape. Before she had reached the sidewalk under the
+trees, Dr. Tredway had interrupted her.
+
+"Miss Flint," he called out, "I wanted to say a word to you before you
+went."
+
+"Yes," she said, stopping and turning to him.
+
+He paused a moment before speaking, as he looked into her face.
+
+"I don't wonder this has upset you a little," he said; "a reaction always
+comes afterwards--even with the strongest of us."
+
+"I am all right," she replied, unconsciously repeating Hilary's words.
+"How is Mr. Vane?"
+
+"You have done a splendid thing," said the doctor, gravely. And he
+continued, after a moment: "It is Mr. Vane I wanted to speak to you
+about. He is an intimate friend, I believe, of your father's, as well as
+Mr. Flint's right-hand man in--in a business way in this State. Mr. Vane
+himself will not listen to reason. I have told him plainly that if he
+does not drop all business at once, the chances are ten to one that he
+will forfeit his life very shortly. I understand that there is a--a
+convention to be held at the capital the day after to-morrow, and that it
+is Mr. Vane's firm intention to attend it. I take the liberty of
+suggesting that you lay these facts before your father, as Mr. Flint
+probably has more influence with Hilary Vane than any other man.
+However," he added, seeing Victoria hesitate, "if there is any reason
+why you should not care to speak to Mr. Flint--"
+
+"Oh, no," said Victoria; "I'll speak to him, certainly. I was going to
+ask you--have you thought of Mr. Austen Vane? He might be able to do
+something."
+
+"Of course," said the doctor, after a moment, "it is an open secret that
+Austen and his father have--have, in short, never agreed. They are not
+now on speaking terms."
+
+"Don't you think," asked Victoria, summoning her courage, "that Austen
+Vane ought to be told?"
+
+"Yes," the doctor repeated decidedly, "I am sure of it. Everybody who
+knows Austen Vane as I do has the greatest admiration for him. You
+probably remember him in that Meader case,--he isn't a man one would be
+likely to forget,--and I know that this quarrel with his father isn't of
+Austen's seeking."
+
+"Oughtn't he to be told--at once?" said Victoria.
+
+"Yes," said the doctor; "time is valuable, and we can't predict what
+Hilary will do. At any rate, Austen ought to know--but the trouble is,
+he's at Jenney's farm. I met him on the way out there just before your
+friend the Englishman caught me. And unfortunately I have a case which I
+cannot neglect. But I can send word to him."
+
+"I know where Jenney's farm is," said Victoria; "I'll drive home that
+way."
+
+"Well," exclaimed Dr. Tredway, heartily, "that's good of you. Somebody
+who knows Hilary's situation ought to see him, and I can think of no
+better messenger than you."
+
+And he helped her into the runabout.
+
+Young Mr. Rangely being a gentleman, he refrained from asking Victoria
+questions on the drive out of Ripton, and expressed the greatest
+willingness to accompany her on this errand and to see her home
+afterwards. He had been deeply impressed, but he felt instinctively that
+after such a serious occurrence, this was not the time to continue to
+give hints of his admiration. He had heard in England that many American
+women whom he would be likely to meet socially were superficial and
+pleasure-loving; and Arthur Rangely came of a family which had long been
+cited as a vindication of a government by aristocracy,--a family which
+had never shirked responsibilities. It is not too much to say that he had
+pictured Victoria among his future tenantry; she had appealed to him
+first as a woman, but the incident of the afternoon had revealed her to
+him, as it were, under fire.
+
+They spoke quietly of places they both had visited, of people whom they
+knew in common, until they came to the hills--the very threshold of
+Paradise on that September evening. Those hills never failed to move
+Victoria, and they were garnished this evening in no earthly colours,
+--rose-lighted on the billowy western pasture slopes and pearl in the
+deep clefts of the streams, and the lordly form of Sawanec shrouded in
+indigo against a flame of orange. And orange fainted, by the subtlest of
+colour changes, to azure in which swam, so confidently, a silver evening
+star.
+
+In silence they drew up before Mr. Jenney's ancestral trees, and through
+the deepening shadows beneath these the windows of the farm-house glowed
+with welcoming light. At Victoria's bidding Mr. Rangely knocked to ask
+for Austen Vane, and Austen himself answered the summons. He held a book
+in his hand, and as Rangely spoke she saw Austen's look turn quickly to
+her, and met it through the gathering gloom between them. In an instant
+he was at her side, looking up questioningly into her face, and the
+telltale blood leaped into hers. What must he think of her for coming
+again? She could not speak of her errand too quickly.
+
+"Mr. Vane, I came to leave a message."
+
+"Yes?" he said, and glanced at the broad-shouldered, well-groomed figure
+of Mr. Rangely, who was standing at a discreet distance.
+
+"Your father has had an attack of some kind,--please don't be alarmed, he
+seems to be recovered now,--and I thought and Dr. Tredway thought you
+ought to know about it. The doctor could not leave Ripton, and I offered
+to come and tell you."
+
+"An attack?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes." Hilary and she related simply how she had found Hilary at
+Fairview, and how she had driven him home. But, during the whole of her
+recital, she could not rid herself of the apprehension that he was
+thinking her interference unwarranted, her coming an indelicate
+repetition of the other visit. As he stood there listening in the
+gathering dusk, she could not tell from his face what he thought. His
+expression, when serious, had a determined, combative, almost grim note
+in it, which came from a habit he had of closing his jaw tightly; and his
+eyes were like troubled skies through which there trembled an occasional
+flash of light.
+
+Victoria had never felt his force so strongly as now, and never had he
+seemed more distant; at times--she had thought--she had had glimpses of
+his soul; to-night he was inscrutable, and never had she realized the
+power (which she bad known he must possess) of making himself so. And to
+her? Her pride forbade her recalling at that moment the confidences which
+had passed between them and which now seemed to have been so impossible.
+He was serious because he was listening to serious news--she told
+herself. But it was more than this: he had shut himself up, he was
+impenetrable. Shame seized her; yes, and anger; and shame again at the
+remembrance of her talk with Euphrasia--and anger once more. Could he
+think that she would make advances to tempt his honour, and risk his good
+opinion and her own?
+
+Confidence is like a lute-string, giving forth sweet sounds in its
+perfection; there are none so discordant as when it snaps.
+
+Victoria scarcely heard Austen's acknowledgments of her kindness, so
+perfunctory did they seem, so unlike the man she had known; and her own
+protestations that she had done nothing to merit his thanks were to her
+quite as unreal. She introduced him to the Englishman.
+
+"Mr. Rangely has been good enough to come with me," she said.
+
+"I've never seen anybody act with more presence of mind than Miss Flint,"
+Rangely declared, as he shook Austen's hand. "She did just the right
+thing, without wasting any time whatever."
+
+"I'm sure of it," said Austen, cordially enough. But to Victoria's keener
+ear, other tones which she had heard at other times were lacking. Nor
+could she, clever as she was, see the palpable reason standing before
+her!
+
+"I say," said Rangely, as they drove away, "he strikes me as a remarkably
+sound chap, Miss Flint. There is something unusual about him, something
+clean cut."
+
+"I've heard other people say so," Victoria replied. For the first time
+since she had known him, praise of Austen was painful to her. What was
+this curious attraction that roused the interest of all who came in
+contact with him? The doctor had it, Mr. Redbrook, Jabe Jenney,--even
+Hamilton Tooting, she remembered. And he attracted women as well as men
+--it must be so. Certainly her own interest in him--a man beyond the
+radius of her sphere--and their encounters had been strange enough! And
+must she go on all her life hearing praises of him? Of one thing she was
+sure--who was not?--that Austen Vane had a future. He was the type of man
+which is inevitably impelled into places of trust.
+
+Manly men, as a rule, do not understand women. They humour them blindly,
+seek to comfort them--if they weep--with caresses, laugh with them if
+they have leisure, and respect their curious and unaccountable moods by
+keeping out of the way. Such a husband was Arthur Rangely destined to
+make; a man who had seen any number of women and understood none,--as
+wondrous mechanisms. He had merely acquired the faculty of appraisal,
+although this does not mean that he was incapable of falling in love.
+
+Mr. Rangely could not account for the sudden access of gayety in
+Victoria's manner as they drove to Fairview through the darkness, nor did
+he try. He took what the gods sent him, and was thankful. When he reached
+Fairview he was asked to dinner, as he could not possibly get back to the
+Inn in time. Mr. Flint had gone to Sumner with the engineers, leaving
+orders to be met at the East Tunbridge station at ten; and Mrs. Flint,
+still convalescent, had dined in her sitting room. Victoria sat opposite
+her guest in the big dining room, and Mr. Rangely pronounced the occasion
+decidedly jolly. He had, he proclaimed, with the exception of Mr. Vane's
+deplorable accident, never spent a better day in his life.
+
+Victoria wondered at her own spirits, which were feverish, as she
+listened to transatlantic gossip about girls she had known who had
+married Mr. Rangely's friends, and stories of Westminster and South
+Africa, and certain experiences of Mr. Rangely's at other places than
+Leith on the American continent, which he had grown sufficiently
+confidential to relate. At times, lifting her eyes to him as he sat
+smoking after dinner on the other side of the library fire, she almost
+doubted his existence. He had come into her life at one o'clock that
+day--it seemed an eternity since. And a subconscious voice, heard but not
+heeded, told her that in the awakening from this curious dream he would
+be associated in her memory with tragedy, just as a tune or a book or a
+game of cards reminds one of painful periods of one's existence.
+To-morrow the--episode would be a nightmare; to-night her one desire was
+to prolong it.
+
+And poor Mr. Rangely little imagined the part he was playing--as little
+as he deserved it. Reluctant to leave, propriety impelled him to ask for
+a trap at ten, and it was half past before he finally made his exit from
+the room with a promise to pay his respects soon--very soon.
+
+Victoria stood before the fire listening to the sound of the wheels
+gradually growing fainter, and her mind refused to work. Hanover Street,
+Mr. Jenney's farm-house, were unrealities too. Ten minutes later--if she
+had marked the interval--came the sound of wheels again, this time
+growing louder. Then she heard a voice in the hall, her father's voice.
+
+"Towers, who was that?"
+
+"A young gentleman, sir, who drove home with Miss Victoria. I didn't get
+his name, sir."
+
+"Has Miss Victoria retired?"
+
+"She's in the library, sir. Here are some telegrams, Mr. Flint."
+
+Victoria heard her father tearing open the telegrams and walking towards
+the library with slow steps as he read them. She did not stir from her
+place before the fire. She saw him enter and, with a characteristic
+movement which had become almost habitual of late, crush the telegrams in
+front of him with both hands.
+
+"Well, Victoria?" he said.
+
+"Well, father?"
+
+It was characteristic of him, too, that he should momentarily drop the
+conversation, unravel the ball of telegrams, read one, crush them once
+more,--a process that seemed to give him relief. He glanced at his
+daughter--she had not moved. Whatever Mr. Flint's original character may
+have been in his long-forgotten youth on the wind-swept hill farm in
+Truro, his methods of attack lacked directness now; perhaps a long
+business and political experience were responsible for this trait.
+
+"Your mother didn't come down to dinner, I suppose."
+
+"No," said Victoria.
+
+Simpson tells me the young bull got loose and cut himself badly. He says
+it's the fault of the Eben Fitch you got me to hire."
+
+"I don't believe it was Eben's fault--Simpson doesn't like him," Victoria
+replied.
+
+"Simpson tells me Fitch drinks."
+
+"Let a man get a bad name," said Victoria, "and Simpson will take care
+that he doesn't lose it." The unexpected necessity of defending one of
+her proteges aroused her. "I've made it a point to see Eben every day for
+the last three months, and he hasn't touched a drop. He's one of the best
+workers we have on the place."
+
+"I've got too much on my mind to put up with that kind of thing," said
+Mr. Flint, "and I won't be worried here on the place. I can get capable
+men to tend cattle, at least. I have to put up with political rascals who
+rob and deceive me as soon as my back is turned, I have to put up with
+inefficiency and senility, but I won't have it at home."
+
+"Fitch will be transferred to the gardener if you think best," she said.
+
+It suddenly occurred to Victoria, in the light of a new discovery, that
+in the past her father's irritability had not extended to her. And this
+discovery, she knew, ought to have some significance, but she felt
+unaccountably indifferent to it. Mr. Flint walked to a window at the far
+end of the room and flung apart the tightly closed curtains before it.
+
+"I never can get used to this new-fangled way of shutting everything up
+tight," he declared. "When I lived in Centre Street, I used to read with
+the curtains up every night, and nobody ever shot me." He stood looking
+out at the starlight for awhile, and turned and faced her again.
+
+"I haven't seen much of you this summer, Victoria," he remarked.
+
+"I'm sorry, father. You know I always like to walk with you every day you
+are here." He had aroused her sufficiently to have a distinct sense that
+this was not the time to refer to the warning she had given him that he
+was working too hard. But he was evidently bent on putting this
+construction on her answer.
+
+"Several times I have asked for you, and you have been away," he said.
+
+"If you had only let me know, I should have made it a point to be at
+home."
+
+"How can I tell when these idiots will give me any rest?" he asked. He
+crushed the telegrams again, and came down the room and stopped in front
+of her. "Perhaps there has been a particular reason why you have not been
+at home as much as usual."
+
+"A particular reason?" she repeated, in genuine surprise.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I have been hearing things which, to put it mildly, have
+astonished me."
+
+"Hearing things?"
+
+"Yes," he exclaimed. "I may be busy, I may be harassed by tricksters and
+bunglers, but I am not too busy not to care something about my daughter's
+doings. I expect them to deceive me, Victoria, but I pinned my faith
+somewhere. I pinned it on you. On you, do you understand?"
+
+She raised her head for the first time and looked at him, with her lips
+quivering. But she did not speak.
+
+"Ever since you were a child you have been everything to me, all I had to
+fly to. I was always sure of one genuine, disinterested love--and that
+was yours. I was always sure of hearing the truth from your lips."
+
+"Father!" she cried.
+
+He seemed not to hear the agonized appeal in her voice. Although he spoke
+in his usual tones, Augustus Flint was, in fact, beside himself.
+
+"And now," he said, "and now I learn that you have been holding
+clandestine meetings with a man who is my enemy, with a man who has done
+me more harm than any other single individual, with a man whom I will not
+have in my house--do you understand? I can only say that before to-night,
+I gave him credit for having the decency not to enter it, not to sit down
+at my table."
+
+Victoria turned away from him, and seized the high oak shelf of the
+mantel with both hands. He saw her shoulders rising and falling as her
+breath came deeply, spasmodically--like sobbing. But she was not sobbing
+as she turned again and looked into his face. Fear was in her eye, and
+the high courage to look: fear and courage. She seemed to be looking at
+another man, at a man who was not her father. And Mr. Flint, despite his
+anger, vaguely interpreting her meaning, was taken aback. He had never
+seen anybody with such a look. And the unexpected quiet quality of her
+voice intensified his strange sensation.
+
+"A Mr. Rangely, an Englishman, who is staying at the Leith Inn, was here
+to dinner to-night. He has never been here before."
+
+"Austen Vane wasn't here to-night?"
+
+"Mr. Vane has never been in this house to my knowledge but once, and you
+knew more about that meeting than I do."
+
+And still Victoria spoke quietly, inexplicably so to Mr. Flint--and to
+herself. It seemed to her that some other than she were answering with
+her voice, and that she alone felt. It was all a part of the nightmare,
+all unreal, and this was not her father; nevertheless, she suffered now,
+not from anger alone, nor sorrow, nor shame for him and for herself, nor
+disgust, nor a sense of injustice, nor cruelty--but all of these played
+upon a heart responsive to each with a different pain.
+
+And Mr. Flint, halted for the moment by her look and manner, yet goaded
+on by a fiend of provocation which had for months been gathering
+strength, and which now mastered him completely, persisted. He knew not
+what he did or said.
+
+"And you haven't seen him to-day, I suppose," he cried.
+
+"Yes, I have seen him to-day."
+
+"Ah, you have! I thought as much. Where did you meet him to-day?"
+
+Victoria turned half away from him, raised a hand to the mantel-shelf
+again, and lifted a foot to the low brass fender as she looked down into
+the fire. The movement was not part of a desire to evade him, as he
+fancied in his anger, but rather one of profound indifference, of
+profound weariness--the sunless deeps of sorrow. And he thought her
+capable of deceiving him! He had been her constant companion from
+childhood, and knew only the visible semblance of her face, her form, her
+smile. Her sex was the sex of subterfuge.
+
+"I went to the place where he is living, and asked for him," she said,
+"and he came out and spoke to me."
+
+"You?" he repeated incredulously. There was surely no subterfuge in her
+tone, but an unreal, unbelievable note which his senses seized, and to
+which he clung. "You! My daughter!"
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I, your daughter. I suppose you think I am
+shameless. It is true--I am."
+
+Mr. Flint was utterly baffled. He was at sea. He had got beyond the range
+of his experience; defence, denial, tears, he could have understood and
+coped with. He crushed the telegrams into a tighter ball, sought for a
+footing, and found a precarious one.
+
+"And all this has been going on without my knowledge, when you knew my
+sentiments towards the man?"
+
+"Yes," she said. "I do not know what you include in that remark, but I
+have seen him many times as many times, perhaps, as you have heard
+about."
