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+Project Gutenberg's Mr. Crewe's Career, Complete, by Winston Churchill
+[Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British]
+
+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, Complete
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Last Updated: March 5, 3009
+Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #3684]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. CREWE'S CAREER, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CREWE'S CAREER, Complete
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE HONOURABLE HILARY VANE SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT
+
+I may as well begin this story with Mr. Hilary Vane, more frequently
+addressed as the Honourable Hilary Vane, although it was the gentleman's
+proud boast that he had never held an office in his life. He belonged
+to the Vanes of Camden Street,--a beautiful village in the hills near
+Ripton,--and was, in common with some other great men who had made
+a noise in New York and the nation, a graduate of Camden Wentworth
+Academy. But Mr. Vane, when he was at home, lived on a wide,
+maple-shaded street in the city of Ripton, cared for by an elderly
+housekeeper who had more edges than a new-fangled mowing machine.
+The house was a porticoed one which had belonged to the Austens for a
+hundred years or more, for Hilary Vane had married, towards middle age,
+Miss Sarah Austen. In two years he was a widower, and he never tried it
+again; he had the Austens' house, and that many-edged woman, Euphrasia
+Cotton, the Austens' housekeeper.
+
+The house was of wood, and was painted white as regularly as leap year.
+From the street front to the vegetable garden in the extreme rear it was
+exceedingly long, and perhaps for propriety's sake--Hilary Vane lived
+at one end of it and Euphrasia at the other. Hilary was sixty-five,
+Euphrasia seventy, which is not old for frugal people, though it is
+just as well to add that there had never been a breath of scandal about
+either of them, in Ripton or elsewhere. For the Honourable Hilary's
+modest needs one room sufficed, and the front parlour had not been used
+since poor Sarah Austen's demise, thirty years before this story opens.
+
+In those thirty years, by a sane and steady growth, Hilary Vane had
+achieved his present eminent position in the State. He was trustee for I
+know not how many people and institutions, a deacon in the first
+church, a lawyer of such ability that he sometimes was accorded
+the courtesy-title of "Judge." His only vice--if it could be called
+such--was in occasionally placing a piece, the size of a pea, of a
+particular kind of plug tobacco under his tongue,--and this was not
+known to many people. Euphrasia could not be called a wasteful person,
+and Hilary had accumulated no small portion of this world's goods, and
+placed them as propriety demanded, where they were not visible to the
+naked eye: and be it added in his favour that he gave as secretly, to
+institutions and hospitals the finances and methods of which were known
+to him.
+
+As concrete evidence of the Honourable Hilary Vane's importance, when
+he travelled he had only to withdraw from his hip-pocket a book in which
+many coloured cards were neatly inserted, an open-sesame which permitted
+him to sit without payment even in those wheeled palaces of luxury known
+as Pullman cars. Within the limits of the State he did not even have
+to open the book, but merely say, with a twinkle of his eyes to the
+conductor, "Good morning, John," and John would reply with a bow and a
+genial and usually witty remark, and point him out to a nobody who sat
+in the back of the car. So far had Mr. Hilary Vane's talents carried
+him.
+
+The beginning of this eminence dated back to the days before the Empire,
+when there were many little principalities of railroads fighting among
+themselves. For we are come to a changed America. There was a time, in
+the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
+it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
+acquire riches hitherto undreamed of. Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
+others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
+sheep. It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
+English history, but he drew no parallels. His first position of trust
+had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
+Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
+Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling
+effect that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its
+stockholders--to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per
+cent. It was, indeed, rumoured that Hilary drew the Act of Consolidation
+itself. At any rate, he was too valuable an opponent to neglect, and
+after a certain interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the
+State for the Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold
+him. And he found, by degrees, that he had no longer time for private
+practice.
+
+It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was
+a man of convictions. In politics he would have told you--with some
+vehemence, if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican. Treason to
+party he regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which
+a man should be justly outlawed. If he were in a mellow mood, with the
+right quantity of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps
+tell you why he was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his
+confidence. He believed in the gold standard, for one thing; in the
+tariff (left unimpaired in its glory) for another, and with a wave of
+his hand would indicate the prosperity of the nation which surrounded
+him,--a prosperity too sacred to tamper with.
+
+One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
+would not mention to you. It was perhaps because he had never formulated
+the article for himself. It might be called a faith in the divine right
+of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal
+creed. This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane. It was his
+foundation-rock and too sacred for light conversation. When he allowed
+himself to be bitter against various "young men with missions" who
+had sprung up in various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of
+politics, he would call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and
+recommend to them the practice of charity, forbearance, and other
+Christian virtues. Thank God, his State was not troubled with such.
+
+In person Mr. Hilary Vane was tall, with a slight stoop to his
+shoulders, and he wore the conventional double-breasted black coat,
+which reached to his knees, and square-toed congress boots. He had a
+Puritan beard, the hawk-like Vane nose, and a twinkling eye that spoke
+of a sense of humour and a knowledge of the world. In short, he was no
+man's fool, and on occasions had been more than a match for certain New
+York lawyers with national reputations.
+
+It is rare, in this world of trouble, that such an apparently ideal
+and happy state of existence is without a canker. And I have left the
+revelation of the canker to the last. Ripton knew it was there, Camden
+Street knew it, and Mr. Vane's acquaintances throughout the State; but
+nobody ever spoke of it. Euphrasia shed over it the only tears she
+had known since Sarah Austen died, and some of these blotted the only
+letters she wrote. Hilary Vane did not shed tears, but his friends
+suspected that his heart-strings were torn, and pitied him. Hilary Vane
+fiercely resented pity, and that was why they did not speak of it. This
+trouble of his was the common point on which he and Euphrasia touched,
+and they touched only to quarrel. Let us out with it--Hilary Vane had a
+wild son, whose name was Austen.
+
+Euphrasia knew that in his secret soul Mr. Vane attributed this
+wildness, and what he was pleased to designate as profligacy, to the
+Austen blood. And Euphrasia resented it bitterly. Sarah Austen had been
+a young, elfish thing when he married her,--a dryad, the elderly and
+learned Mrs. Tredway had called her. Mr Vane had understood her about
+as well as he would have understood Mary, Queen of Scots, if he had been
+married to that lady. Sarah Austen had a wild, shy beauty, startled,
+alert eyes like an animal, and rebellious black hair that curled about
+her ears and gave her a faun-like appearance. With a pipe and the
+costume of Rosalind she would have been perfect. She had had a habit of
+running off for the day into the hills with her son, and the conventions
+of Ripton had been to her as so many defunct blue laws. During her brief
+married life there had been periods of defiance from her lasting a week,
+when she would not speak to Hilary or look at him, and these periods
+would be followed by violent spells of weeping in Euphrasia's arms,
+when the house was no place for Hilary. He possessed by matrimony and
+intricate mechanism of which his really admirable brain could not grasp
+the first principles; he felt for her a real if uncomfortable
+affection, but when she died he heaved a sigh of relief, at which he was
+immediately horrified.
+
+Austen he understood little better, but his affection for the child may
+be likened to the force of a great river rushing through a narrow gorge,
+and he vied with Euphrasia in spoiling him. Neither knew what they were
+doing, and the spoiling process was interspersed with occasional and
+(to Austen) unmeaning intervals of severe discipline. The boy loved
+the streets and the woods and his fellow-beings; his punishments were
+a series of afternoons in the house, during one of which he wrecked
+the bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old
+slipper that broke under the process. Euphrasia kept the slipper, and
+once showed it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was
+grown up and gone and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away,
+choking, and left the room. Such was his cross.
+
+To make it worse, the boy had love his father. Nay, still loved him. As
+a little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
+himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
+near he came to unmanning him. As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
+different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
+essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
+and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.
+
+Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice
+on Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays. Then he went to Camden
+Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and
+attend Camden Wentworth Academy. His letters, such as they were, were
+inimitable if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane
+knew. Camden Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life;
+and the lad could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only
+to begin quarreling with him again.
+
+I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
+and convulsed the other half. Austen went to the college which his
+father had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and
+his career there might well have puzzled a father of far greater
+tolerance and catholicity. Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more
+than once to talk the matter over with the president, who had been his
+classmate there.
+
+"I love that boy, Hilary," the president had said at length, when
+pressed for a frank opinion,--"there isn't a soul in the place, I
+believe, that doesn't,--undergraduates and faculty,--but he has given me
+more anxious thought than any scholar I have ever had."
+
+"Trouble," corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.
+
+"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my
+soul, I think it is all animal spirits."
+
+"A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part
+of us, I have been brought up to believe."
+
+The president was a wise man, and took another tack.
+
+"He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it. Every once
+in a while he takes your breath away--but he has to become interested.
+A few weeks ago Hays came to me direct from his lecture room to tell me
+about a discussion of Austen's in constitutional law. Hays, you know, is
+not easily enthused, but he declares your son has as fine a legal brain
+as he has come across in his experience. But since then, I am bound to
+admit," added the president, sadly, "Austen seems not to have looked at
+a lesson."
+
+"'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,'" replied Hilary.
+
+"He'll sober down," said the president, stretching his conviction a
+little, "he has two great handicaps: he learns too easily, and he is
+too popular." The president looked out of his study window across the
+common, surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian
+lads played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown
+from the tall pine staff. The green was covered now with students of a
+conquering race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory
+baseball game. "I verily believe," said the president, "at a word from
+your son, most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any
+mad expedition that came into his mind."
+
+Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton. It meant
+nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.
+
+"The mad expedition" came at length in the shape of a fight with the
+townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader. If he had
+inherited his mother's eccentricities, he had height and physique from
+the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local
+plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary. Another
+result was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long
+suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were
+not a trustee. Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company. More
+of him later. He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more lumber
+than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the
+receptacle of all the vices.
+
+Eventually Austen went back and graduated--not summa cum laude, honesty
+compels me to add. Then came the inevitable discussion, and to please
+his father he went to the Harvard Law School for two years. At the end
+of that time, instead of returning to Ripton, a letter had come from him
+with the postmark of a Western State, where he had fled with a classmate
+who owned ranch. Evidently the worldly consideration to be derived from
+conformity counted little with Austen Vane. Money was a medium only--not
+an end. He was in the saddle all day, with nothing but the horizon to
+limit him; he loved his father, and did not doubt his father's love for
+him, and he loved Euphrasia. He could support himself, but he must see
+life. The succeeding years brought letters and quaint, useless presents
+to both the occupants of the lonely house,--Navajo blankets and Indian
+jeweler and basket-work,--and Austen little knew how carefully these
+were packed away and surreptitiously gazed at from time to time. But to
+Hilary the Western career was a disgrace, and such meagre reports of
+it as came from other sources than Austen tended only to confirm him in
+this opinion.
+
+It was commonly said of Mr. Paul Pardriff that not a newspaper fell from
+the press that he did not have a knowledge of its contents. Certain
+it was that Mr. Pardriff made a specialty of many kinds of knowledge,
+political and otherwise, and, the information he could give--if he
+chose--about State and national affairs was of a recondite and cynical
+nature that made one wish to forget about the American flag. Mr.
+Pardriff was under forty, and with these gifts many innocent citizens of
+Ripton naturally wondered why the columns of his newspaper, the Ripton
+Record, did not more closely resemble the spiciness of his talk in the
+office of Gales' Hotel. The columns contained, instead, such efforts as
+essays on a national flower and the abnormal size of the hats of certain
+great men, notably Andrew Jackson; yes, and the gold standard; and in
+times of political stress they were devoted to a somewhat fulsome praise
+of regular and orthodox Republican candidates,--and praise of any one
+was not in character with the editor. Ill-natured people said that the
+matter in his paper might possibly be accounted for by the gratitude
+of the candidates, and the fact that Mr. Pardriff and his wife and his
+maid-servant and his hired man travelled on pink mileage books, which
+could only be had for love--not money. On the other hand, reputable
+witnesses had had it often from Mr. Pardriff that he was a reformer, and
+not at all in sympathy with certain practices which undoubtedly existed.
+
+Some years before--to be exact, the year Austen Vane left the law
+school--Mr. Pardriff had proposed to exchange the Ripton Record with
+the editor of the Pepper County Plainsman in afar Western State. The
+exchange was effected, and Mr. Pardriff glanced over the Plainsman
+regularly once a week, though I doubt whether the Western editor ever
+read the Record after the first copy. One day in June Mr. Pardriff was
+seated in his sanctum above Merrill's drug store when his keen green
+eyes fell upon the following:--"The Plainsman considers it safe to say
+that the sympathy of the people of Pepper County at large is with Mr.
+Austen Vane, whose personal difficulty with Jim Blodgett resulted
+so disastrously for Mr. Blodgett. The latter gentleman has long made
+himself obnoxious to local ranch owners by his persistent disregard
+of property lines and property, and it will be recalled that he is at
+present in hot water with the energetic Secretary of the Interior for
+fencing government lands. Vane, who was recently made manager of Ready
+Money Ranch, is one of the most popular young men in the county. He was
+unwillingly assisted over the State line by his friends. Although he has
+never been a citizen of the State, the Plainsman trusts that he may soon
+be back and become one of us. At last report Mr. Blodgett was resting
+easily."
+
+This article obtained circulation in Ripton, although it was not copied
+into the Record out of deference to the feelings of the Honourable
+Hilary Vane. In addition to the personal regard Mr. Pardriff professed
+to have for the Honourable Hilary, it maybe well to remember that
+Austen's father was, among other, things, chairman of the State
+Committee. Mr. Tredway (largest railroad stockholder in Ripton) pursed
+his lips that were already pursed. Tom Gaylord roared with laughter. Two
+or three days later the Honourable Hilary, still in blissful ignorance,
+received a letter that agitated him sorely.
+
+"DEAR FATHER: I hope you don't object to receiving a little visit from a
+prodigal, wayward son. To tell the truth, I have found it convenient
+to leave the Ready Money Ranch for a while, although Bob Tyner is good
+enough to say I may have the place when I come back. You know I often
+think of you and Phrasie back in Ripton, and I long to see the dear old
+town again. Expect me when you see me.
+
+"Your aff. son,
+
+"AUSTEN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. ON THE TREATMENT OF PRODIGALS
+
+While Euphrasia, in a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the
+room which held for her so many memories of Austen's boyhood, even
+beating the carpet with her own hands, Hilary Vane went about his
+business with no apparent lack of diligence. But he was meditating. He
+had many times listened to the Reverend Mr. Weightman read the parable
+from the pulpit, but he had never reflected how it would be to be the
+father of a real prodigal. What was to be done about the calf? Was there
+to be a calf, or was there not? To tell the truth, Hilary wanted a calf,
+and yet to have one (in spite of Holy Writ) would seem to set a premium
+on disobedience and riotous living.
+
+Again, Austen had reached thirty, an age when it was not likely he would
+settle down and live an orderly and godly life among civilized beings,
+and therefore a fatted calf was likely to be the first of many follies
+which he (Hilary) would live to regret. No, he would deal with justice.
+How he dealt will be seen presently, but when he finally reached this
+conclusion, the clipping from the Pepper County Plainsman had not yet
+come before his eyes.
+
+It is worth relating how the clipping did come before his eyes, for no
+one in Ripton had the temerity to speak of it. Primarily, it was because
+Miss Victoria Flint had lost a terrier, and secondarily, because she
+was a person of strong likes and dislikes. In pursuit of the terrier she
+drove madly through Leith, which, as everybody knows, is a famous colony
+of rich summer residents. Victoria probably stopped at every house
+in Leith, and searched them with characteristic vigour and lack of
+ceremony, sometimes entering by the side door, and sometimes by the
+front, and caring very little whether the owners were at home or not.
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe discovered her in a boa-stall at Wedderburn,--as his
+place was called,--for it made little difference to Victoria that Mr.
+Crewe was a bachelor of marriageable age and millions. Full, as ever, of
+practical suggestions, Mr. Crewe proposed to telephone to Ripton and put
+an advertisement in the Record, which--as he happened to know--went to
+press the next day. Victoria would not trust to the telephone, whereupon
+Mr. Crewe offered to drive down with her.
+
+"You'd bore me, Humphrey," said she, as she climbed into her runabout
+with the father and grandfather of the absentee. Mr. Crewe laughed as
+she drove away. He had a chemical quality of turning invidious remarks
+into compliments, and he took this one as Victoria's manner of saying
+that she did not wish to disturb so important a man.
+
+Arriving in the hot main street of Ripton, her sharp eyes descried the
+Record sign over the drug store, and in an astonishingly short time she
+was in the empty office. Mr. Pardriff was at dinner. She sat down in the
+editorial chair and read a great deal of uninteresting matter, but at
+last found something on the floor (where the wind had blown it) which
+made her laugh. It was the account of Austen Vane's difficulty with Mr.
+Blodgett. Victoria did not know Austen, but she knew that the Honourable
+Hilary had a son of that name who had gone West, and this was what
+tickled her. She thrust the clipping in the pocket of her linen coat
+just as Mr. Pardriff came in.
+
+Her conversation with the editor of the Record proved so entertaining
+that she forgot all about the clipping until she had reached Fairview,
+and had satisfied a somewhat imperious appetite by a combination of
+lunch and afternoon tea. Fairview was the "summer place" of Mr. Augustus
+P. Flint, her father, on a shelf of the hills in the town of Tunbridge,
+equidistant from Leith and Ripton: and Mr. Flint was the president of
+the Imperial Railroad, no less.
+
+Yes, he had once been plain Gus Flint, many years ago, when he used to
+fetch the pocket-handkerchiefs of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of Brampton,
+and he was still "Gus" to his friends. Mr. Flint's had been the
+brain which had largely conceived and executed the consolidation of
+principalities of which the Imperial Railroad was the result and, as
+surely as tough metal prevails, Mr. Flint, after many other trials and
+errors of weaker stuff, had been elected to the place for which he was
+so supremely fitted. We are so used in America to these tremendous
+rises that a paragraph will suffice to place Mr. Flint in his Aladdin's
+palace. To do him justice, he cared not a fig for the palace, and he
+would have been content with the farmhouse under the hill where his
+gardener lived. You could not fool Mr. Flint on a horse or a farm, and
+he knew to a dot what a railroad was worth by travelling over it. Like
+his governor-general and dependent, Mr. Hilary Vane, he had married a
+wife who had upset all his calculations. The lady discovered Mr.
+Flint's balance in the bank, and had proceeded to use it for her own
+glorification, and the irony of it all was that he could defend it from
+everybody else. Mrs. Flint spent, and Mr. Flint paid the bills; for the
+first ten years protestingly, and after that he gave it up and let her
+go her own gait.
+
+She had come from the town of Sharon, in another State, through which
+Mr. Flint's railroad also ran, and she had been known as the Rose
+of that place. She had begun to rise immediately, with the kite-like
+adaptability of the American woman for high altitudes, and the leaden
+weight of the husband at the end of the tail was as nothing to her. She
+had begun it all by the study of people in hotels while Mr. Flint was
+closeted with officials and directors. By dint of minute observation and
+reasoning powers and unflagging determination she passed rapidly through
+several strata, and had made a country place out of her husband's farm
+in Tunbridge, so happily and conveniently situated near Leith. In winter
+they lived on Fifth Avenue.
+
+One daughter alone had halted, for a minute period, this progress,
+and this daughter was Victoria--named by her mother. Victoria was now
+twenty-one, and was not only of another generation, but might almost
+have been judged of another race than her parents. The things for which
+her mother had striven she took for granted, and thought of them not at
+all, and she had by nature that simplicity and astonishing frankness of
+manner and speech which was once believed to be an exclusive privilege
+of duchesses.
+
+To return to Fairview. Victoria, after sharing her five o'clock luncheon
+with her dogs, went to seek her father, for the purpose (if it must
+be told) of asking him for a cheque. Mr. Flint was at Fairview on the
+average of two days out of the week during the summer, and then he was
+nearly always closeted with a secretary and two stenographers and a
+long-distance telephone in two plain little rooms at the back of the
+house. And Mr. Hilary Vane was often in consultation with him, as he was
+on the present occasion when Victoria flung open the door. At sight of
+Mr. Vane she halted suddenly on the threshold, and a gleam of mischief
+came into her eye as she thrust her hand into her coat pocket. The two
+regarded her with the detached air of men whose thread of thought has
+been broken.
+
+"Well, Victoria," said her father, kindly if resignedly, "what is it
+now?"
+
+"Money," replied Victoria, promptly; "I went to Avalon this morning and
+bought that horse you said I might have."
+
+"What horse?" asked Mr. Flint, vaguely. "But never mind. Tell Mr.
+Freeman to make out the cheque."
+
+Mr. Vane glanced at Mr. Flint, and his eyes twinkled. Victoria, who
+had long ago discovered the secret of the Honey Dew, knew that he was
+rolling it under his tongue and thinking her father a fool for his
+indulgence.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "Austen's coming home, isn't he?"
+She had got this by feminine arts out of Mr. Paul Pardriff, to whom she
+had not confided the fact of her possession of the clipping.
+
+The Honourable Hilary gave a grunt, as he always did when he was
+surprised and displeased, as though some one had prodded him with a
+stick in a sensitive spot.
+
+"Your son? Why, Vane, you never told me that," said Mr. Flint. "I didn't
+know that you knew him, Victoria."
+
+"I don't," answered Victoria, "but I'd like to. What did he do to Mr.
+Blodgett?" she demanded of Hilary.
+
+"Mr. Blodgett!" exclaimed that gentleman. "I never heard of him. What's
+happened to him?"
+
+"He will probably recover," she assured him.
+
+The Honourable Hilary, trying in vain to suppress his agitation, rose to
+his feet.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about, Victoria," he said, but his
+glance was fixed on the clipping in her hand.
+
+"Haven't you seen it?" she asked, giving it to him.
+
+He read it in silence, groaned, and handed it to Mr. Flint, who had been
+drumming on the table and glancing at Victoria with vague disapproval.
+Mr. Flint read it and gave it back to the Honourable Hilary, who groaned
+again and looked out of the window.
+
+"Why do you feel badly about it?" asked Victoria. "I'd be proud of him,
+if I were you."
+
+"Proud of him" echoed Mr. Vane, grimly. "Proud of him!"
+
+"Victoria, what do you mean?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Why not?" said Victoria. "He's done nothing to make you ashamed.
+According to that clipping, he's punished a man who richly deserved to
+be punished, and he has the sympathy of an entire county."
+
+Hilary Vane was not a man to discuss his domestic affliction with
+anybody, so he merely grunted and gazed persistently out of the window,
+and was not aware of the fact that Victoria made a little face at him as
+she left the room. The young are not always impartial judges of the old,
+and Victoria had never forgiven him for carrying to her father the news
+of an escapade of hers in Ripton.
+
+As he drove through the silent forest roads on his way homeward
+that afternoon, the Honourable Hilary revolved the new and intensely
+disagreeable fact in his mind as to how he should treat a prodigal
+who had attempted manslaughter and was a fugitive from justice. In the
+meantime a tall and spare young man of a red-bronze colour alighted
+from the five o'clock express at Ripton and grinned delightedly at the
+gentlemen who made the station their headquarters about train time.
+They were privately disappointed that the gray felt hat, although
+broad-brimmed, was not a sombrero, and the respectable, loose-fitting
+suit of clothes was not of buckskin with tassels on the trousers; and
+likewise that he came without the cartridge belt and holster which they
+had pictured in anticipatory sessions on the baggage-trucks. There could
+be no doubt of the warmth of their greeting as they sidled up and
+seized a hand somewhat larger than theirs, but the welcome had in it
+an ingredient of awe that puzzled the newcomer, who did not hesitate to
+inquire:--"What's the matter, Ed? Why so ceremonious, Perley?"
+
+But his eagerness did not permit him to wait for explanations. Grasping
+his bag, the only baggage he possessed, he started off at a swinging
+stride for Hanover Street, pausing only to shake the hands of the few
+who recognized him, unconscious of the wild-fire at his back. Hanover
+Street was empty that drowsy summer afternoon, and he stopped under
+the well-remembered maples before the house and gazed at it long and
+tenderly; even at the windows of that room--open now for the first time
+in years--where he had served so many sentences of imprisonment. Then he
+went cautiously around by the side and looked in at the kitchen door.
+To other eyes than his Euphrasia might not have seemed a safe person to
+embrace, but in a moment he had her locked in his arms and weeping. She
+knew nothing as yet of Mr. Blodgett's misfortunes, but if Austen
+Vane had depopulated a county it would have made no difference in her
+affection.
+
+"My, but you're a man," exclaimed Euphrasia, backing away at last and
+staring at him with the only complete approval she had ever accorded to
+any human being save one.
+
+"What did you expect, Phrasie?"
+
+"Come, and I'll show you your room," she said, in a gutter she could not
+hide; "it's got all the same pictures in, your mother's pictures, and
+the chair you broke that time when Hilary locked you in. It's mended."
+
+"Hold on, Phrasie," said Austen, seizing her by the apron-strings, "how
+about the Judge?" It was by this title he usually designated his father.
+
+"What about him?" demanded Euphrasia, sharply.
+
+"Well, it's his house, for one thing," answered Austen, "and he may
+prefer to have that room--empty."
+
+"Empty! Turn you out? I'd like to see him," cried Euphrasia. "It
+wouldn't take me long to leave him high and dry."
+
+She paused at the sound of wheels, and there was the Honourable Hilary,
+across the garden patch, in the act of slipping out of his buggy at the
+stable door. In the absence of Luke, the hired man, the chief counsel
+for the railroad was wont to put up the horse himself, and he already
+had the reins festooned from the bit rings when he felt a heavy, hand on
+his shoulder and heard a voice say:--"How are you, Judge?"