+
+He wheeled, and walked over to a cabinet between two of the great windows
+and stood there examining a collection of fans which his wife had bought
+at a famous sale in Paris. Had he suddenly been asked the question, he
+could not have said whether they were fans or beetles. And it occurred to
+Victoria, as her eyes rested on his back, that she ought to be sorry for
+him--but wasn't, somehow. Perhaps she would be to-morrow. Mr. Flint
+looked at the fans, and an obscure glimmering of the truth came to him
+that instead of administering a severe rebuke to the daughter he believed
+he had known all his life, he was engaged in a contest with the soul of a
+woman he had never known. And the more she confessed, the more she
+apparently yielded, the more impotent he seemed, the tighter the demon
+gripped him. Obstacles, embarrassments, disappointments, he had met early
+in his life, and he had taken them as they came. There had followed a
+long period when his word had been law. And now, as age came on, and he
+was meeting with obstacles again, he had lost the magic gift of sweeping
+them aside; the growing certainty that he was becoming powerless haunted
+him night and day. Unbelievably strange, however, it was that the rays of
+his anger by some subconscious process had hovered from the first about
+the son of Hilary Vane, and were now, by the trend of event after event,
+firmly focussed there.
+
+He left the cabinet abruptly and came back to Victoria.
+
+She was standing in the same position.
+
+"You have spared me something," he said. "He has apparently undermined me
+with my own daughter. He has evidently given you an opinion of me which
+is his. I think I can understand why you have not spoken of these
+--meetings."
+
+"It is an inference that I expected," said Victoria. Then she lifted her
+head and looked at him, and again he could not read her expression, for a
+light burned in her eyes that made them impenetrable to him,--a light
+that seemed pitilessly to search out and reveal the dark places and the
+weak places within him which he himself had not known were there. Could
+there be another standard by which men and women were measured and
+judged?
+
+Mr. Flint snapped his fingers, and turned and began to pace the room.
+
+"It's all pretty clear," he said; "there's no use going into it any
+farther. You believe, with the rest of them, that I'm a criminal and
+deserve the penitentiary. I don't care a straw about the others," he
+cried, snapping his fingers again. "And I suppose, if I'd had any sense,
+I might have expected it from you, too, Victoria--though you are my
+daughter."
+
+He was aware that her eyes followed him.
+
+"How many times have you spoken with Austen Vane?" she asked.
+
+"Once," he exclaimed; "that was enough. Once."
+
+"And he gave you the impression," she continued slowly, "that he was
+deceitful, and dishonourable, and a coward? a man who would say things
+behind your back that he dared not say to your face? who desired reward
+for himself at any price, and in any manner? a man who would enter your
+house and seek out your daughter and secretly assail your character?"
+
+Mr. Flint stopped in the middle of the floor.
+
+"And you tell me he has not done these things?"
+
+"Suppose I did tell you so," said Victoria, "would you believe me? I have
+no reason to think that you would. I am your daughter, I have been your
+most intimate companion, and I had the right to think that you should
+have formed some estimate of my character. Suppose I told you that Austen
+Vane has avoided me, that he would not utter a word against you or in
+favour of himself? Suppose I told you that I, your daughter, thought
+there might be two sides to the political question that is agitating you,
+and wished in fairness to hear the other side, as I intended to tell you
+when you were less busy? Suppose I told you that Austen Vane was the soul
+of honour, that he saw your side and presented it as ably as you have
+presented it? that he had refrained in many matters which might have been
+of advantage to him--although I did not hear of them from him--on account
+of his father? Would you believe me?"
+
+"And suppose I told you," cried Mr. Flint--so firmly fastened on him was
+the long habit of years of talking another down, "suppose I told you that
+this was the most astute and the craftiest course he could take? I've
+always credited him with brains. Suppose I told you that he was
+intriguing now, as he has been all along, to obtain the nomination for
+the governorship? Would you believe me?"
+
+"No," answered Victoria, quietly.
+
+Mr. Flint went to the lamp, unrolled the ball of telegrams, seized one
+and crossed the room quickly, and held it out to her. His hand shook a
+little.
+
+"Read that!" he said.
+
+She read it: "Estimate that more than half of delegates from this section
+pledged to Henderson will go to Austen Vane when signal is given in
+convention. Am told on credible authority same is true of other sections,
+including many of Hunt's men and Crewe's. This is the result of quiet but
+persistent political work I spoke about. BILLINGS."
+
+She handed the telegram back to her father in silence. "Do you believe it
+now?" he demanded exultantly.
+
+"Who is the man whose name is signed to that message?" she asked.
+
+Mr. Flint eyed her narrowly.
+
+"What difference does that make?" he demanded.
+
+"None," said Victoria. But a vision of Mr. Billings rose before her. He
+had been pointed out to her as the man who had opposed Austen in the
+Meader suit.  "If the bishop of the diocese signed it, I would not believe
+that Austen Vane had anything to do with the matter."
+
+"Ah, you defend him!" cried Mr. Flint. "I thought so--I thought so. I
+take off my hat to him, he is a cleverer man even than I. His own father,
+whom he has ruined, comes up here and defends him."
+
+"Does Hilary Vane defend him?" Victoria asked curiously.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Flint, beside himself; "incredible as it may seem, he
+does. I have Austen Vane to thank for still another favour--he is
+responsible for Hilary's condition to-day. He has broken him down--he has
+made him an imbecile. The convention is scarcely thirty-six hours off,
+and Hilary is about as fit to handle it as--as Eben Fitch. Hilary, who
+never failed me in his life!"
+
+Victoria did not speak for a moment, and then she reached out her hand
+quickly and laid it on his that still held the telegram. A lounge stood
+on one side of the fireplace, and she drew him gently to it, and he sat
+down at her side. His acquiescence to her was a second nature, and he was
+once more bewildered. His anger now seemed to have had no effect upon her
+whatever.
+
+"I waited up to tell you about Hilary Vane, father," she said gently. "He
+has had a stroke, which I am afraid is serious."
+
+"A stroke!" cried Mr. Flint, "Why didn't you tell me? How do you know?"
+
+Victoria related how she had found Hilary coming away from Fairview, and
+what she had done, and the word Dr. Tredway had sent.
+
+"Good God!" cried Mr. Flint, "he won't be able to go to the convention!"
+And he rose and pressed the electric button. "Towers," he said, when the
+butler appeared, "is Mr. Freeman still in my room? Tell him to telephone
+to Ripton at once and find out how Mr. Hilary Vane is. They'll have to
+send a messenger. That accounts for it," he went on, rather to himself
+than to Victoria, and he began to pace the room once more; "he looked
+like a sick man when he was here. And who have we got to put in his
+place? Not a soul!"
+
+He paced awhile in silence. He appeared to have forgotten Victoria.
+
+"Poor Hilary!" he said again, "poor Hilary! I'll go down there the first
+thing in the morning."
+
+Another silence, and then Mr. Freeman, the secretary, entered.
+
+"I telephoned to Dr. Tredway's, Mr. Flint. I thought that would be
+quickest. Mr. Vane has left home. They don't know where he's gone."
+
+"Left home! It's impossible!" and he glanced at Victoria, who had risen
+to her feet. "There must be some mistake."
+
+"No, sir. First I got the doctor, who said that Mr. Vane was gone--at the
+risk of his life. And then I talked to Mr. Austen Vane himself, who was
+there consulting with the doctor. It appears that Mr. Hilary Vane had
+left home by eight o'clock, when Mr. Austen Vane got there."
+
+"Hilary's gone out of his head," exclaimed Mr. Flint. "This thing has
+unhinged him. Here, take these telegrams. No, wait a minute, I'll go out
+there. Call up Billings, and see if you can get Senator Whitredge."
+
+He started out of the room, halted, and turned his head and hesitated.
+
+"Father," said Victoria, "I don't think Hilary Vane is out of his mind."
+
+"You don't?" he said quickly. "Why?"
+
+By some unaccountable change in the atmosphere, of which Mr. Flint was
+unconscious, his normal relation to his daughter had been suddenly
+reestablished. He was giving ear, as usual, to her judgment.
+
+"Did Hilary Vane tell you he would go to the convention?" she asked.
+
+"Yes." In spite of himself, he had given the word an apologetic
+inflection.
+
+"Then he has gone already," she said. "I think, if you will telephone a
+little later to the State capital, you will find that he is in his room
+at the Pelican Hotel."
+
+"By thunder, Victoria!" he ejaculated, "you may be right. It would be
+like him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE ARENA AND THE DUST
+
+Alas! that the great genius who described the battle of Waterloo is not
+alive to-day and on this side of the Atlantic, for a subject worthy of
+his pen is at hand,--nothing less than that convention of conventions at
+which the Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith is one of the candidates.
+One of the candidates, indeed! Will it not be known, as long as there are
+pensions, and a governor and a state-house and a seal and State
+sovereignty and a staff, as the Crewe Convention? How charge after charge
+was made during the long, hot day and into the night; how the delegates
+were carried out limp and speechless and starved and wet through, and
+carried in to vote again,--will all be told in time. But let us begin at
+the beginning, which is the day before.
+
+But look! it is afternoon, and the candidates are arriving at the
+Pelican. The Honourable Adam B. Hunt is the first, and walks up the hill
+from the station escorted by such prominent figures as the Honourables
+Brush Bascom and Jacob Botcher, and surrounded by enthusiastic supporters
+who wear buttons with the image of their leader--goatee and all--and the
+singularly prophetic superscription, 'To the Last Ditch!' Only veterans
+and experts like Mr. Bascom and Mr. Botcher can recognize the last ditch
+when they see it.
+
+Another stir in the street--occasioned by the appearance of the
+Honourable Giles Henderson,--of the blameless life. Utter a syllable
+against him if you can! These words should be inscribed on his buttons if
+he had any--but he has none. They seem to be, unuttered, on the tongues
+of the gentlemen who escort the Honourable Giles, United States Senator
+Greene and the Honourable Elisha Jane, who has obtained leave of absence
+from his consular post to attend the convention,--and incidentally to
+help prepare for it.
+
+But who and what is this? The warlike blast of a siren horn is heard, the
+crowd in the lobby rushes to the doors, people up-stairs fly to the
+windows, and the Honourable Adam B. Hunt leans out and nearly falls out,
+but is rescued by Division Superintendent Manning of the Northeastern
+Railroads, who has stepped in from Number Seven to give a little private
+tug of a persuasive nature to the Honourable Adam's coat-tails. A red
+Leviathan comes screaming down Main Street with a white trail of dust
+behind it, smothering the occupants of vehicles which have barely
+succeeded in getting out of the way, and makes a spectacular finish
+before the Pelican by sliding the last fifty feet on locked rear wheels.
+
+A group in the street raises a cheer. It is the People's Champion! Dust
+coat, gauntlets, goggles, cannot hide him; and if they did, some one
+would recognize that voice, familiar now and endeared to many, and so
+suited to command:--"Get that baggage off, and don't waste any time!
+Jump out, Watling--that handle turns the other way. Well, Tooting, are
+the headquarters ready? What was the matter that I couldn't get you on
+the telephone?" (To the crowd.) "Don't push in and scratch the paint.
+He's going to back out in a minute, and somebody'll get hurt."
+
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting (Colonel Hamilton Tooting that is to be--it being an
+open secret that he is destined for the staff) is standing hatless on the
+sidewalk ready to receive the great man. The crowd in the rotunda makes a
+lane, and Mr. Crewe, glancing neither to the right nor left, walks
+upstairs; and scarce is he installed in the bridal suite, surrounded by
+his faithful workers for reform, than that amazing reception begins. Mr.
+Hamilton Tooting, looking the very soul of hospitality, stands by the
+doorway with an open box of cigars in his left hand, pressing them upon
+the visitors with his right. Reform, contrary to the preconceived opinion
+of many, is not made of icicles, nor answers with a stone a request for
+bread. As the hours run on, the visitors grow more and more numerous, and
+after supper the room is packed to suffocation, and a long line is
+waiting in the corridor, marshalled and kept in good humour by able
+lieutenants; while Mr. Crewe is dimly to be perceived through clouds of
+incense burning in his honour--and incidentally at his expense--with a
+welcoming smile and an appropriate word for each caller, whose waistcoat
+pockets, when they emerge, resemble cartridge-belts of cigars.
+
+More cigars were hastily sent for, and more. There are to be but a
+thousand delegates to the convention, and at least two thousand men have
+already passed through the room--and those who don't smoke have friends.
+It is well that Mr. Crewe has stuck to his conservative habit of not
+squeezing hands too hard.
+
+"Isn't that Mr. Putter, who keeps a livery-stable here?" inquired Mr.
+Crewe, about nine o'clock--our candidate having a piercing eye of his
+own. Mr. Putter's coat, being brushed back, has revealed six cigars.
+
+"Why, yes--yes," says Mr. Watling.
+
+"Is he a delegate?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+"Why, I guess he must be," says Mr. Watling.
+
+But Mr. Putter is not a delegate.
+
+"You've stood up and made a grand fight, Mr. Crewe," says another
+gentleman, a little later, with a bland, smooth shaven face and strong
+teeth to clinch Mr. Crewe's cigars. "I wish I was fixed so as I could
+vote for you."
+
+Mr. Crewe looks at him narrowly.
+
+"You look very much like a travelling man from New York, who tried to
+sell me farm machinery," he answers.
+
+"Where are you from?"
+
+"You ain't exactly what they call a tyro, are you?" says the bland-faced
+man; "but I guess you've missed the mark this shot. Well, so long."
+
+"Hold on!" says Mr. Crewe, "Watling will talk to you."
+
+And, as the gentleman follows Mr. Wailing through the press, a pamphlet
+drops from his pocket to the floor. It is marked 'Catalogue of the Raines
+Farm Implement Company.' Mr. Watling picks it up and hands it to the
+gentleman, who winks again.
+
+"Tim," he says, "where can we sit down? How much are you getting out of
+this? Brush and Jake Botcher are bidding high down-stairs, and the
+quotation on delegates has gone up ten points in ten minutes. It's mighty
+good of you to remember old friends, Tim, even if they're not delegates."
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Crewe is graciously receiving others who are crowding to
+him.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Giddings? How are the cows? I carry some stock that'll
+make you sit up--I believe I told you when I was down your way. Of
+course, mine cost a little money, but that's one of my hobbies. Come and
+see 'em some day. There's a good hotel in Ripton, and I'll have you met
+there and drive you back."
+
+Thus, with a genial and kindly remark to each, he passes from one to the
+other, and when the members of the press come to him for his estimate of
+the outcome on the morrow, he treats them with the same courtly
+consideration.
+
+"Estimate!" cries Mr. Crewe. "Where have your eyes been to-night, my
+friends? Have you seen the people coming into these headquarters? Have
+you seen 'em pouring into any other headquarters? All the State and
+federal office-holders in the country couldn't stop me now. Estimate!
+I'll be nominated on the first ballot."
+
+They wrote it down.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Crewe," they said; "that's the kind of talk we like to
+hear."
+
+"And don't forget," said Mr. Crewe, "to mention this reception in the
+accounts."
+
+Mr. Tooting, who makes it a point from time to time to reconnoitre,
+saunters halfway down-stairs and surveys the crowded rotunda from the
+landing. Through the blue medium produced by the burning of many cigars
+(mostly Mr. Crewe's) he takes note of the burly form of Mr. Thomas
+Gaylord beside that of Mr. Redbrook and other rural figures; he takes
+note of a quiet corner with a ring of chairs surrounded by scouts and
+outposts, although it requires a trained eye such as Mr. Tooting's to
+recognize them as such--for they wear no uniforms. They are, in truth,
+minor captains of the feudal system, and their present duties consist (as
+Mr. Tooting sees clearly) in preventing the innocent and inquisitive from
+unprofitable speech with the Honourable Jacob Botcher, who sits in the
+inner angle conversing cordially with those who are singled out for this
+honour. Still other scouts conduct some of the gentlemen who have talked
+with Mr. Botcher up the stairs to a mysterious room on the second floor.
+Mr. Tooting discovers that the room is occupied by the Honourable Brush
+Bascom; Mr. Tooting learns with indignation that certain of these guests
+of Mr. Bascom's are delegates pledged to Mr. Crewe, whereupon he rushes
+back to the bridal suite to report to his chief. The cigars are giving
+out again, and the rush has slackened, and he detaches the People's
+Champion from the line and draws him to the inner room.
+
+"Brush Bascom's conducting a bourse on the second floor and is running the
+price up right along," cried the honest and indignant Mr. Tooting.  He's
+stringin' Adam Hunt all right. They say he's got Adam to cough up six
+thousand extra since five o'clock, but the question is--ain't he
+stringin' us? He paid six hundred for a block of ten not quarter of an
+hour ago--and nine of 'em were our delegates."
+
+It must be remembered that these are Mr. Tooting's words, and Mr. Crewe
+evidently treated them as the product of that gentleman's vivid
+imagination. Translated, they meant that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt has
+no chance for the nomination, but that the crafty Messrs. Botcher and
+Bascom are inducing him to think that he has--by making a supreme effort.
+The supreme effort is represented by six thousand dollars.
+
+"Are you going to lie down under that?" Mr. Tooting demanded, forgetting
+himself in his zeal for reform and Mr. Crewe. But Mr. Tooting, in some
+alarm, perceived the eye of his chief growing virtuous and glassy.
+
+"I guess I know when I'm strung, as you call it, Mr. Tooting," he replied
+severely. "This cigar bill alone is enough to support a large family for
+several months."
+
+And with this merited reproof he turned on his heel and went back to his
+admirers without, leaving Mr. Tooting aghast, but still resourceful. Ten
+minutes later that gentleman was engaged in a private conversation with
+his colleague, the Honourable Timothy Wading.
+
+"He's up on his hind legs at last," said Mr. Tooting; "it looks as if he
+was catching on."
+
+Mr. Wading evidently grasped these mysterious words, for he looked grave.
+
+"He thinks he's got the nomination cinched, don't he?"
+
+"That's the worst of it," cried Mr. Tooting.
+
+"I'll see what I can do," said the Honourable Tim. "He's always talking
+about thorough, let him do it thorough." And Mr. Watling winked.
+
+"Thorough," repeated Mr. Tooting, delightedly.
+
+"That's it--Colonel," said Mr. Watling. "Have you ordered your uniform
+yet, Ham?"
+
+Mr. Tooting plainly appreciated this joke, for he grinned.
+
+"I guess you won't starve if you don't get that commissionership, Tim,"
+he retorted.
+
+"And I guess," returned Mr. Watling, "that you won't go naked if you
+don't have a uniform."
+
+Victoria's surmise was true. At ten o'clock at night, two days before the
+convention, a tall figure had appeared in the empty rotunda of the
+Pelican, startling the clerk out of a doze. He rubbed his eyes and
+stared, recognized Hilary Vane, and yet failed to recognize him. It was
+an extraordinary occasion indeed which would cause Mr. McAvoy to lose his
+aplomb; to neglect to seize the pen and dip it, with a flourish, into the
+ink, and extend its handle towards the important guest; to omit a few
+fitting words of welcome. It was Hilary who got the pen first, and wrote
+his name in silence, and by this time Mr. McAvoy had recovered his
+presence of mind sufficiently to wield the blotter.
+
+"We didn't expect you to-night, Mr. Vane," he said, in a voice that
+sounded strange to him, "but we've kept Number Seven, as usual. Front!"
+
+"The old man's seen his day, I guess," Mr. McAvoy remarked, as he studied
+the register with a lone reporter. "This Crewe must have got in on 'em
+hard, from what they tell me, and Adam Hunt has his dander up."
+
+The next morning at ten o'clock, while the workmen were still tacking
+down the fireproof carpets in headquarters upstairs, and before even the
+advance guard of the armies had begun to arrive, the eye of the clerk was
+caught by a tall young man rapidly approaching the desk.
+
+"Is Mr. Hilary Vane here?"
+
+"He's in Number Seven," said Mr. McAvoy, who was cudgelling his brains.
+"Give me your card, and I'll send it up."
+
+"I'll go up," said the caller, turning on his heel and suiting the action
+to the word, leaving Mr. McAvoy to make active but futile inquiries among
+the few travelling men and reporters seated about.
+
+"Well, if you fellers don't know him, I give up," said the clerk,
+irritably, "but he looks as if he ought to be somebody. He knows his
+business, anyway."
+
+In the meantime Mr. Vane's caller had reached the first floor; he
+hesitated just a moment before knocking at the door of Number Seven, and
+the Honourable Hilary's voice responded. The door opened.
+
+Hilary was seated, as usual, beside the marble-topped table, which was
+covered with newspapers and memoranda. In the room were Mr. Ridout, the
+capital lawyer, and Mr. Manning, the division superintendent. There was
+an instant of surprised silence on the part of the three, but the
+Honourable Hilary was the only one who remained expressionless.
+
+"If you don't mind, gentlemen," said the visitor, "I should like to talk
+to my father for a few minutes."
+
+"Why, certainly, Austen," Mr. Ridout replied, with an attempt at
+heartiness. Further words seemed to fail him, and he left the room
+somewhat awkwardly, followed by Mr. Manning; but the Honourable Hilary
+appeared to take no notice of this proceeding.
+
+"Judge," said Austen, when the door had closed behind them, "I won't keep
+you long. I didn't come down here to plead with you to abandon what you
+believe to be your duty, because I know that would be useless. I have had
+a talk with Dr. Tredway," he added gently, "and I realize that you are
+risking your life. If I could take you back to Ripton I would, but I know
+that I cannot. I see your point of view, and if I were in your place I
+should do the same thing. I only wanted to tell you this--" Austen's
+voice caught a little, "if--anything should happen, I shall be at Mrs.
+Peasley's on Maple Street, opposite the Duncan house." He laid his hand
+for an instant, in the old familiar way, on Hilary's shoulder, and looked
+down into the older man's face. It may have been that Hilary's lips
+trembled a little. "I--I'll see you later, Judge, when it's all over.
+Good luck to you."
+
+He turned slowly, went to the door and opened it, gave one glance at the
+motionless figure in the chair, and went out. He did not hear the voice
+that called his name, for the door had shut.
+
+Mr. Ridout and Mr. Manning were talking together in low tones at the head
+of the stairs. It was the lawyer who accosted Austen.
+
+"The old gentleman don't seem to be quite himself, Austen. Don't seem
+well. You ought to hold him in he can't work as hard as he used to."
+
+"I think you'll find, Mr. Ridout," answered Austen, deliberately, "that
+he'll perform what's required of him with his usual efficiency."
+
+Mr. Ridout followed Austen's figure with his eyes until he was hidden by
+a turn of the stairs. Then he whistled.
+
+"I can't make that fellow out," he exclaimed. "Never could. All I know is
+that if Hilary Vane pulls us through this mess, in the shape he's in,
+it'll be a miracle.
+
+"His mind seems sound enough to-day--but he's lost his grip, I tell you.
+I don't wonder Flint's beside himself. Here's Adam Hunt with both feet in
+the trough, and no more chance of the nomination than I have, and Bascom
+and Botcher teasing him on, and he's got enough votes with Crewe to lock
+up that convention for a dark horse. And who's the dark horse?"
+
+Mr. Manning, who was a silent man, pointed with his thumb in the
+direction Austen had taken.
+
+"Hilary Vane's own son," said Mr. Ridout, voicing the gesture; "they tell
+me that Tom Gaylord's done some pretty slick work. Now I leave it to you,
+Manning, if that isn't a mess!"
+
+At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance on the
+stairway of the impressive form of United States Senator Whitredge,
+followed by a hall boy carrying the senatorial gripsack. The senator's
+face wore a look of concern which could not possibly be misinterpreted.
+
+"How's Hilary?" were his first words.
+
+Mr. Ridout and Mr. Manning glanced at each other.
+
+"He's in Number Seven; you'd better take a look at him, Senator."
+
+The senator drew breath, directed that his grip be put in the room where
+he was to repose that night, produced an amber cigar-holder from a case,
+and a cigar from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"I thought I'd better come down early," he said, "things aren't going
+just as they should, and that's the truth. In fact," he added,
+significantly tapping his pocket, "I've got a letter from Mr. Flint to
+Hilary which I may have to use. You understand me."
+
+"I guessed as much," said Mr. Ridout.
+
+"Ahem! I saw young Vane going out of the hotel just now," the senator
+remarked. "I am told, on pretty good authority, that under certain
+circumstances, which I must confess seem not unlikely at present, he may
+be a candidate for the nomination. The fact that he is in town tends to
+make the circumstance more probable."
+
+"He's just been in to see Hilary," said Mr. Ridout.
+
+"You don't tell me!" said the senator, pausing as he lighted his cigar;
+"I was under the impression that they were not on speaking terms."
+
+"They've evidently got together now, that--" said Mr. Ridout. "I wonder
+how old Hilary would feel about it. We couldn't do much with Austen Vane
+if he was governor--that's a sure thing."
+
+The senator pondered a moment.
+
+"It's been badly managed," he muttered; "there's no doubt of that. Hunt
+must be got out of the way. When Bascom and Botcher come, tell them I
+want to see them in my room, not in Number Seven."
+
+And with this impressive command, received with nods of understanding,
+Senator Whitredge advanced slowly towards Number Seven, knocked, and
+entered. Be it known that Mr. Flint, with characteristic caution, had not
+confided even to the senator that the Honourable Hilary had had a stroke.
+
+"Ah, Vane," he said, in his most affable tones, "how are you?"
+
+The Honourable Hilary, who was looking over some papers, shot at him a
+glance from under his shaggy eyebrows.
+
+"Came in here to find out--didn't you, Whitredge?" he replied.
+
+"What?" said the senator, taken aback; and for once at a loss for words.
+
+The Honourable Hilary rose and stood straighter than usual, and looked
+the senator in the eye.
+
+"What's your diagnosis?" he asked. "Superannuated--unfit for duty
+--unable to cope with the situation ready to be superseded? Is that about
+it?"
+
+To say that Senator Whitredge was startled and uncomfortable would be to
+put his case mildly. He had never before seen Mr. Vane in this mood.
+
+"Ha-ha!" he laughed; "the years are coming over us a little, aren't they?
+But I guess it isn't quite time for the youngsters to step in yet."
+
+"No, Whitredge," said Mr. Vane, slowly, without taking his eye from the
+senator's, "and it won't be until this convention is over. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"That's the first good news I've heard this morning," said the senator,
+with the uneasy feeling that, in some miraculous way, the Honourable
+Hilary had read the superseding orders from highest authority through his
+pocket.
+
+"You may take it as good news or bad news, as you please, but it's a
+fact. And now I want 'YOU' to tell Ridout that I wish to see him again,
+and to bring in Doby, who is to be chairman of the convention."
+
+"Certainly," assented the senator, with alacrity, as he started for the
+door. Then he turned. "I'm glad to see you're all right, Vane," he added;
+"I'd heard that you were a little under the weather--a bilious attack on
+account of the heat--that's all I meant." He did not wait for an answer,
+nor would he have got one. And he found Mr. Ridout in the hall.
+
+"Well?" said the lawyer, expectantly, and looking with some curiosity at
+the senator's face.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Whitredge, with marked impatience, "he wants to see you
+right away."
+
+All day long Hilary Vane held conference in Number Seven, and at six
+o'clock sent a request that the Honourable Adam visit him. The Honourable
+Adam would not come; and the fact leaked out--through the Honourable
+Adam.
+
+"He's mad clean through," reported the Honourable Elisha Jane, to whose
+tact and diplomacy the mission had been confided. "He said he would teach
+Flint a lesson. He'd show him he couldn't throw away a man as useful and
+efficient as he'd been, like a sucked orange."
+
+"Humph! A sucked orange. That's what he said, is it? A sucked orange,"
+Hilary repeated.
+
+"That's what he said," declared Mr. Jane, and remembered afterwards how
+Hilary had been struck by the simile.
+
+At ten o'clock at night, at the very height of the tumult, Senator
+Whitredge had received an interrogatory telegram from Fairview, and had
+called a private conference (in which Hilary was not included) in a back
+room on the second floor (where the conflicting bands of Mr. Crewe and
+Mr. Hunt could not be heard), which Mr. Manning and Mr. Jane and State
+Senator Billings and Mr. Ridout attended. Query: the Honourable Hilary
+had quarrelled with Mr. Flint, that was an open secret; did not Mr. Vane
+think himself justified, from his own point of view, in taking a singular
+revenge in not over-exerting himself to pull the Honourable Adam out,
+thereby leaving the field open for his son, Austen Vane, with whom he was
+apparently reconciled? Not that Mr. Flint had hinted of such a thing! He
+had, in the telegram, merely urged the senator himself to see Mr. Hunt,
+and to make one more attempt to restrain the loyalty to that candidate of
+Messrs. Bascom and Botcher.
+
+The senator made the attempt, and failed signally.
+
+It was half-past midnight by the shining face of the clock on the tower
+of the state-house, and hope flamed high in the bosom of the Honourable
+Adam B. Hunt a tribute to the bellows-like skill of Messrs. Bascom and
+Botcher. The bands in the street had blown themselves out, the delegates
+were at last seeking rest, the hall boys in the corridors were turning
+down the lights, and the Honourable Adam, in a complacent and even
+jubilant frame of mind, had put on his carpet slippers and taken off his
+coat, when there came a knock at his door. He was not a little amazed and
+embarrassed, upon opening it, to see the Honourable Hilary. But these
+feelings gave place almost immediately to a sense of triumph; gone were
+the days when he had to report to Number Seven. Number Seven, in the
+person of Hilary (who was Number Seven), had been forced to come to him!
+
+"Well, upon my soul!" he exclaimed heartily. "Come in, Hilary."
+
+He turned up the jets of the chandelier, and gazed at his friend, and was
+silent.
+
+"Have a seat, Hilary," he said, pushing up an armchair.
+
+Mr. Vane sat down. Mr. Hunt took a seat opposite, and waited for his
+visitor to speak. He himself seemed to find no words.
+
+"Adam," said Mr. Vane, at length, "we've known each other for a good many
+years."
+
+"That's so, Hilary. That's so," Mr. Hunt eagerly assented. What was
+coming?
+
+"And whatever harm I've done in my life," Hilary continued, "I've always
+tried to keep my word. I told you, when we met up there by the mill this
+summer, that if Mr. Flint had consulted me about your candidacy, before
+seeing you in New York, I shouldn't have advised it--this time."
+
+The Honourable Adam's face stiffened.
+
+"That's what you said. But--"
+
+"And I meant it," Mr. Vane interrupted. "I was never pledged to your
+candidacy, as a citizen. I've been thinking over my situation some, this
+summer, and I'll tell you in so many plain words what it is. I guess you
+know--I guess everybody knows who's thought about it. I deceived myself
+for a long time by believing that I earned my living as the attorney for
+the Northeastern Railroads. I've drawn up some pretty good papers for
+them, and I've won some pretty difficult suits. I'm not proud of 'em all,
+but let that go. Do you know what I am?"
+
+The Honourable Adam was capable only of a startled ejaculation. Was
+Hilary Vane in his right senses?
+
+"I'm merely their paid political tool," Mr. Vane continued, in the same
+tone. "I've sold them my brain, and my right of opinion as a citizen. I
+wanted to make this clear to you first of all. Not that you didn't know
+it, but I wished you to know that I know it. When Mr. Flint said that you
+were to be the Republican nominee, my business was to work to get you
+elected, which I did. And when it became apparent that you couldn't be
+nominated--"
+
+"Hold on!" cried the Honourable Adam.
+
+"Please wait until I have finished. When it became apparent that you
+couldn't be nominated, Mr. Flint sent me to try to get you to withdraw,
+and he decreed that the new candidate should pay your expenses up to
+date. I failed in that mission."
+
+"I don't blame you, Hilary," exclaimed Mr. Hunt. "I told you so at the
+time. But I guess I'll soon be in a position where I can make Flint walk
+the tracks--his own tracks."
+
+"Adam," said Mr. Vane, "it is because I deserve as much of the blame as
+Mr. Flint that I am here."
+
+Again Mr. Hunt was speechless. The Honourable Hilary Vane in an
+apologetic mood! A surmise flashed into the brain of the Honourable Adam,
+and sparkled there. The Honourable Giles Henderson was prepared to
+withdraw, and Hilary had come, by authority, to see if he would pay the
+Honourable Giles' campaign expenses. Well, he could snap his fingers at
+that.
+
+"Flint has treated me like a dog," he declared.
+
+"Mr. Flint never pretended," answered Mr. Vane, coldly, "that the
+nomination and election of a governor was anything but a business
+transaction. His regard for you is probably unchanged, but the interests
+he has at stake are too large to admit of sentiment as a factor."
+
+"Exactly," exclaimed Mr. Hunt. "And I hear he hasn't treated you just
+right, Hilary. I understand--"
+
+Hilary's eyes flashed for the first time.
+
+"Never mind that, Adam," he said quietly; "I've been treated as I
+deserve. I have nothing whatever to complain of from Mr. Flint. I will
+tell you why I came here to-night. I haven't felt right about you since
+that interview, and the situation to-night is practically what it was
+then. You can't be nominated."
+
+"Can't be nominated!" gasped Mr: Hunt. And he reached to the table for
+his figures. "I'll have four hundred on the first ballot, and I've got
+two hundred and fifty more pledged to me as second choice. If you've come
+up here at this time of night to try to deceive me on that, you might as
+well go back and wire Flint it's no use. Why, I can name the delegates,
+if you'll listen."
+
+Mr. Vane shook his head sadly. And, confident as he was, the movement
+sent a cold chill down the Honourable Adam's spine, for faith in Mr.
+Vane's judgment had become almost a second nature. He had to force
+himself to remember that this was not the old Hilary.
+
+"You won't have three hundred, Adam, at any time," answered Mr. Vane.
+"Once you used to believe what I said, and if you won't now, you won't.
+But I can't go away without telling you what I came for."
+
+"What's that?" demanded Mr. Hunt, wonderingly.
+
+"It's this," replied Hilary, with more force than he had yet shown. "You
+can't get that nomination. If you'll let me know what your campaign
+expenses have been up to date,--all of 'em, you understand, to-night
+too,--I'll give you a check for them within the next two weeks."
+
+"Who makes this offer?" demanded Mr. Hunt, with more curiosity than
+alarm; "Mr. Flint?"
+
+"No," said Hilary; "Mr. Flint does not use the road's funds for such
+purposes."
+
+"Henderson?"
+
+"No," said Hilary; "I can't see what difference it makes to you."
+
+The Honourable Adam had an eminently human side, and he laid his hand on
+Mr. Vane's knee.
+
+"I think I've got a notion as to where that money would come from,
+Hilary," he said. "I'm much obliged to you, my friend. I wouldn't take it
+even if I thought you'd sized up the situation right. But--I don't agree
+with you this time. I know I've got the nomination. And I want to say
+once more, that I think you're a square man, and I don't hold anything
+against you."
+
+Mr. Vane rose.
+
+"I'm sorry, Adam," he said; my offer holds good after to-morrow."
+
+"After to-morrow!"
+
+"Yes," said the Honourable Hilary. "I don't feel right about this thing.
+Er--good night, Adam."
+
+"Hold on!" cried Mr. Hunt, as a new phase of the matter struck him. "Why,
+if I got out--"
+
+"What then?" said Mr. Vane, turning around.
+
+"Oh, I won't get out," said Mr. Hunt, "but if I did,--why, there
+wouldn't, according to your way of thinking, be any chance for a dark
+horse."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Vane.
+
+"Now don't get mad, Hilary. I guess, and you know, that Flint hasn't
+treated you decently this summer after all you've done for him, and I
+admire the way you're standing by him. I wouldn't do it. I just wanted to
+say," Mr. Hunt added slowly, "that I respect you all the more for trying
+to get me out. If--always according to your notion of the convention--if
+I don't get out, and haven't any chance, they tell me on pretty good
+authority Austen Vane will get the nomination."