+
+If the truth be told, that voice and that touch threw the Honourable
+Hilary's heart out of beat. Many days he had been schooling himself
+for this occasion: this very afternoon he had determined his course of
+action, which emphatically did not include a fatted calf. And now surged
+up a dryad-like memory which had troubled him many a wakeful night, of
+startled, appealing eyes that sought his in vain, and of the son she had
+left him flinging himself into his arms in the face of chastisement. For
+the moment Hilary Vane, under this traitorous influence, was unable to
+speak. But he let the hand rest on his shoulder, and at length was
+able to pronounce, in a shamefully shaky voice, the name of his son.
+Whereupon Austen seized him by the other shoulder and turned him round
+and looked into his face.
+
+"The same old Judge," he said.
+
+But Hilary was startled, even as Euphrasia had been. Was this strange,
+bronzed, quietly humorous young man his son? Hilary even had to raise
+his eyes a little; he had forgotten how tall Austen was. Strange
+emotions, unbidden and unwelcome, ran riot in his breast; and Hilary
+Vane, who made no slips before legislative committees or supreme courts,
+actually found himself saying:--"Euphrasia's got your room ready."
+
+"It's good of you to take me in, Judge," said Austen, patting his
+shoulder. And then he began, quite naturally to unbuckle the breechings
+and loose the traces, which he did with such deftness and celerity that
+he had the horse unharnessed and in the stall in a twinkling, and had
+hauled the buggy through the stable door, the Honourable Hilary watching
+him the while. He was troubled, but for the life of him could find no
+adequate words, who usually had the dictionary at his disposal.
+
+"Didn't write me why you came home," said the Honourable Hilary, as his
+son washed his hands at the spigot.
+
+"Didn't I? Well, the truth was I wanted to see you again, Judge."
+
+His father grunted, not with absolute displeasure, but suspiciously.
+
+"How about Blodgett?" he asked.
+
+"Blodgett? Have you heard about that? Who told you?"
+
+"Never mind. You didn't. Nothing in your letter about it."
+
+"It wasn't worth mentioning," replied Austen. "Tyner and the boys liked
+it pretty well, but I didn't think you'd be interested. It was a local
+affair."
+
+"Not interested! Not worth mentioning!" exclaimed the Honourable
+Hilary, outraged to discover that his son was modestly deprecating an
+achievement instead of defending a crime. "Godfrey! murder ain't worth
+mentioning, I presume."
+
+"Not when it isn't successful," said Austen. "If Blodgett had succeeded,
+I guess you'd have heard of it before you did."
+
+"Do you mean to say this Blodgett tried to kill you?" demanded the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Yes," said his son, "and I've never understood why he didn't. He's a
+good deal better shot than I am."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and sat down on a bucket and carefully
+prepared a piece of Honey Dew. He was surprised and agitated.
+
+"Then why are you a fugitive from justice if you were acting in
+self-defence?" he inquired.
+
+"Well, you see there were no witnesses, except a Mexican of Blodgett's,
+and Blodgett runs the Pepper County machine for the railroad out there.
+I'd been wanting to come East and have a look at you for some time, and
+I thought I might as well come now."
+
+"How did this--this affair start?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+"Blodgett was driving in some of Tyner's calves, and I caught him. I
+told him what I thought of him, and he shot at me through his pocket.
+That was all."
+
+"All! You shot him, didn't you?"
+
+"I was lucky enough to hit him first," said Austen.
+
+Extraordinary as it may seem, the Honourable Hilary experienced a sense
+of pride.
+
+"Where did you hit him?" he asked.
+
+It was Euphrasia who took matters in her own hands and killed the fatted
+calf, and the meal to which they presently sat down was very different
+from the frugal suppers Mr. Vane usually had. But he made no comment.
+It is perhaps not too much to say that he would have been distinctly
+disappointed had it been otherwise. There was Austen's favourite pie,
+and Austen's favourite cake, all inherited from the Austens, who had
+thought more of the fleshpots than people should. And the prodigal did
+full justice to the occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. CONCERNING THE PRACTICE OF LAW
+
+So instinctively do we hark back to the primeval man that there was a
+tendency to lionize the prodigal in Ripton, which proves the finished
+civilization of the East not to be so far removed from that land of
+outlaws, Pepper County. Mr. Paul Pardriff, who had a guilty conscience
+about the clipping, and vividly bearing in mind Mr. Blodgett's mishap,
+alone avoided young Mr. Vane; and escaped through the type-setting room
+and down an outside stairway in the rear when that gentleman called.
+It gave an ironical turn to the incident that Mr. Pardriff was at the
+moment engaged in a "Welcome Home" paragraph meant to be propitiatory.
+
+Austen cared very little for lionizing. He spent most of his time with
+young Tom Gaylord, now his father's right-hand man in a tremendous
+lumber business. And Tom, albeit he had become so important, habitually
+fell once more under the domination of the hero of his youthful days.
+Together these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing
+and scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.
+
+After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant
+though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence
+of his son one morning at his office. This office was in what had once
+been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out
+through the elms on to the square. Old-fashioned bookcases lined with
+musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal
+light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary
+sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.
+
+The anteroom next door, where the clerks sat, was also a waiting-room
+for various individuals from the different parts of the State who
+continually sought the counsel's presence.
+
+"Haven't seen much of you since you've be'n home, Austen," his father
+remarked as an opening.
+
+"Your--legal business compels you to travel a great deal," answered
+Austen, turning from the window and smiling.
+
+"Somewhat," said the Honourable Hilary, on whom this pleasantry was not
+lost. "You've be'n travelling on the lumber business, I take it."
+
+"I know more about it than I did," his son admitted.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted.
+
+"Caught a good many fish, haven't you?"
+
+Austen crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside his
+father's chair.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, "what are you driving at? Out with it."
+
+"When are you--going back West?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+Austen did not answer at once, but looked down into his father's
+inscrutable face.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me?" he said.
+
+"Sowed enough wild oats, haven't you?" inquired the father.
+
+"I've sowed a good many," Austen admitted.
+
+"Why not settle down?"
+
+"I haven't yet met the lady, Judge," replied his son.
+
+"Couldn't support her if you had," said Mr. Vane.
+
+"Then it's fortunate," said Austen, resolved not to be the necessary
+second in a quarrel. He knew his father, and perceived that these
+preliminary and caustic openings of his were really olive branches.
+
+"Sometimes I think you might as well be in that outlandish country, for
+all I see of you," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"You ought to retire from business and try fishing," his son suggested.
+
+The Honourable Hilary sometimes smiled.
+
+"You've got a good brain, Austen, and what's the use of wasting it
+chasing cattle and practising with a pistol on your fellow-beings? You
+won't have much trouble in getting admitted to the bar. Come into the
+office."
+
+Austen did not answer at once. He suspected that it had cost his father
+not a little to make these advances.
+
+"Do you believe you and I could get along, Judge? How long do you think
+it would last?"
+
+"I've considered that some," answered the Honourable Hilary, "but I
+won't last a great while longer myself."
+
+"You're as sound as a bronco," declared Austen, patting him.
+
+"I never was what you might call dissipated," agreed Mr. Vane, "but men
+don't go on forever. I've worked hard all my life, and got where I am,
+and I've always thought I'd like to hand it on to you. It's a position
+of honour and trust, Austen, and one of which any lawyer might be
+proud."
+
+"My ambition hasn't run in exactly that channel," said his son.
+
+"Didn't know as you had any precise ambition," responded the Honourable
+Hilary, "but I never heard of a man refusing to be chief counsel for a
+great railroad. I don't say you can be, mind, but I say with work and
+brains it's as easy for the son of Hilary Vane as for anybody else."
+
+"I don't know much about the duties of such a position," said Austen,
+laughing, "but at all events I shall have time to make up my mind how
+to answer Mr. Flint when he comes to me with the proposal. To speak
+frankly, Judge, I hadn't thought of spending the whole of what might
+otherwise prove a brilliant life in Ripton."
+
+The Honourable Hilary smiled again, and then he grunted.
+
+"I tell you what I'll do," he said; "you come in with me and agree to
+stay five years. If you've done well for yourself, and want to go to New
+York or some large place at the end of that time, I won't hinder you.
+But I feel it my duty to say, if you don't accept my offer, no son
+of mine shall inherit what I've laid up by hard labour. It's against
+American doctrine, and it's against my principles. You can go back to
+Pepper County and get put in jail, but you can't say I haven't warned
+you fairly."
+
+"You ought to leave your fortune to the railroad, Judge," said Austen.
+"Generations to come would bless your name if you put up a new station
+in Ripton and built bridges over Bunker Hill grade crossing and the
+other one on Heath Street where Nic Adams was killed last month. I
+shouldn't begrudge a cent of the money."
+
+"I suppose I was a fool to talk to you," said the Honourable Hilary,
+getting up.
+
+But his son pushed him down again into the Windsor chair.
+
+"Hold on, Judge," he said, "that was just my way of saying if I accepted
+your offer, it wouldn't be because I yearned after the money. Thinking
+of it has never kept me awake nights. Now if you'll allow me to take a
+few days once in a while to let off steam, I'll make a counter proposal,
+in the nature of a compromise."
+
+"What's that?" the Honourable Hilary demanded suspiciously.
+
+"Provided I get admitted to the bar I will take a room in another part
+of this building and pick up what crumbs of practice I can by myself. Of
+course, sir, I realize that these, if they come at all, will be owing
+to the lustre of your name. But I should, before I become Mr. Flint's
+right-hand man, like to learn to walk with my own legs."
+
+The speech pleased the Honourable Hilary, and he put out his hand.
+
+"It's a bargain, Austen," he said.
+
+"I don't mind telling you now, Judge, that when I left the West I left
+it for good, provided you and I could live within a decent proximity.
+And I ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd
+had a fling. It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this
+is a sudden determination. Prodigals don't become good as quick as all
+that."
+
+Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law
+office, nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was
+admitted to the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the
+habits and customs of prodigals. Needless to say, the practice did not
+immediately begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked
+a visitor, and sometimes had as many as five or six. There was an
+irresistible attraction about that room, and apparently very little law
+read there, though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors
+into the hall and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to
+let the smoke out. Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the
+little room in the far corridor to the great man's own office.
+
+These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were
+not all clients. Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise
+on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was
+continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went--fat
+and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced--who were neither clients nor
+lawyers. These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them
+had a hail-fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they
+talked to the Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then
+they sat very close to his ear. Many of them preferred now to wait in
+Austen's office instead of the anteroom, and some of them were not so
+cautious with the son of Hilary Vane that they did not let drop
+certain observations to set him thinking. He had a fanciful if somewhat
+facetious way of calling them by feudal titles which made them grin.
+
+"How is the Duke of Putnam this morning?" he would ask of the
+gentleman of whom the Ripton Record would frequently make the following
+announcement: "Among the prominent residents of Putnam County in town
+this week was the Honourable Brush Bascom."
+
+The Honourable Brush and many of his associates, barons and earls,
+albeit the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son
+of Hilary Vane. This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who
+did not wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the
+feudal system. Although Austen had set up for himself, there were many
+ways--not legal--in which the son might have been helpful to the father,
+but the Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to
+make use of him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting and
+other young men of a hustling nature in the Honourable Hilary's office
+found that Austen's advent did not tend greatly to lighten a certain
+class of their labours. In fact, father and son were not much nearer in
+spirit than when ode had been in Pepper County and the other in Ripton.
+Caution and an instinct which senses obstacles are characteristics of
+gentlemen in Mr. Vane's business.
+
+So two years passed,--years liberally interspersed with expeditions
+into the mountains and elsewhere, and nights spent in the company of
+Tom Gaylord and others. During this period Austen was more than once
+assailed by the temptation to return to the free life of Pepper
+County, Mr. Blodgett having completely recovered now, and only desiring
+vengeance of a corporal nature. But a bargain was a bargain, and Austen
+Vane stuck to his end of it, although he had now begun to realize many
+aspects of a situation which he had not before suspected. He had long
+foreseen, however, that the time was coming when a serious disagreement
+with his father was inevitable. In addition to the difference in
+temperament, Hilary Vane belonged to one generation and Austen to
+another.
+
+It happened, as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by
+a seeming chance. It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church
+sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of
+Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton. The grove was bounded on one
+side by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second
+growth and alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing. The picnic
+was over and the people preparing to go home when they were startled by
+a crash, followed by the screaming of brakes as a big engine flew past
+the grove and brought a heavy train to a halt some distance down the
+grade. The women shrieked and dropped the dishes they were washing,
+and the men left their horses standing and ran to the crossing and then
+stood for the moment helpless, in horror at the scene which met their
+eyes. The wagon of one--of their own congregation was in splinters, a
+man (a farmer of the neighbourhood) lying among the alders with what
+seemed a mortal injury. Amid the lamentations and cries for some one
+to go to Mercer Village for the doctor a young man drove up rapidly and
+sprang out of a buggy, trusting to some one to catch his horse, pushed,
+through the ring of people, and bent over the wounded farmer. In an
+instant he had whipped out a knife, cut a stick from one of the alders,
+knotted his handkerchief around the man's leg, ran the stick through the
+knot, and twisted the handkerchief until the blood ceased to flow. They
+watched him, paralyzed, as the helpless in this world watch the capable,
+and before he had finished his task the train crew and some passengers
+began to arrive.
+
+"Have you a doctor aboard, Charley?" the young man asked.
+
+"No," answered the conductor, who had been addressed; "my God, not one,
+Austen."
+
+"Back up your train," said Austen, "and stop your baggage car here. And
+go to the grove," he added to one of the picnickers, "and bring four or
+five carriage cushions. And you hold this."
+
+The man beside him took the tourniquet, as he was bid. Austen Vane drew
+a note-book from his pocket.
+
+"I want this man's name and address," he said, "and the names and
+addresses of every person here, quickly."
+
+He did not lift his voice, but the man who had taken charge of such
+a situation was not to be denied. They obeyed him, some eagerly, some
+reluctantly, and by that time the train had backed down and the cushions
+had arrived. They laid these on the floor of the baggage car and
+lifted the man on to them. His name was Zeb Meader, and he was still
+insensible. Austen Vane, with a peculiar set look upon his face, sat
+beside him all the way into Ripton. He spoke only once, and that was to
+tell the conductor to telegraph from Avalon to have the ambulance from
+St. Mary's Hospital meet the train at Ripton.
+
+The next day Hilary Vane, returning from one of his periodical trips to
+the northern part of the State, invaded his son's office.
+
+"What's this they tell me about your saving a man's life?" he asked,
+sinking into one of the vacant chairs and regarding Austen with his
+twinkling eyes.
+
+"I don't know what they tell you," Austen answered. "I didn't do
+anything but get a tourniquet on his leg and have him put on the train."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and continued to regard his son. Then he
+cut a piece of Honey Dew.
+
+"Looks bad, does it?" he said.
+
+"Well," replied Austen, "it might have been done better. It was bungled.
+In a death-trap as cleverly conceived as that crossing, with a down
+grade approaching it, they ought to have got the horse too."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted again, and inserted the Honey Dew. He
+resolved to ignore the palpable challenge in this remark, which was in
+keeping with this new and serious mien in Austen.
+
+"Get the names of witnesses?" was his next question.
+
+"I took particular pains to do so."
+
+"Hand 'em over to Tooting. What kind of man is this Meagre?"
+
+"He is rather meagre now," said Austen, smiling a little. "His name's
+Meader."
+
+"Is he likely to make a fuss?"
+
+"I think he is," said Austen.
+
+"Well," said the Honourable Hilary, "we must have Ham Tooting hurry
+'round and fix it up with him as soon as he can talk, before one of
+these cormorant lawyers gets his claw in him."
+
+Austen said nothing, and after some desultory conversation, in which
+he knew how to indulge when he wished to conceal the fact that he was
+baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed. That student of human nature,
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a
+free vocabulary, made the next attempt. It is a characteristic of Mr.
+Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
+awkward diminutive of their friends' names.
+
+"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
+that Meagre accident, before I forget it."
+
+"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
+Statutes.
+
+"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
+cigar. "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"
+
+"I may."
+
+"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
+like a nasty one. I don't like those Mercer people. The last farmer they
+ran over there raised hell."
+
+"I shouldn't blame this one if he did, if he ever gets well enough,"
+said Austen. Young Mr. Tooting paused with a lighted match halfway to
+his cigar and looked at Austen shrewdly, and then sat down on the desk
+very close to him.
+
+"Say, Aust, it sometimes sickens a man to have to buy these fellows off.
+What? Poor devils, they don't get anything like what they ought to get,
+do they? Wait till you see how the Railroad Commission'll whitewash that
+case. It makes a man want to be independent. What?"
+
+"This sounds like virtue, Ham."
+
+"I've often thought, too," said Mr. Tooting, "that a man could make more
+money if he didn't wear the collar."
+
+"But not sleep as well, perhaps," said Austen.
+
+"Say, Aust, you're not on the level with me."
+
+"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham."
+
+"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting,
+now a little bewildered.
+
+"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
+sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?"
+
+They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
+brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he
+decided that any subject would do.
+
+"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've seen him," said Austen. "He's a young man, isn't he?"
+
+"And natty. He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
+work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle. You ought
+to hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics. I was passing
+there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds.
+'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered. I almost fell out of the buggy."
+
+"What did he want?" asked Austen, curiously. Mr. Tooting winked.
+
+"Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake. You'd think a
+fellow that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job,
+wouldn't you? He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as
+he called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda. A fellow with
+buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe. Then this Crewe gave
+me a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State
+needed,--macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows
+what. I told him all he had to do was to get permission from old man
+Flint, and he could have 'em."
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"He said Flint was an intimate friend of his. Then he asked me a whole
+raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd
+ever heard of. Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature."
+
+"He can go for all I care," said Austen, as he pushed open the door of
+the restaurant.
+
+For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death. But he came of
+a stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of
+granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines. Austen Vane called
+twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the
+numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he
+was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation.
+Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion
+on many a boisterous expedition.
+
+When Austen, in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over
+the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of
+that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him.
+The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from
+caverns of suffering below the bandage. They were shrewd eyes, however,
+and proved that Mr. Meader had possession of the five senses--nay, of
+the six. Austen sat down beside the bed.
+
+"Dr. Tredway tells me you are getting along finely," he said.
+
+"No thanks to the railrud," answered Mr. Meader; "they done their best."
+
+"Did you hear any whistle or any bell?" Austen asked.
+
+"Not a sound," said Mr. Meader; "they even shut off their steam on that
+grade."
+
+Austen Vane, like most men who are really capable of a deep sympathy,
+was not an adept at expressing it verbally. Moreover, he knew enough of
+his fellow-men to realize that a Puritan farmer would be suspicious of
+sympathy. The man had been near to death himself, was compelled to spend
+part of the summer, his bread-earning season, in a hospital, and yet no
+appeal or word of complaint had crossed his lips.
+
+"Mr. Meader," said Austen, "I came over here to tell you that in my
+opinion you are entitled to heavy damages from the railroad, and to
+advise you not to accept a compromise. They will send some one to
+you and offer you a sum far below that which you ought in justice to
+receive, You ought to fight this case."
+
+"How am I going to pay a lawyer, with a mortgage on my farm?" demanded
+Mr. Meader.
+
+"I'm a lawyer," said Austen, "and if you'll take me, I'll defend you
+without charge."
+
+"Ain't you the son of Hilary Vane?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've heard of him a good many times," said Mr. Meader, as if to ask
+what man had not. "You're railroad, ain't ye?"
+
+Mr. Meader gazed long and thoughtfully into the young man's face, and
+the suspicion gradually faded from the farmer's blue eyes.
+
+"I like your looks," he said at last. "I guess you saved my life.
+I'm--I'm much obliged to you."
+
+When Mr. Tooting arrived later in the day, he found Mr. Meader
+willing to listen, but otherwise strangely non-committal. With native
+shrewdness, the farmer asked him what office he came from, but did not
+confide in Mr. Tooting the fact that Mr. Vane's son had volunteered to
+wring more money from Mr. Vane's client than Mr. Tooting offered him.
+Considerably bewildered, that gentleman left the hospital to report the
+affair to the Honourable Hilary, who, at intervals during the afternoon,
+found himself relapsing into speculation.
+
+Inside of a somewhat unpromising shell, Mr. Zeb Meader was a human
+being, and no mean judge of men and motives. As his convalescence
+progressed, Austen Vane fell into the habit of dropping in from time
+to time to chat with him, and gradually was rewarded by many vivid
+character sketches of Mr. Meader's neighbours in Mercer and its
+vicinity. One afternoon, when Austen came into the ward, he found at
+Mr. Meader's bedside a basket of fruit which looked too expensive and
+tempting to have come from any dealer's in Ripton.
+
+"A lady came with that," Mr. Meader explained. "I never was popular
+before I was run over by the cars. She's be'n here twice. When she
+fetched it to-day, I kind of thought she was up to some, game, and I
+didn't want to take it."
+
+"Up to some game?" repeated Austen.
+
+"Well, I don't know," continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, "the woman
+here tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks,
+but from the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted
+something. But I don't know. Thought I'd ask you. You see, she's
+railrud."
+
+"Railroad!"
+
+"She's Flint's daughter."
+
+Austen laughed.
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that," he said. "If Mr. Flint sent his daughter
+with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to
+do anything else. I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case."
+
+Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.
+
+"She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me
+laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'. She wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"What did she want to know?" Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.
+
+"Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you
+druv up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down.
+She was a good deal took with that."
+
+"I think you are inclined to make too much of it," said Austen.
+
+Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being
+now the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in
+the doorway. The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that
+struck pleasantly on Austen's ear. Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside
+Mr. Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced
+by intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.
+
+"And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader," said
+Victoria. "You would have made a fortune on the stage."
+
+"Me a play-actor!" exclaimed the invalid. "How much wages do they git?"
+
+"Untold sums," she declared, "if they can talk like you."
+
+"He kind of thought that story funny--same as you," Mr. Meader
+ruminated, and glanced up. "Drat me," he remarked, "if he ain't a-comin'
+now! I callated he'd run acrost you sometime."
+
+Victoria raised her eyes, sparkling with humour, and they met Austen's.
+
+"We was just talkin' about you," cried Mr. Meader, cordially; "come
+right in." He turned to Victoria. "I want to make you acquainted," he
+said, "with Austen Vane."
+
+"And won't you tell him who I am, Mr. Meader?" said Victoria.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Meader, apologetically, "that was stupid of me--wahn't
+it? But I callated he'd know. She's the daughter of the railrud
+president--the 'one that was askin' about you."
+
+There was an instant's pause, and the colour stole into Victoria's
+cheeks. Then she glanced at Austen and bit her lip-and laughed. Her
+laughter was contagious.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to confess that you have inspired my curiosity,
+Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen's face was sunburned, but it flushed a more vivid red under
+the tan. It is needless to pretend that a man of his appearance and
+qualities had reached the age of thirty-two without having listened to
+feminine comments of which he was the exclusive subject. In this
+remark of Victoria's, or rather in the manner in which she made it, he
+recognized a difference.
+
+"It is a tribute, then, to the histrionic talents of Mr. Meader, of
+which you were speaking," he replied laughingly.
+
+Victoria glanced at him with interest as he looked down at Mr. Meader.
+
+"And how is it to-day, Zeb?" he said.
+
+"It ain't so bad as it might be--with sech folks as her and you
+araound," admitted Mr. Meader. "I'd almost agree to get run over again.
+She was askin' about you, and that's a fact, and I didn't slander you,
+neither. But I never callated to comprehend wimmen-folks."
+
+"Now, Mr. Meader," said Victoria, reprovingly, but there were little
+creases about her eyes, "don't be a fraud."
+
+"It's true as gospel," declared the invalid; "they always got the better
+of me. I had one of 'em after me once, when I was young and prosperin'
+some."
+
+"And yet you have survived triumphant," she exclaimed.
+
+"There wahn't none of 'em like you," said Mr. Meader, "or it might have
+be'n different."
+
+Again her eyes irresistibly sought Austen's,--as though to share with
+him the humour of this remark,--and they laughed together. Her colour,
+so sensitive, rose again, but less perceptibly this time. Then she got
+up.
+
+"That's unfair, Mr. Meader!" she protested.
+
+"I'll leave it to Austen," said Mr. Meader, "if it ain't probable. He'd
+ought to know."
+
+In spite of a somewhat natural embarrassment, Austen could not but
+acknowledge to himself that Mr. Meader was right. With a womanly
+movement which he thought infinitely graceful, Victoria leaned over the
+bed.
+
+"Mr. Meader," she said, "I'm beginning to think it's dangerous for me to
+come here twice a week to see you, if you talk this way. And I'm not a
+bit surprised that that woman didn't get the better of you."
+
+"You hain't a-goin'!" he exclaimed. "Why, I callated--"
+
+"Good-by," she said quickly; "I'm glad to see that you are doing
+so well." She raised her head and looked at Austen in a curious,
+inscrutable way. "Good-by, Mr. Vane," she said; "I--I hope Mr. Blodgett
+has recovered."
+
+Before he could reply she had vanished, and he was staring at the empty
+doorway. The reference to the unfortunate Mr. Blodgett, after taking his
+breath away, aroused in him an intense curiosity betraying, as it did,
+a certain knowledge of past events in his life in the hitherto unknown
+daughter of Augustus interest could she have in him? Such a Flint. What
+question, from similar sources, has heightened the pulse of young men
+from time immemorial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. "TIMEO DANAOS"
+
+The proverbial little birds that carry news and prophecies through the
+air were evidently responsible for an official-looking letter which
+Austen received a few mornings later. On the letter-head was printed
+"The United Northeastern Railroads," and Mr. Austen Vane was informed
+that, by direction of the president, the enclosed was sent to him in
+an entirely complimentary sense. "The enclosed" was a ticket of red
+cardboard, and its face informed him that he might travel free for the
+rest of the year. Thoughtfully turning it over, he read on the back the
+following inscription:--"It is understood that this pass is accepted by
+its recipient as a retainer."
+
+Austen stared at it and whistled. Then he pushed back his chair, with
+the pass in his hand, and hesitated. He seized a pen and wrote a few
+lines: "Dear sir, I beg to return the annual pass over the Northeastern
+Railroads with which you have so kindly honoured me"--when he suddenly
+changed his mind again, rose, and made his way through the corridors
+to his father's office. The Honourable Hilary was absorbed in his daily
+perusal of the Guardian.
+
+"Judge," he asked, "is Mr. Flint up at his place this week?"
+
+The Honourable Hilary coughed.
+
+"He arrived yesterday on the three. Er--why?"
+
+"I wanted to go up and thank him for this," his son answered, holding up
+the red piece of cardboard. "Mr. Flint is a very thoughtful man."
+
+The Honourable Hilary tried to look unconcerned, and succeeded.
+
+"Sent you an annual, has he? Er--I don't know as I'd bother him
+personally, Austen. Just a pleasant note of acknowledgment."
+
+"I don't flatter myself that my achievements in the law can be
+responsible for it," said Austen. "The favour must be due to my
+relationship with his eminent chief counsel."
+
+Hilary Vane's keen eyes rested on his son for an instant. Austen was
+more than ever an enigma to him.
+
+"I guess relationship hasn't got much to do with business," he replied.
+"You have be'n doing--er--better than I expected."
+
+"Thank you, Judge," said Austen, quietly. "I don't mind saying that
+I would rather have your approbation than--this more substantial
+recognition of merit."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's business was to deal with men, and by reason of
+his ability in so doing he had made a success in life. He could judge
+motives more than passably well, and play upon weaknesses. But he left
+Austen's presence that morning vaguely uneasy, with a sense of having
+received from his own son an initial defeat at a game of which he was
+a master. Under the excuse of looking up some precedents, he locked his
+doors to all comers for two hours, and paced his room. At one moment he
+reproached himself for not having been frank; for not having told Austen
+roundly that this squeamishness about a pass was unworthy of a strong
+man of affairs; yes, for not having revealed to him the mysteries
+of railroad practice from the beginning. But frankness was not an
+ingredient of the Honourable Hilary's nature, and Austen was not the
+kind of man who would accept a hint and a wink. Hilary Vane had formless
+forebodings, and found himself for once in his life powerless to act.
+
+The cost of living in Ripton was not so high that Austen Vane could not
+afford to keep a horse and buggy. The horse, which he tended himself,
+was appropriately called Pepper; Austen had found him in the hills, and
+he was easily the finest animal in Ripton: so good, in fact, that Mr.
+Humphrey Crewe (who believed he had an eye for horses) had peremptorily
+hailed Austen from a motorcar and demanded the price, as was Mr. Crewe's
+wont when he saw a thing he desired. He had been somewhat surprised and
+not inconsiderably offended by the brevity and force of the answer which
+he had received.
+
+On the afternoon of the summer's day in which Austen had the
+conversation with his father just related, Pepper was trotting at a
+round clip through the soft and shady wood roads toward the town of
+Tunbridge; the word "town" being used in the New England sense, as a
+piece of territory about six miles by six. The fact that automobiles
+full of laughing people from Leith hummed by occasionally made no
+apparent difference to Pepper, who knew only the master hand on the
+reins; the reality that the wood roads were climbing great hills the
+horse did not seem to feel. Pepper knew every lane and by-path within
+twenty miles of Ripton, and exhibited such surprise as a well-bred horse
+may when he was slowed down at length and turned into a hard, blue-stone
+driveway under a strange granite arch with the word "Fairview" cut in
+Gothic letters above it, and two great lamps in wrought-iron brackets
+at the sides. It was Austen who made a note of the gratings over the
+drains, and of the acres of orderly forest in a mysterious and seemingly
+enchanted realm. Intimacy with domains was new to him, and he began
+to experience an involuntary feeling of restraint which was new to him
+likewise, and made him chafe in spite of himself. The estate seemed to
+be the visible semblance of a power which troubled him.
+
+Shortly after passing an avenue neatly labelled "Trade's Drive" the road
+wound upwards through a ravine the sides of which were covered with a
+dense shrubbery which had the air of having always been there, and yet
+somehow looked expensive. At the top of the ravine was a sharp curve;
+and Austen, drawing breath, found himself swung, as it were, into space,
+looking off across miles of forest-covered lowlands to an ultramarine
+mountain in the hazy south,--Sawanec. As if in obedience to a telepathic
+command of his master, Pepper stopped.
+
+Drinking his fill of this scene, Austen forgot an errand which was not
+only disagreeable, but required some fortitude for its accomplishment.
+The son had this in common with the Honourable Hilary--he hated heroics;
+and the fact that the thing smacked of heroics was Austen's only
+deterrent. And then there was a woman in this paradise! These gradual
+insinuations into his revery at length made him turn. A straight avenue
+of pear-shaped, fifteen-year-old maples led to the house, a massive
+colonial structure of wood that stretched across the shelf; and he
+had tightened the reins and started courageously up the avenue when
+he perceived that it ended in a circle on which there was no sign of a
+hitching-post. And, worse than this, on the balconied, uncovered porch
+which he would have to traverse to reach the doorway he saw the sheen
+and glimmer of women's gowns grouped about wicker tables, and became
+aware that his approach was the sole object of the scrutiny of an
+afternoon tea party.
+
+As he reached the circle it was a slight relief to learn that Pepper
+was the attraction. No horse knew better than Pepper when he was being
+admired, and he arched his neck and lifted his feet and danced in the
+sheer exhilaration of it. A smooth-faced, red-cheeked gentleman in
+gray flannels leaned over the balustrade and made audible comments in
+a penetrating voice which betrayed the fact that he was Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe.
+
+"Saw him on the street in Ripton last year. Good hock action, hasn't
+he?--that's rare in trotters around here. Tried to buy him. Feller
+wouldn't sell. His name's Vane--he's drivin' him now."
+
+A lady of a somewhat commanding presence was beside him. She was perhaps
+five and forty, her iron-gray hair was dressed to perfection, her figure
+all that Parisian art could make it, and she was regarding Austen with
+extreme deliberation through the glasses which she had raised to a
+high-bridged nose.
+
+"Politics is certainly your career, Humphrey," she remarked, "you have
+such a wonderful memory for faces. I don't see how he does it, do you,
+Alice?" she demanded of a tall girl beside her, who was evidently her
+daughter, but lacked her personality.
+
+"I don't know," said Alice.
+
+"It's because I've been here longer than anybody else, Mrs. Pomfret,"
+answered Mr. Crewe, not very graciously, "that's all. Hello." This last
+to Austen.
+
+"Hello," said Austen.
+
+"Who do you want to see?" inquired Mr. Crewe, with the admirable tact
+for which he was noted.
+
+Austen looked at him for the first time.
+
+"Anybody who will hold my horse," he answered quietly.
+
+By this time the conversation had drawn the attention of the others at
+the tables, and one or two smiled at Austen's answer. Mrs. Flint, with
+a "Who is it?" arose to repel a social intrusion. She was an overdressed
+lady, inclining to embonpoint, but traces of the Rose of Sharon were
+still visible.
+
+"Why don't you drive 'round to the stables?" suggested Mr. Crewe,
+unaware of a smile.
+
+Austen did not answer. He was, in fact, looking towards the doorway,
+and the group on the porch were surprised to see a gleam of mirthful
+understanding start in his eyes. An answering gleam was in Victoria's,
+who had at that moment, by a singular coincidence, come out of the
+house. She came directly down the steps and out on the gravel, and held
+her hand to him in the buggy, and he flushed with pleasure as he grasped
+it.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said. "I am so glad you have called.
+Humphrey, just push the stable button, will you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe obeyed with no very good grace, while the tea-party went back
+to their seats. Mrs. Flint supposed he had come to sell Victoria the
+horse; while Mrs. Pomfret, who had taken him in from crown to boots,
+remarked that he looked very much like a gentleman.
+
+"I came to see your father for a few moments--on business," Austen
+explained.
+
+She lifted her face to his with a second searching look.
+
+"I'll take you to him," she said.
+
+By this time a nimble groom had appeared from out o a shrubbery path
+and seized Pepper's head. Austen alighted and followed Victoria into
+a great, cool hallway, and through two darkened rooms, bewilderingly
+furnished and laden with the scent of flowers, into a narrow passage
+beyond. She led the way simply, not speaking, and her silence seemed to
+betoken the completeness of an understanding between them, as of a long
+acquaintance.
+
+In a plain white-washed room, behind a plain oaken desk, sat Mr.
+Flint--a plain man. Austen thought he would have known him had he seen
+him on the street. The other things in the room were letter-files, a
+safe, a long-distance telephone, and a thin private secretary with
+a bend in his back. Mr. Flint looked up from his desk, and his face,
+previously bereft of illumination, lighted when he saw his daughter.
+Austen liked that in him.
+
+"Well, Vic, what is it now?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Austen Vane to see you," said Victoria, and with a quick glance at
+Austen she left him standing on the threshold. Mr. Flint rose. His
+eyes were deep-set in a square, hard head, and he appeared to be taking
+Austen in without directly looking at him; likewise, one felt that Mr.
+Flint's handshake was not an absolute gift of his soul.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane? I don't remember ever to have had the pleasure
+of seeing you, although your father and I have been intimately connected
+for many years."
+
+So the president's manner was hearty, but not the substance. It came,
+Austen thought, from a rarity of meeting with men on a disinterested
+footing; and he could not but wonder how Mr. Flint would treat the
+angels in heaven if he ever got there, where there were no franchises
+to be had. Would he suspect them of designs upon his hard won harp
+and halo? Austen did not dislike Mr. Flint; the man's rise, his
+achievements, his affection for his daughter, he remembered. But he was
+also well aware that Mr. Flint had thrown upon him the onus of the first
+move in a game which the railroad president was used to playing every
+day. The dragon was on his home ground and had the choice of weapons.
+
+"I do not wish to bother you long," said Austen.
+
+"No bother," answered Mr. Flint, "no bother to make the acquaintance of
+the son of my old friend, Hilary Vane. Sit down--sit down. And while I
+don't believe any man should depend upon his father to launch him in
+the world, yet it must be a great satisfaction to you, Mr. Vane, to have
+such a father. Hilary Vane and I have been intimately associated for
+many years, and my admiration for him has increased with every year. It
+is to men of his type that the prosperity, the greatness, of this nation
+is largely due,--conservative, upright, able, content to confine himself
+to the difficult work for which he is so eminently fitted, without
+spectacular meddling in things in which he can have no concern.
+Therefore I welcome the opportunity to know you, sir, for I understand
+that you have settled down to follow in his footsteps and that you will
+make a name for yourself. I know the independence of young men--I was
+young once myself. But after all, Mr. Vane, experience is the great
+teacher, and perhaps there is some little advice which an old man can
+give you that may be of service. As your father's son, it is always at
+your disposal. Have a cigar."
+
+The thin secretary continued to flit about the room, between the
+letter-files and the desk. Austen had found it infinitely easier to
+shoot Mr. Blodgett than to engage in a duel with the president of the
+United Railroad.
+
+"I smoke a pipe," he said.
+
+"Too many young men smoke cigars--and those disgusting cigarettes," said
+Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in
+these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke,
+and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and
+cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over
+at Leith, for instance--you may have seen him. Not that he's
+dissipated--but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the
+stock market to make you sick, and don't know any more about 'em than my
+farmer."
+
+During this diatribe Austen saw his opening growing smaller and smaller.
+If he did not make a dash for it, it would soon be closed entirely.
+
+"I received a letter this morning, Mr. Flint, enclosing me an annual
+pass--"
+
+"Did Upjohn send you one?" Mr. Flint cut in; "he ought to have done so
+long ago. It was probably an oversight that he did not, Mr. Vane. We try
+to extend the courtesies of the road to persons who are looked up to
+in their communities. The son of Hilary Vane is at all times welcome to
+one."
+
+Mr. Flint paused to light his cigar, and Austen summoned his resolution.
+Second by second it was becoming more and more difficult and seemingly
+more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no
+inconsiderable intrinsic value. Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously
+contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune
+upstart. Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the
+president of the Northeastern Railroads?
+
+"I had first thought of writing you a letter, Mr. Flint," he said, "but
+it seemed to me that, considering your relations with my father, the
+proper thing to do was to come to you and tell you why I cannot take the
+pass."
+
+The thin secretary paused in his filing, and remained motionless with
+his body bent over the drawer.
+
+"Why you cannot take it, Mr. Vane?" said the railroad president. "I'm
+afraid I don't understand."
+
+"I appreciate the--the kindness," said Austen, "and I will try to
+explain." He drew the red cardboard from his pocket and turned it over.
+"On the back of this is printed, in small letters, 'It is understood
+that this pass is accepted by the recipient as a retainer.'"
+
+"Well," Mr. Flint interrupted, smiling somewhat blandly, "how much money
+do you think that pass would save an active young lawyer in a year?
+Is three hundred dollars too much? Three hundred dollars is not an
+insignificant sum to a young man on the threshold of his practice, is
+it?"
+
+Austen looked at Mr. Flint.
+
+"Any sum is insignificant when it restricts a lawyer from the acceptance
+of just causes, Mr. Flint. As I understand the matter, it is the custom
+of your railroad to send these passes to the young lawyers of the State
+the moment they begin to give signs of ability. This past would prevent
+me from serving clients who might have righteous claims against your
+railroads, and--permit me to speak frankly--in my opinion the practice
+tends to make it difficult for poor people who have been injured to get
+efficient lawyers."
+
+"Your own father is retained by the railroad," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"As their counsel," answered Austen. "I have a pride in my profession,
+Mr. Flint, as no doubt you have in yours. If I should ever acquire
+sufficient eminence to be sought as counsel for a railroad, I should
+make my own terms with it. I should not allow its management alone to
+decide upon the value of my retainer, and my services in its behalf
+would be confined strictly to professional ones."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that I would not engage, for a fee or a pass, to fight the
+political battles of a railroad, or undertake any political manipulation
+in its behalf whatever."
+
+Mr. Flint leaned forward aggressively.
+
+"How long do you think a railroad would pay dividends if it did not
+adopt some means of defending itself from the blackmail politician of
+the State legislatures, Mr. Vane? The railroads of which I have the
+honour to be president pay a heavy tag in this and other States. We
+would pay a much heavier one if we didn't take precautions to protect
+ourselves. But I do not intend to quarrel with you, Mr. Vane," he
+continued quickly, perceiving that Austen was about to answer him,
+"nor do I wish to leave you with the impression that the Northeastern
+Railroads meddle unduly in politics."
+
+Austen knew not how to answer. He had not gone there to discuss this
+last and really great question with Mr. Flint, but he wondered whether
+the president actually thought him the fledgling he proclaimed. Austen
+laid his pass on Mr. Flint's desk, and rose.
+
+"I assure you, Mr. Flint, that the spirit which prompted my visit was
+not a contentious one. I cannot accept the pass, simply because I do not
+wish to be retained."
+
+Mr. Flint eyed him. There was a mark of dignity, of silent power, on
+this tall scapegrace of a son of Hilary Vane that the railroad president
+had missed at first--probably because he had looked only for the
+scapegrace. Mr. Flint ardently desired to treat the matter in the
+trifling aspect in which he believed he saw it, to carry it off
+genially. But an instinct not yet formulated told the president that
+he was face to face with an enemy whose potential powers were not to be
+despised, and he bristled in spite of himself.
+
+"There is no statute I know of by which a lawyer can be compelled to
+accept a retainer against his will, Mr. Vane," he replied, and overcame
+himself with an effort. "But I hope that you will permit me," he added
+in another tone, "as an old friend of your father's and as a man of
+some little experience in the world, to remark that intolerance is
+a characteristic of youth. I had it in the days of Mr. Isaac D.
+Worthington, whom you do not remember. I am not addicted to flattery,
+but I hope and believe you have a career before you. Talk to your
+father. Study the question on both sides,--from the point of view of
+men who are honestly trying, in the face of tremendous difficulties, to
+protect innocent stockholders as well as to conduct a corporation in the
+interests of the people at large, and for their general prosperity. Be
+charitable, young man, and judge not hastily."
+
+Years before, when poor Sarah Austen had adorned the end of his table,
+Hilary Vane had raised his head after the pronouncement of grace to
+surprise a look in his wife's eyes which strangely threw him into
+a white heat of anger. That look (and he at intervals had beheld it
+afterwards) was the true presentment of the soul of the woman whose
+body was his. It was not--as Hilary Vane thought it--a contempt for the
+practice of thanking one's Maker for daily bread, but a contempt for
+cant of one who sees the humour in cant. A masculine version of that
+look Mr. Flint now beheld in the eyes of Austen Vane, and the enraging
+effect on the president of the United Railroads was much the same as
+it had been on his chief counsel. Who was this young man of three and
+thirty to agitate him so? He trembled, though not visibly, yet took
+Austen's hand mechanically.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Vane," he said; "Mr. Freeman will help you to find your
+horse."
+
+The thin secretary bowed, and before he reached the door into the
+passage Mr. Flint had opened another at the back of the room and stepped
+out on a close-cropped lawn flooded with afternoon sunlight. In the
+passage Austen perceived a chair, and in the chair was seated patiently
+none other than Mr. Brush Bascom--political Duke of Putnam. Mr. Bascom's
+little agate eyes glittered in the dim light.
+
+"Hello, Austen," he said, "since when have you took to comin' here?"
+
+"It's a longer trip from Putnam than from Ripton, Brush," said Austen,
+and passed on, leaving Mr. Bascom with a puzzled mind. Something very
+like a smile passed over Mr. Freeman's face as he led the way silently
+out of a side entrance and around the house. The circle of the drive was
+empty, the tea-party had gone--and Victoria. Austen assured himself that
+her disappearance relieved him: having virtually quarrelled with her
+father, conversation would have been awkward; and yet he looked for her.
+
+They found the buggy and Pepper in the paved courtyard of the stables.
+As Austen took the reins the secretary looked up at him, his mild blue
+eyes burning with an unsuspected fire. He held out his hand.
+
+"I want to congratulate you," he said.
+
+"What for?" asked Austen, taking the hand in some embarrassment.
+
+"For speaking like a man," said the secretary, and he turned on his heel
+and left him.
+
+This strange action, capping, as it did, a stranger experience, gave
+Austen food for thought as he let Pepper take his own pace down the
+trade's road. Presently he got back into the main drive where it clung
+to a steep, forest-covered side hill, when his attention was distracted
+by the sight of a straight figure in white descending amidst the
+foliage ahead. His instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk,
+scarcely analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the
+spot where their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically
+to enjoy the unpropitious elements arrayed against a friendship with
+Victoria Flint.
+
+She halted on a flagstone of the descending path some six feet above the
+roadway, and stood expectant. The Rose of Sharon, five and twenty years
+before, would have been coy--would have made believe to have done it by
+accident. But the Rose of Sharon, with all her beauty, would have had
+no attraction for Austen Vane. Victoria had much of her mother's good
+looks, the figure of a Diana, and her clothes were of a severity and
+correctness in keeping with her style; they merely added to the
+sum total of the effect upon Austen. Of course he stopped the buggy
+immediately beneath her, and her first question left him without any
+breath. No woman he had ever known seized the essentials as she did.
+
+"What have you been doing to my father?" she asked.
+
+"Why?" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Because he's in such a bad temper," said Victoria. "You must have put
+him in it. It can't be possible that you came all the way up here to
+quarrel with him. Nobody ever dares to quarrel with him."
+
+"I didn't come up to quarrel with him," said Austen.
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Victoria.
+
+The humour of this question was too much for him, and he laughed.
+Victoria's eyes laughed a little, but there was a pucker in her
+forehead.
+
+"Won't you tell me?" she demanded, "or must I get it out of him?"
+
+"I am afraid," said Austen, slowly, "that you must get it out of him--if
+he hasn't forgotten it."
+
+"Forgotten it, dear old soul!" cried Victoria. "I met him just now
+and tried to make him look at the new Guernseys, and he must have been
+disturbed quite a good deal when he's cross as a bear to me. He really
+oughtn't to be upset like that, Mr. Vane, when he comes up here to rest.
+I am afraid that you are rather a terrible person, although you look so
+nice. Won't you tell me what you did to him?"
+
+Austen was non-plussed.
+
+"Nothing intentional," he answered earnestly, "but it wouldn't be fair
+to your father if I gave you my version of a business conversation that
+passed between us, would it?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Victoria. She sat down on the flagstone with
+her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and looked at him
+thoughtfully. He knew well enough that a wise general would have
+retreated--horse, foot, and baggage; but Pepper did not stir.
+
+"Do you know," said Victoria, "I have an idea you came up here about Zeb
+Meader."
+
+"Zeb Meader!"
+
+"Yes. I told my father about him,--how you rescued him, and how you went
+to see him in the hospital, and what a good man he is, and how poor."
+
+"Oh, did you!" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Yes. And I told him the accident wasn't Zeb's fault, that the train
+didn't whistle or ring, and that the crossing was a blind one."
+
+"And what did he say?" asked Austen, curiously.
+
+"He said that on a railroad as big as his something of the kind must
+happen occasionally. And he told me if Zeb didn't make a fuss and act
+foolishly, he would have no cause to regret it."
+
+"And did you tell Zeb?" asked Austen.
+
+"Yes," Victoria admitted, "but I'm sorry I did, now."
+
+"What did Zeb say?"
+
+Victoria laughed in spite of herself, and gave a more or less exact
+though kindly imitation of Mr. Meader's manner.
+
+"He said that wimmen-folks had better stick to the needle and the
+duster, and not go pokin' about law business that didn't concern 'em.
+But the worst of it was," added Victoria, with some distress, "he won't
+accept any more fruit. Isn't he silly? He won't get it into his head
+that I give him the fruit, and not my father. I suspect that he actually
+believes my father sent me down there to tell him that."
+
+Austen was silent, for the true significance of this apparently obscure
+damage case to the Northeastern Railroads was beginning to dawn on him.
+The public was not in the best of humours towards railroads: there was
+trouble about grade crossings, and Mr. Meader's mishap and the manner of
+his rescue by the son of the corporation counsel had given the accident
+a deplorable publicity. Moreover, if it had dawned on Augustus Flint
+that the son of Hilary Vane might prosecute the suit, it was worth while
+taking a little pains with Mr. Meader and Mr. Austen Vane. Certain small
+fires have been known to light world-wide conflagrations.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" asked Victoria. "It isn't at all polite
+to forget the person you are talking to."
+
+"I haven't forgotten you," said Austen, with a smile. How could
+he--sitting under her in this manner?
+
+"Besides," said Victoria, mollified, "you haven't an answered my
+question."
+
+"Which question?"
+
+She scrutinized him thoughtfully, and with feminine art made the kind of
+an attack that rarely fails.
+
+"Why are you such an enigma, Mr. Vane?" she demanded. "Is it because
+you're a lawyer, or because you've been out West and seen so much of
+life and shot so many people?"
+
+Austen laughed, yet he had tingling symptoms because she showed enough
+interest in him to pronounce him a riddle. But he instantly became
+serious as the purport of the last charge came home to him.
+
+"I suppose I am looked upon as a sort of Jesse James," he said. "As it
+happens, I have never shot but one man, and I didn't care very much for
+that."
+
+Victoria got up and came down a step and gave him her hand. He took
+it, nor was he the first to relinquish the hold; and a colour rose
+delicately in her face as she drew her fingers away.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you," she said.
+
+"You didn't offend me," he replied quickly. "I merely wished you to know
+that I wasn't a brigand."
+
+Victoria smiled.
+
+"I really didn't think so--you are much too solemn. I have to go now,
+and--you haven't told me anything."
+
+She crossed the road and began to descend the path on the other side.
+Twice he glanced back, after he had started, and once surprised her
+poised lightly among the leaves, looking over her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+The next time Austen visited the hospital Mr. Meader had a surprise in
+store for him. After passing the time of day, as was his custom, the
+patient freely discussed the motives which had led him to refuse any
+more of Victoria's fruit.
+
+"I hain't got nothing against her," he declared; "I tried to make that
+plain. She's as nice and common a young lady as I ever see, and I don't
+believe she had a thing to do with it. But I suspicioned they was up
+to somethin' when she brought them baskets. And when she give me the
+message from old Flint, I was sure of it."
+
+"Miss Flint was entirely innocent, I'm sure," said Austen, emphatically.
+
+"If I could see old Flint, I'd tell him what I thought of him usin'
+wimmen-folks to save 'em money," said Mr. Meader. "I knowed she wahn't
+that kind. And then that other thing come right on top of it."
+
+"What other thing?"
+
+"Say," demanded Mr. Meader, "don't you know?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Austen.
+
+"Didn't know Hilary Vane's be'n here?"
+
+"My father!" Austen ejaculated.
+
+"Gittin' after me pretty warm, so they be. Want to know what my price is
+now. But say, I didn't suppose your fayther'd come here without lettin'
+you know."
+
+Austen was silent. The truth was that for a few moments he could not
+command himself sufficiently to speak.
+
+"He is the chief counsel for the road," he said at length; "I am not
+connected with it."
+
+"I guess you're on the right track. He's a pretty smooth talker, your
+fayther. Just dropped in to see how I be, since his son was interested.
+Talked a sight of law gibberish I didn't understand. Told me I didn't
+have much of a case; said the policy of the railrud was to be liberal,
+and wanted to know what I thought I ought to have."
+
+"Well?" said Austen, shortly.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Mender, "he didn't git a mite of satisfaction out of
+me. I've seen enough of his kind of folks to know how to deal with 'em,
+and I told him so. I asked him what they meant by sending that slick Mr.