+
+Hilary Vane walked to the door, opened it and went out, and slammed it
+behind him.
+
+It is morning,--a hot morning, as so many recall,--and the partisans of
+the three leaders are early astir, and at seven-thirty Mr. Tooting
+discovers something going on briskly which he terms "dealing in futures."
+My vote is yours as long as you are in the race, but after that I have
+something negotiable. The Honourable Adam Hunt strolls into the rotunda
+after an early breakfast, with a toothpick in his mouth, and is pointed
+out by the sophisticated to new arrivals as the man who spent seven
+thousand dollars over night, much of which is said to have stuck in the
+pockets of two feudal chiefs who could be named. Is it possible that
+there is a split in the feudal system at last? that the two feudal chiefs
+(who could be named) are rebels against highest authority? A smile from
+the sophisticated one. This duke and baron have merely stopped to pluck a
+bird; it matters not whether or not the bird is an erstwhile friend--he
+has been outlawed by highest authority, and is fair game. The bird (with
+the toothpick in his mouth) creates a smile from other chiefs of the
+system in good standing who are not too busy to look at him. They have
+ceased all attempts to buttonhole him, for he is unapproachable.
+
+The other bird, the rebel of Leith, who has never been in the feudal
+system at all, they have stopped laughing at. It is he who has brought
+the Empire to its most precarious state.
+
+And now, while strangers from near and far throng into town, drawn by the
+sensational struggle which is to culminate in battle to-day, Mr. Crewe is
+marshalling his forces. All the delegates who can be collected, and who
+wear the button with the likeness and superscription of Humphrey Crewe,
+are drawn up beside the monument in the park, where the Ripton Band is
+stationed; and presently they are seen by cheering crowds marching to
+martial music towards the convention hall, where they collect in a body,
+with signs and streamers in praise of the People's Champion well to the
+front and centre. This is generally regarded as a piece of consummate
+general ship on the part of their leader. They are applauded from the
+galleries,--already packed,--especially from one conspicuous end where
+sit that company of ladies (now so famed) whose efforts have so
+materially aided the cause of the People's Champion. Gay streamers vie
+with gayer gowns, and morning papers on the morrow will have something to
+say about the fashionable element and the special car which brought them
+from Leith.
+
+"My, but it is hot!"
+
+The hall is filled now, with the thousand delegates, or their
+representatives who are fortunate enough to possess their credentials.
+Something of this matter later. General Doby, chairman of the convention,
+an impressive but mournful figure, could not call a roll if he wanted to.
+Not that he will want to! Impossible to tell, by the convenient laws of
+the State, whether the duly elected delegates of Hull or Mercer or Truro
+are here or not, since their credentials may be bought or sold or
+conferred. Some political giants, who have not negotiated their
+credentials, are recognized as they walk down the aisle: the
+statesmanlike figure of Senator Whitredge (a cheer); that of Senator
+Green (not so statesmanlike, but a cheer); Congressman Fairplay (cheers);
+and--Hilary Vane! His a figure that does not inspire cheers,--least of
+all to-day,--the man upon whose shoulders rests the political future of
+the Northeastern. The conservative Mr. Tredways and other Lincoln
+radicals of long ago who rely on his strength and judgment are not the
+sort to cheer. And yet--and yet Hilary inspires some feeling when, with
+stooping gait, he traverses the hall, and there is a hush in many
+quarters as delegates and spectators watch his progress to the little
+room off the platform: the general's room, as the initiated know.
+
+Ah, but few know what a hateful place it is to Hilary Vane to-day, this
+keyboard at which he has sat so complacently in years gone by, the envied
+of conventions. He sits down wearily at the basswood table, and scarcely
+hears the familiar sounds without, which indicate that the convention of
+conventions has begun. Extraordinary phenomenon at such a time, scenes of
+long ago and little cherished then, are stealing into his mind.
+
+The Reverend Mr. Crane (so often chaplain of the Legislature, and known
+to the irreverent as the chaplain of the Northeastern) is praying now for
+guidance in the counsels of this great gathering of the people's
+representatives. God will hear Mr. Botcher better if he closes his eyes;
+which he does. Now the platform is being read by State Senator Billings;
+closed eyes would best suit this proceeding, too. As a parallel to that
+platform, one can think only of the Ten Commandments. The Republican
+Party (chosen children of Israel) must be kept free from the domination
+of corporations. (Cheers and banner waving for a full minute.) Some
+better method of choosing delegates which will more truly reflect the
+will of the people. (Plank of the Honourable Jacob Botcher, whose
+conscience is awakening.) Never mind the rest. It is a triumph for Mr.
+Crewe, and is all printed in that orthodox (reform) newspaper, the State
+Tribune, with urgent editorials that it must be carried out to the
+letter.
+
+And what now? Delegates, credential holders, audience, and the Reverend
+Mr. Crane draw long breaths of heated carbon dioxide. Postmaster Burrows
+of Edmundton, in rounded periods, is putting in nomination his
+distinguished neighbour and fellow-citizen, the Honourable Adam B. Hunt,
+who can subscribe and say amen to every plank in that platform. He
+believes it, he has proclaimed it in public, and he embodies it. Mr.
+Burrows indulges in slight but effective sarcasm of sham reformers and
+so-called business men who perform the arduous task of cutting coupons
+and live in rarefied regions where they can only be seen by the common
+people when the light is turned on. (Cheers from two partisan bodies and
+groans and hisses from another. General Doby, with a pained face,
+pounding with the gavel. This isn't a circumstance to what's coming,
+General.)
+
+After General Doby has succeeded in abating the noise in honour-of the
+Honourable Adam, there is a hush of expectancy. Humphrey Crewe, who has
+made all this trouble and enthusiasm, is to be nominated next, and the
+Honourable Timothy Wailing of Newcastle arises to make that celebrated
+oration which the cynical have called the "thousand-dollar speech." And
+even if they had named it well (which is not for a moment to be
+admitted!), it is cheap for the price. How Mr. Crewe's ears must tingle
+as he paces his headquarters in the Pelican! Almost would it be sacrilege
+to set down cold, on paper, the words that come, burning, out of the
+Honourable Timothy's loyal heart. Here, gentlemen, is a man at last, not
+a mere puppet who signs his name when a citizen of New York pulls the
+string; one who is prepared to make any sacrifice,--to spend his life, if
+need be, in their service. (A barely audible voice, before the cheering
+commences, "I guess that's so.") Humphrey Crewe needs no defence--the
+Honourable Timothy avers--at his hands, or any one's. Not merely an
+idealist, but a practical man who has studied the needs of the State;
+unselfish to the core; longing, like Washington, the Father of his
+Country, to remain in a beautiful country home, where he dispenses
+hospitality with a flowing hand to poor and rich alike, yet harking to
+the call of duty. Leaving, like the noble Roman of old, his plough in the
+furrow--(Same voice as before, "I wish he'd left his automobil' thar!"
+Hisses and laughter.) The Honourable Timothy, undaunted, snatches his
+hand from the breast of his Prince Albert and flings it, with a superb
+gesture, towards the Pelican. "Gentlemen, I have the honour to nominate
+to this convention that peerless leader for the right, the Honourable
+Humphrey Crewe of Leith--our next governor."
+
+General Andrew Jackson himself, had he been alive and on this historic
+ground and chairman of that convention, could scarce have quelled the
+tumult aroused by this name and this speech--much less General Doby.
+Although a man of presence, measurable by scales with weights enough, our
+general has no more ponderosity now than a leaf in a mountain storm at
+Hale--and no more control over the hurricane. Behold him now, pounding
+with his gavel on something which should give forth a sound, but doesn't.
+Who is he (to change the speech's figure--not the general's), who is he
+to drive a wild eight-horse team, who is fit only to conduct Mr. Flint's
+oxen in years gone by?
+
+It is a memorable scene, sketched to life for the metropolitan press. The
+man on the chair, his face lighted by a fanatic enthusiasm, is the
+Honourable Hamilton Tooting, coatless and collarless, leading the cheers
+that shake the building, that must have struck terror to the soul of
+Augustus P. Flint himself--fifty miles away. But the endurance of the
+human throat is limited.
+
+Why, in the name of political strategy, has United States Senator Greene
+been chosen to nominate the Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston? Some
+say that it is the will of highest authority, others that the senator is
+a close friend of the Honourable Giles--buys his coal from him,
+wholesale. Both surmises are true. The senator's figure is not
+impressive, his voice less so, and he reads from manuscript, to the
+accompaniment of continual cries of "Louder!" A hook for Leviathan! "A
+great deal of dribble," said the senator, for little rocks sometimes
+strike fire, "has been heard about the 'will of the people.'"
+
+The Honourable Giles Henderson is beholden to no man and to no
+corporation, and will go into office prepared to do justice impartially
+to all."
+
+"Bu--copia verborum--let us to the main business!"
+
+To an hundred newspapers, to Mr. Flint at Fairview, and other important
+personages ticks out the momentous news that the balloting has begun. No
+use trying to hold your breath until the first ballot is announced; it
+takes time to obtain the votes of one thousand men--especially when
+neither General Doby nor any one else knows who they are! The only way is
+to march up on the stage by counties and file past the ballot-box.
+Putnam, with their glitter-eyed duke, Mr. Bascom, at their head
+--presumably solid for Adam B. Hunt; Baron Burrows, who farms out the
+post-office at Edmundton, leads Edmunds County; Earl Elisha Jane, consul
+at some hot place where he spends the inclement months drops the first
+ticket for Haines County, ostensibly solid for home-made virtue and the
+Honourable Giles.
+
+An hour and a quarter of suspense and torture passes, while collars wilt
+and coats come off, and fans in the gallery wave incessantly, and excited
+conversation buzzes in every quarter. And now, see! there is whispering
+on the stage among the big-bugs. Mr. Chairman Doby rises with a paper in
+his hand, and the buzzing dies down to silence.
+
+   The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . .398
+   The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . 353
+   The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has. .  249
+   And a majority being required, there is no choice!
+
+Are the supporters of the People's Champion crest-fallen, think you? Mr.
+Tooting is not leading them for the moment, but is pressing through the
+crowd outside the hall and flying up the street to the Pelican and the
+bridal suite, where he is first with the news. Note for an unabridged
+biography: the great man is discovered sitting quietly by the window,
+poring over a book on the modern science of road-building, some notes
+from which he is making for his first message. And instead of the reek of
+tobacco smoke, the room is filled with the scent of the floral tributes
+brought down by the Ladies' Auxiliary from Leith. In Mr. Crewe's
+right-hand pocket, neatly typewritten, is his speech of acceptance. He is
+never caught unprepared. Unkind, now, to remind him of that prediction
+made last night about the first ballot to the newspapers--and useless.
+
+"I told you last night they were buyin' 'em right under our noses," cried
+Mr. Tooting, in a paroxysm of indignation, "and you wouldn't believe me.
+They got over one hundred and sixty away from us."
+
+"It strikes me, Mr. Tooting," said Mr. Crewe, "that it was your business
+to prevent that."
+
+There will no doubt be a discussion, when the biographer reaches this
+juncture, concerning the congruity of reform delegates who can be bought.
+It is too knotty a point of ethics to be dwelt upon here.
+
+"Prevent it!" echoed Mr. Tooting, and in the strong light of the
+righteousness of that eye reproaches failed him. "But there's a whole lot
+of 'em can be seen, right now, while the ballots are being taken. It
+won't be decided on the next ballot."
+
+"Mr. Tooting," said Mr. Crewe, indubitably proving that he had the
+qualities of a leader--if such proof were necessary, "go back to the
+convention. I have no doubt of the outcome, but that doesn't mean you are
+to relax your efforts. Do you understand?"
+
+"I guess I do," replied Mr. Tooting, and was gone. "He still has his flag
+up," he whispered into the Honourable Timothy Watling's ear, when he
+reached the hall. "He'll stand a little more yet."
+
+Mr. Tooting, at times, speaks a language unknown to us--and the second
+ballot is going on. And during its progress the two principal lieutenants
+of the People's Champion were observed going about the hall apparently
+exchanging the time of day with various holders of credentials. Mr. Jane,
+too, is going about the hall, and Postmaster Burrows, and Postmaster Bill
+Fleeting of Brampton, and the Honourable Nat Billings, and Messrs. Bascom
+and Botcher, and Mr. Manning, division superintendent, and the Honourable
+Orrin Young, railroad commissioner and candidate for reappointment--all
+are embracing the opportunity to greet humble friends or to make new
+acquaintances. Another hour and a quarter, with the temperature steadily
+rising and the carbon dioxide increasing--and the second ballot is
+announced.
+
+   The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . 440
+   The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . . 336
+   The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has . . . 255
+
+And there are three votes besides improperly made out!
+
+What the newspapers call indescribable excitement ensues. The three votes
+improperly made out are said to be trip passes accidentally dropped into
+the box by the supporters of the Honourable Elisha Jane. And add up the
+sum total of the votes! Thirty-one votes more than there are credentials
+in the hall! Mystery of mysteries how can it be? The ballot, announces
+General Doby, after endless rapping, is a blank. Cheers, recriminations,
+exultation, disgust of decent citizens, attempts by twenty men to get the
+eye of the president (which is too watery to see any of them), and rushes
+for the platform to suggest remedies or ask what is going to be done
+about such palpable fraud. What can be done? Call the roll! How in blazes
+can you call the roll when you don't know who's here? Messrs. Jane,
+Botcher, Bascom, and Fleming are not disturbed, and improve their time.
+Watling and Tooting rush to the bridal suite, and rush back again to
+demand justice. General Doby mingles his tears with theirs, and somebody
+calls him a jellyfish. He does not resent it. Friction makes the air
+hotter and hotter--Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would scarce enter
+into this furnace,--and General Doby has a large damp spot on his back as
+he pounds and pounds and pounds until we are off again on the third
+ballot. No dinner, and three-thirty P.M.! Two delegates have fainted, but
+the essential parts of them--the credentials--are left behind.
+
+Four-forty, whispering again, and the gavel drops.
+
+   The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . 412
+   The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . 325
+   The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has. . . 250
+   And there is no choice on the third ballot!
+
+Thirteen delegates are actually missing this time. Scour the town! And
+now even the newspaper adjectives describing the scene have given out. A
+persistent and terrifying rumour goes the rounds, where's Tom Gaylord?
+Somebody said he was in the hall a moment ago, on a Ripton credential. If
+so, he's gone out again--gone out to consult the dark horse, who is in
+town, somewhere. Another ominous sign: Mr. Redbrook, Mr. Widgeon of Hull,
+and the other rural delegates who have been voting for the People's
+Champion, and who have not been observed in friendly conversation with
+anybody at all, now have their heads together. Mr. Billings goes
+sauntering by, but cannot hear what they are saying. Something must be
+done, and right away, and the knowing metropolitan reporters are winking
+at each other and declaring darkly that a sensation is about to turn up.
+
+Where is Hilary Vane? Doesn't he realize the danger? Or--traitorous
+thought!--doesn't he care? To see his son nominated would be a singular
+revenge for the indignities which are said to have been heaped upon him.
+Does Hilary Vane, the strong man of the State, merely sit at the
+keyboard, powerless, while the tempest itself shakes from the organ a new
+and terrible music? Nearly, six hours he has sat at the basswood table,
+while senators, congressmen, feudal chiefs, and even Chairman Doby
+himself flit in and out, whisper in his ear, set papers before him, and
+figures and problems, and telegrams from highest authority. He merely
+nods his head, says a word now and then, or holds his peace. Does he know
+what he's about? If they had not heard things concerning his health,--and
+other things,--they would still feel safe. He seems the only calm man to
+be found in the hall--but is the calm aberration?
+
+A conference in the corner of the platform, while the fourth ballot is
+progressing, is held between Senators Whitredge and Greene, Mr. Ridout
+and Mr. Manning. So far the Honourable Hilary has apparently done nothing
+but let the storm take its course; a wing-footed messenger has returned
+who has seen Mr. Thomas Gaylord walking rapidly up Maple Street, and
+Austen Vane (most astute and reprehensible of politicians) is said to be
+at the Widow Peasley's, quietly awaiting the call. The name of Austen
+Vane--another messenger says--is running like wildfire through the hall,
+from row to row. Mr. Crewe has no chance--so rumour goes. A reformer (to
+pervert the saying of a celebrated contemporary humorist) must fight
+Marquis of Queensberry to win; and the People's Champion, it is averred,
+has not. Shrewd country delegates who had listened to the Champion's
+speeches and had come to the capital prepared to vote for purity, had
+been observing the movements since yesterday, of Mr. Tooting and Mr.
+Wading with no inconsiderable interest. Now was the psychological moment
+for Austen Vane, but who was to beard Hilary?
+
+No champion was found, and the Empire, the fate of which was in the hands
+of a madman, was cracking. Let an individual of character and known
+anti-railroad convictions (such as the gentleman said to be at the Widow
+Peasley's) be presented to the convention, and they would nominate him.
+Were Messrs. Bascom and Botcher going to act the part of Samsons? Were
+they working for revenge and a new regime? Mr. Whitredge started for the
+Pelican, not at his ordinary senatorial gait, to get Mr. Flint on the
+telephone.
+
+The result of the fourth ballot was announced, and bedlam broke loose.
+
+The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . 419 The Honourable
+Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . . 337 The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of
+Edmundton has . . . 256
+
+Total, one thousand and eleven out of a thousand! Two delegates abstained
+from voting, and proclaimed the fact, but were heard only a few feet
+away. Other delegates, whose flesh and blood could stand the atmosphere
+no longer, were known to have left the hall! Aha! the secret is out, if
+anybody could hear it. At the end of every ballot several individuals
+emerge and mix with the crowd in the street. Astute men sometimes make
+mistakes, and the following conversation occurs between one of the
+individuals in question and Mr. Crewe's chauffeur.
+
+   Individual: "Do you want to come in and see the convention and
+   vote?"
+
+   Chauffeur: "I am Frenchman."
+
+   Individual: "That doesn't cut any ice. I'll make out the ballot,
+   and all you'll have to do is to drop it in the box."
+   Chauffeur: "All right; I vote for Meester Crewe."
+
+Sudden disappearance of the individual.
+
+Nor is this all. The Duke of Putnam, for example, knows how many
+credentials there are in his county--say, seventy-six. He counts the men
+present and voting, and his result is sixty-one. Fifteen are absent,
+getting food or--something else. Fifteen vote over again. But, as the
+human brain is prone to error, and there are men in the street, the Duke
+miscalculates; the Earl of Haines miscalculates, too. Result--eleven over
+a thousand votes, and some nine hundred men in the hall!
+
+How are you going to stop it? Mr. Watling climbs up on the platform and
+shakes his fist in General Doby's face, and General Doby tearfully
+appeals for an honest ballot--to the winds.
+
+In the meantime the Honourable Elisha Jane, spurred on by desperation and
+thoughts of a 'dolce far niente' gone forever; has sought and cornered
+Mr. Bascom.
+
+"For God's sake, Brush," cries the Honourable Elisha, "hasn't this thing
+gone far enough? A little of it is all right--the boys understand that;
+but have you thought what it means to you and me if these blanked
+reformers get in,--if a feller like Austen Vane is nominated?"
+
+That cold, hard glitter which we have seen was in Mr. Bascom's eyes.
+
+"You fellers have got the colic," was the remark of the arch-rebel. "Do
+you think old Hilary doesn't know what he's about?"
+
+"It looks that way to me," said Mr. Jane.
+
+"It looks that way to Doby too, I guess," said Mr. Bascom, with a glance
+of contempt at the general; "he's lost about fifteen pounds to-day. Did
+Hilary send you down here?" he demanded.
+
+"No," Mr. Jane confessed.
+
+"Then go back and chase yourself around the platform some more," was Mr.
+Bascom's unfeeling advice, "and don't have a fit here. All the brains in
+this hall are in Hilary's room. When he's ready to talk business with me
+in behalf of the Honourable Giles Henderson, I guess he'll do so."
+
+But fear had entered the heart of the Honourable Elisha, and there was a
+sickly feeling in the region of his stomach which even the strong
+medicine administered by the Honourable Brush failed to alleviate. He
+perceived Senator Whitredge, returned from the Pelican. But the advice
+--if any--the president of the Northeastern has given the senator is not
+forthcoming in practice. Mr. Flint, any more than Ulysses himself, cannot
+recall the tempests when his own followers have slit the bags--and in
+sight of Ithaca! Another conference at the back of the stage, out of
+which emerges State Senator Nat Billings and gets the ear of General
+Doby.
+
+"Let 'em yell," says Mr. Billings--as though the general, by raising one
+adipose hand, could quell the storm. Eyes are straining, scouts are
+watching at the back of the hall and in the street, for the first glimpse
+of the dreaded figure of Mr. Thomas Gaylord. "Let 'em yell;" counsels Mr.
+Billings, "and if they do nominate anybody nobody'll hear 'em. And send
+word to Putnam County to come along on their fifth ballot."
+
+It is Mr. Billings himself who sends word to Putnam County, in the name
+of the convention's chairman. Before the messenger can reach Putnam
+County another arrives on the stage, with wide pupils, "Tom Gaylord is
+coming!" This momentous news, Marconi-like, penetrates the storm, and is
+already on the floor. Mr. Widgeon and Mr. Redbrook are pushing their way
+towards the door. The conference, emboldened by terror, marches in a body
+into the little room, and surrounds the calmly insane Lieutenant-general
+of the forces; it would be ill-natured to say that visions of lost
+railroad commissionerships, lost consulships, lost postmasterships,
+--yes, of lost senatorships, were in these loyal heads at this crucial
+time.
+
+It was all very well (so said the first spokesman) to pluck a few
+feathers from a bird so bountifully endowed as the Honourable Adam, but
+were not two gentlemen who should be nameless carrying the joke a little
+too far? Mr. Vane unquestionably realized what he was doing, but--was it
+not almost time to call in the two gentlemen and--and come to some
+understanding?
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Honourable Hilary, apparently unmoved, "I have not
+seen Mr. Bascom or Mr. Botcher since the sixteenth day of August, and I
+do not intend to."
+
+Some clearing of throats followed this ominous declaration,--and a
+painful silence. The thing must be said and who would say it? Senator
+Whitredge was the hero.
+
+Mr. Thomas Gaylord has just entered the convention hall, and is said to
+be about to nominate--a dark horse. The moment was favourable, the
+convention demoralized, and at least one hundred delegates had left the
+hall. (How about the last ballot, Senator, which showed 1011?)
+
+The Honourable Hilary rose abruptly, closed the door to shut out the
+noise, and turned and looked Mr. Whitredge in the eye.
+
+"Who is the dark horse?" he demanded.
+
+The members of the conference coughed again, looked at each other, and
+there was a silence. For some inexplicable reason, nobody cared to
+mention the name of Austen Vane.
+
+The Honourable Hilary pointed at the basswood table.
+
+"Senator," he said, "I understand you have been telephoning Mr. Flint.
+Have you got orders to sit down there?"
+
+"My dear sir," said the Senator, "you misunderstand me."
+
+"Have you got orders to sit down there?" Mr. Vane repeated.
+
+"No," answered the Senator, "Mr. Flint's confidence in you--"
+
+The Honourable Hilary sat down again, and at that instant the door was
+suddenly flung open by Postmaster Bill Fleeting of Brampton, his genial
+face aflame with excitement and streaming with perspiration. Forgotten,
+in this moment, is senatorial courtesy and respect for the powers of the
+feudal system.
+
+"Say, boys," he cried, "Putnam County's voting, and there's be'n no
+nomination and ain't likely to be. Jim Scudder, the station-master at
+Wye, is here on credentials, and he says for sure the thing's fizzled
+out, and Tom Gaylord's left the hall!"
+
+Again a silence, save for the high hum let in through the open doorway.
+The members of the conference stared at the Honourable Hilary, who seemed
+to have forgotten their presence; for he had moved his chair to the
+window, and was gazing out over the roofs at the fast-fading red in the
+western sky.
+
+An hour later, when the room was in darkness save for the bar of light
+that streamed in from the platform chandelier, Senator Whitredge entered.
+
+"Hilary!" he said.
+
+There was no answer. Mr. Whitredge felt in his pocket for a match, struck
+it, and lighted the single jet over the basswood table. Mr. Vane still
+sat by the window. The senator turned and closed the door, and read from
+a paper in his hand; so used was he to formality that he read it
+formally, yet with a feeling of intense relief, of deference, of apology.
+
+"Fifth ballot:--The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . . 587;
+The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has . . . 230; The Honourable
+Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . 154.
+
+And Giles Henderson is nominated--Hilary?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Vane.
+
+"I don't think any of us were--quite ourselves to-day. It wasn't that we
+didn't believe in you--but we didn't have all the threads in our hands,
+and--for reasons which I think I can understand--you didn't take us into
+your confidence. I want to--"
+
+The words died on the senator's lips. So absorbed had he been in his
+momentous news, and solicitous over the result of his explanation, that
+his eye looked outward for the first time, and even then accidentally.
+
+"Hilary!" he cried; "for God's sake, what's the matter? Are you sick?"
+
+"Yes, Whitredge," said Mr. Vane, slowly, "sick at heart."
+
+It was but natural that these extraordinary and incomprehensible words
+should have puzzled and frightened the senator more than ever.
+
+"Your heart!" he repeated.
+
+"Yes, my heart," said Hilary.
+
+The senator reached for the ice-water on the table.
+
+"Here," he cried, pouring out a glass, "it's only the heat--it's been a
+hard day--drink this."
+
+But Hilary did not raise his arm. The door opened others coming to
+congratulate Hilary Vane on the greatest victory he had ever won. Offices
+were secure once more, the feudal system intact, and rebels justly
+punished; others coming to make their peace with the commander whom,
+senseless as they were, they had dared to doubt.
+
+They crowded past each other on the threshold, and stood grouped beyond
+the basswood table, staring--staring--men suddenly come upon a tragedy
+instead of a feast, the senator still holding the glass of water in a
+hand that trembled and spilled it. And it was the senator, after all, who
+first recovered his presence of mind. He set down the water, pushed his
+way through the group into the hall, where the tumult and the shouting
+die. Mr. Giles Henderson, escorted, is timidly making his way towards the
+platform to read his speech of acceptance of a willing bondage, when a
+voice rings out:--"If there is a physician in the house, will he please
+come forward?"
+
+And then a hush,--and then the buzz of comment. Back to the little room
+once more, where they are gathered speechless about Hilary Vane. And the
+doctor comes young Dr. Tredway of Ripton, who is before all others.
+
+"I expected this to happen, gentlemen," he said, "and I have been here
+all day, at the request of Mr. Vane's son, for this purpose."
+
+"Austen!"
+
+It was Hilary who spoke.
+
+"I have sent for him," said the doctor. "And now, gentlemen, if you will
+kindly--"
+
+They withdrew and the doctor shut the door. Outside, the Honourable Giles
+is telling them how seriously he regards the responsibility of the honour
+thrust upon him by a great party. But nobody hears him in the wild
+rumours that fly from mouth to mouth as the hall empties. Rushing in
+against the tide outpouring, tall, stern, vigorous, is a young man whom
+many recognize, whose name is on many lips as they make way for him, who
+might have saved them if he would. The door of the little room opens, and
+he stands before his father, looking down at him. And the stern
+expression is gone from his face.
+
+"Austen!" said Mr. Vane.
+
+"Yes, Judge."
+
+"Take me away from here. Take me home--now--to-night."
+
+Austen glanced at Dr. Tredway.
+
+"It is best," said the doctor; "we will take him home--to-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE VOICE OF AN ERA
+
+They took him home, in the stateroom of the sleeper attached to the night
+express from the south, although Mr. Flint, by telephone, had put a
+special train at his disposal. The long service of Hilary Vane was over;
+he had won his last fight for the man he had chosen to call his master;
+and those who had fought behind him, whose places, whose very luminary
+existences, had depended on his skill, knew that the end had come; nay,
+were already speculating, manoeuvring, and taking sides. Who would be the
+new Captain-general? Who would be strong enough to suppress the straining
+ambitions of the many that the Empire might continue to flourish in its
+integrity and gather tribute? It is the world-old cry around the palace
+walls: Long live the new ruler--if you can find him among the curdling
+factions.
+
+They carried Hilary home that September night, when Sawanec was like a
+gray ghost-mountain facing the waning moon, back to the home of those
+strange, Renaissance Austens which he had reclaimed for a grim
+puritanism, and laid him in the carved and canopied bedstead Channing
+Austen had brought from Spain. Euphrasia had met them at the door, but a
+trained nurse from the Ripton hospital was likewise in waiting; and a New
+York specialist had been summoned to prolong, if possible, the life of
+one from whom all desire for life had passed.
+
+Before sunrise a wind came from the northern spruces; the dawn was
+cloudless, fiery red, and the air had an autumn sharpness. At ten o'clock
+Dr. Harmon arrived, was met at the station by Austen, and spent half an
+hour with Dr. Tredway. At noon the examination was complete. Thanks to
+generations of self-denial by the Vanes of Camden Street, Mr. Hilary Vane
+might live indefinitely, might even recover, partially; but at present he
+was condemned to remain, with his memories, in the great canopied bed.
+
+The Honourable Hilary had had another caller that morning besides Dr.
+Harmon,--no less a personage than the president of the Northeastern
+Railroads himself, who had driven down from Fairview immediately after
+breakfast. Austen having gone to the station, Dr. Tredway had received
+Mr. Flint in the darkened hall, and had promised to telephone to Fairview
+the verdict of the specialist. At present Dr. Tredway did not think it
+wise to inform Hilary of Mr. Flint's visit--not, at least, until after
+the examination.
+
+Mr. Vane exhibited the same silent stoicism on receiving the verdict of
+Dr. Harmon as he had shown from the first. With the clew to Hilary's life
+which Dr. Tredway had given him, the New York physician understood the
+case; one common enough in his practice in a great city where the fittest
+survive--sometimes only to succumb to unexpected and irreparable blows in
+the evening of life.
+
+On his return from seeing Dr. Harmon off Austen was met on the porch by
+Dr. Tredway.
+
+"Your father has something on his mind," said the doctor, "and perhaps it
+is just as well that he should be relieved. He is asking for you, and I
+merely wished to advise you to make the conversation as short as
+possible."
+
+Austen climbed the stairs in obedience to this summons, and stood before
+his father at the bedside. Hilary lay, back among the pillows, and the
+brightness of that autumn noonday only served to accentuate the pallor of
+his face, the ravages of age which had come with such incredible
+swiftness, and the outline of a once vigorous frame. The eyes alone shone
+with a strange new light, and Austen found it unexpectedly difficult to
+speak. He sat down on the bed and laid his hand on the helpless one that
+rested on the coverlet.
+
+"Austen," said Mr. Vane, "I want you to go to Fairview."
+
+His son's hand tightened over his own.
+
+"Yes, Judge."
+
+"I want you to go now."
+
+"Yes, Judge."
+
+"You know the combination of my safe at the office. It's never been
+changed since--since you were there. Open it. You will find two tin
+boxes, containing papers labelled Augustus P. Flint. I want you to take
+them to Fairview and put them into the hands of Mr. Flint himself. I--I
+cannot trust any one else. I promised to take them myself, but--Flint
+will understand."
+
+"I'll go right away," said Austen, rising, and trying to speak
+cheerfully. "Mr. Flint was here early this morning--inquiring for you."
+
+Hilary Vane's lips trembled, and another expression came into his eyes.
+
+"Rode down to look at the scrap-heap,--did he?"
+
+Austen strove to conceal his surprise at his father's words and change of
+manner.
+
+"Tredway saw him," he said. "I'm pretty sure Mr. Flint doesn't feel that
+way, Judge. He has taken your illness very much to heart, I know, and he
+left some fruit and flowers for you."
+
+"I guess his daughter sent those," said Hilary.
+
+"His daughter?" Austen repeated.
+
+"If I didn't think so," Mr. Vane continued, "I'd send 'em back. I never
+knew what she was until she picked me up and drove me down here. I've
+always done Victoria an injustice."
+
+Austen walked to the door, and turned slowly.
+
+"I'll go at once, Judge," he said.
+
+In the kitchen he was confronted by Euphrasia.
+
+"When is that woman going away?" she demanded. "I've took care of Hilary
+Vane nigh on to forty years, and I guess I know as much about nursing,
+and more about Hilary, than that young thing with her cap and apron. I
+told Dr. Tredway so. She even came down here to let me know what to cook
+for him, and I sent her about her business."
+
+Austen smiled. It was the first sign, since his return the night before,
+Euphrasia had given that an affection for Hilary Vane lurked beneath the
+nature.
+
+"She won't stay long, Phrasie," he answered, and added mischievously,
+"for a very good reason."
+
+"And what's that?" asked Euphrasia.
+
+"Because you won't allow her to. I have a notion that she'll pack up and
+leave in about three days, and that all the doctors in Ripton couldn't
+keep her here."
+
+"Get along with you," said Euphrasia, who could not for the life of her
+help looking a little pleased.
+
+"I'm going off for a few hours," he said more seriously. "Dr. Tredway
+tells me they do not look for any developments--for the worse."
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Euphrasia, sharply.
+
+"To Fairview," he said.
+
+Euphrasia moved the kettle to another part of the stove.
+
+"You'll see her?" she said.
+
+"Who?" Austen asked. But his voice must have betrayed him a little, for
+Euphrasia turned and seized him by the elbows and looked up into his
+face.
+
+"Victoria," she said.
+
+He felt himself tremble at the name,--at the strangeness of its sound on
+Euphrasia's lips.
+
+"I do not expect to see Miss Flint," he answered, controlling himself as
+well as he was able. "I have an errand for the Judge with Mr. Flint
+himself."
+
+Euphrasia had guessed his secret! But how?
+
+"Hadn't you better see her?" said Euphrasia, in a curious monotone.
+
+"But I have no errand with her," he objected, mystified yet excited by
+Euphrasia's manner.
+
+"She fetched Hilary home," said Euphrasia.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She couldn't have be'n kinder if she was his own daughter."
+
+"I know--" he began, but Euphrasia interrupted.
+
+"She sent that Englishman for the doctor, and waited to take the news to
+her father, and she came out in this kitchen and talked to me."
+
+Austen started. Euphrasia was not looking at him now, and suddenly she
+dropped his arms and went to the window overlooking the garden.
+
+"She wouldn't go in the parlour, but come right out here in her fine
+clothes. I told her I didn't think she belonged in a kitchen--but I guess
+I did her an injustice," said Euphrasia, slowly.
+
+"I think you did," he said, and wondered.
+
+"She looked at that garden," Euphrasia went on, "and cried out. I didn't
+callate she was like that. And the first thing I knew I was talking about
+your mother, and I'd forgot who I was talking to. She wahn't like a
+stranger--it was just as if I'd known her always. I haven't understood it
+yet. And after a while I told her about that verse, and she wanted to see
+it--the verse about the skylark, you know--"
+
+"Yes," said Austen.
+
+"Well, the way she read it made me cry, it brought back Sarah Austen so.
+Somehow, I can't account for it, she puts me in mind of your mother."
+
+Austen did not speak.
+
+"In more ways than one," said Euphrasia. "I didn't look to find her so
+natural--and so gentle. And their she has a way of scolding you, just as
+Sarah Austen had, that you'd never suspect."