+Tooting 'raound to offer me five hundred dollars. I said I was willin'
+to trust my case on that crossin' to a jury."
+
+Austen smiled, in spite of his mingled emotions.
+
+"What else did Mr. Vane say?" he asked.
+
+"Not a great sight more. Said a good many folks were foolish enough
+to spend money and go to law when they'd done better to trust to the
+liberality of the railrud. Liberality! Adams' widow done well to trust
+their liberality, didn't she? He wanted to know one more thing, but I
+didn't give him any satisfaction."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you how he got 'raound to it. Guess he never did,
+quite. He wanted to know what lawyer was to have my case. Wahn't none of
+his affair, and I callated if you'd wanted him to know just yet, you'd
+have toad him."
+
+Austen laid his hand on the farmer's, as he rose to go.
+
+"Zeb," he said, "I never expect to have a more exemplary client."
+
+Mr. Mender shot a glance at him.
+
+"Mebbe I spoke a mite too free about your fayther, Austen," he said;
+"you and him seem kind of different."
+
+"The Judge and I understand each other," answered Austen.
+
+He had got as far as the door, when he stopped, swung on his heel, and
+came back to the bedside.
+
+"It's my duty to tell you, Zeb, that in order to hush this thing up they
+may offer you more than you can get from a jury. In that case I should
+have to advise you to accept."
+
+He was aware that, while he made this statement, Zeb Meader's eyes were
+riveted on him, and he knew that the farmer was weighing him in the
+balance.
+
+"Sell out?" exclaimed Mr. Meader. "You advise me to sell out?"
+
+Austen did not get angry. He understood this man and the people from
+which he sprang.
+
+"The question is for you to decide--whether you can get more money by a
+settlement."
+
+"Money!" cried Zeb Meader, "I have found it pretty hard to git, but
+there's some things I won't do for it. There's a reason why they want
+this case hushed up, the way they've be'n actin'. I ain't lived in
+Mercer and Putnam County all my life for nothin'. Hain't I seen 'em run
+their dirty politics there under Brush Bascom for the last twenty-five
+years? There's no man has an office or a pass in that county but what
+Bascom gives it to him, and Bascom's the railrud tool." Suddenly Zeb
+raised himself in bed. "Hev' they be'n tamperin' with you?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Austen, dispassionately. He had hardly heard what Zeb
+had said; his mind had been going onward. "Yes. They sent me an annual
+pass, and I took it back."
+
+Zeb Meader did not speak for a few moments.
+
+"I guess I was a little hasty, Austen," he said at length.
+
+"I might have known you wouldn't sell out. If you're' willin' to take
+the risk, you tell 'em ten thousand dollars wouldn't tempt me."
+
+"All right, Zeb," said Austen.
+
+He left the hospital and struck out across the country towards the
+slopes of Sawanec, climbed them, and stood bareheaded in the evening
+light, gazing over the still, wide valley northward to the wooded ridges
+where Leith and Fairview lay hidden. He had come to the parting of the
+ways of life, and while he did not hesitate to choose his path, a Vane
+inheritance, though not dominant, could not fail at such a juncture to
+point out the pleasantness of conformity. Austen's affection for Hilary
+Vane was real; the loneliness of the elder man appealed to the son, who
+knew that his father loved him in his own way. He dreaded the wrench
+there.
+
+And nature, persuasive in that quarter, was not to be stilled in a field
+more completely her own. The memory and suppliance of a minute will
+scarce suffice one of Austen's temperament for a lifetime; and his eyes,
+flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds
+of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level
+light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be. Just what the
+state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too
+vague--accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give
+way to the attraction he felt for her. His sense of humour intervened if
+he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing
+the acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of
+opposition to the dragon. A young woman, surrounded as she was, could
+be expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political
+morality: let him take Zeb Meader's case, and her loyalty would
+naturally be with her father,--if she thought of Austen Vane at all.
+
+And yet the very contradiction of her name, Victoria joined with Flint,
+seemed to proclaim that she did not belong to her father or to the
+Rose of Sharon. Austen permitted himself to dwell, as he descended the
+mountain in the gathering darkness, upon the fancy of the springing of a
+generation of ideals from a generation of commerce which boded well for
+the Republic. And Austen Vane, in common with that younger and travelled
+generation, thought largely in terms of the Republic. Pepper County and
+Putnam County were all one to him--pieces of his native land. And as
+such, redeemable.
+
+It was long past the supper hour when he reached the house in Hanover
+Street; but Euphrasia, who many a time in days gone by had fared
+forth into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him.
+Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and
+presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite
+doorstep.
+
+"Is that you, Judge?" said Austen.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted in response.
+
+"Be'n on another wild expedition, I suppose."
+
+"I went up Sawanec to stretch my legs a little," Austen answered,
+sitting down beside his father.
+
+"Funny," remarked the Honourable Hilary, "I never had this mania for
+stretchin' my legs after I was grown."
+
+"Well," said Austen, "I like to go into the woods and climb the hills
+and get aired out once in a while."
+
+"I heard of your gettin' aired out yesterday, up Tunbridge way," said
+the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"I supposed you would hear of it," answered Austen.
+
+"I was up there to-day. Gave Mr. Flint your pass did you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Didn't see fit to mention it to me first--did you? Said you were going
+up to thank him for it."
+
+Austen considered this.
+
+"You have put me in the wrong, Judge," he replied after a little. "I
+made that remark ironically. I I am afraid we cannot agree on the motive
+which prompted me."
+
+"Your conscience a little finer than your father's--is it?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "I don't honestly think it is. I've thought a good
+deal in the last few years about the difference in our ways of
+looking at things. I believe that two men who try to be honest may
+conscientiously differ. But I also believe that certain customs have
+gradually grown up in railroad practice which are more or less to be
+deplored from the point of view of the honour of the profession. I think
+they are not perhaps--realized even by the eminent men in the law."
+
+"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary. But he did not press his son for
+the enumeration of these customs. After all the years he had disapproved
+of Austen's deeds it seemed strange indeed to be called to account by
+the prodigal for his own. Could it be that this boy whom he had so often
+chastised took a clearer view of practical morality than himself? It was
+preposterous. But why the uneasiness of the past few years? Why had
+he more than once during that period, for the first time in his life,
+questioned a hitherto absolute satisfaction in his position of chief
+counsel for the Northeastern Railroads? Why had he hesitated to initiate
+his son into many of the so-called duties of a railroad lawyer? Austen
+had never verbally arraigned those duties until to-night.
+
+Contradictory as it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable
+Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as
+when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of
+Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more
+than ever. A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride
+made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit
+of his employer not to be thought of. He therefore assumed the same
+attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced the burden of explanation upon
+Austen, relying surely on the disinclination of his son to be specific.
+And Austen, considering his relationship, could not be expected to
+fathom these mental processes.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, greatly embarrassed by the real affection
+he felt, "I don't want to seem like a prig and appear to be sitting in
+judgment upon a man of your experience and position especially since I
+have the honour to be your son, and have made a good deal of trouble
+by a not irreproachable existence. Since we have begun on the subject,
+however, I think I ought to tell you that I have taken the case of Zeb
+Meader against the Northeastern Railroads."
+
+"Wahn't much need of telling me, was there?" remarked the Honourable
+Hilary, dryly. "I'd have found it out as soon as anybody else."
+
+"There was this need of telling you," answered Austen, steadily,
+"although I am not in partnership with you, I bear your name. And
+in-as-much as I am to have a suit against your client, it has occurred
+to me that you would like me to move--elsewhere."
+
+The Honourable Hilary was silent for a long time.
+
+"Want to move--do YOU? Is that it?"
+
+"Only because my presence may embarrass you."
+
+"That wahn't in the contract," said the Honourable Hilary; "you've got
+a right to take any fool cases you've a mind to. Folks know pretty well
+I'm not mixed up in 'em."
+
+Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in
+this matter. As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the
+stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.
+
+"And then," he continued, "in taking, a course so obviously against your
+wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your
+table and sleeping in your house."
+
+To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.
+
+"I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,"
+he cried.
+
+"I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge. I believe my work is in this
+State."
+
+The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect
+of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the
+one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet
+a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining
+years in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.
+
+"I knew you had this Meader business in mind," he said. "I knew you had
+fanciful notions about--some things. Never told you I didn't want you
+here, did I?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "but--"
+
+"Would have told you if I hadn't wanted you--wouldn't I?"
+
+"I hope so, Judge," said Austen, who understood something of the feeling
+which underlay this brusqueness. That knowledge made matters all the
+harder for him.
+
+"It was your mother's house--you're entitled to that, anyway," said the
+Honourable Hilary, "but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise
+that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him. You'll
+never get a county jury to give as much."
+
+"I did advise him to accept it," answered Austen.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" the Honourable Hilary demanded.
+
+"Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like
+Meader is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal
+retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom." And Austen thought with a
+return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the
+afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary
+Vane. Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father.
+
+"Life," observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase
+from the 'Book of Arguments,' "is a survival of the fittest."
+
+"How do you define 'the fittest?'" asked Austen. "Are they the men who
+have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money
+from their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may
+be at hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the
+practice of morality? Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
+exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"
+
+"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
+letters before his eyes. He had never read a line of the philosopher's
+writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in
+the "Book of Arguments"). Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the
+woods, and her son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but
+unanswerable flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed
+the husband's authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the
+best of him--The name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the
+synonym for incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs. "Don't talk
+Emerson to me," he exclaimed. "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him
+for thirty years, and he's done as much for the Republican party as any
+man in this State."
+
+This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
+conversation which had already continued too long. The Honourable Hilary
+retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
+small hours of the morning.
+
+It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
+against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,
+the county-seat of Putnam County, and we do not wish to appear to give
+it too great a weight in the annals of the State. For one thing, the
+weekly newspapers did not mention it; and Mr. Paul Pardriff, when urged
+to give an account of the proceedings in the Ripton Record, said it was
+a matter of no importance, and spent the afternoon writing an editorial
+about the domestic habits of the Aztecs. Mr. Pardriff, however, had
+thought the matter of sufficient interest personally to attend the
+trial, and for the journey he made use of a piece of green cardboard
+which he habitually carried in his pocket. The editor of the Bradford
+Champion did not have to use his yellow cardboard, yet his columns may
+be searched in vain for the event.
+
+Not that it was such a great event, one of hundreds of railroad
+accidents that come to court. The son of Hilary Vane was the plaintiff's
+counsel; and Mr. Meader, although he had not been able to work since his
+release from the hospital, had been able to talk, and the interest taken
+in the case by the average neglected citizen in Putnam proved that the
+weekly newspaper is not the only disseminator of news.
+
+The railroad's side of the case was presented by that genial and able
+practitioner of Putnam County, Mr. Nathaniel Billings, who travelled
+from his home in Williamstown by the exhibition of a red ticket. Austen
+Vane had to pay his own way from Ripton, but as he handed back the
+mileage book, the conductor leaned over and whispered something in his
+ear that made him smile, and Austen thought he would rather have that
+little drop of encouragement than a pass. And as he left the car at
+Bradford, two grizzled and hard-handed individuals arose and wished him
+good luck.
+
+He needed encouragement,--what young lawyer does not on his first
+important case? And he did not like to think of the future if he lost
+this. But in this matter he possessed a certain self-confidence which
+arose from a just and righteous anger against the forces opposing him
+and a knowledge of their tactics. To his mind his client was not Zeb
+Meader alone, but the host of victims who had been maimed and bought off
+because it was cheaper than to give the public a proper protection.
+
+The court room was crowded. Mr. Zeb Meader, pale but determined, was
+surrounded by a knot of Mercer neighbours, many of whom were witnesses.
+The agate eyes of Mr. Brush Bascom flashed from the audience, and Mr.
+Nat Billings bustled forward to shake Austen's hand. Nat was one of
+those who called not infrequently upon the Honourable Hilary in Ripton,
+and had sat on Austen's little table.
+
+"Glad to see you, Austen," he cried, so that the people might hear; and
+added, in a confidentially lower tone, "We lawyers understand that these
+little things make no difference, eh?"
+
+"I'm willing to agree to that if you are, Nat," Austen answered. He
+looked at the lawyer's fleshy face, blue-black where it was shaven,
+and at Mr. Billings' shifty eyes and mouth, which its muscles could not
+quite keep in place. Mr. Billings also had nicked teeth. But he did his
+best to hide these obvious disadvantages by a Falstaffian bonhomie,--for
+Mr. Billings was growing stout.
+
+"I tried it once or twice, my friend, when I was younger. It's noble,
+but it don't pay," said Mr. Billings, still confidential. "Brush is
+sour--look at him. But I understand how you feel. I'm the kind of feller
+that speaks out, and what I can't understand is, why the old man let you
+get into it."
+
+"He knew you were going to be on the other side, Nat, and wanted to
+teach me a lesson. I suppose it is folly to contest a case where the
+Railroad Commission has completely exonerated your client," Austen added
+thoughtfully.
+
+Mr. Billings' answer was to wink, very slowly, with one eye; and shortly
+after these pleasantries were over, the case was called. A fragrant wind
+blew in at the open windows, and Nature outside was beginning to array
+herself in myriad hues of green. Austen studied the jury, and wondered
+how many points of his argument he could remember, but when he had got
+to his feet the words came to him. If we should seek an emblem for King
+David's smooth, round stone which he flung at Goliath, we should call it
+the truth--for the truth never fails to reach the mark. Austen's opening
+was not long, his words simple and not dramatic, but he seemed to charge
+them with something of the same magnetic force that compelled people
+to read and believe "Uncle Ton's Cabin" and the "Song of the Shirt."
+Spectators and jury listened intently.
+
+Some twenty witnesses appeared for the plaintiff, all of whom declared
+that they had heard neither bell nor whistle. Most of these witnesses
+had been in the grove, two or three in the train; two, residents of the
+vicinity, testified that they had complained to the Railroad Commission
+about that crossing, and had received evasive answers to the effect
+that it was the duty of citizens to look out for themselves. On
+cross-examination they declared they had no objection to grade crossings
+which were properly safeguarded; this crossing was a death-trap.
+(Stricken out.) Mr. Billings made the mistake of trying to prove
+that one of these farmers--a clear-eyed, full-chested man with a deep
+voice--had an animus against the railroad dating from a controversy
+concerning the shipping of milk.
+
+"I have an animus, your Honour," said the witness, quietly. "When the
+railrud is represented by the kind of politicians we have in Putnam,
+it's natural I should hain't it?"
+
+This answer, although stricken out, was gleefully received.
+
+In marked contrast to the earnestness of young Mr. Vane, who then
+rested, Mr. Billings treated the affair from the standpoint of a man of
+large practice who usually has more weighty matters to attend to. This
+was so comparatively trivial as not to be dignified by a serious mien.
+He quoted freely from the "Book of Arguments," reminding the jury of the
+debt of gratitude the State owed to the Northeastern Railroads for
+doing so much for its people; and if they were to eliminate all grade
+crossings, there would be no dividends for the stockholders. Besides,
+the law was that the State should pay half when a crossing was
+eliminated, and the State could not afford it. Austen had suggested, in
+his opening, that it was cheaper for the railroad as well as the State
+to kill citizens. He asked permission to inquire of the learned counsel
+for the defence by what authority he declared that the State could not
+afford to enter into a policy by which grade crossings would gradually
+be eliminated.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Billings, "the fact that all bills introduced to this
+end never get out of committee."
+
+"May I ask," said Austen, innocently, "who has been chairman of that
+particular committee in the lower House for the last five sessions?"
+
+Mr. Billings was saved the embarrassment of answering this question by a
+loud voice in the rear calling out:--"Brush Bascom!"
+
+A roar of laughter shook the court room, and all eyes were turned on
+Brush, who continued to sit unconcernedly with his legs crossed and
+his arm over the back of the seat. The offender was put out, order was
+restored, and Mr. Billings declared, with an injured air, that he failed
+to see why the counsel for the plaintiff saw fit to impugn Mr. Bascom.
+
+"I merely asked a question," said Austere; "far be it from me to impugn
+any man who has held offices in the gift of the people for the last
+twenty years."
+
+Another gale of laughter followed this, during which Mr. Billings
+wriggled his mouth and gave a strong impression that such tactics and
+such levity were to be deplored.
+
+For the defence, the engineer and fireman both swore that the bell
+had been rung before the crossing was reached. Austen merely inquired
+whether this was not when they had left the station at North Mercer,
+two miles away. No, it was nearer. Pressed to name the exact spot, they
+could only conjecture, but near enough to be heard on the crossing.
+Other witnesses--among them several picnickers in the grove--swore that
+they had heard the bell. One of these Austen asked if he was not the
+member from Mercer in the last Legislature, and Mr. Billings, no longer
+genial, sprang to his feet with an objection.
+
+"I merely wish to show, your Honour," said Austen, "that this witness
+accepted a pass from the Northeastern Railroads when he went to the
+Legislature, and that he has had several trip passes for himself and his
+family since."
+
+The objection was not sustained, and Mr. Billings noted an exception.
+
+Another witness, upon whose appearance the audience tittered audibly,
+was Dave Skinner, boss of Mercer. He had lived, he said, in the town of
+Mercer all his life, and maintained that he was within a hundred yards
+of the track when the accident occurred, and heard the bell ring.
+
+"Is it not a fact," said Austen to this witness, "that Mr. Brush Bascom
+has a mortgage on your farm?"
+
+"I can show, your Honour," Austen continued, when Mr. Billings had
+finished his protest, "that this man was on his way to Riverside to pay
+his quarterly instalment."
+
+Mr. Bascom was not present at the afternoon session. Mr. Billings'
+summing up was somewhat impassioned, and contained more quotations from
+the "Book of Arguments." He regretted, he said, the obvious appeals to
+prejudice against a railroad corporation that was honestly trying to do
+its duty-yes, and more than its duty.
+
+Misjudged, misused, even though friendless, it would continue to serve
+the people. So noble, indeed, was the picture which Mr. Billings'
+eloquence raised up that his voice shook with emotion as he finished.
+
+In the opinion of many of the spectators Austen Vane had yet to learn
+the art of oratory. He might with propriety have portrayed the suffering
+and loss of the poor farmer who was his client; he merely quoted from
+the doctor's testimony to the effect that Mr. Meader would never again
+be able to do physical labour of the sort by which he had supported
+himself, and ended up by calling the attention of the jury to the
+photographs and plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after
+the accident, requesting them to note the facts that the public highway,
+approaching through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of
+thirty-three degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and
+a train could not be seen until the horse was actually on the track.
+
+The jury was out five minutes after the judge's charge, and gave Mr.
+Zebulun Meader a verdict of six thousand dollars and costs,--a popular
+verdict, from the evident approval with which it was received in the
+court room. Quiet being restored, Mr. Billings requested, somewhat
+vehemently, that the case be transferred on the exceptions to the
+Supreme Court, that the stenographer write out the evidence, and that he
+might have three weeks in which to prepare a draft. This was granted.
+
+Zeb Meader, true to his nature, was self-contained throughout the
+congratulations he received, but his joy was nevertheless intense.
+
+"You shook 'em up good, Austen," he said, making his way to where his
+counsel stood. "I suspicioned you'd do it. But how about this here
+appeal?"
+
+"Billings is merely trying to save the face of his railroad," Austen
+answered, smiling. "He hasn't the least notion of allowing this case to
+come up again--take my word for it."
+
+"I guess your word's good," said Zeb. "And I want to tell you one thing,
+as an old man. I've been talkin' to Putnam County folks some, and you
+hain't lost nothin' by this."
+
+"How am I to get along without the friendship of Brush Bascom?" asked
+Austen, soberly.
+
+Mr. Meader, who had become used to this mild sort of humour, relaxed
+sufficiently to laugh.
+
+"Brush did seem a mite disgruntled," he remarked.
+
+Somewhat to Austen's embarrassment, Mr. Mender's friends were
+pushing forward. One grizzled veteran took him by the hand and looked
+thoughtfully into his face.
+
+"I've lived a good many years," he said, "but I never heerd 'em talked
+up to like that. You're my candidate for governor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. ENTER THE LION
+
+It is a fact, as Shakespeare has so tersely hinted, that fame sometimes
+comes in the line of duty. To be sure, if Austen Vane had been Timothy
+Smith, the Mender case might not have made quite so many ripples in the
+pond with which this story is concerned. Austen did what he thought was
+right. In the opinion of many of his father's friends whom he met from
+time to time he had made a good-sized stride towards ruin, and they
+did not hesitate to tell him so--Mr. Chipman, president of the Ripton
+National Bank; Mr. Greene, secretary and treasurer of the Hawkeye Paper
+Company, who suggested with all kindness that, however noble it may be,
+it doesn't pay to tilt at windmills.
+
+"Not unless you wreck the windmill," answered Austen. A new and very
+revolutionary point of view to Mr. Greene, who repeated it to Professor
+Brewer, urging that gentleman to take Austen in hand. But the professor
+burst out laughing, and put the saying into circulation.
+
+Mr. Silas Tredway, whose list of directorships is too long to print,
+also undertook to remonstrate with the son of his old friend, Hilary
+Vane. The young lawyer heard him respectfully. The cashiers of some
+of these gentlemen, who were younger men, ventured to say--when out of
+hearing--that they admired the championship of Mr. Mender, but it would
+never do. To these, likewise, Austen listened good-naturedly enough, and
+did not attempt to contradict them. Changing the angle of the sun-dial
+does not affect the time of day.
+
+It was not surprising that young Tom Gaylord, when he came back from New
+York and heard of Austen's victory, should have rushed to his office and
+congratulated him in a rough but hearty fashion. Even though Austen
+had won a suit against the Gaylord Lumber Company, young Tom would have
+congratulated him. Old Tom was a different matter. Old Tom, hobbling
+along under the maples, squinted at Austen and held up his stick.
+
+"Damn you, you're a lawyer, ain't you?" cried the old man.
+
+Austen, well used to this kind of greeting from Mr. Gaylord, replied
+that he didn't think himself much of one.
+
+"Damn it, I say you are. Some day I may have use for you," said old Tom,
+and walked on.
+
+"No," said young Tom, afterwards, in explanation of this extraordinary
+attitude of his father, "it isn't principle. He's had a row with the
+Northeastern about lumber rates, and swears he'll live till he gets even
+with 'em."
+
+If Professor Brewer (Ripton's most clear-sighted citizen) had made the
+statement that Hilary Vane--away down in the bottom of his heart--was
+secretly proud of his son, the professor would probably have lost his
+place on the school board, the water board, and the library committee.
+The way the worldly-wise professor discovered the secret was this: he
+had gone to Bradford to hear the case, for he had been a dear friend of
+Sarah Austen. Two days later Hilary Vane saw the professor on his little
+porch, and lingered. Mr. Brewer suspected why, led carefully up to the
+subject, and not being discouraged--except by numerous grunts--gave the
+father an account of the proceedings by no means unfavourable to the
+son. Some people like paregoric; the Honourable Hilary took his without
+undue squirming, with no visible effects to Austen.
+
+Life in the office continued, with one or two exceptions, the even tenor
+of its way. Apparently, so far as the Honourable Hilary was concerned,
+his son had never been to Bradford. But the Honourable Brush Bascom,
+when he came on mysterious business to call on the chief counsel, no
+longer sat on Austen's table; this was true of other feudal lords and
+retainers: of Mr. Nat Billings, who, by the way, did not file his draft
+after all. Not that Mr. Billings wasn't polite, but he indulged
+no longer in slow winks at the expense of the honourable Railroad
+Commission.
+
+Perhaps the most curious result of the Meader case to be remarked in
+passing, was upon Mr. Hamilton Tooting. Austen, except when he fled to
+the hills, was usually the last to leave the office, Mr. Tooting often
+the first. But one evening Mr. Tooting waited until the force had gone,
+and entered Austen's room with his hand outstretched.
+
+"Put her there, Aust," he said.
+
+Austen put her there.
+
+"I've been exercisin' my thinker some the last few months," observed Mr.
+Tooting, seating himself on the desk.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of nervous prostration, Ham?"
+
+"Say," exclaimed Mr. Tooting, with a vexed laugh, "why are you always
+jollying me? You ain't any older than I am."
+
+"I'm not as old, Ham. I don't begin to have your knowledge of the
+world."
+
+"Come off," said Mr. Tooting, who didn't know exactly how to take this
+compliment. "I came in here to have a serious talk. I've been thinking
+it over, and I don't know but what you did right."
+
+"Well, Ham, if you don't know, I don't know how I am to convince you."
+
+"Hold on. Don't go twistin' around that way--you make me dizzy." He
+lowered his voice confidentially, although there was no one within
+five walls of them. "I know the difference between a gold brick and a
+government bond, anyhow. I believe bucking the railroad's going to pay
+in a year or so. I got on to it as soon as you did, I guess, but when
+a feller's worn the collar as long as I have and has to live, it ain't
+easy to cut loose--you understand."
+
+"I understand," answered Austen, gravely.
+
+"I thought I'd let you know I didn't take any too much trouble with
+Meader last summer to get the old bird to accept a compromise."
+
+"That was good of you, Ham."
+
+"I knew what you was up to," said Mr. Tooting, giving Austen a friendly
+poke with his cigar.
+
+"You showed your usual acumen, Mr. Tooting," said Austen, as he rose to
+put on his coat. Mr. Tooting regarded him uneasily.
+
+"You're a deep one, Aust," he declared; "some day you and, me must get
+together."
+
+Mr. Billings' desire for ultimate justice not being any stronger than
+Austen suspected, in due time Mr. Meader got his money. His counsel
+would have none of it,--a decision not at all practical, and on the
+whole disappointing. There was, to be sure, an influx into Austen's
+office of people who had been run over in the past, and it was Austen's
+unhappy duty to point out to these that they had signed (at the request
+of various Mr. Tootings) little slips of paper which are technically
+known as releases. But the first hint of a really material advantage
+to be derived from his case against the railroad came from a wholly
+unexpected source, in the shape of a letter in the mail one August
+morning.
+
+   "DEAR SIR: Having remarked with some interest the verdict for a
+   client of yours against the United Northeastern Railroads, I wish
+   you would call and see me at your earliest convenience.
+
+   "Yours truly,
+
+   "HUMPHREY CREWE."
+
+Although his curiosity was aroused, Austen was of two minds whether to
+answer this summons, the truth being that Mr. Crewe had not made, on
+the occasions on which they had had intercourse, the most favourable of
+impressions. However, it is not for the struggling lawyer to scorn any
+honourable brief, especially from a gentleman of stocks and bonds and
+varied interests like Mr. Crewe, with whom contentions of magnitude are
+inevitably associated. As he spun along behind Pepper on the Leith road
+that climbed Willow Brook on the afternoon he had made the appointment,
+Austen smiled to himself over his anticipations, and yet---being
+human-let his fancy play.
+
+The broad acres of Wedderburn stretched across many highways, but the
+manor-house (as it had been called) stood on an eminence whence one
+could look for miles down the Yale of the Blue. It had once been a
+farmhouse, but gradually the tail had begun to wag the dog, and the
+farmhouse became, like the original stone out of which the Irishman made
+the soup, difficult to find. Once the edifice had been on the road, but
+the road had long ago been removed to a respectful distance, and Austen
+entered between two massive pillars built of granite blocks on a musical
+gravel drive.
+
+Humphrey Crewe was on the porch, his hands in his pockets, as Austen
+drove up.
+
+"Hello," he said, in a voice probably meant to be hospitable, but which
+had a peremptory ring, "don't stand on ceremony. Hitch your beast and
+come along in."
+
+Having, as it were, superintended the securing of Pepper, Mr. Crewe led
+the way through the house to the study, pausing once or twice to point
+out to Austen a carved ivory elephant procured at great expense in
+China, and a piece of tapestry equally difficult of purchase. The study
+itself was no mere lounging place of a man of pleasure, but sober and
+formidable books were scattered through the cases: "Turner's Evolution
+of the Railroad," "Graham's Practical Forestry," "Eldridge's Finance";
+while whole shelves of modern husbandry proclaimed that Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe was no amateur farmer. There was likewise a shelf devoted to road
+building, several to knotty-looking pamphlets, and half a wall of neatly
+labelled pigeonholes. For decoration, there was an oar garnished with a
+ribbon, and several groups of college undergraduates, mostly either in
+puffed ties or scanty attire, and always prominent in these groups, and
+always unmistakable, was Mr. Humphrey Crewe himself.
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent awhile, that this formidable array of things might
+make the proper impression upon his visitor.
+
+"It was lucky you came to-day, Vane," he said at length. "I am due in
+New York to-morrow for a directors' meeting, and I have a conference in
+Chicago with a board of trustees of which I am a member on the third.
+Looking at my array of pamphlets, eh? I've been years in collecting
+them,--ever since I left college. Those on railroads ought especially to
+interest you--I'm somewhat of a railroad man myself."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Austen.
+
+"Had two or three blocks of stock in subsidiary lines that had to be
+looked after. It was a nuisance at first," said Mr. Crewe, "but I
+didn't shirk it. I made up my mind I'd get to the bottom of the railroad
+problem, and I did. It's no use doing a thing at all unless you do
+it well." Mr. Crewe, his hands still in his pockets, faced Austen
+smilingly. "Now I'll bet you didn't know I was a railroad man until you
+came in here. To tell the truth, it was about a railroad matter that I
+sent for you."
+
+Mr. Crewe lit a cigar, but he did not offer one to Austen, as he had to
+Mr. Tooting. "I wanted to see what you were like," he continued, with
+refreshing frankness. "Of course, I'd seen you on the road. But you can
+get more of an idea of a man by talkin' to him, you know."
+
+"You can if he'll talk," said Austen, who was beginning to enjoy his
+visit.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him keenly. Few men are fools at all points of the
+compass, and Mr. Crewe was far from this.
+
+"You did well in that little case you had against the Northeastern. I
+heard about it."
+
+"I did my best," answered Austen, and he smiled again.
+
+"As some great man has remarked," observed Mr. Crewe, "it isn't what we
+do, it's how we do it. Take pains over the smaller cases, and the larger
+cases will come of themselves, eh?"
+
+"I live in hope," said Austen, wondering how soon this larger case was
+going to unfold itself.
+
+"Let me see," said Mr. Crewe, "isn't your father the chief attorney in
+this State for the Northeastern? How do you happen to be on the other
+side?"
+
+"By the happy accident of obtaining a client," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him again. In spite of himself, respect was growing
+in him. He had expected to find a certain amount of eagerness and
+subserviency--though veiled; here was a man of different calibre than he
+looked for in Ripton.
+
+"The fact is," he declared, "I have a grievance against the Northeastern
+Railroads, and I have made up my mind that you are the man for me."
+
+"You may have reason to regret your choice," Austen suggested.
+
+"I think not," replied Mr. Crewe, promptly; "I believe I know a man when
+I see one, and you inspire me with confidence. This matter will have a
+double interest for you, as I understand you are fond of horses."
+
+"Horses?"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Crewe continued, gaining a little heat at the word, "I
+bought the finest-lookin' pair you ever saw in New York this
+spring,--all-around action, manners, conformation, everything; I'll show
+'em to you. One of 'em's all right now; this confounded railroad injured
+the other gettin' him up here. I've put in a claim. They say they
+didn't, my man says they did. He tells me the horse was thrown violently
+against the sides of the car several times. He's internally injured. I
+told 'em I'd sue 'em, and I've decided that you are the man to take the
+case--on conditions."
+
+Austen's sense of humour saved him,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe had begun to
+interest him. He rose and walked to the window and looked out for a few
+moments over the flower garden before he replied:--"On what conditions?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "frankly, I don't want to pay more than the
+horse is worth, and it's business to settle on the fee in case you win.
+I thought--"
+
+"You thought," said Austen, "that I might not charge as much as the next
+man."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I knew that if you took the case, you'd fight
+it through, and I want to get even with 'em. Their claim agent had the
+impudence to suggest that the horse had been doctored by the dealer in
+New York. To tell me that I, who have been buying horses all my life,
+was fooled. The veterinary swears the animal is ruptured. I'm a citizen
+of Avalon County, though many people call me a summer resident; I've
+done business here and helped improve the neighbourhood for years.
+It will be my policy to employ home talent Avalon County lawyers, for
+instance. I may say, without indiscretion, that I intend from now on to
+take even a greater interest in public affairs. The trouble is in this
+country that men in my position do not feel their responsibilities."
+
+"Public spirit is a rare virtue," Austen remarked, seeing that he
+was expected to say something. "Avalon County appreciates the
+compliment,--if I may be permitted to answer for it."
+
+"I want to do the right thing," said Mr. Crewe. "In fact, I have almost
+made up my mind to go to the Legislature this year. I know it would be
+a sacrifice of time, in a sense, and all that, but--" He paused, and
+looked at Austen.
+
+"The Legislature needs leavening."
+
+"Precisely," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "and when I look around me and see the
+things crying to be done in this State, and no lawmaker with sense and
+foresight enough to propose them, it makes me sick. Now, for instance,"
+he continued, and rose with an evident attempt to assault the forestry
+shelves. But Austen rose too.
+
+"I'd like to go over that with you, Mr. Crewe," said he, "but I have to
+be back in Ripton."
+
+"How about my case?" his host demanded, with a return to his former
+abruptness.
+
+"What about it?" asked Austen.
+
+"Are you going to take it?"
+
+"Struggling lawyers don't refuse business."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "that's sensible. But what are you going to
+charge?"
+
+"Now," said Austen, with entire good humour, "when you get on that
+ground, you are dealing no longer with one voracious unit, but with
+a whole profession,--a profession, you will allow me to add, which in
+dignity is second to none. In accordance with the practice of the best
+men in that profession, I will charge you what I believe is fair--not
+what I think you are able and willing to pay. Should you dispute the
+bill, I will not stoop to quarrel with you, but, try to live on bread
+and butter a while longer."
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent for a moment. It would not be exact to say
+uncomfortable, for it is to be doubted whether he ever got so. But he
+felt dimly that the relations of patron and patronized were becoming
+somewhat jumbled.
+
+"All right," said he, "I guess we can let it go at that. Hello! What the
+deuce are those women doing here again?"
+
+This irrelevant exclamation was caused by the sight through the open
+French window--of three ladies in the flower garden, two of whom were
+bending over the beds. The third, upon whose figure Austen's eyes were
+riveted, was seated on a stone bench set in a recess of pines, and
+looking off into the Yale of the Blue. With no great eagerness, but
+without apology to Austen, Mr. Crewe stepped out of the window and
+approached them; and as this was as good a way as any to his horse
+and buggy, Austen followed. One of the ladies straightened at their
+appearance, scrutinized them through the glasses she held in her
+hand, and Austen immediately recognized her as the irreproachable Mrs.
+Pomfret.
+
+"We didn't mean to disturb you, Humphrey," she said. "We knew you would
+be engaged in business, but I told Alice as we drove by I could not
+resist stopping for one more look at your Canterbury bells. I knew
+you wouldn't mind, but you mustn't leave your--affairs,--not for an
+instant."
+
+The word "affairs" was accompanied by a brief inspection of Austen Vane.
+
+"That's all right," answered Mr. Crewe; "it doesn't cost anything to
+look at flowers, that's what they're for. Cost something to put 'em in.
+I got that little feller Ridley to lay 'em out--I believe I told you.
+He's just beginning. Hello, Alice."
+
+"I think he did it very well, Humphrey," said Miss Pomfret.
+
+"Passably," said Mr. Crewe. "I told him what I wanted and drew a rough
+sketch of the garden and the colour scheme."
+
+"Then you did it, and not Mr. Ridley. I rather suspected it," said
+Mrs. Pomfret; "you have such clear and practical ideas about things,
+Humphrey."
+
+"It's simple enough," said Mr. Crewe, deprecatingly, "after you've seen
+a few hundred gardens and get the general underlying principle."
+
+"It's very clever," Alice murmured.
+
+"Not at all. A little application will do wonders. A certain definite
+colour massed here, another definite colour there, and so forth."
+
+Mr. Crewe spoke as though Alice's praise irritated him slightly.
+He waved his hand to indicate the scheme in general, and glanced at
+Victoria on the stone bench. From her (Austen thought) seemed to
+emanate a silent but mirthful criticism, although she continued to gaze
+persistently down the valley, apparently unaware of their voices. Mr.
+Crewe looked as if he would have liked to reach her, but the two ladies
+filled the narrow path, and Mrs. Pomfret put her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Humphrey, you must explain it to us. I am so interested in gardens I'm
+going to have one if Electrics increase their dividend."
+
+Mr. Crewe began, with no great ardour, to descant on the theory of
+planting, and Austen resolved to remain pocketed and ignored no longer.
+He retraced his steps and made his way rapidly by another path towards
+Victoria, who turned her head at his approach, and rose. He acknowledged
+an inward agitation with the vision in his eye of the tall, white figure
+against the pines, clad with the art which, in mysterious simplicity,
+effaces itself.
+
+"I was wondering," she said, as she gave him her hand, "how long it
+would be before you spoke to me."
+
+"You gave me no chance," said Austen, quickly.
+
+"Do you deserve one?" she asked.
+
+Before he could answer, Mr. Crewe's explanation of his theories had
+come lamely to a halt. Austen was aware of the renewed scrutiny of Mrs.
+Pomfret, and then Mr. Crewe, whom no social manacles could shackle,
+had broken past her and made his way to them. He continued to treat the
+ground on which Austen was standing as unoccupied.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he said, "you don't know anything about gardens, do
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe you do either," was Victoria's surprising reply.
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed at this pleasantry.
+
+"How are you going to prove it?" he demanded.
+
+"By comparing what you've done with Freddie Ridley's original plan,"
+said Victoria.
+
+Mr. Crewe was nettled.
+
+"Ridley has a lot to learn," he retorted. "He had no conception of what
+was appropriate here."
+
+"Freddie was weak," said Victoria, "but he needed the money. Don't you
+know Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I've been talking to him--on business."
+
+"Oh," said Victoria, "I had no means of knowing. Mrs. Pomfret, I want to
+introduce Mr. Vane, and Miss Pomfret, Mr. Vane."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, who had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel,
+inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her hand
+with her sweetest manner.
+
+"When did you arrive?" she asked.
+
+"Well, the fact is, I haven't arrived yet," said Austen.
+
+"Not arrived" exclaimed Alice, with a puzzled glance into Victoria's
+laughing eyes.
+
+"Perhaps Humphrey will help you along," Victoria suggested, turning to
+him. "He might be induced to give you his celebrated grievance about his
+horses."
+
+"I have given it to him," said Mr. Crewe, briefly.
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Vane, your fortune is made," said Victoria.
+
+"Victoria," said Mrs. Pomfret, in her most imperial voice, "we ought
+to be going instantly, or we shan't have time to drop you at the
+Hammonds'."
+
+"I'll take you over in the new motor car," said Mr. Crewe, with his air
+of conferring a special train.
+
+"How much is gasoline by the gallon?" inquired Victoria.
+
+"I did a favour once for the local manager, and get a special price,"
+said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, taking his hand, "don't forget you are
+coming to dinner to-night. Four people gave out at the last minute, and
+there will be just Alice and myself. I've asked old Mr. Fitzhugh."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll have the motor car brought around."
+
+The latter part of this remark was, needless to say, addressed to
+Victoria.
+
+"It's awfully good of you, Humphrey," she answered, "but the Hammonds
+are on the road to Ripton, and I am going to ask Mr. Vane to drive me
+down there behind that adorable horse of his."
+
+This announcement produced a varied effect upon those who heard it,
+although all experienced surprise. Mrs. Pomfret, in addition to an anger
+which she controlled only as the result of long practice, was horrified,
+and once more levelled her glasses at Austen.
+
+"I think, Victoria, you had better come with us," she said. "We shall
+have plenty of time, if we hurry."
+
+By this time Austen had recovered his breath.
+
+"I'll be ready in an instant," he said, and made brief but polite adieus
+to the three others.
+
+"Good-by," said Alice, vaguely.
+
+"Let me know when anything develops," said Mr. Crewe, with his back to
+his attorney.
+
+Austen found Victoria, her colour heightened a little, waiting for him
+by the driveway. The Pomfrets had just driven off, and Mr. Crewe was
+nowhere to be seen.
+
+"I do not know what you will think of me for taking this for granted,
+Mr. Vane," she said as he took his seat beside her, "but I couldn't
+resist the chance of driving behind your horse."
+
+"I realized," he answered smilingly, "that Pepper was the attraction,
+and I have more reason than ever to be grateful to him."
+
+She glanced covertly at the Vane profile, at the sure, restraining
+hands on the reins which governed with so nice a touch the mettle of the
+horse. His silence gave her time to analyze again her interest in this
+man, which renewed itself at every meeting. In the garden she had been
+struck by the superiority of a nature which set at naught what had been,
+to some smaller spirits, a difficult situation. She recognized this
+quality as inborn, but, not knowing of Sarah Austen, she wondered where
+he got it. Now it was the fact that he refrained from comment that
+pleased her most.
+
+"Did Humphrey actually send for you to take up the injured horse case?"
+she asked.
+
+Austen flushed.
+
+"I'm afraid he did. You seem to know all about it," he added.
+
+"Know all about it Every one within twenty miles of Leith knows about
+it. I'm sure the horse was doctored when he bought him."
+
+"Take care, you may be called as a witness."
+
+"What I want to know is, why you accepted such a silly case," said
+Victoria.
+
+Austen looked quizzically into her upturned face, and she dropped her
+eyes.
+
+"That's exactly what I should have asked myself,--after a while," he
+said.
+
+She laughed with a delicious understanding of "after a while."
+
+"I suppose you think me frightfully forward," she said, in a lowered
+voice, "inviting myself to drive and asking you such a question when
+I scarcely know you. But I just couldn't go on with Mrs. Pomfret,--she
+irritated me so,--and my front teeth are too valuable to drive with
+Humphrey Crewe."
+
+Austen smiled, and secretly agreed with her.
+
+"I should have offered, if I had dared," he said.
+
+"Dared! I didn't know that was your failing. I don't believe you even
+thought of it."
+
+"Nevertheless, the idea occurred to me, and terrified me," said Austen.
+
+"Why?" she asked, turning upon him suddenly. "Why did it terrify you?"
+
+"I should have been presuming upon an accidental acquaintance, which I
+had no means of knowing you wished to continue," he replied, staring at
+his horse's head.
+
+"And I?" Victoria asked. "Presumption multiplies tenfold in a woman,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"A woman confers," said Austen.
+
+She smiled, but with a light in her eyes. This simple sentence seemed to
+reveal yet more of an inner man different from some of those with whom
+her life had been cast. It was an American point of view--this choosing
+to believe that the woman conferred. After offering herself as his
+passenger Victoria, too, had had a moment of terror: the action had been
+the result of an impulse which she did not care to attempt to define.
+She changed the subject.
+
+"You have been winning laurels since I saw you last summer," she said.
+"I hear incidentally you have made our friend Zeb Meader a rich man."
+
+"As riches go, in the town of Mercer," Austen laughed. "As for my
+laurels, they have not yet begun to chafe."
+
+Here was a topic he would have avoided, and yet he was curious to
+discover what her attitude would be. He had antagonized her father, and
+the fact that he was the son of Hilary Vane had given his antagonism
+prominence.
+
+"I am glad you did it for Zeb."
+
+"I should have done it for anybody--much as I like Zeb," he replied
+briefly.
+
+She glanced at him.
+
+"It was--courageous of you," she said.
+
+"I have never looked upon it in that light," he answered. "May I ask you
+how you heard of it?"
+
+She coloured, but faced the question.
+
+"I heard it from my father, at first, and I took an interest--on Zeb
+Meader's account," she added hastily.
+
+Austen was silent.
+
+"Of course," she continued, "I felt a little like boasting of an
+'accidental acquaintance' with the man who saved Zeb Meader's life."
+
+Austen laughed. Then he drew Pepper down to a walk, and turned to her.
+
+"The power of making it more than an accidental acquaintance lies with
+you," he said quietly.
+
+"I have always had an idea that aggression was a man's prerogative,"
+Victoria answered lightly. "And seeing that you have not appeared at
+Fairview for something over a year, I can only conclude that you do not
+choose to exercise it in this case."
+
+Austen was in a cruel quandary.
+
+"I did wish to come," he answered simply, "but--the fact that I have
+had a disagreement with your father has--made it difficult." "Nonsense"
+exclaimed Victoria; "just because you have won a suit against his
+railroad. You don't know my father, Mr. Vane. He isn't the kind of man
+with whom that would make any difference. You ought to talk it over with
+him. He thinks you were foolish to take Zeb Meader's side."
+
+"And you?" Austen demanded quickly.
+
+"You see, I'm a woman," said Victoria, "and I'm prejudiced--for Zeb
+Meader. Women are always prejudiced,--that's our trouble. It seemed to
+me that Zeb was old, and unfortunate, and ought to be compensated, since
+he is unable to work. But of course I suppose I can't be expected to
+understand."
+
+It was true that she could not be expected to understand. He might not
+tell her that his difference with Mr. Flint was not a mere matter of
+taking a small damage suit against his railroad, but a fundamental one.
+And Austen recognized that the justification of his attitude meant an
+arraignment of Victoria's father.
+
+"I wish you might know my father better, Mr. Vane," she went on, "I wish
+you might know him as I know him, if it were possible. You see, I have
+been his constant companion all my life, and I think very few people
+understand him as I do, and realize his fine qualities. He makes no
+attempt to show his best side to the world. His life has been spent in
+fighting, and I am afraid he is apt to meet the world on that footing.
+He is a man of such devotion to his duty that he rarely has a day to
+himself, and I have known him to sit up until the small hours of the
+morning to settle some little matter of justice. I do not think I am
+betraying his confidence when I say that he is impressed with your
+ability, and that he liked your manner the only time he ever talked to
+you. He believes that you have got, in some way, a wrong idea of what he
+is trying to do. Why don't you come up and talk to him again?"
+
+"I am afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen
+replied, with mingled feelings. Victoria's confidence in her father made
+the situation all the more hopeless.
+
+"I'm sure I don't," she answered quickly; "ever since--ever since I
+first laid eyes upon you I have had a kind of belief in you."
+
+"Belief?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes," she said, "belief that--that you had a future. I can't describe
+it," she continued, the colour coming into her face again; "one feels
+that way about some people without being able to put the feeling into
+words. And have a feeling, too, that I should like you to be friends
+with my father."
+
+Neither of them, perhaps, realized the rapidity with which "accidental
+acquaintance" had melted into intimacy. Austen's blood ran faster, but
+it was characteristic of him that he tried to steady himself, for he
+was a Vane. He had thought of her many times during the past year, but
+gradually the intensity of the impression had faded until it had been
+so unexpectedly and vividly renewed to-day. He was not a man to lose his
+head, and the difficulties of the situation made him pause and choose
+his words, while he dared not so much as glance at her as she sat in the
+sunlight beside him.
+
+"I should like to be friends with your father," he answered
+gravely,--the statement being so literally true as to have its
+pathetically humorous aspect.
+
+"I'll tell him so, Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen turned, with a seriousness that dismayed her.
+
+"I must ask you as a favour not to do that," he said.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"In the first place," he answered quietly, "I cannot afford to have Mr.
+Flint misunderstand my motives. And I ought not to mislead you," he went
+on. "In periods of public controversy, such as we are passing through at
+present, sometimes men's views differ so sharply as to make intercourse
+impossible. Your father and I might not agree--politically, let us
+say. For instance," he added, with evident hesitation, "my father and I
+disagree."
+
+Victoria was silent. And presently they came to a wire fence overgrown
+with Virginia creeper, which divided the shaded road from a wide lawn.
+
+"Here we are at the Hammonds', and--thank you," she said.
+
+Any reply he might have made was forestalled. The insistent and
+intolerant horn of an automobile, followed now by the scream of the
+gears, broke the stillness of the country-side, and a familiar voice
+cried out--"Do you want the whole road?"
+
+Austen turned into the Hammonds' drive as the bulldog nose of a motor
+forged ahead, and Mr. Crewe swung in the driver's seat.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he shouted, "you people ought to have ear-trumpets."
+
+The car swerved, narrowly missed a watering fountain where the word
+"Peace" was inscribed, and shot down the hill.
+
+"That manner," said Victoria, as she jumped out of the buggy, "is a
+valuable political asset."
+
+"Does he really intend to go into politics?" Austen asked curiously.
+
+"'Intend' is a mild word applied to Humphrey," she answered;
+"'determined' would suit him better. According to him, there is no game
+that cannot be won by dynamics. 'Get out of the way' is his motto. Mrs.
+Pomfret will tell you how he means to cover the State with good roads
+next year, and take a house in Washington the year after." She held out
+her hand. "Good-by,--and I am ever so much obliged to you for bringing
+me here."
+
+He drove away towards Ripton with many things to think about, with a
+last picture of her in his mind as she paused for an instant in the
+flickering shadows, stroking Pepper's forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS
+
+It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of
+his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these
+pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr.
+Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, and he
+had of late been declaring that he was no summer resident. Wedderburn
+was his home, and there he paid his taxes. Undoubtedly, they were less
+than city taxes.
+
+Although a young man, Mr. Crewe was in all respects a model citizen, and
+a person of many activities. He had built a farmers' club, to which
+the farmers, in gross ingratitude, had never gone. Now it was a summer
+residence and distinctly rentable. He had a standing offer to erect
+a library in the village of Leith provided the town would furnish the
+ground, the books, and permit the name of Crewe to be carved in stone
+over the doorway. The indifference of the town pained him, and he was
+naturally not a little grieved at the lack of proper feeling of
+the country people of America towards those who would better their
+conditions. He had put a large memorial window in the chapel to his
+family.
+
+Mr. Crewe had another standing offer to be one of five men to start a
+farming experiment station--which might pay dividends. He, was a church
+warden; president of a society for turning over crops (which he had
+organized); a member of the State Grange; president of the embryo
+State Economic League (whatever that was); and chairman of the Local
+Improvement Board--also a creation of his own. By these tokens, and
+others too numerous to mention, it would seem that the inhabitants of
+Leith would have jumped at the chance to make such a man one of the five
+hundred in their State Legislature.
+
+To Whitman is attributed the remark that genius is almost one hundred
+per cent directness, but whether or not this applied to Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe remains to be seen. "Dynamics" more surely expressed him. It would
+not seem to be a very difficult feat, to be sure, to get elected to a
+State Legislature of five hundred which met once a year: once in ten
+years, indeed, might have been more appropriate for the five hundred.
+The town of Leith with its thousand inhabitants had one representative,
+and Mr. Crewe had made up his mind he was to be that representative.
+
+There was, needless to say, great excitement in Leith over Mr. Crewe's
+proposed venture into the unknown seas of politics. I mean, of course,
+that portion of Leith which recognized in Mr. Crewe an eligible
+bachelor and a person of social importance, for these qualities were not
+particularly appealing to the three hundred odd farmers whose votes were
+expected to send him rejoicing to the State capital.