+
+"Did she scold you--Phrasie?" asked Austen. And the irresistible humour
+that is so near to sorrow made him smile again.
+
+"Indeed she did! And it surprised, me some--coming right out of a summer
+sky. I told her what I thought about Hilary, and how he'd driven you out
+of your own mother's house. She said you'd ought to be sent for, and I
+said you oughtn't to set foot in this house until Hilary sent for you.
+She said I'd no right to take such a revenge--that you'd come right away
+if you knew Hilary'd had a stroke, and that Hilary'd never send for you
+--because he couldn't. She said he was like a man on a desert island."
+
+"She was right," answered Austen.
+
+"I don't know about that," said Euphrasia; "she hadn't put up with Hilary
+for forty years, as I had, and seen what he'd done to your mother and
+you. But that's what she said. And she went for you herself, when she
+found the doctor couldn't go. Austen, ain't you going to see her?"
+
+Austen shook his head gently, and smiled at her.
+
+"I'm afraid it's no use, Phrasie," he said. "Just because she has been
+--kind we mustn't be deceived. It's h er nature to be kind."
+
+Euphrasia crossed the room swiftly, and seized his arm again.
+
+"She loves you, Austen," she cried; "she loves you. Do you think that I'd
+love her, that I'd plead for her, if she didn't?"
+
+Austen's breath came deeply. He disengaged himself, and went to the
+window.
+
+"No," he said, "you don't know. You can't--know. I have only seen her--a
+few times. She lives a different life--and with other people. She will
+marry a man who can give her more."
+
+"Do you think I could be deceived?" exclaimed Euphrasia, almost fiercely.
+"It's as true as the sun shining on that mountain. You believe she loves
+the Englishman, but I tell you she loves you--you."
+
+He turned towards her.
+
+"How do you know?" he asked, as though he were merely curious.
+
+"Because I'm a woman, and she's a woman," said Euphrasia. "Oh, she didn't
+confess it. If she had, I shouldn't think so much of her. But she told me
+as plain as though she had spoken it in words, before she left this
+room."
+
+Austen shook his head again.
+
+"Phrasie," he said, "I'm afraid you've been building castles in Spain."
+And he went out, and across to the stable to harness Pepper.
+
+Austen did not believe Euphrasia. On that eventful evening when Victoria
+had called at Jabe Jenney's, the world's aspect had suddenly changed for
+him; old values had faded,--values which, after all, had been but tints
+and glows,--and sterner but truer colours took their places. He saw
+Victoria's life in a new perspective,--one in which his was but a small
+place in the background of her numerous beneficences; which was, after
+all, the perspective in which he had first viewed it. But, by degrees,
+the hope that she loved him had grown and grown until it had become
+unconsciously the supreme element of his existence,--the hope that stole
+sweetly into his mind with the morning light, and stayed him through the
+day, and blended into the dreams of darkness.
+
+By inheritance, by tradition, by habits of thought, Austen Vane was an
+American,--an American as differentiated from the citizen of any other
+nation upon the earth. The French have an expressive phrase in speaking
+of a person as belonging to this or that world, meaning the circle by
+which the life of an individual is bounded; the true American recognizes
+these circles--but with complacency, and with a sure knowledge of his
+destiny eventually to find himself within the one for which he is best
+fitted by his talents and his tastes. The mere fact that Victoria had
+been brought up amongst people with whom he had nothing in common would
+not have deterred Austen Vane from pressing his suit; considerations of
+honour had stood in the way, and hope had begun to whisper that these
+might, in the end, be surmounted. Once they had disappeared, and she
+loved him, that were excuse and reason enough.
+
+And suddenly the sight of Victoria with a probable suitor--who at once
+had become magnified into an accepted suitor--had dispelled hope.
+Euphrasia! Euphrasia had been deceived as he had, by a loving kindness
+and a charity that were natural. But what so natural (to one who had
+lived the life of Austen Vane) as that she should marry amongst those
+whose ways of life were her ways? In the brief time in which he had seen
+her and this other man, Austen's quickened perceptions had detected tacit
+understanding, community of interest, a habit of thought and manner,--in
+short, a common language, unknown to him, between the two. And, more than
+these, the Victoria of the blissful excursions he had known was changed
+as she had spoken to him--constrained, distant, apart; although still
+dispensing kindness, going out of her way to bring Hilary home, and to
+tell him of Hilary's accident. Rumour, which cannot be confined in casks
+or bottles, had since informed Austen Vane that Mr. Rangely had spent the
+day with Victoria, and had remained at Fairview far into the evening;
+rumour went farther (thanks to Mrs. Pomfret) and declared the engagement
+already an accomplished fact. And to Austen, in the twilight in front of
+Jabe Jenney's, the affair might well have assumed the proportions of an
+intimacy of long standing rather than that of the chance acquaintance of
+an hour. Friends in common, modes of life in common, and incidents in
+common are apt to sweep away preliminaries.
+
+Such were Austen's thoughts as he drove to Fairview that September
+afternoon when the leaves were turning their white backs to the northwest
+breeze. The sun was still high, and the distant hills and mountains were
+as yet scarce stained with blue, and stood out in startling clearness
+against the sky. Would he see her? That were a pain he scarce dared
+contemplate.
+
+He reached the arched entrance, was on the drive. Here was the path again
+by which she had come down the hillside; here was the very stone on which
+she had stood--awaiting him. Why? Why had she done that? Well-remembered
+figure amidst the yellow leaves dancing in the sunlight! Here he had
+stopped, perforce, and here he had looked up into his face and smiled and
+spoken!
+
+At length he gained the plateau across which the driveway ran, between
+round young maples, straight to Fairview House, and he remembered the
+stares from the tea-tables, and how she had come out to his rescue. Now
+the lawn was deserted, save for a gardener among the shrubs. He rang the
+stable-bell, and as he waited for an answer to his summons, the sense of
+his remoteness from these surroundings of hers deepened, and with a touch
+of inevitable humour he recalled the low-ceiled bedroom at Mr. Jenney's
+and the kitchen in Hanover Street; the annual cost of the care of that
+lawn and driveway might well have maintained one of these households.
+
+He told the stable-boy to wait. It is to be remarked as curious that the
+name of the owner of the house on Austen's lips brought the first thought
+of him to Austen's mind. He was going to see and speak with Mr. Flint, a
+man who had been his enemy ever since the day he had come here and laid
+down his pass on the president's desk; the man who--so he believed until
+three days ago--had stood between him and happiness. Well, it did not
+matter now.
+
+Austen followed the silent-moving servant through the hall. Those were
+the stairs which knew her feet, these the rooms--so subtly
+flower-scented--she lived in; then came the narrow passage to the sterner
+apartment of the master himself. Mr. Flint was alone, and seated upright
+behind the massive oak desk, from which bulwark the president of the
+Northeastern was wont to meet his opponents and his enemies; and few
+visitors came into his presence, here or elsewhere, who were not to be
+got the better of, if possible. A life-long habit had accustomed Mr.
+Flint to treat all men as adversaries until they were proved otherwise.
+His square, close-cropped head, his large features, his alert eyes, were
+those of a fighter.
+
+He did not rise, but nodded. Suddenly Austen was enveloped in a flame of
+wrath that rose without warning and blinded him, and it was with a
+supreme effort to control himself that he stopped in the doorway. He was
+frightened, for he had felt this before, and he knew it for the anger
+that demands physical violence.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Vane," said the president.
+
+Austen advanced to the desk, and laid the boxes before Mr. Flint.
+
+"Mr. Vane told me to say that he would have brought these himself, had it
+been possible. Here is the list, and I shall be much obliged if you will
+verify it before I go back."
+
+"Sit down." said Mr. Flint.
+
+Austen sat down, with the corner of the desk between them, while Mr.
+Flint opened the boxes and began checking off the papers on the list.
+
+"How is your father this afternoon?" he asked, without looking up.
+
+"As well as can be expected," said Austen.
+
+"Of course nobody knew his condition but himself," Mr. Flint continued;
+"but it was a great shock to me--when he resigned as my counsel three
+days ago."
+
+Austen laid his forearm on the desk, and his hand closed.
+
+"He resigned three days ago?" he exclaimed.
+
+Mr. Flint was surprised, but concealed it.
+
+"I can understand, under the circumstances, how he has overlooked telling
+you. His resignation takes effect to-day."
+
+Austen was silent a moment, while he strove to apply this fact to his
+father's actions.
+
+"He waited until after the convention."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Flint, catching the implied accusation in Austen's
+tone; "and needless to say, if I had been able to prevent his going, in
+view of what happened on Monday night, I should have done so. As you
+know, after his--accident, he went to the capital without informing any
+one."
+
+"As a matter of honour," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Flint looked up from the papers, and regarded him narrowly, for the
+tone in which this was spoken did not escape the president of the
+Northeastern. He saw, in fact, that at the outset he had put a weapon
+into Austen's hands. Hilary's resignation was a vindication of Austen's
+attitude, an acknowledgment that the business and political practices of
+his life had been wrong.
+
+What Austen really felt, when he had grasped the significance of that
+fact, was relief--gratitude. A wave of renewed affection for his father
+swept over him, of affection and pity and admiration, and for the instant
+he forgot Mr. Flint.
+
+"As a matter of honour," Mr. Flint repeated. "Knowing he was ill, Mr.
+Vane insisted upon going to that convention, even at the risk of his
+life. It is a fitting close to a splendid career, and one that will not
+soon be forgotten."
+
+Austen merely looked at Mr. Flint, who may have found the glance a trifle
+disconcerting, for he turned to the papers again.
+
+"I repeat," he went on presently, "that this illness of Mr. Vane's is not
+only a great loss to the Northeastern system, but a great blow to me
+personally. I have been associated with him closely for more than a
+quarter of a century, and I have never seen a lawyer of greater
+integrity, clear-headedness, and sanity of view. He saw things as they
+were, and he did as much to build up the business interests and the
+prosperity of this State as any man I know of. He was true to his word,
+and true to his friends."
+
+Still Austen did not reply. He continued to look at Mr. Flint, and Mr.
+Flint continued to check the papers only more slowly. He had nearly
+finished the first box.
+
+"A wave of political insanity, to put it mildly, seems to be sweeping
+over this country," said the president of the Northeastern. "Men who
+would paralyze and destroy the initiative of private enterprise, men who
+themselves are ambitious, and either incapable or unsuccessful, have
+sprung up; writers who have no conscience, whose one idea is to make
+money out of a passing craze against honest capital, have aided them.
+Disappointed and dangerous politicians who merely desire office and power
+have lifted their voices in the hue and cry to fool the honest voter. I
+am glad to say I believe that the worst of this madness and rascality is
+over; that the common sense of the people of this country is too great to
+be swept away by the methods of these self-seekers; that the ordinary man
+is beginning to see that his bread and butter depends on the brain of the
+officers who are trying honestly to conduct great enterprises for the
+benefit of the average citizen.
+
+"We did not expect to escape in this State," Mr. Flint went on, raising
+his head and meeting Austen's look; "the disease was too prevalent and
+too catching for the weak-minded. We had our self-seekers who attempted
+to bring ruin upon an institution which has done more for our population
+than any other. I do not hesitate to speak of the Northeastern Railroads
+as an institution, and as an institution which has been as
+conscientiously and conservatively conducted as any in the country, and
+with as scrupulous a regard for the welfare of all. Hilary Vane, as you
+doubtless know, was largely responsible for this. My attention, as
+president of all the roads, has been divided. Hilary Vane guarded the
+interests in this State, and no man could have guarded them better. He
+well deserves the thanks of future generations for the uncompromising
+fight he made against such men and such methods. It has broken him down
+at a time of life when he has earned repose, but he has the satisfaction
+of knowing that he has won the battle for conservative American
+principles, and that he has nominated a governor worthy of the traditions
+of the State."
+
+And Mr. Flint started checking off the papers again. Had the occasion
+been less serious, Austen could have smiled at Mr. Flint's ruse--so
+characteristic of the tactics of the president of the Northeastern--of
+putting him into a position where criticism of the Northeastern and its
+practices would be criticism of his own father. As it was, he only set
+his jaw more firmly, an expression indicative of contempt for such
+tactics. He had not come there to be lectured out of the "Book of
+Arguments" on the divine right of railroads to govern, but to see that
+certain papers were delivered in safety.
+
+Had his purpose been deliberately to enter into a contest with Mr. Flint,
+Austen could not have planned the early part of it any better than by
+pursuing this policy of silence. To a man of Mr. Flint's temperament and
+training, it was impossible to have such an opponent within reach without
+attempting to hector him into an acknowledgment of the weakness of his
+position. Further than this, Austen had touched him too often on the
+quick merely to be considered in the light of a young man who held
+opposite and unfortunate views--although it was Mr. Flint's endeavour to
+put him in this light. The list of injuries was too fresh in Mr. Flint's
+mind--even that last conversation with Victoria, in which she had made it
+plain that her sympathies were with Austen.
+
+But with an opponent who would not be led into ambush, who had the
+strength to hold his fire under provocation, it was no easy matter to
+maintain a height of conscious, matter-of-fact rectitude and implied
+reproof. Austen's silence, Austen's attitude, declared louder than words
+the contempt for such manoeuvres of a man who knows he is in the right
+--and knows that his adversary knows it. It was this silence and this
+attitude which proclaimed itself that angered Mr. Flint, yet made him
+warily conceal his anger and change his attack.
+
+"It is some years since we met, Mr. Vane," he remarked presently.
+
+Austen's face relaxed into something of a smile.
+
+"Four, I think," he answered.
+
+"You hadn't long been back from that Western experience. Well, your
+father has one decided consolation; you have fulfilled his hope that you
+would settle down here and practise in the State. And I hear that you are
+fast forging to the front. You are counsel for the Gaylord Company, I
+believe."
+
+"The result of an unfortunate accident," said Austen; "Mr. Hammer died."
+
+"And on the occasion when you did me the honour to call on me," said Mr.
+Flint, "if I remember rightly, you expressed some rather radical views
+--for the son of Hilary Vane."
+
+"For the son of Hilary Vane," Austen agreed, with a smile.
+
+Mr. Flint ignored the implication in the repetition.
+
+"Thinking as mach as I do of Mr. Vane, I confess that your views at that
+time rather disturbed me. It is a matter of relief to learn that you have
+refused to lend yourself to the schemes of men like our neighbour, Mr.
+Humphrey Crewe, of Leith."
+
+"Honesty compels me to admit," answered Austen, "that I did not refrain
+on Mr. Crewe's account."
+
+"Although," said Mr. Flint, drumming on the table, "there was some talk
+that you were to be brought forward as a dark horse in the convention,
+and as a candidate unfriendly to the interests of the Northeastern
+Railroads, I am glad you did not consent to be put in any such position.
+I perceive that a young man of your ability and--popularity, a Vane of
+Camden Street, must inevitably become a force in this State. And as a
+force, you must retain the conservatism of the Vanes--the traditional
+conservatism of the State. The Northeastern Railroads will continue to be
+a very large factor in the life of the people after you and I are gone,
+Mr. Vane. You will have to live, as it were, with that corporation, and
+help to preserve it. We shall have to work together, perhaps, to that
+end--who can say? I repeat, I am glad that your good sense led you to
+refrain from coming as a candidate before that Convention. There is time
+enough in the future, and you could not have been nominated."
+
+"On the contrary," answered Austen, quietly, "I could have been
+nominated."
+
+Mr. Flint smiled knowingly--but with an effort. What a relief it would
+have been to him to charge horse and foot, to forget that he was a
+railroad president dealing with a potential power.
+
+"Do you honestly believe that?" he asked.
+
+"I am not accustomed to dissemble my beliefs," said Austen, gravely. "The
+fact that my father had faith enough in me to count with certainty on my
+refusal to go before the convention enabled him to win the nomination for
+the candidate of your railroads."
+
+Mr. Flint continued to smile, but into his eyes had crept a gleam of
+anger.
+
+"It is easy to say such things--after the convention," he remarked.
+
+"And it would have been impossible to say their before," Austen responded
+instantly, with a light in his own eyes. "My nomination was the only
+disturbing factor in the situation for you and the politicians who had
+your interests in hand, and it was as inevitable as night and day that
+the forces of the candidates who represented the two wings of the machine
+of the Northeastern Railroads should have united against Mr. Crewe. I
+want to say to you frankly that if my father had not been the counsel for
+your corporation, and responsible for its political success, or if he
+could have resigned with honour before the convention, I should not have
+refused to let my name go in. After all," he added, in a lower tone, and
+with a slight gesture characteristic of him when a subject was
+distasteful, "it doesn't matter who is elected governor this autumn."
+
+"What?" cried Mr. Flint, surprised out of his attitude as much by
+Austen's manner as by Austen's words.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Austen, "whether the Northeastern Railroads
+have succeeded this time in nominating and electing a governor to whom
+they can dictate, and who will reappoint railroad commissioners and other
+State officials in their interests. The practices by which you have
+controlled this State, Mr. Flint, and elected governors and councillors
+and State and national senators are doomed. However necessary these
+practices may have been from your point of view, they violated every
+principle of free government, and were they to continue, the nation to
+which we belong would inevitably decay and become the scorn of the world.
+Those practices depended for their success on one condition,--which in
+itself is the most serious of ills in a republic,--the ignorance and
+disregard of the voter. You have but to read the signs of the times to
+see clearly that the day of such conditions is past, to see that the
+citizens of this State and this country are thinking for themselves, as
+they should; are alive to the dangers and determined to avert it. You may
+succeed in electing one more governor and one more senate, or two, before
+the people are able to destroy the machinery you have built up and repeal
+the laws you have made to sustain it. I repeat, it doesn't matter in the
+long run. The era of political domination by a corporation, and mainly
+for the benefit of a corporation, is over."
+
+Mr. Flint had been drumming on the desk, his face growing a darker red as
+Austen proceeded: Never, since he had become president of the
+Northeastern Railroads, had any man said such things to his face. And the
+fact that Austen Vane had seemingly not spoken in wrath, although
+forcefully enough to compel him to listen, had increased Mr. Flint's
+anger. Austen apparently cared very little for him or his opinions in
+comparison with his own estimate of right and wrong.
+
+"It seems," said Mr. Flint, "that you have grown more radical since your
+last visit."
+
+"If it be radical to refuse to accept a pass from a railroad to bind my
+liberty of action as an attorney and a citizen, then I am radical,"
+replied Austen. "If it be radical to maintain that the elected
+representatives of the people should not receive passes, or be beholden
+to any man or any corporation, I acknowledge the term. If it be radical
+to declare that these representatives should be elected without
+interference, and while in office should do exact justice to the body of
+citizens on the one hand and the corporations on the other, I declare
+myself a radical. But my radicalism goes back behind the establishment of
+railroads, Mr. Flint, back to the foundation of this government, to the
+idea from which it sprang."
+
+Mr. Flint smiled again.
+
+"We have changed materially since then," he said. "I am afraid such a
+utopian state of affairs, beautiful as it is, will not work in the
+twentieth century. It is a commercial age, and the interests which are
+the bulwark of the country's strength must be protected."
+
+"Yes," said Austen, "we have changed materially. The mistake you make,
+and men like you, is the stress which you lay on that word material. Are
+there no such things as moral interests, Mr. Flint? And are they not
+quite as important in government, if not more important, than material
+interests? Surely, we cannot have commercial and political stability
+without cominertial and political honour! if, as a nation, we lose sight
+of the ideals which have carried us so far, which have so greatly
+modified the conditions of other peoples than ourselves, we shall perish
+as a force in the world. And if this government proves a failure, how
+long do you think the material interests of which you are so solicitous
+will endure? Or do you care whether they endure beyond your lifetime?
+Perhaps not. But it is a matter of importance, not only to the nation,
+but to the world, whether or not the moral idea of the United States of
+America is perpetuated, I assure you."
+
+"I begin to fear, Mr. Vane," said the president of the Northeastern,
+"that you have missed your vocation. Suppose I were to grant you, for the
+sake of argument, that the Northeastern Railroads, being the largest
+taxpayers in this State, have taken an interest in seeing that
+conservative men fill responsible offices. Suppose such to be the case,
+and we abruptly cease--to take such an interest. What then? Are we not at
+the mercy of any and all unscrupulous men who build up a power of their
+own, and start again the blackmail of the old days?"
+
+"You have put the case mildly," said Austen, and ingeniously. "As a
+matter of fact, Mr. Flint, you know as well as I do that for years you
+have governed this State absolutely, for the purpose of keeping down your
+taxes, avoiding unnecessary improvements for safety and comfort, and
+paying high dividends--"
+
+"Perhaps you realize that in depicting these criminal operations so
+graphically," cried Mr. Flint, interrupting, "you are involving the
+reputation of one of the best citizens the State ever had--your own
+father."
+
+Austen Vane leaned forward across the desk, and even Mr. Flint (if the
+truth were known) recoiled a little before the anger he had aroused. It
+shot forth from Austen's eyes, proclaimed itself in the squareness of the
+face, and vibrated in every word he spoke.
+
+"Mr. Flint," he said, "I refrain from comment upon your methods of
+argument. There were many years in which my father believed the practices
+which he followed in behalf of your railroad to be necessary--and hence
+justified. And I have given you the credit of holding the same belief.
+Public opinion would not, perhaps, at that time have protected your
+property from political blackmail. I merely wished you to know, Mr.
+Flint, that there is no use in attempting to deceive me in regard to the
+true colour of those practices. It is perhaps useless for me to add that
+in my opinion you understand as well as I do the real reason for Mr.
+Vane's resignation and illness. Once he became convinced that the
+practices were wrong, he could no longer continue them without violating
+his conscience. He kept his word to you--at the risk of his life, and, as
+his son, I take a greater pride in him to-day than I ever have before."
+
+Austen got to his feet. He was formidable even to Mr. Flint, who had met
+many formidable, and angry men in his time--although not of this type.
+Perhaps--who can say?--he was the in the mind of the president
+unconscious embodiment of the Northeastern of the new forces which had
+arisen against him,--forces which he knew in his secret soul he could not
+combat, because they were the irresistible forces of things not material.
+All his life he had met and successfully conquered forces of another
+kind, and put down with a strong hand merely physical encroachments.
+
+Mr. Flint's nature was not an introspective one, and if he had tried, he
+could not have accounted for his feelings. He was angry--that was
+certain. But he measured the six feet and more of Austen Vane with his
+eye, and in spite of himself experienced the compelled admiration of one
+fighting man for another. A thought, which had made itself vaguely felt
+at intervals in the past half hour, shot suddenly and poignantly through
+Mr. Flint's mind what if this young man, who dared in spite of every
+interest to oppose him, should in the apparently inevitable trend of
+things, become...?
+
+Mr. Flint rose and went to the window, where he stood silent for a space,
+looking out, played upon by unwonted conflicting thoughts and emotions.
+At length, with a characteristic snap of the fingers, he turned abruptly.
+Austen Vane was still standing beside the desk. His face was still
+square, determined, but Mr. Flint noted curiously that the anger was gone
+from his eyes, and that another--although equally human--expression had
+taken its place,--a more disturbing expression, to Mr. Flint.
+
+"It appears, Mr. Vane," he said, gathering up the papers and placing them
+in the boxes, "it appears that we are able to agree upon one point, at
+least--Hilary Vane."
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Austen, "I did not come up here with any thought of
+arguing with you, of intruding any ideas--I may hold, but you have
+yourself asked me one question which I feel bound to answer to the best
+of my ability before I go. You have asked me what, in my opinion, would
+happen if you ceased--as you express it--to take an interest in the
+political, affairs of this State.
+
+"I believe, as firmly as I stand here, that the public opinion which
+exists to-day would protect your property, and I base that belief on the
+good sense of the average American voter. The public would protect you
+not only in its own interests, but from an inherent sense of fair play.
+On the other hand, if you persist in a course of political manipulation
+which is not only obsolete but wrong, you will magnify the just charges
+against you, and the just wrath; you will put ammunition into the hands
+of the agitators you rightly condemn. The stockholders of your
+corporation, perhaps, are bound to suffer some from the fact that you
+have taken its life-blood to pay dividends, and the public will demand
+that it be built up into a normal and healthy condition. On the other
+hand, it could not have gone on as it was. But the corporation will
+suffer much more if a delayed justice is turned into vengeance.
+
+"You ask me what I could do. I should recognize, frankly, the new
+conditions, and declare as frankly what the old ones were, and why such
+methods of defence as you adopted were necessary and justified. I should
+announce, openly, that from this day onward the Northeastern Railroads
+depended for fair play on an enlightened public--and I think your trust
+would be well founded, and your course vindicated. I should declare, from
+this day onward, that the issue of political passes, newspaper passes,
+and all other subterfuges would be stopped, and that all political
+hirelings would be dismissed. I should appeal to the people of this State
+to raise up political leaders who would say to the corporations, 'We will
+protect you from injustice if you will come before the elected
+representatives of the people, openly, and say what you want and why you
+want it.' By such a course you would have, in a day, the affection of the
+people instead of their distrust. They would rally to your defence. And,
+more than that, you would have done a service for American government the
+value of which cannot well be estimated."
+
+Mr. Flint rang the bell on his desk, and his secretary appeared.
+
+"Put these in my private safe, Mr. Freeman," he said.
+
+Mr. Freeman took the boxes, glanced curiously at Austen, and went out. It
+was the same secretary, Austen recalled, who had congratulated him four
+years before. Then Mr. Flint laid his hand deliberately on the desk, and
+smiled slightly as he turned to Austen.
+
+"If you had run a railroad as long as I have, Mr. Vane," he said, "I do
+you the credit of thinking that you would have intelligence enough to
+grasp other factors which your present opportunities for observation have
+not permitted you to perceive. Nevertheless, I am much obliged to you for
+your opinion, and I value the--frankness in which it was given. And I
+shall hope to hear good news of your father. Remember me to him, and tell
+him how deeply I feel his affliction. I shall call again in a day or
+two."
+
+Austen took up his hat.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Flint," he said; "I will tell him."
+
+By the time he had reached the door, Mr. Flint had gone back to the
+window once more, and appeared to have forgotten his presence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE VALE OF THE BLUE
+
+Austen himself could not well have defined his mental state as he made
+his way through the big rooms towards the door, but he was aware of one
+main desire--to escape from Fairview. With the odours of the flowers in
+the tall silver vases on the piano--her piano!--the spirit of desire
+which had so long possessed him, waking and sleeping, returned,--returned
+to torture him now with greater skill amidst these her possessions; her
+volume of Chopin on the rack, bound in red leather and stamped with her
+initials, which compelled his glance as he passed, and brought vivid to
+his memory the night he had stood in the snow and heard her playing. So,
+he told himself, it must always be, for him to stand in the snow
+listening.
+
+He reached the hall, with a vast relief perceived that it was empty, and
+opened the door and went out. Strange that he should note, first of all,
+as he parsed a moment at the top of the steps, that the very day had
+changed. The wind had fallen; the sun, well on his course towards the rim
+of western hills, poured the golden light of autumn over field and
+forest, while Sawanec was already in the blue shadow; the expectant
+stillness of autumn reigned, and all unconsciously Austen's blood was
+quickened though a quickening of pain.
+
+The surprise of the instant over, he noticed that his horse was gone,
+--had evidently been taken to the stables. And rather than ring the bell
+and wait in the mood in which he found himself, he took the path through
+the shrubbery from which he had seen the groom emerge.
+
+It turned beyond the corner of the house, descended a flight of stone
+steps, and turned again.
+
+They stood gazing each at the other for a space of time not to be
+computed before either spoke, and the sense of unreality which comes with
+a sudden fulfilment of intense desire--or dread--was upon Austen. Could
+this indeed be her figure, and this her face on which he watched the
+colour rise (so he remembered afterwards) like the slow flood of day?
+Were there so many Victorias, that a new one--and a strange one--should
+confront him at every meeting? And, even while he looked, this Victoria,
+too,--one who had been near him and departed,--was surveying him now from
+an unapproachable height of self-possession and calm. She held out her
+hand, and he took it, scarce knowing--that it was hers.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "I did not expect to meet you here."
+
+"I was searching for the stable, to get my horse," he answered lamely.
+
+"And your father?" she asked quickly; "I hope he is not--worse."
+
+It was thus she supplied him, quite naturally, with an excuse for being
+at Fairview. And yet her solicitude for Hilary was wholly unaffected.
+
+"Dr. Harmon, who came from New York, has been more encouraging than I had
+dared to hope," said Austen. "And, by the way, Mr. Vane believes that you
+had a share in the fruit and flowers which Mr. Flint so kindly brought.
+If--he had known that I were to see you, I am sure he would have wished
+me to thank you."
+
+Victoria turned, and tore a leaf from the spiraea.
+
+"I will show you where the stables are," she said; "the path divides a
+little farther on--and you might find yourself in the kitchen."
+
+Austen smiled, and as she went on slowly, he followed her, the path not
+being wide enough for them to walk abreast, his eyes caressing the stray
+hairs that clustered about her neck and caught the light. It seemed so
+real, and yet so unrealizable, that he should be here with her.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "that I did not express my gratitude as I should
+have done the evening you were good enough to come up to Jabe Jenney's."
+
+He saw her colour rise again, but she did not pause.
+
+"Please don't say anything about it, Mr. Vane. Of course I understand how
+you felt," she cried.
+
+"Neither my father nor myself will forget that service," said Austen.
+
+"It was nothing," answered Victoria, in a low voice. "Or, rather, it was
+something I shall always be glad that I did not miss. I have seen Mr.
+Vane all my life, but I never=-never really knew him until that day. I
+have come to the conclusion," she added, in a lighter tone, "that the
+young are not always the best judges of the old. There," she added, "is
+the path that goes to the kitchen, which you probably would have taken."
+
+He laughed. Past and future were blotted out, and he lived only in the
+present. He could think of nothing but that she was here beside him.
+Afterwards, cataclysms might come and welcome.
+
+"Isn't there another place," he asked, "where I might lose my way?"
+
+She turned and gave him one of the swift, searching looks he recalled so
+well: a look the meaning of which he could not declare, save that she
+seemed vainly striving to fathom something in him--as though he were not
+fathomable! He thought she smiled a little as she took the left-hand
+path.
+
+"You will remember me to your father?" she said. "I hope he is not
+suffering."
+
+"He is not suffering," Austen replied. "Perhaps--if it were not too much
+to ask--perhaps you might come to see him, sometime? I can think of
+nothing that would give him greater pleasure."
+
+"I will come--sometime," she answered. "I am going away to-morrow, but--"
+
+"Away?" he repeated, in dismay. Now that he was beside her, all
+unconsciously the dominating male spirit which was so strong in him, and
+which moves not woman alone, but the world, was asserting itself. For the
+moment he was the only man, and she the only woman, in the universe.
+
+"I am going on a promised visit to a friend of mine."
+
+"For how long?" he demanded.
+
+"I don't know, said Victoria, calmly; probably until she gets tired of
+me. And there," she added, "are the stables, where no doubt you will find
+your faithful Pepper."
+
+They had come out upon an elevation above the hard service drive, and
+across it, below them, was the coach house with its clock-tower and
+weather-vane, and its two wings, enclosing a paved court where a
+whistling stable-boy was washing a carriage. Austen regarded this scene
+an instant, and glanced back at her profile. It was expressionless.
+
+"Might I not linger--a few minutes?" he asked.
+
+Her lips parted slightly in a smile, and she turned her head. How
+wonderfully, he thought, it was poised upon her shoulders.
+
+"I haven't been very hospitable, have I?" she said. But then, you seemed
+in such a hurry to go, didn't you? You were walking so fast when I met
+you that you quite frightened me."
+
+"Was I?" asked Austen, in surprise.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"You looked as if you were ready to charge somebody. But this isn't a
+very nice place--to linger, and if you really will stay awhile," said
+Victoria, "we might walk over to the dairy, where that model protege of
+yours, Eben Fitch, whom you once threatened with corporal chastisement if
+he fell from grace, is engaged. I know he will be glad to see you."
+
+Austen laughed as he caught up with her. She was already halfway across
+the road.
+
+"Do you always beat people if they do wrong?" she asked.
+
+"It was Eben who requested it, if I remember rightly," he said.
+"Fortunately, the trial has not yet arrived. Your methods," he added,
+"seem to be more successful with Eben."
+
+They went down the grassy slope with its groups of half-grown trees;
+through an orchard shot with slanting, yellow sunlight,--the golden
+fruit, harvested by the morning winds, littering the ground; and then by
+a gate into a dimpled, emerald pasture slope where the Guernseys were
+feeding along a water run. They spoke of trivial things that found no
+place in Austen's memory, and at times, upon one pretext or another, he
+fell behind a little that he might feast his eyes upon her.
+
+Eben was not at the dairy, and Austen betraying no undue curiosity as to
+his whereabouts, they walked on up the slopes, and still upward towards
+the crest of the range of hills that marked the course of the Blue. He
+did not allow his mind to dwell upon this new footing they were on, but
+clung to it. Before, in those delicious moments with her, seemingly
+pilfered from the angry gods, the sense of intimacy had been deep; deep,
+because robbing the gods together, they had shared the feeling of guilt,
+had known that retribution would coma. And now the gods had locked their
+treasure-chest, although themselves powerless to redeem from him the
+memory of what he had gained. Nor could they, apparently, deprive him of
+the vision of her in the fields and woods beside him, though transformed
+by their magic into a new Victoria, keeping him lightly and easily at a
+distance.
+
+Scattering the sheep that flecked the velvet turf of the uplands, they
+stood at length on the granite crown of the crest itself. Far below them
+wound the Blue into its vale of sapphire shadows, with its hillsides of
+the mystic fabric of the backgrounds of the masters of the Renaissance.
+For a while they stood in silence under the spell of the scene's
+enchantment, and then Victoria seated herself on the rock, and he dropped
+to a place at her side.
+
+"I thought you would like the view," she said; "but perhaps you have been
+here, perhaps I am taking you to one of your own possessions."
+
+He had flung his hat upon the rock, and she glanced at his serious,
+sunburned face. His eyes were still fixed, contemplatively, on the Yale
+of the Blue, but he turned to her with a smile.
+
+"It has become yours by right of conquest," he answered.
+
+She did not reply to that. The immobility of her face, save for the one
+look she had flashed upon him, surprised and puzzled him more and more
+--the world--old, indefinable, eternal feminine quality of the Spring.
+
+"So you refused to be governor? she said presently,--surprising him
+again.
+
+"It scarcely came to that," he replied.
+
+"What did it come to?" she demanded.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"I had to go down to the capital, on my father's account, but I did not
+go to the convention. I stayed," he said slowly, "at the little cottage
+across from the Duncan house where--you were last winter." He paused, but
+she gave no sign. "Tom Gaylord came up there late in the afternoon, and
+wanted me to be a candidate."
+
+"And you refused?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you could have been nominated!"
+
+"Yes," he admitted; "it is probable. The conditions were chaotic."
+
+"Are you sure you have done right?" she asked. "It has always seemed to
+me from what I know and have heard of you that you were made for
+positions of trust. You would have been a better governor than the man
+they have nominated."
+
+His expression became set.
+
+"I am sure I have done right," he answered deliberately. "It doesn't make
+any difference who is governor this time."
+
+"Doesn't make any difference!" she exclaimed.