+
+"It is so rare with us for a gentleman to go into politics, that we
+ought to do everything we can to elect him," Mrs. Pomfret went about
+declaring. "Women do so much in England, I wonder they don't do more
+here. I was staying at Aylestone Court last year when the Honourable
+Billy Aylestone was contesting the family seat with a horrid Radical,
+and I assure you, my dear, I got quite excited. We did nothing from
+morning till night but electioneer for the Honourable Billy, and kissed
+all the babies in the borough. The mothers were so grateful. Now, Edith,
+do tell Jack instead of playing tennis and canoeing all day he ought to
+help. It's the duty of all young men to help. Noblesse oblige, you know.
+I can't understand Victoria. She really has influence with these country
+people, but she says it's all nonsense. Sometimes I think Victoria has a
+common streak in her--and no wonder. The other day she actually drove to
+the Hammonds' in a buggy with an unknown lawyer from Ripton. But I told
+you about it. Tell your gardener and the people that do your haying,
+dear, and your chicken woman. My chicken woman is most apathetic, but do
+you wonder, with the life they lead?"
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe might have had, with King Charles, the watchword
+"Thorough." He sent to the town clerk for a check-list, and proceeded to
+honour each of the two hundred Republican voters with a personal visit.
+This is a fair example of what took place in the majority of cases.
+
+Out of a cloud of dust emerges an automobile, which halts, with
+protesting brakes, in front of a neat farmhouse, guarded by great
+maples. Persistent knocking by a chauffeur at last brings a woman to the
+door. Mrs. Jenney has a pleasant face and an ample figure.
+
+"Mr. Jenney live here?" cries Mr. Crewe from the driver's seat.
+
+"Yes," says Mrs. Jenney, smiling.
+
+"Tell him I want to see him."
+
+"Guess you'll find him in the apple orchard."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+The chauffeur takes down the bars, Mr. Jenney pricks up his ears, and
+presently--to his amazement--perceives a Leviathan approaching him,
+careening over the ruts of his wood road. Not being an emotional person,
+he continues to pick apples until he is summarily hailed. Then he goes
+leisurely towards the Leviathan.
+
+"Are you Mr. Jenney?"
+
+"Callate to be," says Mr. Jenney, pleasantly.
+
+"I'm Humphrey Crewe."
+
+"How be you?" says Mr. Jenney, his eyes wandering over the Leviathan.
+
+"How are the apples this year?" asks Mr. Crewe, graciously.
+
+"Fair to middlin'," says Mr. Jenney.
+
+"Have you ever tasted my Pippins?" says Mr. Crewe. "A little science
+in cultivation helps along. I'm going to send you a United States
+government pamphlet on the fruit we can raise here."
+
+Mr. Jenney makes an awkward pause by keeping silent on the subject of
+the pamphlet until he shall see it.
+
+"Do you take much interest in politics?"
+
+"Not a great deal," answers Mr. Jenney.
+
+"That's the trouble with Americans," Mr. Crewe declares, "they don't
+care who represents 'em, or whether their government's good or bad."
+
+"Guess that's so," replies Mr. Jenney, politely.
+
+"That sort of thing's got to stop," declares Mr. Crewe; "I'm a candidate
+for the Republican nomination for representative."
+
+"I want to know!" ejaculates Mr. Jenney, pulling his beard. One would
+never suspect that this has been one of Mr. Jenney's chief topics of
+late.
+
+"I'll see that the interests of this town are cared for."
+
+"Let's see," says Mr. Jenney, "there's five hundred in the House, ain't
+there?"
+
+"It's a ridiculous number," says Mr. Crewe, with truth.
+
+"Gives everybody a chance to go," says Mr. Jenney. "I was thar in '78,
+and enjoyed it some."
+
+"Who are you for?" demanded Mr. Crewe, combating the tendency of the
+conversation to slip into a pocket.
+
+"Little early yet, hain't it? Hain't made up my mind. Who's the
+candidates?" asks Mr. Jenney, continuing to stroke his beard.
+
+"I don't know," says Mr. Crewe, "but I do know I've done something for
+this town, and I hope you'll take it into consideration. Come and see
+me when you go to the village. I'll give you a good cigar, and that
+pamphlet, and we'll talk matters over."
+
+"Never would have thought to see one of them things in my orchard," says
+Mr. Jenney. "How much do they cost? Much as a locomotive, don't they?"
+
+It would not be exact to say that, after some weeks of this sort of
+campaigning, Mr. Crewe was discouraged, for such writhe vitality with
+which nature had charged him that he did not know the meaning of the
+word. He was merely puzzled, as a June-bug is puzzled when it bumps up
+against a wire window-screen. He had pledged to him his own gardener,
+Mrs. Pomfret's, the hired men of three of his neighbours, a few modest
+souls who habitually took off their hats to him, and Mr. Ball, of the
+village, who sold groceries to Wedderburn and was a general handy man
+for the summer people. Mr. Ball was an agitator by temperament and a
+promoter by preference. If you were a summer resident of importance and
+needed anything from a sewing-machine to a Holstein heifer, Mr. Ball,
+the grocer, would accommodate you. When Mrs. Pomfret's cook became
+inebriate and refractory, Mr. Ball was sent for, and enticed her to the
+station and on board of a train; when the Chillinghams' tank overflowed,
+Mr. Ball found the proper valve and saved the house from being washed
+away. And it was he who, after Mrs. Pomfret, took the keenest interest
+in Mr. Crewe's campaign. At length came one day when Mr. Crewe pulled up
+in front of the grocery store and called, as his custom was, loudly
+for Mr. Ball. The fact that Mr. Ball was waiting on customers made no
+difference, and presently that gentleman appeared, rubbing his hands
+together.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" he said, "automobile going all right?"
+
+"What's the matter with these fellers?" said Mr. Crewe. "Haven't I done
+enough for the town? Didn't I get 'em rural free delivery? Didn't I
+subscribe to the meeting-house and library, and don't I pay more taxes
+than anybody else?"
+
+"Certain," assented Mr. Ball, eagerly, "certain you do." It did not
+seem to occur to him that it was unfair to make him responsible for the
+scurvy ingratitude of his townsmen. He stepped gingerly down into the
+dust and climbed up on the tool box.
+
+"Look out," said Mr. Crewe, "don't scratch the varnish. What is it?"
+
+Mr. Ball shifted obediently to the rubber-covered step, and bent his
+face to his patron's ear.
+
+"It's railrud," he said.
+
+"Railroad!" shouted Mr. Crewe, in a voice that made the grocer clutch
+his arm in terror. "Don't pinch me like that. Railroad! This town ain't
+within ten miles of the railroad."
+
+"For the love of David," said Mr. Ball, "don't talk so loud, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"What's the railroad got to do with it?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball glanced around him, to make sure that no one was within
+shouting distance.
+
+"What's the railrud got to do with anything in this State?" inquired Mr.
+Ball, craftily.
+
+"That's different," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I'm a corporation man
+myself. They've got to defend 'emselves."
+
+"Certain. I ain't got anything again' 'em," Mr. Ball agreed quickly. "I
+guess they know what they're about. By the bye, Mr. Crewe," he added,
+coming dangerously near the varnish again, and drawing back, "you hain't
+happened to have seen Job Braden, have you?"
+
+"Job Braden!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "Job Braden! What's all this mystery
+about Job Braden? Somebody whispers that name in my ear every day. If
+you mean that smooth-faced cuss that stutters and lives on Braden's
+Hill, I called on him, but he was out. If you see him, tell him to come
+up to Wedderburn, and I'll talk with him."
+
+Mr. Ball made a gesture to indicate a feeling divided between respect
+for Mr. Crewe and despair at the hardihood of such a proposition.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, Job wouldn't go."
+
+"Wouldn't go?"
+
+"He never pays visits,--folks go to him."
+
+"He'd come to see me, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid riot, Mr. Crewe. Job holds his comb rather high."
+
+"Do you mean to say this two-for-a-cent town has a boss?"
+
+"Silas Grantley was born here," said Mr. Ball--for even the worm will
+turn. "This town's got a noble history."
+
+"I don't care anything about Silas Grantley. What I want to know is, how
+this rascal manages to make anything out of the political pickings of a
+town like Leith."
+
+"Well, Job ain't exactly a rascal, Mr. Crewe. He's got a good many of
+them hill farmers in a position of--of gratitude. Enough to control the
+Republican caucus."
+
+"Do you mean he buys their votes?" demanded Mr. Crewe.
+
+"It's like this," explained Mr. Ball, "if one of 'em falls behind in his
+grocery bill, for example, he can always get money from Job. Job takes
+a mortgage, but he don't often close down on 'm. And Job has been
+collectin' credentials in Avalon County for upward of forty years."
+
+"Collecting credentials?"
+
+"Yes. Gets a man nominated to State and county conventions that can't
+go, and goes himself with a bunch of credentials. He's in a position to
+negotiate. He was in all them railrud fights with Jethro Bass, and
+now he does business with Hilary Vane or Brush Bascom when anything
+especial's goin' on. You'd ought to see him, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"I guess I won't waste my time with any picayune boss if the United
+Northeastern Railroads has any hand in this matter," declared Mr. Crewe.
+"Wind her up."
+
+This latter remark was addressed to a long-suffering chauffeur who
+looked like a Sicilian brigand.
+
+"I didn't exactly like to suggest it," said Mr. Ball, rubbing his hands
+and raising his voice above the whir of the machine, "but of course I
+knew Mr. Flint was an intimate friend. A word to him from you--"
+
+But by this Mr. Crewe had got in his second speed and was sweeping
+around a corner lined with farmers' teams, whose animals were behaving
+like circus horses. On his own driveway, where he arrived in incredibly
+brief time, he met his stenographer, farm superintendent, secretary,
+housekeeper, and general utility man, Mr. Raikes. Mr. Raikes was
+elderly, and showed signs of needing a vacation.
+
+"Telephone Mr. Flint, Raikes, and tell him I would like an appointment
+at his earliest convenience, on important business."
+
+Mr. Raikes, who was going for his daily stroll beside the river, wheeled
+and made for the telephone, and brought back the news that Mr. Flint
+would be happy to see Mr. Crewe the next afternoon at four o'clock.
+
+This interview, about which there has been so much controversy in the
+newspapers, and denials and counter-denials from the press bureaus
+of both gentlemen,--this now historic interview began at four o'clock
+precisely the next day. At that hour Mr. Crewe was ushered into that
+little room in which Mr. Flint worked when at Fairview. Like Frederick
+the Great and other famous captains, Mr. Flint believed in an iron
+bedstead regime. The magnate was, as usual, fortified behind his oak
+desk; the secretary with a bend in his back was in modest evidence; and
+an elderly man of comfortable proportions, with a large gold watch-charm
+portraying the rising sun, and who gave, somehow, the polished
+impression of a marble, sat near the window smoking a cigar. Mr. Crewe
+approached the desk with that genial and brisk manner for which he was
+noted and held out his hand to the railroad president.
+
+"We are both business men, and both punctual, Mr. Flint," he said, and
+sat down in the empty chair beside his host, eyeing without particular
+favour him of the watch-charm, whose cigar was not a very good one. "I
+wanted to have a little private conversation with you which might be of
+considerable interest to us both." And Mr. Crewe laid down on the desk a
+somewhat formidable roll of papers.
+
+"I trust the presence of Senator Whitredge will not deter you," answered
+Mr. Flint. "He is an old friend of mine."
+
+Mr. Crewe was on his feet again with surprising alacrity, and beside the
+senator's chair.
+
+"How are you, Senator?" he said, "I have never had the pleasure of
+meeting you, but I know you by reputation."
+
+The senator got to his feet. They shook hands, and exchanged cordial
+greetings; and during the exchange Mr. Crewe looked out of the window,
+and the senator's eyes were fixed on the telephone receiver on Mr.
+Flint's desk. As neither gentleman took hold of the other's fingers very
+hard, they fell apart quickly.
+
+"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Crewe," said the senator. Mr. Crewe
+sat down again, and not being hampered by those shrinking qualities so
+fatal to success he went on immediately:--"There is nothing which I have
+to say that the senator cannot hear. I made the appointment with you,
+Mr. Flint, to talk over a matter which may be of considerable importance
+to us both. I have made up my mind to go to the Legislature."
+
+Mr. Crewe naturally expected to find visible effects of astonishment
+and joy on the faces of his hearers at such not inconsiderable news. Mr.
+Flint, however, looked serious enough, though the senator smiled as he
+blew his smoke out of the window.
+
+"Have you seen Job Braden, Mr. Crewe?" he asked, with genial jocoseness.
+"They tell me that Job is still alive and kicking over in your parts."
+
+"Thank you, Senator," said Mr. Crewe, "that brings me to the very point
+I wish to emphasize. Everywhere in Leith I am met with the remark,
+'Have you seen Job Braden?' And I always answer, 'No, I haven't seen Mr.
+Braden, and I don't intend to see him."'
+
+Mr. Whitredge laughed, and blew out a ring of smoke. Mr. Flint's face
+remained sober.
+
+"Now, Mr. Flint," Mr. Crewe went on, "you and I understand each other,
+and we're on the same side of the fence. I have inherited some interests
+in corporations myself, and I have acquired an interest in others. I
+am a director in several. I believe that it is the duty of property to
+protect itself, and the duty of all good men in politics,--such as the
+senator here,"--(bow from Mr. Whitredge)--"to protect property. I am
+a practical man, and I think I can convince you, if you don't see
+it already, that my determination to go to the Legislature is an
+advantageous thing for your railroad."
+
+"The advent of a reputable citizen into politics is always a good thing
+for the railroad, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Exactly," Mr. Crewe agreed, ignoring the non-committal quality of this
+remark, "and if you get a citizen who is a not inconsiderable property
+holder, a gentleman, and a college graduate,--a man who, by study and
+predilection, is qualified to bring about improved conditions in the
+State, so much the better."
+
+"So much the better," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I thought you would see it that way," Mr. Crewe continued. "Now a man
+of your calibre must have studied to some extent the needs of the State,
+and it must have struck you that certain improvements go hand in hand
+with the prosperity of your railroad."
+
+"Have a cigar, Mr. Crewe. Have another, Senator?" said Mr. Flint. "I
+think that is safe as a general proposition, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"To specify," said Mr. Crewe, laying his hand on the roll of papers
+he had brought, "I have here bills which I have carefully drawn up and
+which I will leave for your consideration. One is to issue bonds for ten
+millions to build State roads."
+
+"Ten millions!" said Mr. Flint, and the senator whistled mildly.
+
+"Think about it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways
+through the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase
+them tremendously. Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in
+automobiles, and remain and buy summer places. The State would have its
+money back in taxes and business in no time at all. I wonder somebody
+hasn't seen it before--the stupidity of the country legislator is
+colossal. And we want forestry laws, and laws for improving the
+condition of the farmers--all practical things. They are all there," Mr.
+Crewe declared, slapping the bundle; "read them, Mr. Flint. If you have
+any suggestions to make, kindly note them on the margin, and I shall be
+glad to go over them with you."
+
+By this time the senator was in a rare posture for him--he was seated
+upright.
+
+"As you know, I am a very busy man, Mr. Crewe," said the railroad
+president.
+
+"No one appreciates that more fully than I do, Mr. Flint," said Mr.
+Crewe; "I haven't many idle hours myself. I think you will find the
+bills and my comments on them well worth your consideration from the
+point of view of advantage to your railroad. They are typewritten, and
+in concrete form. In fact, the Northeastern Railroads and myself must
+work together to our mutual advantage--that has become quite clear to
+me. I shall have need of your help in passing the measures."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint,
+putting down the papers.
+
+"That is," said Mr. Crewe, "if you approve of the bills, and I am
+confident that I shall be able to convince you."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" asked the railroad president.
+
+"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Crewe, unabashed, "send word to
+your man Braden that you've seen me and it's all right."
+
+"I assure you," answered Mr. Flint, giving evidence for the first time
+of a loss of patience, "that neither the Northeastern Railroads nor
+myself, have any more to do with this Braden than you have."
+
+Mr. Crewe, being a man of the world, looked incredulous.
+
+"Senator," Mr. Flint continued, turning to Mr. Whitredge, "you know as
+much about politics in this State as any man of my acquaintance,
+have you ever heard of any connection between this Braden and the
+Northeastern Railroads?"
+
+The senator had a laugh that was particularly disarming.
+
+"Bless your soul, no," he replied. "You will pardon me, Mr. Crewe, but
+you must have been listening to some farmer's tale. The railroad is
+the bugaboo in all these country romances. I've seen old Job Braden at
+conventions ever since I was a lad. He's a back number, one of the few
+remaining disciples and imitators of Jethro Bass: talks like him
+and acts like him. In the old days when there were a lot of little
+railroads, he and Bijah Bixby and a few others used to make something
+out of them, but since the consolidation, and Mr. Flint's presidency,
+Job stays at home. They tell me he runs Leith yet. You'd better go over
+and fix it up with him."
+
+A somewhat sarcastic smile of satisfaction was playing over Mr. Flint's
+face as he listened to the senator's words. As a matter of fact, they
+were very nearly true as regarded Job Braden, but Mr. Crewe may be
+pardoned for thinking that Mr. Flint was not showing him quite the
+confidence due from one business and corporation man to another. He was
+by no means abashed,--Mr. Crewe had too much spirit for that. He merely
+became--as a man whose watchword is "thorough" will--a little more
+combative.
+
+"Well, read the bills anyway, Mr. Flint, and I'll come and go over them
+with you. You can't fail to see my arguments, and all I ask is that you
+throw the weight of your organization at the State capital for them when
+they come up."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"The men who have held office in this State," he said, "have always been
+willing to listen to any suggestion I may have thought proper to make to
+them. This is undoubtedly because I am at the head of the property
+which pays the largest taxes. Needless to say I am chary of making
+suggestions. But I am surprised that you should have jumped at a
+conclusion which is the result of a popular and unfortunately prevalent
+opinion that the Northeastern Railroads meddled in any way with the
+government or politics of this State. I am glad of this opportunity of
+assuring you that we do not," he continued, leaning forward and holding
+up his hand to ward off interruption, "and I know that Senator Whitredge
+will bear me out in this statement, too."
+
+The senator nodded gravely. Mr. Crewe, who was anything but a fool, and
+just as assertive as Mr. Flint, cut in.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Flint," he said, "I know what a lobby is. I haven't been
+a director in railroads myself for nothing. I have no objection to a
+lobby. You employ counsel before the Legislature, don't you--"
+
+"We do," said Mr. Flint, interrupting, "the best and most honourable
+counsel we can find in the State. When necessary, they appear before
+the legislative committees. As a property holder in the State, and an
+admirer of its beauties, and as its well-wisher, it will give me great
+pleasure to look over your bills, and use whatever personal influence I
+may have as a citizen to forward them, should they meet my approval.
+And I am especially glad to do this as a neighbour, Mr. Crewe. As a
+neighbour," he repeated, significantly.
+
+The president of the Northeastern Railroads rose as he spoke these
+words, and held out his hand to Mr. Crewe. It was perhaps a coincidence
+that the senator rose also.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll call around again in about two weeks.
+Come and see me sometime, Senator." "Thank you," said the senator, "I
+shall be happy. And if you are ever in your automobile near the town of
+Ramsey, stop at my little farm, Mr. Crewe. I trust to be able soon to
+congratulate you on a step which I am sure will be but the beginning of
+a long and brilliant political career."
+
+"Thanks," said Mr. Crewe; "by the bye, if you could see your way to drop
+a hint to that feller Braden, I should be much obliged."
+
+The senator shook his head and laughed.
+
+"Job is an independent cuss," he said, "I'm afraid he'd regard that as
+an unwarranted trespass on his preserves."
+
+Mr. Crewe was ushered out by the stooping secretary, Mr. Freeman; who,
+instead of seizing Mr. Crewe's hand as he had Austen Vane's, said not
+a word. But Mr. Crewe would have been interested if he could have heard
+Mr. Flint's first remark to the senator after the door was closed on
+his back. It did not relate to Mr. Crewe, but to the subject under
+discussion which he had interrupted; namely, the Republican candidates
+for the twenty senatorial districts of the State.
+
+On its way back to Leith the red motor paused in front of Mr. Ball's
+store, and that gentleman was summoned in the usual manner.
+
+"Do you see this Braden once in a while?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball looked knowing.
+
+"Tell him I want to have a talk with him," said Mr. Crewe. "I've been
+to see Mr. Flint, and I think matters can be arranged. And mind you, no
+word about this, Ball."
+
+"I guess I understand a thing or two," said Mr. Ball. "Trust me to
+handle it."
+
+Two days later, as Mr. Crewe was seated in his study, his man entered
+and stood respectfully waiting for the time when he should look up from
+his book.
+
+"Well, what is it now, Waters?"
+
+"If you please, sir," said the man, "a strange message has come over
+the telephone just now that you were to be in room number twelve of
+the Ripton House to-morrow at ten o'clock. They wouldn't give any name,
+sir," added the dignified Waters, who, to tell the truth, was somewhat
+outraged, "nor tell where they telephoned from. But it was a man's voice,
+sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+He spent much of the afternoon and evening debating whether or not his
+dignity would permit him to go. But he ordered the motor at half-past
+nine, and at ten o'clock precisely the clerk at the Ripton House was
+bowing to him and handing him, deferentially, a dripping pen.
+
+"Where's room number twelve?" said the direct Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh," said the clerk, and possessing a full share of the worldly wisdom
+of his calling, he smiled broadly. "I guess you'll find him up there,
+Mr. Crewe. Front, show the gentleman to number twelve."
+
+The hall boy knocked on the door of number twelve.
+
+"C--come in," said a voice. "Come in."
+
+Mr. Crewe entered, the hall boy closed the door, and he found himself
+face to face with a comfortable, smooth-faced man seated with great
+placidity on a rocking-chair in the centre of the room, between the bed
+and the marble-topped table: a man to whom, evidently, a rich abundance
+of thought was sufficient company, for he had neither newspaper nor
+book. He rose in a leisurely fashion, and seemed the very essence of the
+benign as he stretched forth his hand.
+
+"I'm Mr. Crewe," the owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the
+hand with no exaggeration of cordiality. The situation jarred on him a
+trifle.
+
+"I know. Seed you on the road once or twice. How be you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe sat down.
+
+"I suppose you are Mr. Braden," he said.
+
+Mr. Braden sank into the rocker and fingered a waistcoat pocket full of
+cigars that looked like a section of a cartridge-belt.
+
+"T--try one of mine," he said.
+
+"I only smoke once after breakfast," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Abstemious, be you? Never could find that it did me any hurt."
+
+This led to an awkward pause, Mr. Crewe not being a man who found profit
+in idle discussion. He glanced at Mr. Braden's philanthropic and beaming
+countenance, which would have made the fortune of a bishop. It was not
+usual for Mr. Crewe to find it difficult to begin a conversation, or to
+have a companion as self-sufficient as himself. This man Braden had all
+the fun, apparently, in sitting in a chair and looking into space that
+Stonewall Jackson had, or an ordinary man in watching a performance of
+"A Trip to Chinatown." Let it not be inferred, again, that Mr. Crewe was
+abashed; but he was puzzled.
+
+"I had an engagement in Ripton this morning," he said, "to see about
+some business matters. And after I received your telephone I thought I'd
+drop in here."
+
+"Didn't telephone," said Mr. Braden, placidly.
+
+"What!" said Mr. Crewe, "I certainly got a telephone message."
+
+"N--never telephone," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"I certainly got a message from you," Mr. Crewe protested.
+
+"Didn't say it was from me--didn't say so--did they--"
+
+"No," said Mr. Crewe, "but--"
+
+"Told Ball you wanted to have me see you, didn't you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe, when he had unravelled this sentence, did not fancy the way
+it was put.
+
+"I told Ball I was seeing everybody in Leith," he answered, "and that I
+had called on you, and you weren't at home. Ball inferred that you had a
+somewhat singular way of seeing people."
+
+"You don't understand," was Mr. Braden's somewhat enigmatic reply.
+
+"I understand pretty well," said Mr. Crewe. "I'm a candidate for the
+Republican nomination for representative from Leith, and I want your
+vote and influence. You probably know what I have done for the town, and
+that I'm the biggest taxpayer, and an all-the-year-round resident."
+
+"S--some in Noo York--hain't you?"
+
+"Well, you can't expect a man in my position and with my interests to
+stay at home all the time. I feel that I have a right to ask the town
+for this nomination. I have some bills here which I'll request you to
+read over, and you will see that I have ideas which are of real value
+to the State. The State needs waking up-progressive measures. You're a
+farmer, ain't you?"
+
+"Well, I have be'n."
+
+"I can improve the condition of the farmer one hundred per cent, and if
+my road system is followed, he can get his goods to market for about a
+tenth of what it costs him now. We have infinitely valuable forests
+in the State which are being wasted by lumbermen, which ought to be
+preserved. You read those bills, and what I have written about them."
+
+"You don't understand," said Mr. Braden, drawing a little closer and
+waving aside the manuscript with his cigar.
+
+"Don't understand what?"
+
+"Don't seem to understand," repeated Mr. Braden, confidingly laying his
+hand on Mr. Crewe's knee. "Candidate for representative, be you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Crewe, who was beginning to resent the manner in
+which he deemed he was being played with, "I told you I was."
+
+"M--made all them bills out before you was chose?" said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mr. Crewe grew red in the face.
+
+"I am interested in these questions," he said stiffly.
+
+"Little mite hasty, wahn't it?" Mr. Braden remarked equably, "but you've
+got plenty of time and money to fool with such things, if you've a mind
+to. Them don't amount to a hill of beans in politics. Nobody pays any
+attention to that sort of fireworks down to the capital, and if they
+was to get into committee them Northeastern Railroads fellers'd bury 'em
+deeper than the bottom of Salem pond. They don't want no such things as
+them to pass."
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Crewe, "but you haven't read 'em."
+
+"I know what they be," said Mr. Braden, "I've be'n in politics more
+years than you've be'n livin', I guess. I don't want to read 'em," he
+announced, his benign manner unchanged.