+
+"No," he said. "Things have changed--the people have changed. The old
+method of politics, which was wrong, although it had some justification
+in conditions, has gone out. A new and more desirable state of affairs
+has come. I am at liberty to say this much to you now," he added, fixing
+his glance upon her, "because my father has resigned as counsel for the
+Northeastern, and I have just had a talk with--Mr. Flint."
+
+"You have seen my father?" she asked, in a low voice, and her face was
+averted.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"You--did not agree," she said quickly.
+
+His blood beat higher at the question and the manner of her asking it,
+but he felt that he must answer it honestly, unequivocally, whatever the
+cost.
+
+"No, we did not agree. It is only fair to tell you that we differed
+--vitally. On the other hand, it is just that you should know that we did
+not part in anger, but, I think, with a mutual respect."
+
+She drew breath.
+
+"I knew," she said, "I knew if he could but talk to you he would
+understand that you were sincere--and you have proved it. I am glad--I am
+glad that you saw him." The quality of the sunlight changed, the very
+hills leaped, and the river sparkled. Could she care? Why did she wish
+her father to know that he was sincere.
+
+"You are glad that I saw him!" he repeated.
+
+But she met his glance steadily.
+
+"My father has so little faith in human nature," she answered.  "He has a
+faculty of doubting the honesty of his opponents--I suppose because so
+many of them have been dishonest. And--I believe in my friends," she
+added, smiling. "Isn't it natural that I should wish to have my judgment
+vindicated?"
+
+He got to his feet and walked slowly to the far edge of the rock, where
+he stood for a while, seemingly gazing off across the spaces to Sawanec.
+It was like him, thus to question the immutable. Victoria sat motionless,
+but her eyes followed irresistibly the lines of power in the tall figure
+against the sky--the breadth of shoulder and slimness of hip and length
+of limb typical of the men who had conquered and held this land for their
+descendants. Suddenly, with a characteristic movement of determination;
+he swung about and came towards her, and at the same instant she rose.
+
+"Don't you think we should be going back?" she said.
+
+Rut he seemed not to hear her.
+
+"May I ask you something?" he said.
+
+"That depends," she answered.
+
+"Are you going to marry Mr. Rangely?"
+
+"No," she said, and turned away. "Why did you think that?"
+
+He quivered.
+
+"Victoria!"
+
+She looked up at him, swiftly, half revealed, her eyes like stars
+surprised by the flush of dawn in her cheeks. Hope quickened at the
+vision of hope, the seats of judgment themselves were filled with
+radiance, and rumour, cowered and fled like the spirit of night. He could
+only gaze, enraptured.
+
+"Yes?" she answered.
+
+His voice was firm but low, yet vibrant with sincerity, with the vast
+store of feeling, of compelling magnetism that was in the man and moved
+in spite of themselves those who knew him. His words Victoria remembered
+afterwards--all of them; but it was to the call of the voice she
+responded. His was the fibre which grows stronger in times of crisis.
+Sure of himself, proud of the love which he declared, he spoke as a man
+who has earned that for which he prays,--simply and with dignity.
+
+"I love you," he said; "I have known it since I have known you, but you
+must see why I could not tell you so. It was very hard, for there were
+times when I led myself to believe that you might come to love me. There
+were times when I should have gone away if I hadn't made a promise to
+stay in Ripton. I ask you to marry me, because I--know that I shall love
+you as long as I live. I can give you this, at least, and I can promise
+to protect and cherish you. I cannot give you that to which you have been
+accustomed all your life, that which you have here at Fairview, but I
+shouldn't say this to you if I believed that you cared for them above
+--other things."
+
+"Oh, Austen!" she cried, "I do not--I--do not! They would be hateful to
+me--without you. I would rather live with you--at Jabe Jenney's," and her
+voice caught in an exquisite note between laughter and tears. "I love
+you, do you understand, you! Oh, how could you ever have doubted it? How
+could you? What you believe, I believe. And, Austen, I have been so
+unhappy for three days."
+
+He never knew whether, as the most precious of graces ever conferred upon
+man, with a womanly gesture she had raised her arms and laid her hands
+upon his shoulders before he drew her to him and kissed her face, that
+vied in colour with the coming glow in the western sky. Above the prying
+eyes of men, above the world itself, he held her, striving to realize
+some little of the vast joy of this possession, and failing. And at last
+she drew away from him, gently, that she might look searchingly into his
+face again, and shook her head slowly.
+
+"And you were going away," she said, "without a word I thought--you
+didn't care. How could I have known that you were just--stupid?"
+
+His eyes lighted with humour and tenderness.
+
+"How long have you cared, Victoria?" he asked.
+
+She became thoughtful.
+
+"Always, I think," she answered; "only I didn't know it. I think I loved
+you even before I saw you."
+
+"Before you saw me!"
+
+"I think it began," said Victoria, "when I learned that you had shot Mr.
+Blodgett--only I hope you will never do such a thing again. And you will
+please try to remember," she added, after a moment, "that I am neither
+Eben Fitch nor your friend, Tom Gaylord."
+
+Sunset found them seated on the rock, with the waters of the river turned
+to wine at the miracle in the sky their miracle. At times their eyes
+wandered to the mountain, which seemed to regard them from a discreet
+distance--with a kindly and protecting majesty.
+
+"And you promised," said Victoria, "to take me up there. When will you do
+it?"
+
+"I thought you were going away," he replied.
+
+"Unforeseen circumstances," she answered, "have compelled me to change my
+plans."
+
+"Then we will go tomorrow," he said.
+
+"To the Delectable Land," said Victoria, dreamily; "your land, where we
+shall be--benevolent despots. Austen?"
+
+"Yes?" He had not ceased to thrill at the sound of his name upon her
+lips.
+
+"Do you think," she asked, glancing at him, "do you think you have money
+enough to go abroad--just for a little while?"
+
+He laughed joyously.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "but I shall make it a point to examine my
+bank-account to-night. I haven't done so--for some time."
+
+"We will go to Venice, and drift about in a gondola on one of those gray
+days when the haze comes in from the Adriatic and touches the city with
+the magic of the past. Sometimes I like the gray days best--when I am
+happy. And then," she added, regarding him critically, "although you are
+very near perfection, there are some things you ought to see and learn to
+make your education complete. I will take you to all the queer places I
+love. When you are ambassador to France, you know, it would be
+humiliating to have to have an interpreter, wouldn't it?"
+
+"What's the use of both of us knowing the language?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm afraid we shall be--too happy," she sighed, presently.
+
+"Too happy!" he repeated.
+
+"I sometimes wonder," she said, "whether happiness and achievement go
+together. And yet--I feel sure that you will achieve."
+
+"To please you, Victoria," he answered, "I think I should almost be
+willing to try."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+P.S.
+
+By request of one who has read thus far, and is still curious.
+
+Yes, and another who, in spite of himself, has fallen in love with
+Victoria and would like to linger a while longer, even though it were
+with the paltry excuse of discussing that world-old question of hers--Can
+sublime happiness and achievement go together? Novels on the problem of
+sex nowadays often begin with marriages, but rarely discuss the happy
+ones; and many a woman is forced to sit wistfully at home while her
+companion soars.
+
+        "Yet may I look with heart unshook
+         On blow brought home or missed--
+         Yet may I hear with equal ear
+         The clarions down the List;
+         Yet set my lance above mischance
+         And ride the barriere--
+         Oh, hit or miss, how little 'tis,
+         My Lady is not there!"
+
+A verse, in this connection, which may be a perversion of Mr. Kipling's
+meaning, but not so far from it, after all. And yet, would the eagle
+attempt the great flights if contentment were on the plain? Find the
+mainspring of achievement, and you hold in your hand the secret of the
+world's mechanism. Some aver that it is woman.
+
+Do the gods ever confer the rarest of gifts upon him to whom they have
+given pinions? Do they mate him, ever, with another who soars as high as
+he, who circles higher that he may circle higher still? Who can answer?
+Must those who soar be condemned to eternal loneliness, and was it a
+longing they did not comprehend which bade them stretch their wings
+toward the sun? Who can say?
+
+Alas, we cannot write of the future of Austen and Victoria Vane! We can
+only surmise, and hope, and pray,--yes, and believe. Romance walks with
+parted lips and head raised to the sky; and let us follow her, because
+thereby our eyes are raised with hers. We must believe, or perish.
+
+Postscripts are not fashionable. The satiated theatre goer leaves before
+the end of the play, and has worked out the problem for himself long
+before the end of the last act. Sentiment is not supposed to exist in the
+orchestra seats. But above (in many senses) is the gallery, from whence
+an excited voice cries out when the sleeper returns to life, "It's Rip
+Van Winkle!" The gallery, where are the human passions which make this
+world our world; the gallery, played upon by anger, vengeance, derision,
+triumph, hate, and love; the gallery, which lingers and applauds long
+after the fifth curtain, and then goes reluctantly home--to dream. And he
+who scorns the gallery is no artist, for there lives the soul of art. We
+raise our eyes to it, and to it we dedicate this our play;--and for it we
+lift the curtain once more after those in the orchestra have departed.
+
+It is obviously impossible, in a few words, to depict the excitement in
+Ripton, in Leith, in the State at large, when it became known that the
+daughter of Mr. Flint was to marry Austen Vane,--a fitting if unexpected
+climax to a drama. How would Mr. Flint take it? Mr. Flint, it may be
+said, took it philosophically; and when Austen went up to see him upon
+this matter, he shook hands with his future son-in-law,--and they agreed
+to disagree. And beyond this it is safe to say that Mr. Flint was
+relieved; for in his secret soul he had for many years entertained a
+dread that Victoria might marry a foreigner. He had this consolation at
+any rate.
+
+His wife denied herself for a day to her most intimate friends,--for it
+was she who had entertained visions of a title; and it was characteristic
+of the Rose of Sharon that she knew nothing of the Vanes beyond the name.
+The discovery that the Austens were the oldest family in the State was in
+the nature of a balm; and henceforth, in speaking of Austen, she never
+failed to mention the fact that his great-grandfather was Minister to
+Spain in the '30's,--a period when her own was engaged in a far different
+calling.
+
+And Hilary Vane received the news with a grim satisfaction, Dr. Tredway
+believing that it had done more for him than any medicine or specialists.
+And when, one warm October day, Victoria herself came and sat beside the
+canopied bed, her conquest was complete: he surrendered to her as he had
+never before surrendered to man or woman or child, and the desire to live
+surged back into his heart,--the desire to live for Austen and Victoria.
+It became her custom to drive to Ripton in the autumn mornings and to sit
+by the hour reading to Hilary in the mellow sunlight in the lee of the
+house, near Sarah Austen's little garden. Yes, Victoria believed she had
+developed in him a taste for reading; although he would have listened to
+Emerson from her lips.
+
+And sometimes, when she paused after one of his long silences to glance
+at him, she would see his eyes fixed, with a strange rapt look, on the
+garden or the dim lavender form of Sawanec through the haze, and knew
+that he was thinking of a priceless thing which he had once possessed,
+and missed. Then Victoria would close the volume, and fall to dreaming,
+too.
+
+What was happiness? Was it contentment? If it were, it might endure,
+--contentment being passive. But could active, aggressive, exultant joy
+exist for a lifetime, jealous of its least prerogative, perpetually
+watchful for its least abatement, singing unending anthems on its
+conquest of the world? The very intensity of her feelings at such times
+sobered Victoria--alarmed her. Was not perfection at war with the world's
+scheme, and did not achievement spring from a void?
+
+But when Austen appeared, with Pepper, to drive her home to Fairview, his
+presence never failed to revive the fierce faith that it was his destiny
+to make the world better, and hers to help him. Wondrous afternoons they
+spent together in that stillest and most mysterious of seasons in the
+hill country--autumn! Autumn and happiness! Happiness as shameless as the
+flaunting scarlet maples on the slopes, defiant of the dying year of the
+future, shadowy and unreal as the hills before them in the haze. Once,
+after a long silence, she started from a revery with the sudden
+consciousness of his look intent upon her, and turned with parted lips
+and eyes which smiled at him out of troubled depths.
+
+"Dreaming, Victoria?" he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered simply, and was silent once more. He loved these
+silences of hers,--hinting, as they did, of unexplored chambers in an
+inexhaustible treasure-house which by some strange stroke of destiny was
+his. And yet he felt at times the vague sadness of them, like the sadness
+of the autumn, and longed to dispel it.
+
+"It is so wonderful," she went on presently, in a low voice, "it is so
+wonderful I sometimes think that it must be like--like this; that it
+cannot last. I have been wondering whether we shall be as happy when the
+world discovers that you are great."
+
+He shook his head at her slowly, in mild reproof.
+
+"Isn't that borrowing trouble, Victoria?" he said. "I think you need have
+no fear of finding the world as discerning as yourself."
+
+She searched his face.
+
+"Will you ever change?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said. "No man can stand such flattery as that without
+deteriorating, I warn you. I shall become consequential, and pompous, and
+altogether insupportable, and then you will leave me and never realize
+that it has been all your fault."
+
+Victoria laughed. But there was a little tremor in her voice, and her
+eyes still rested on his face.
+
+"But I am serious, Austen," she said. "I sometimes feel that, in the
+future, we shall not always have many such days as these. It's selfish,
+but I can't help it. There are so many things you will have to do without
+me. Don't you ever think of that?"
+
+His eyes grew grave, and he reached out and took her hand in his.
+
+"I think, rather, of the trials life may bring, Victoria," he answered,
+"of the hours when judgment halts, when the way is not clear. Do you
+remember the last night you came to Jabe Jenney's? I stood in the road
+long after you had gone, and a desolation such as I had never known came
+over me. I went in at last, and opened a book to some verses I had been
+reading, which I shall never forget. Shall I tell you what they were?"
+
+"Yes," she whispered.
+
+"They contain my answer to your question," he said.
+
+       "What became of all the hopes,
+        Words and song and lute as well?
+        Say, this struck you 'When life gropes
+        Feebly for the path where fell
+        Light last on the evening slopes,
+
+       "'One friend in that path shall be,
+        To secure my step from wrong;
+        One to count night day for me,
+        Patient through the watches long,
+        Serving most with none to see.'"
+
+"Victoria, can you guess who that friend is?"
+
+She pressed his hand and smiled at him, but her eyes were wet.
+
+"I have thought of it in that way, too, dear. But--but I did not know
+that you had. I do not think that many men have that point of view,
+Austen."
+
+"Many men," he answered, "have not the same reason to be thankful as I."
+
+There is a time, when the first sharp winds which fill the air with
+flying leaves have come and gone, when the stillness has come again, and
+the sunlight is tinged with a yellower gold, and the pastures are still a
+vivid green, and the mountain stained with a deeper blue than any gem,
+called Indian summer. And it was in this season that Victoria and Austen
+were married, in a little church at Tunbridge, near Fairview, by the
+bishop of the diocese, who was one of Victoria's dearest friends. Mr.
+Thomas Gaylord (for whose benefit there were many rehearsals) was best
+man, Miss Beatrice Chillingham maid of honour; and it was unanimously
+declared by Victoria's bridesmaids, who came up from New York, that they
+had fallen in love with the groom.
+
+How describe the wedding breakfast and festivities at Fairview House, on
+a November day when young ladies could walk about the lawns in the
+filmiest of gowns! how recount the guests and leave out no friends--for
+none were left out! Mr. Jabe Jenney and Mrs. Jenney, who wept as she
+embraced both bride and groom; and Euphrasia, in a new steel-coloured
+silk and a state of absolute subjection and incredulous happiness. Would
+that there were time to chronicle that most amazing of conquests of
+Victoria over Euphrasia! And Mrs. Pomfret, who, remarkable as it may
+seem, not only recognized Austen without her lorgnette, but quite
+overwhelmed him with an unexpected cordiality, and declared her intention
+of giving them a dinner in New York.
+
+"My dear," she said, after kissing Victoria twice, "he is most
+distinguished-looking--I had no idea--and a person who grows upon one.
+And I am told he is descended from Channing Austen, of whom I have often
+heard my grandfather speak. Victoria, I always had the greatest
+confidence in your judgment."
+
+Although Victoria had a memory (what woman worth her salt has not?), she
+was far too happy to remind Mrs. Pomfret of certain former occasions, and
+merely smiled in a manner which that lady declared to be enigmatic. She
+maintained that she had never understood Victoria, and it was
+characteristic of Mrs. Pomfret that her respect increased in direct
+proportion to her lack of understanding.
+
+Mr. Thomas Gaylord, in a waistcoat which was the admiration of all who
+beheld it, proposed the health of the bride; and proved indubitably that
+the best of oratory has its origin in the heart and not in the mind,--for
+Tom had never been regarded by his friends as a Demosthenes. He was
+interrupted from time to time by shouts of laughter; certain episodes in
+the early career of Mr. Austen Vane (in which, if Tom was to be believed,
+he was an unwilling participant) were particularly appreciated. And
+shortly after that, amidst a shower of miscellaneous articles and rice,
+Mr. and Mrs. Vane took their departure.
+
+They drove through the yellow sunlight to Ripton, with lingering looks at
+the hills which brought back memories of boys and sorrows, and in Hanover
+Street bade good-by to Hilary Vane. A new and strange contentment shone
+in his face as he took Victoria's hands in his, and they sat with him
+until Euphrasia came. It was not until they were well on their way to New
+York that they opened the letter he had given them, and discovered that
+it contained something which would have enabled them to remain in Europe
+the rest of their lives had they so chosen.
+
+We must leave them amongst the sunny ruins of Italy and Greece and
+southern France, on a marvellous journey that was personally conducted by
+Victoria.
+
+Mr. Crewe was unable to go to the wedding, having to attend a directors'
+meeting of some importance in the West. He is still in politics, and
+still hopeful; and he was married, not long afterwards, to Miss Alice
+Pomfret.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Mr. Crewe's Career, Book III., by Winston Churchill
+
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