+
+"I think you have made a mistake so far as the railroad is concerned,
+Mr. Braden," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm a practical man myself, and I don't
+indulge in moonshine. I am a director in one or two railroads. I have
+talked this matter over with Mr. Flint, and incidentally with Senator
+Whitredge."
+
+"Knowed Whitredge afore you had any teeth," said Mr. Braden, who did not
+seem to be greatly impressed, "know him intimate. What'd you go to Flint
+for?"
+
+"We have interests in common," said Mr. Crewe, "and I am rather a close
+friend of his. My going to the Legislature will be, I think, to our
+mutual advantage."
+
+"O--ought to have come right to me," said Mr. Braden, leaning over until
+his face was in close proximity to Mr. Crewe's. "Whitredge told you to
+come to me, didn't he?"
+
+Mr. Crewe was a little taken aback.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name," he admitted.
+
+"He knows. Said I was the man to see if you was a candidate, didn't he?
+Told you to talk to Job Braden, didn't he?"
+
+Now Mr. Crewe had no means of knowing whether Senator Whitredge had been
+in conference with Mr. Braden or not.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name casually, in some connection," said Mr.
+Crewe.
+
+"He knows," Mr. Braden repeated, with a finality that spoke volumes for
+the senator's judgment; and he bent over into Mr. Crewe's ear, with the
+air of conveying a mild but well-merited reproof, "You'd ought to
+come right to me in the first place. I could have saved you all that
+unnecessary trouble of seein' folks. There hasn't be'n a representative
+left the town of Leith for thirty years that I hain't agreed to.
+Whitredge knows that. If I say you kin go, you kin go. You understand,"
+said Mr. Braden, with his fingers on Mr. Crewe's knee once more.
+
+Five minutes later Mr. Crewe emerged into the dazzling sun of the Ripton
+square, climbed into his automobile, and turned its head towards Leith,
+strangely forgetting the main engagement which he said had brought him
+to town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE TRIALS OF AN HONOURABLE
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was transformed, by
+one of those subtle and inexplicable changes which occur in American
+politics, into the Honourable Humphrey Crewe. And, as interesting bits
+of news about important people are bound to leak out, it became known in
+Leith that he had subscribed to what is known as a Clipping Bureau. Two
+weeks after the day he left Mr. Braden's presence in the Ripton
+House the principal newspapers of the country contained the startling
+announcement that the well-known summer colony of Leith was to be
+represented in the State Legislature by a millionaire. The Republican
+nomination, which Mr. Crewe had secured, was equivalent to an election.
+
+For a little time after that Mr. Crewe, although naturally an important
+and busy man, scarcely had time to nod to his friends on the road.
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, "who was so used to dropping
+in to dinner, hasn't had a moment to write me a line to thank me for
+the statesman's diary I bought for him in London this spring. They're
+in that new red leather, and Aylestone says he finds his so useful. I
+dropped in at Wedderburn to-day to see if I could be of any help, and
+the poor man was buttonholed by two reporters who had come all the way
+from New York to see him. I hope he won't overdo it."
+
+It was true. Mr. Crewe was to appear in the Sunday supplements. "Are
+our Millionaires entering Politics?" Mr. Crewe, with his usual gracious
+hospitality, showed the reporters over the place, and gave them
+suggestions as to the best vantage-points in which to plant their
+cameras. He himself was at length prevailed upon to be taken in a rough
+homespun suit, and with a walking-stick in his hand, appraising with a
+knowing eye a flock of his own sheep. Pressed a little, he consented to
+relate something of the systematic manner in which he had gone about to
+secure this nomination: how he had visited in person the homes of his
+fellow-townsmen. "I knew them all, anyway," he is quoted as saying; "we
+have had the pleasantest of relationships during the many years I have
+been a resident of Leith."
+
+"Beloved of his townspeople," this part of the article was headed. No,
+these were not Mr. Crewe's words--he was too modest for that. When urged
+to give the name of one of his townsmen who might deal with this and
+other embarrassing topics, Mr. Ball was mentioned. "Beloved of his
+townspeople" was Mr. Ball's phrase. "Although a multi-millionaire,
+no man is more considerate of the feelings and the rights of his more
+humble neighbours. Send him to the Legislature! We'd send him to the
+United States Senate if we could. He'll land there, anyway." Such was
+a random estimate (Mr. Ball's) the reporters gathered on their way to
+Ripton. Mr. Crewe did not hesitate to say that the prosperity of the
+farmers had risen as a result of his labours at Wedderburn where the
+most improved machinery and methods were adopted. His efforts to raise
+the agricultural, as well as the moral and intellectual, tone of the
+community had been unceasing.
+
+Then followed an intelligent abstract of the bills he was to
+introduce--the results of a progressive and statesmanlike brain. There
+was an account of him as a methodical and painstaking business man whose
+suggestions to the boards of directors of which he was a member had
+been invaluable. The article ended with a list of the clubs to which he
+belonged, of the societies which he had organized and of those of which
+he was a member,--and it might have been remarked by a discerning reader
+that most of these societies were State affairs. Finally there was a pen
+portrait of an Apollo Belvidere who wore the rough garb of a farmer (on
+the days when the press was present).
+
+Mr. Crewe's incessant trials, which would have taxed a less rugged
+nature, did not end here. About five o'clock one afternoon a
+pleasant-appearing gentleman with a mellifluous voice turned up who
+introduced himself as ex (State) Senator Grady. The senator was from
+Newcastle, that city out of the mysterious depths of which so many
+political stars have arisen. Mr. Crewe cancelled a long-deferred
+engagement with Mrs. Pomfret, and invited the senator to stay to dinner;
+the senator hesitated, explained that he was just passing through
+Ripton, and, as it was a pleasant afternoon, had called to "pay his
+respects"; but Mr. Crewe's well-known hospitality would accept no
+excuses. Mr. Crewe opened a box of cigars which he had bought especially
+for the taste of State senators and a particular grade of Scotch
+whiskey.
+
+They talked politics for four hours. Who would be governor? The senator
+thought Asa Gray would. The railroad was behind him, Mr. Crewe observed
+knowingly. The senator remarked that Mr. Crewe was no gosling. Mr.
+Crewe, as political-geniuses will, asked as many questions as the
+emperor of Germany--pertinent questions about State politics. Senator
+Grady was tremendously impressed with his host's programme of bills,
+and went over them so painstakingly that Mr. Crewe became more and more
+struck with Senator Grady's intelligence. The senator told Mr. Crewe
+that just such a man as he was needed to pull the State out of the rut
+into which she had fallen. Mr. Crewe said that he hoped to find such
+enlightened men in the Legislature as the senator. The senator let it be
+known that he had read the newspaper articles, and had remarked that Mr.
+Crewe was close to the president of the Northeastern Railroads.
+
+"Such a man as you," said the senator, looking at the remainder of the
+Scotch whiskey, "will have the railroad behind you, sure."
+
+"One more drink," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I must go," said Mr. Grady, pouring it out, "but that reminds me. It
+comes over me sudden-like, as I sit here, that you certainly ought to be
+in the new encyclopeedie of the prominent men of the State. But sure you
+have received an application."
+
+"It is probable that my secretary has one," said Mr. Crewe, "but he
+hasn't called it to my attention."
+
+"You must get in that book, Mr. Crewe," said the senator, with an
+intense earnestness which gave the impression of alarm; "after what
+you've told me to-night I'll see to it myself that you get in. It may be
+that I've got some of the sample pages here, if I haven't left them at
+home," said Mr. Grady, fumbling in an ample inside pocket, and drawing
+forth a bundle. "Sure, here they are. Ain't that luck for you? Listen!
+'Asa P. Gray was born on the third of August, eighteen forty-seven, the
+seventh son of a farmer. See, there's a space in the end they left
+to fill up when he's elicted governor! Here's another. The Honourable
+Hilary Vane comes from one of the oldest Puritan families in the State,
+the Vanes of Camden Street--' Here's another. 'The Honourable Brush
+Bascom of Putnam County is the son of poor but honourable parents--'
+Look at the picture of him. Ain't that a handsome steel-engravin' of the
+gentleman?"
+
+Mr. Crewe gazed contemplatively at the proof, but was too busy with
+his own thoughts to reflect that there was evidently not much poor or
+honourable about Mr. Bascom now.
+
+"Who's publishing this?" he asked.
+
+"Fogarty and Company; sure they're the best publishers in the State, as
+you know, Mr. Crewe. They have the State printing. Wasn't it fortunate
+I had the proofs with me? Tim Fogarty slipped them into me pocket when
+I was leavin' Newcastle. 'The book is goin' to press the day after
+eliction,' says he, 'John,' says he, 'you know I always rely on your
+judgment, and if you happen to think of anybody between now and then
+who ought to go in, you'll notify me,' says he. When I read the bills
+to-night, and saw the scope of your work, it came over me in a flash
+that Humphrey Crewe was the man they left out. You'll get a good man to
+write your life, and what you done for the town and State, and all them
+societies and bills, won't you? 'Twould be a thousand pities not to have
+it right."
+
+"How much does it cost?" Mr. Crewe inquired.
+
+"Sure I forgot to ask Tim Fogarty. Mebbe he has it here. I signed one
+myself, but I couldn't afford the steelengravin'. Yes, he slipped one
+in. Two hundred dollars for a two-page biography, and, three hundred for
+the steelengravin'. Five hundred dollars. I didn't know it was so cheap
+as that," exclaimed the senator, "and everybody in the State havin' to
+own one in self-protection. You don't happen to have a pen about you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe waved the senator towards his own desk, and Mr. Grady filled
+out the blank.
+
+"It's lucky we are that I didn't drop in after eliction, and the book
+in press," he remarked; "and I hope you'll give him a good photograph.
+This's for you, I'll take this to Tim myself," and he handed the pen for
+Mr. Crewe to sign with.
+
+Mr. Crewe read over the agreement carefully, as a business man should,
+before putting his signature to it. And then the senator, with renewed
+invitations for Mr. Crewe to call on him when he came to Newcastle, took
+his departure. Afterwards Mr. Crewe remained so long in reflection that
+his man Waters became alarmed, and sought him out and interrupted his
+revery.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Pomfret, who was merely "driving by" with her
+daughter Alice and Beatrice Chillingham, spied Mr. Crewe walking about
+among the young trees he was growing near the road, and occasionally
+tapping them with his stout stick. She poked her coachman in the back
+and cried:--"Humphrey, you're such an important man now that I despair
+of ever seeing you again. What was the matter last night?"
+
+"A politician from Newcastle," answered Mr. Crewe, continuing to tap the
+trees, and without so much as a glance at Alice.
+
+"Well, if you're as important as this before you're elected, I can't
+think what it will be afterwards," Mrs. Pomfret lamented. "Poor dear
+Humphrey is so conscientious. When can you come, Humphrey?"
+
+"Don't know," said Mr. Crewe; "I'll try to come tonight, but I may be
+stopped again. Here's Waters now."
+
+The three people in Mrs. Pomfret's victoria were considerably impressed
+to see the dignified Waters hurrying down the slope from the house
+towards them. Mr. Crewe continued to tap the trees, but drew a little
+nearer the carriage.
+
+"If you please, sir," said Waters, "there's a telephone call for you
+from Newcastle. It's urgent, sir."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"They won't give their names, sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, and with a grin which spoke volumes for
+the manner in which he was harassed he started towards the house--in no
+great hurry, however. Reaching the instrument, and saying "Hello" in
+his usually gracious manner, he was greeted by a voice with a decided
+Hibernian-American accent.
+
+"Am I talkin' to Mr. Crewe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Crewe?"
+
+"Yes--yes, of course you are. Who are you?"
+
+"I'm the president of the Paradise Benevolent and Military Association,
+Mr. Crewe. Boys that work in the mills, you know," continued the voice,
+caressingly. "Sure you've heard of us. We're five hundred strong, and
+all of us good Republicans as the president. We're to have our annual
+fall outing the first of October in Finney Grove, and we'd like to have
+you come down."
+
+"The first of October?" said Mr. Crewe. "I'll consult my engagement
+book."
+
+"We'd like to have a good picture of you in our programme, Mr. Crewe. We
+hope you'll oblige us. You're such an important figure in State politics
+now you'd ought to have a full page."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"What does it cost?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+"Sure," said the caressing voice of the president, "whatever you like."
+
+"I'll send you a check for five dollars, and a picture," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The answer to this was a hearty laugh, which the telephone reproduced
+admirably. The voice now lost a little of its caressing note and partook
+of a harder quality.
+
+"You're a splendid humorist, Mr. Crewe. Five dollars wouldn't pay for
+the plate and the paper. A gentleman like you could give us twenty-five,
+and never know it was gone. You won't be wanting to stop in the
+Legislature, Mr. Crewe, and we remember our friends in Newcastle."
+
+"Very well, I'll see what I can do. Good-by, I've got an engagement,"
+said Mr. Crewe, and slammed down the telephone. He seated himself in his
+chair, and the pensive mood so characteristic (we are told) of statesmen
+came over him once more.
+
+While these and other conferences and duties too numerous to mention
+were absorbing Mr. Crewe, he was not too busy to bear in mind the
+pleasure of those around him who had not received such an abundance
+of the world's blessings as he. The townspeople of Leith were about
+to bestow on him their greatest gift. What could he do to show his
+appreciation? Wrestling with this knotty problem, a brilliant idea
+occurred to him,--he would have a garden-party: invite everybody in
+town, and admit them to the sanctities of Wedderburn; yes, even of
+Wedderburn house, that they might behold with their own eyes the carved
+ivory elephants and other contents of glass cabinets which reeked of
+the Sunday afternoons of youth. Being a man of action, Mr. Pardriff
+was summoned at once from Leith and asked for his lowest price on eight
+hundred and fifty invitations and a notice of the party in the Ripton
+Record.
+
+"Goin' to invite Democrats, too?" demanded Mr. Pardriff, glancing at the
+check-list.
+
+"Everybody," said Mr. Crewe, with unparalleled generosity. "I won't draw
+any distinction between friends and enemies. They're all neighbours."
+
+"And some of 'em might, by accident, vote the Republican ticket," Mr.
+Pardriff retorted, narrowing his eyes a little.
+
+Mr. Crewe evidently thought this a negligible suggestion, for he did not
+reply to it, but presently asked for the political news in Ripton.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pardriff, "you know they tried to get Austen Vane to
+run for State senator, don't you?"
+
+"Vane Why, he ain't a full-fledged lawyer yet. I've hired him in an
+unimportant case. Who asked him to run?"
+
+"Young Tom Gaylord and a delegation."
+
+"He couldn't have got it," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Pardriff, "he might have given Billings a
+hustle for the nomination."
+
+"You supported Billings, I noticed," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+Mr. Pardriff winked an eye.
+
+"I'm not ready to walk the ties when I go to Newcastle," he remarked,
+"and Nat ain't quite bankrupt yet. The Gaylords," continued Mr.
+Pardriff, who always took the cynical view of a man of the world, "have
+had some row with the Northeastern over lumber shipments. I understand
+they're goin' to buck 'em for a franchise in the next Legislature, just
+to make it lively. The Gaylords ain't exactly poverty-stricken, but they
+might as well try to move Sawanec Mountain as the Northeastern."
+
+It was a fact that young Tom Gaylord had approached Austen Vane with
+a "delegation" to request him to be a candidate for the Republican
+nomination for the State senate in his district against the railroad
+candidate and Austen's late opponent, the Honourable Nat Billings. It
+was a fact also that Austen had invited the delegation to sit down,
+although there were only two chairs, and that a wrestling match had
+ensued with young Tom, in the progress of which one chair had been
+broken. Young Tom thought it was time to fight the railroad, and
+perceived in Austen the elements of a rebel leader. Austen had
+undertaken to throw young Tom out of a front window, which was a large,
+old-fashioned one,--and after Herculean efforts had actually got him
+on the ledge, when something in the street caught his eye and made him
+desist abruptly. The something was the vision of a young woman in a
+brown linen suit seated in a runabout and driving a horse almost as
+handsome as Pepper.
+
+When the delegation, after exhausting their mental and physical powers
+of persuasion, had at length taken their departure in disgust, Austen
+opened mechanically a letter which had very much the appearance of
+an advertisement, and bearing a one-cent stamp. It announced that a
+garden-party would take place at Wedderburn, the home of the Honourable
+Humphrey Crewe, at a not very distant date, and the honour of the
+bearer's presence was requested. Refreshments would be served, and the
+Ripton Band would dispense music. Below, in small print, were minute
+directions where to enter, where to hitch your team, and where to go
+out.
+
+Austen was at a loss to know what fairy godmother had prompted Mr. Crewe
+to send him an invitation, the case of the injured horse not having
+advanced with noticeable rapidity. Nevertheless, the prospect of the
+garden-party dawned radiantly for him above what had hitherto been a
+rather gloomy horizon. Since the afternoon he had driven Victoria to
+the Hammonds' he had had daily debates with an imaginary man in his own
+likeness who, to the detriment of his reading of law, sat across his
+table and argued with him. The imaginary man was unprincipled, and
+had no dignity, but he had such influence over Austen Vane that he had
+induced him to drive twice within sight of Fairview gate, when Austen
+Vane had turned round again. The imaginary man was for going to call on
+her and letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane,
+had an uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to
+its simplest terms. He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed,
+ineradicable, and unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument;
+he felt (as Mr. Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a
+forerunner of, a strife to come between them; and add to this the facts
+that Mr. Flint was very rich and Austen Vane poor, that Victoria's
+friends were not his friends, and that he had grave doubts that the
+interest she had evinced in him sprang from any other incentive than
+a desire to have communication with various types of humanity, his
+hesitation as to entering Mr. Flint's house was natural enough.
+
+It was of a piece with Mr. Crewe's good fortune of getting what he
+wanted that the day of the garden-party was the best that September
+could do in that country, which is to say that it was very beautiful. A
+pregnant stillness enwrapped the hills, a haze shot with gold dust, like
+the filmiest of veils, softened the distant purple and the blue-black
+shadows under the pines. Austen awoke from his dream in this enchanted
+borderland to find himself in a long line of wagons filled with people
+in their Sunday clothes,--the men in black, and the young women in
+white, with gay streamers, wending their way through the rear-entrance
+drive of Wedderburn, where one of Mr. Crewe's sprucest employees was
+taking up the invitation cards like tickets,--a precaution to prevent
+the rowdy element from Ripton coming and eating up the refreshments.
+Austen obediently tied Pepper in a field, as he was directed, and made
+his way by a path through the woods towards the house, where the Ripton
+Band could be heard playing the second air in the programme, "Don't you
+wish you'd Waited?"
+
+For a really able account of that memorable entertainment see the Ripton
+Record of that week, for we cannot hope to vie with Mr. Pardriff when
+his heart is really in his work. How describe the noble figure of Mr.
+Crewe as it burst upon Austen when he rounded the corner of the house?
+Clad in a rough-and-ready manner, with a Gladstone collar to indicate
+the newly acquired statesmanship, and fairly radiating geniality, Mr.
+Crewe stood at the foot of the steps while the guests made the circuit
+of the driveway; and they carefully avoided, in obedience to a warning
+sign, the grass circle in the centre. As man and wife confronted him,
+Mr. Crewe greeted them in hospitable but stentorian tones that rose
+above the strains of "Don't you wish you'd Waited?" It was Mr. Ball who
+introduced his townspeople to the great man who was to represent them.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Crewe, with his eyes on the geraniums. "Mr.
+and Mrs. Perley Wright, eh? Make yourselves at home. Everything's
+free--you'll find the refreshments on the back porch--just have an eye
+to the signs posted round, that's all." And Mr. and Mrs. Perley Wright,
+overwhelmed by such a welcome, would pass on into a back eddy of
+neighbours, where they would stick, staring at a sign requesting them
+please not to pick the flowers.
+
+"Can't somebody stir 'em up?" Mr. Crewe shouted in an interval when the
+band had stopped to gather strength for a new effort. "Can't somebody
+move 'em round to see the cows and what's in the house and the
+automobile and the horses? Move around the driveway, please. It's so hot
+here you can't breathe. Some of you wanted to see what was in the house.
+Now's your chance."
+
+This graceful appeal had some temporary effect, but the congestion soon
+returned, when a man of the hour appeared, a man whose genius scattered
+the groups and who did more to make the party a success than any single
+individual,--Mr. Hamilton Tooting, in a glorious white silk necktie with
+purple flowers.
+
+"I'll handle 'em, Mr. Crewe," he said; "a little brains'll start 'em
+goin'. Come along here, Mr. Wright, and I'll show you the best cows this
+side of the Hudson Riverall pedigreed prize winners. Hello, Aust, you
+take hold and get the wimmen-folks interested in the cabinets. You know
+where they are."
+
+"There's a person with some sense," remarked Mrs. Pomfret, who had
+been at a little distance among a group of summer-resident ladies and
+watching the affair with shining eyes. "I'll help. Come, Edith; come,
+Victoria where's Victoria?--and dear Mrs. Chillingham. We American women
+are so deplorably lacking in this kind of experience. Alice, take
+some of the women into the garden. I'm going to interest that dear,
+benevolent man who looks so helpless, and doing his best to have a good
+time."
+
+The dear, benevolent man chanced to be Mr. Job Braden, who was standing
+somewhat apart with his hands in his pockets. He did not move as Mrs.
+Pomfret approached him, holding her glasses to her eyes.
+
+"How are you?" exclaimed that lady, extending a white-gloved hand with
+a cordiality that astonished her friends. "It is so pleasant to see you
+here, Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"How be you?" said Mr. Braden, taking her fingers in the gingerly manner
+he would have handled one of Mr. Crewe's priceless curios. The giraffe
+Mr. Barnum had once brought to Ripton was not half as interesting as
+this immaculate and mysterious production of foreign dressmakers and
+French maids, but he refrained from betraying it. His eye rested on the
+lorgnette.
+
+"Near-sighted, be you?" he inquired,--a remark so unexpected that for
+the moment Mrs. Pomfret was deprived of speech.
+
+"I manage to see better with--with these," she gasped, "when we get
+old--you know."
+
+"You hain't old," said Mr. Braden, gallantly. "If you be," he added,
+his eye travelling up and down the Parisian curves, "I wouldn't have
+suspected it--not a mite."
+
+"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr.--Mr.--" she replied
+hurriedly. "Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?"
+
+"Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me."
+
+"How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"I hain't heard your name," he said.
+
+"Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret--a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's. Whenever he
+has his friends with him, like this, I come over and help him. It is so
+difficult for a bachelor to entertain, Mr. Braden."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Braden, bending alarmingly near her ear, "there's one
+way out of it."
+
+"What's that?" said Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"Git married," declared Mr. Braden.
+
+"How very clever you are, Mr. Braden! I wish poor dear Mr. Crewe would
+get married--a wife could take so many burdens off his shoulders. You
+don't know Mr. Crewe very well, do you?"
+
+"Callate to--so so," said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret was at sea again.
+
+"I mean, do you see him often?"
+
+"Seen him once," said Mr. Braden. "G-guess that's enough."
+
+"You're a shrewd judge of human nature, Mr. Braden," she replied,
+tapping him on the shoulder with the lorgnette, "but you can have no
+idea how good he is--how unceasingly he works for others. He is not
+a man who gives much expression to his feelings, as no doubt you have
+discovered, but if you knew him as I do, you would realize how much
+affection he has for his country neighbours and how much he has their
+welfare at heart."
+
+"Loves 'em--does he--loves 'em?"
+
+"He is like an English gentleman in his sense of responsibility,"
+said Mrs. Pomfret; "over there, you know, it is a part of a country
+gentleman's duty to improve the condition of his--his neighbours. And
+then Mr. Crewe is so fond of his townspeople that he couldn't resist
+doing this for them," and she indicated with a sweep of her eyeglasses
+the beatitude with which they were surrounded.
+
+"Wahn't no occasion to," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"What!" cried Mrs. Pomfret, who had been walking on ice for some time.
+
+"This hain't England--is it? Hain't England?"
+
+"No," she admitted, "but--"
+
+"Hain't England," said Mr. Braden, and leaned forward until he was
+within a very few inches of her pearl ear-ring. "He'll be chose all
+right--d-don't fret--he'll be chose."
+
+"My dear Mr. Braden, I've no doubt of it--Mr. Crewe's so popular," she
+cried, removing her ear-ring abruptly from the danger zone. "Do make
+yourself at home," she added, and retired from Mr. Braden's company a
+trifle disconcerted,--a new experience for Mrs. Pomfret. She wondered
+whether all country people were like Mr. Braden, but decided, after
+another experiment or two, that he was an original. More than once
+during the afternoon she caught sight of him, beaming upon the
+festivities around him. But she did not renew the conversation.
+
+To Austen Vane, wandering about the grounds, Mr. Crewe's party
+presented a sociological problem of no small interest. Mr. Crewe himself
+interested him, and he found himself speculating how far a man would go
+who charged the fastnesses of the politicians with a determination not
+to be denied and a bank account to be reckoned with. Austen talked to
+many of the Leith farmers whom he had known from boyhood, thanks to
+his custom of roaming the hills; they were for the most part honest men
+whose occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content
+to leave politics to Mr. Braden--that being his profession. To the most
+intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton
+whim of a millionaire. It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for
+reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they
+were mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to
+secure votes which were as certain as the sun's rising on the morrow.
+
+It was some time before Austen came upon the object of his
+search--though scarce admitting to himself that it had an object. In
+greeting him, after inquiring about his railroad case, Mr. Crewe
+had indicated with a wave of his hand the general direction of the
+refreshments; but it was not until Austen had tried in all other
+quarters that he made his way towards the porch where the lemonade and
+cake and sandwiches were. It was, after all, the most popular
+place, though to his mind the refreshments had little to do with its
+popularity. From the outskirts of the crowd he perceived Victoria
+presiding over the punchbowl that held the lemonade. He liked to think
+of her as Victoria; the name had no familiarity for him, but seemed
+rather to enhance the unattainable quality of her.
+
+Surrounding Victoria were several clean-looking, freckled, and tanned
+young men of undergraduate age wearing straw hats with coloured ribbons,
+who showed every eagerness to obey and even anticipate the orders she
+did not hesitate to give them. Her eye seemed continually on the alert
+for those of Mr. Crewe's guests who were too bashful to come forward,
+and discerning them she would send one of her lieutenants forward with
+supplies. Sometimes she would go herself to the older people; and once,
+perceiving a tired woman holding a baby (so many brought babies, being
+unable to leave them), Victoria impulsively left her post and seized the
+woman by the arm.
+
+"Do come and sit down," she cried; "there's a chair beside me. And oh,
+what a nice baby! Won't you let me hold him?"
+
+"Why, yes, ma'am," said the woman, looking up at Victoria with grateful,
+patient eyes, and then with awe at what seemed to her the priceless
+embroidery on Victoria's waist, "won't he spoil your dress?"
+
+"Bless him, no," said Victoria, poking her finger into a dimple--for he
+was smiling at her. "What if he does?" and forthwith she seized him in
+her arms and bore him to the porch, amidst the laughter of those who
+beheld her, and sat him down on her knee in front of the lemonade bowl,
+the tired mother beside her. "Will a little lemonade hurt him? Just a
+very, very little, you know?"
+
+"Why, no, ma'am," said the mother.
+
+"And just a teeny bit of cake," begged Victoria, daintily breaking off
+a piece, while the baby gurgled and snatched for it. "Do tell me how old
+he is, and how many more you have."
+
+"He's eleven months on the twenty-seventh," said the mother, "and I've
+got four more." She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the embroidery.
+"What between them and the housework and the butter makin', it hain't
+easy. Be you married?"
+
+"No," said Victoria, laughing and blushing a little.
+
+"You'll make a good wife for somebody," said the woman. "I hope you'll
+get a good man."
+
+"I hope so, too," said Victoria, blushing still deeper amidst the
+laughter, "but there doesn't seem to be much chance of it, and good men
+are very scarce."
+
+"I guess you're right," said the mother, soberly. "Not but what my man's
+good enough, but he don't seem to get along, somehow. The farm's wore
+out, and the mortgage comes around so regular."
+
+"Where do you live?" asked Victoria, suddenly growing serious.
+
+"Fitch's place. 'Tain't very far from the Four Corners, on the Avalon
+road."
+
+"And you are Mrs. Fitch?"
+
+"Callate to be," said the mother. "If it ain't askin' too much, I'd like
+to know your name."
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint. I live not very far from the Four Corners--that is,
+about eight miles. May I come over and see you sometime?"
+
+Although Victoria said this very simply, the mother's eyes widened until
+one might almost have said they expressed a kind of terror.
+
+"Land sakes alive, be you Mr. Flint's daughter? I might have knowed it
+from the lace--that dress must have cost a fortune. But I didn't think
+to find you so common."
+
+Victoria did not smile. She had heard the word "common" so used before,
+and knew that it was meant for a compliment, and she turned to the woman
+with a very expressive light in her eyes.
+
+"I will come to see you--this very week," she said. And just then her
+glance, seemingly drawn in a certain direction, met that of a tall young
+man which had been fixed upon her during the whole of this scene. She
+coloured again, abruptly handed the baby back to his mother, and rose.
+
+"I'm neglecting all these people," she said, "but do sit there and rest
+yourself and--have some more lemonade."
+
+She bowed to Austen, and smiled a little as she filled the glasses, but
+she did not beckon him. She gave no further sign of her knowledge of his
+presence until he stood beside her--and then she looked up at him.
+
+"I have been looking for you, Miss Flint," he said.
+
+"I suppose a man would never think of trying the obvious places first,"
+she replied. "Hastings, don't you see that poor old woman over there?
+She looks so thirsty--give her this."
+
+The boy addressed, with a glance at Austen, did as he was bid, and she
+sent off a second on another errand.
+
+"Let me help," said Austen, seizing the cake; and being seized at the
+same time, by an unusual and inexplicable tremor of shyness, thrust it
+at the baby.
+
+"Oh, he can't have anymore; do you want to kill him?" cried Victoria,
+seizing the plate, and adding mischievously, "I don't believe you're of
+very much use--after all!"
+
+"Then it's time I learned," said Austen. "Here's Mr. Jenney. I'm sure
+he'll have a piece."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Jenney, the same Mr. Jenney of the apple orchard, but
+holding out a horny hand with unmistakable warmth, "how be you, Austen?"
+Looking about him, Mr. Jenney put his hand to his mouth, and added,
+"Didn't expect to see you trailin' on to this here kite." He took a
+piece of cake between his thumb and forefinger and glanced bashfully at
+Victoria.
+
+"Have some lemonade, Mr. Jenney? Do," she urged.
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," he said, "just a little mite." He did not
+attempt to stop her as she filled the glass to the brim, but continued
+to regard her with a mixture of curiosity and admiration. "Seen you
+nursin' the baby and makin' folks at home. Guess you have the knack of
+it better'n some I could mention."
+
+This was such a palpable stroke at their host that Victoria laughed, and
+made haste to turn the subject from herself.
+
+"Mr. Vane seems to be an old friend of yours," she said.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Jenney, laying his hand on Austen's shoulder, "I callate
+he is. Austen's broke in more'n one of my colts afore he went West and
+shot that feller. He's as good a judge of horse-flesh as any man in this
+part of the State. Hear Tom Gaylord and the boys wanted him to be State
+senator."
+
+"Why didn't you accept, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Because I don't think the boys could have elected me," answered Austen,
+laughing.
+
+"He's as popular a man as there is in the county," declared Mr. Jenney.
+"He was a mite wild as a boy, but sence he's sobered down and won that
+case against the railrud, he could get any office he'd a mind to. He's
+always adoin' little things for folks, Austen is."
+
+"Did--did that case against the railroad make him so popular?" asked
+Victoria, glancing at Austen's broad back--for he had made his escape
+with the cake.
+
+"I guess it helped considerable," Mr. Jenney admitted.
+
+"Why?" asked Victoria.
+
+"Well, it was a fearless thing to do--plumb against his own interests
+with old Hilary Vane. Austen's a bright lawyer, and I have heard it said
+he was in line for his father's place as counsel."
+
+"Do--do people dislike the railroad?"
+
+Mr. Jenney rubbed his beard thoughtfully. He began to wonder who this
+young woman was, and a racial caution seized him.
+
+"Well," he said, "folks has an idea the railrud runs this State to suit
+themselves. I guess they hain't far wrong. I've be'n to the Legislature
+and seen some signs of it. Why, Hilary Vane himself has charge of the
+most considerable part of the politics. Who be you?" Mr. Jenney demanded
+suddenly.
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint," said Victoria.
+
+"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Jenney, "you don't say so! I might have known
+it--seen you on the rud more than once. But I don't know all you rich
+folks apart. Wouldn't have spoke so frank if I'd knowed who you was."
+
+"I'm glad you did, Mr. Jenney," she answered. "I wanted to know what
+people think."
+
+"Well, it's almighty complicated," said Mr. Jenney, shaking his head.
+"I don't know by rights what to think. As long as I've said what I have,
+I'll say this: that the politicians is all for the railrud, and I hain't
+got a mite of use for the politicians. I'll vote for a feller like
+Austen Vane every time, if he'll run, and I know other folks that will."
+
+After Mr. Jenney had left her, Victoria stood motionless, gazing off
+into the haze, until she was startled by the voice of Hastings Weare
+beside her.
+
+"Say, Victoria, who is that man?" he asked.
+
+"What man?"
+
+Hastings nodded towards Austen, who, with a cake basket in his hand,
+stood chatting with a group of country people on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Oh, that man!" said Victoria. "His name's Austen Vane, and he's a
+lawyer in Ripton."
+
+"All I can say is," replied Hastings, with a light in his face, "he's
+one I'd like to tie to. I'll bet he could whip any four men you could
+pick out."
+
+Considering that Hastings had himself proposed--although in a very mild
+form--more than once to Victoria, this was generous.
+
+"I daresay he could," she agreed absently.
+
+"It isn't only the way he's built," persisted Hastings, "he looks as if
+he were going to be somebody some day. Introduce me to him, will you?"
+
+"Certainly," said Victoria. "Mr. Vane," she called, "I want to introduce
+an admirer, Mr. Hastings Weare."
+
+"I just wanted to know you," said Hastings, reddening, "and Victoria--I
+mean Miss Flint--said she'd introduce me."
+
+"I'm much obliged to her," said Austen, smiling.
+
+"Are you in politics?" asked Hastings.
+
+"I'm afraid not," answered Austen, with a glance at Victoria.
+
+"You're not helping Humphrey Crewe, are you?"
+
+"No," said Austen, and added with an illuminating smile, "Mr. Crewe
+doesn't need any help."
+
+"I'm glad you're not," exclaimed the downright Hastings, with palpable
+relief in his voice that an idol had not been shattered. "I think
+Humphrey's a fakir, and all this sort of thing tommyrot. He wouldn't get
+my vote by giving me lemonade and cake and letting me look at his cows.
+If you ever run for office, I'd like to cast it for you. My father is
+only a summer resident, but since he has gone out of business he stays
+here till Christmas, and I'll be twenty-one in a year."
+
+Austen had ceased to smile; he was looking into the boy's eyes with that
+serious expression which men and women found irresistible.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply.
+
+Hastings was suddenly overcome with the shyness of youth. He held out
+his hand, and said, "I'm awfully glad to have met you," and fled.
+
+Victoria, who had looked on with a curious mixture of feelings, turned
+to Austen.
+
+"That was a real tribute," she said. "Is this the way you affect
+everybody whom you meet?"
+
+They were standing almost alone. The sun was nearing the western hills
+beyond the river, and people had for some time been wending their way
+towards the field where the horses were tied. He did not answer her
+question, but asked one instead.
+
+"Will you let me drive you home?"
+
+"Do you think you deserve to, after the shameful manner in which you
+have behaved?"
+
+"I'm quite sure that I don't deserve to," he answered, still looking
+down at her.
+
+"If you did deserve to, being a woman, I probably shouldn't let you,"
+said Victoria, flashing a look upwards; "as it is, you may."
+
+His face lighted, but she halted in the grass, with her hands behind
+her, and stared at him with a puzzled expression.
+
+"I'm sure you're a dangerous man," she declared. "First you take in poor
+little Hastings, and now you're trying to take me in."
+
+"Then I wish I were still more dangerous," he laughed, "for apparently I
+haven't succeeded."
+
+"I want to talk to you seriously," said Victoria; "that is the only
+reason I'm permitting you to drive me home."
+
+"I am devoutly thankful for the reason then," he said,--"my horse is
+tied in the field."
+
+"And aren't you going to say good-by to your host and hostess?"
+
+"Hostess?" he repeated, puzzled.
+
+"Hostesses," she corrected herself, "Mrs. Pomfret and Alice. I thought
+you had eyes in your head," she added, with a fleeting glance at them.
+
+"Is Crewe engaged to Miss Pomfret?" he asked.
+
+"Are all men simpletons?" said Victoria. "He doesn't know it yet, but he
+is."
+
+"I think I'd know it, if I were," said Austen, with an emphasis that
+made her laugh.
+
+"Sometimes fish don't know they're in a net until--until the morning
+after," said Victoria. "That has a horribly dissipated sound--hasn't
+it? I know to a moral certainty that Mr. Crewe will eventually lead Miss
+Pomfret away from the altar. At present," she could not refrain from
+adding, "he thinks he's in love with some one else."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," she replied. "Humphrey's perfectly happy, because
+he believes most women are in love with him, and he's making up his mind
+in that magnificent, thorough way of his whether she is worthy to be
+endowed with his heart and hand, his cows, and all his stocks and
+bonds. He doesn't know he's going to marry Alice. It almost makes one a
+Calvinist, doesn't it. He's predestined, but perfectly happy."
+
+"Who is he in love with?" demanded Austen, ungrammatically.
+
+"I'm going to say good-by to him. I'll meet you in the field, if
+you don't care to come. It's only manners, after all, although the
+lemonade's all gone and I haven't had a drop."
+
+"I'll go along too," he said.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of Mrs. Pomfret?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"I am," said Victoria, "but I think you'd better come just the same."
+
+Around the corner of the house they found them,--Mr. Crewe urging the
+departing guests to remain, and not to be bashful in the future about
+calling.
+
+"We don't always have lemonade and cake," he was saying, "but you can be
+sure of a welcome, just the same. Good-by, Vane, glad you came. Did they
+show you through the stables? Did you see the mate to the horse I lost?
+Beauty, isn't he? Stir 'em up and get the money. I guess we won't see
+much of each other politically. You're anti-railroad. I don't believe
+that tack'll work--we can't get along without corporations, you know.
+You ought to talk to Flint. I'll give you a letter of introduction to
+him. I don't know what I'd have done without that man Tooting in your
+father's office. He's a wasted genius in Ripton. What? Good-by, you'll
+find your wagon, I guess. Well, Victoria, where have you been keeping
+yourself? I've been so busy I haven't had time to look for you. You're
+going to stay to dinner, and Hastings, and all the people who have
+helped."
+
+"No, I'm not," answered Victoria, with a glance at Austen, before whom
+this announcement was so delicately made, "I'm going home."
+
+"But when am I to see you?" cried Mr. Crewe, as near genuine alarm as he
+ever got. "You never let me see you. I was going to drive you home in the
+motor by moonlight."
+
+"We all know that you're the most original person, Victoria," said Mrs.
+Pomfret, "full of whims and strange fancies," she added, with the only
+brief look at Austen she had deigned to bestow on him. "It never pays to
+count on you for twenty-four hours. I suppose you're off on another wild
+expedition."
+
+"I think I've earned the right to it," said Victoria;--"I've poured
+lemonade for Humphrey's constituents the whole afternoon. And besides,
+I never said I'd stay for dinner. I'm going home. Father's leaving for
+California in the morning."
+
+"He'd better stay at home and look after her," Mrs. Pomfret remarked,
+when Victoria was out of hearing.
+
+"Since Mrs. Harry Haynes ran off, one can never tell what a woman will
+do. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Victoria eloped with a handsome
+nobody like that. Of course he's after her money, but he wouldn't get
+it, not if I know Augustus Flint."
+
+"Is he handsome?" said Mr. Crewe, as though the idea were a new one.
+"Great Scott, I don't believe she gives him a thought. She's only going
+as far as the field with him. She insisted on leaving her horse there
+instead of putting him in the stable."
+
+"Catch Alice going as far as the field with him," said Mrs. Pomfret,
+"but I've done my duty. It's none of my affair."
+
+In the meantime Austen and Victoria had walked on some distance in
+silence.
+
+"I have an idea with whom Mr. Crewe is in love," he said at length.
+
+"So have I," replied Victoria, promptly. "Humphrey's in love with
+himself. All he desires in a wife--if he desires one--is an inanimate
+and accommodating looking-glass, in whom he may see what he conceives to
+be his own image daily. James, you may take the mare home. I'm going to
+drive with Mr. Vane."
+
+She stroked Pepper's nose while Austen undid the hitch-rope from around
+his neck.
+
+"You and I are getting to be friends, aren't we, Pepper?" she asked, as
+the horse, with quivering nostrils, thrust his head into her hand. Then
+she sprang lightly into the buggy by Austen's side. The manner of these
+acts and the generous courage with which she defied opinion appealed
+to him so strongly that his heart was beating faster than Pepper's
+hoof-beats on the turf of the pasture.
+
+"You are very good to come with me," he said gravely, when they had
+reached the road; "perhaps I ought not to have asked you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, with one of her direct looks.
+
+"It was undoubtedly selfish," he said, and added, more lightly, "I don't
+wish to put you into Mrs. Pomfret's bad graces."
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"She thought it her duty to tell father the time you drove me to the
+Hammonds'. She said I asked you to do it."
+
+"What did he say?" Austen inquired, looking straight ahead of him.
+
+"He didn't say much," she answered. "Father never does. I think he knows
+that I am to be trusted."
+
+"Even with me?" he asked quizzically, but with a deeper significance.
+
+"I don't think he realizes how dangerous you are," she replied, avoiding
+the issue. "The last time I saw you, you were actually trying to throw
+a fat man out of your window. What a violent life you lead, Mr. Vane. I
+hope you haven't shot any more people--"
+
+"I saw you," he said.
+
+"Is that the way you spend your time in office hours,--throwing people
+out of the windows?"
+
+"It was only Tom Gaylord."
+
+"He's the man Mr. Jenney said wanted you to be a senator, isn't he?" she
+asked.
+
+"You have a good memory," he answered her. "Yes. That's the reason I
+tried to throw him out of the window."
+
+"Why didn't you be a senator?" she asked abruptly. "I always think of
+you in public life. Why waste your opportunities?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure that was an opportunity. It was only some of Tom's
+nonsense. I should have had all the politicians in the district against
+me."
+
+"But you aren't the kind of man who would care about the politicians,
+surely. If Humphrey Crewe can get elected by the people, I should think
+you might."
+
+"I can't afford to give garden-parties and buy lemonade," said Austen,
+and they both laughed. He did not think it worth while mentioning Mr.
+Braden.
+
+"Sometimes I think you haven't a particle of ambition," she said. "I
+like men with ambition."
+
+"I shall try to cultivate it," said Austen.
+
+"You seem to be popular enough."
+
+"Most worthless people are popular, because they don't tread on
+anybody's toes."
+
+"Worthless people don't take up poor people's suits, and win them,"
+she said. "I saw Zeb Meader the other day, and he said you could be
+President of the United States."
+
+"Zeb meant that I was eligible--having been born in this country," said
+Austen. "But where did you see him?"
+
+"I--I went to see him."
+
+"All the way to Mercer?"
+
+"It isn't so far in an automobile," she replied, as though in excuse,
+and added, still more lamely, "Zeb and I became great friends, you know,
+in the hospital."
+
+He did not answer, but wondered the more at the simplicity and kindness
+in one brought up as she had been which prompted her to take the trouble
+to see the humblest of her friends: nay, to take the trouble to have
+humble friends.
+
+The road wound along a ridge, and at intervals was spread before them
+the full glory of the September sunset,--the mountains of the west
+in blue-black silhouette against the saffron sky, the myriad dappled
+clouds, the crimson fading from the still reaches of the river, and the
+wine-colour from the eastern hills. Both were silent under the spell,
+but a yearning arose within him when he glanced at the sunset glow on
+her face: would sunsets hereafter bring sadness?
+
+His thoughts ran riot as the light faded in the west. Hers were not
+revealed. And the silence between them seemed gradually to grow into a
+pact, to become a subtler and more intimate element than speech. A
+faint tang of autumn smoke was in the air, a white mist crept along the
+running waters, a silver moon like a new-stamped coin rode triumphant
+in the sky, impatient to proclaim her glory; and the shadows under the
+ghost-like sentinel trees in the pastures grew blacker. At last Victoria
+looked at him.
+
+"You are the only man I know who doesn't insist on talking," she said.
+"There are times when--"
+
+"When there is nothing to say," he suggested.
+
+She laughed softly. He tried to remember the sound of it afterwards,
+when he rehearsed this phase of the conversation, but couldn't.
+
+"It's because you like the hills, isn't it?" she asked. "You seem such
+an out-of-door person, and Mr. Jenney said you were always wandering
+about the country-side."
+
+"Mr. Jenney also made other reflections about my youth," said Austen.
+
+She laughed again, acquiescing in his humour, secretly thankful not to
+find him sentimental.
+
+"Mr. Jenney said something else that--that I wanted to ask you about,"
+she went on, breathing more deeply. "It was about the railroad."
+
+"I am afraid you have not come to an authority," he replied.
+
+"You said the politicians would be against you if you tried to become
+a State senator. Do you believe that the politicians are owned by the
+railroad?"
+
+"Has Jenney been putting such things into your head?"
+
+"Not only Mr. Jenney, but--I have heard other people say that. And
+Humphrey Crewe said that you hadn't a chance politically, because you
+had opposed the railroad and had gone against your own interests."
+
+Austen was amazed at this new exhibition of courage on her part, though
+he was sorely pressed.
+
+"Humphrey Crewe isn't much of an authority, either," he said briefly.
+
+"Then you won't tell me?" said Victoria. "Oh, Mr. Vane," she cried, with
+sudden vehemence, "if such things are going on here, I'm sure my father
+doesn't know about them. This is only one State, and the railroad runs
+through so many. He can't know everything, and I have heard him say that
+he wasn't responsible for what the politicians did in his name. If they
+are bad, why don't you go to him and tell him so? I'm sure he'd listen
+to you."
+
+"I'm sure he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen. "Politicians
+are not idealists anywhere--the very word has become a term of reproach.
+Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one
+else--probably more than any one."
+
+"Oh, I know he does," exclaimed Victoria.
+
+"If politics are not all that they should be," he went on, somewhat
+grimly, with an unpleasant feeling of hypocrisy, "we must remember that
+they are nobody's fault in particular, and can't be set right in an
+instant by any one man, no matter how powerful."
+
+She turned her face to him gratefully, but he did not meet her look.
+They were on the driveway of Fairview.
+
+"I suppose you think me very silly for asking such questions," she said.
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "but politics are so intricate a subject that
+they are often not understood by those who are in the midst of them. I
+admire--I think it is very fine in you to want to know."
+
+"You are not one of the men who would not wish a woman to know, are
+you?"
+
+"No," he said, "no, I'm not."
+
+The note of pain in his voice surprised and troubled her. They were
+almost in sight of the house.
+
+"I asked you to come to Fairview," she said, assuming a lightness of
+tone, "and you never appeared. I thought it was horrid of you to forget,
+after we'd been such friends."
+
+"I didn't forget," replied Austen.
+
+"Then you didn't want to come."
+
+He looked into her eyes, and she dropped them.
+
+"You will have to be the best judge of that," he said.
+
+"But what am I to think?" she persisted.
+
+"Think the best of me you can," he answered, as they drew up on the
+gravel before the open door of Fairview house. A man was standing in the
+moonlight on the porch.
+
+"Is that you, Victoria?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"I was getting worried," said Mr. Flint, coming down on the driveway.
+
+"I'm all right," she said, leaping out of the buggy, "Mr. Vane brought
+me home."
+
+"How are you, Hilary?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I'm Austen Vane, Mr. Flint," said Austen.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Flint, as curtly as the barest politeness
+allowed. "What was the matter with your own horse, Victoria?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied, after an instant's pause. Austen wondered many
+times whether her lips had trembled. "Mr. Vane asked me to drive with
+him, and I came. Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Austen, "I'm afraid I have to go back to Ripton."
+
+"Good-by, and thank you," she said, and gave him her hand. As he pressed
+it, he thought he felt the slightest pressure in return, and then she
+fled up the steps. As he drove away, he turned once to look at the great
+house, with its shades closely drawn, as it stood amidst its setting of
+shrubbery silent under the moon.
+
+An hour later he sat in Hanover Street before the supper Euphrasia
+had saved for him. But though he tried nobly, his heart was not in the
+relation, for her benefit, of Mr. Crewe's garden-party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. Mr. CREWE ASSAULTS THE CAPITAL
+
+Those portions of the biographies of great men which deal with the small
+beginnings of careers are always eagerly devoured, and for this reason
+the humble entry of Mr. Crewe into politics may be of interest. Great
+revolutions have had their origins in back cellars; great builders of
+railroads have begun life with packs on their shoulders, trudging over
+the wilderness which they were to traverse in after years in private
+cars. The history of Napoleon Bonaparte has not a Sunday-school moral,
+but we can trace therein the results of industry after the future
+emperor got started. Industry, and the motto "nil desperandum" lived up
+to, and the watchword "thorough," and a torch of unsuspected genius, and
+"l'audace, toujours l'audace," and a man may go far in life.
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe possessed, as may have been surmised, a dash of all
+these gifts. For a summary of his character one would not have used the
+phrase (as a contemporary of his remarked) of "a shrinking violet." The
+phrase, after all, would have fitted very few great men; genius is sure
+of itself, and seeks its peers.
+
+The State capital is an old and beautiful and somewhat conservative
+town. Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions,
+and heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written
+about it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach
+the state-house or the Pelican Hotel. The casual visitor in that capital
+leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear,
+and (if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow. Comedies do not
+necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre for
+their enactment.
+
+No casual visitor, for instance, would have suspected from the faces
+or remarks of the inhabitants whom he chanced to meet that there was
+excitement in the capital over the prospective arrival of Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe for the legislative session that winter. Legislative sessions,
+be it known, no longer took place in the summer, a great relief to Mr.
+Crewe and to farmers in general, who wished to be at home in haying
+time.
+
+The capital abounded in comfortable homes and boasted not a dwellings
+of larger pretensions. Chief among these was the Duncan house--still so
+called, although Mr. Duncan, who built it, had been dead these fifteen
+years, and his daughter and heiress, Janet, had married an Italian
+Marquis and lived in a Roman palace, rehabilitated by the Duncan money.
+Mr. Duncan, it may be recalled by some readers of "Coniston," had been
+a notable man in his day, who had married the heiress of the State,
+and was president of the Central Railroad, now absorbed in the United
+Northeastern. The house was a great square of brick, with a wide
+cornice, surrounded by a shaded lawn; solidly built, in the fashion
+of the days when rich people stayed at home, with a conservatory and a
+library that had once been Mr. Duncan's pride. The Marchesa cared very
+little about the library, or about the house, for that matter; a great
+aunt and uncle, spinster and bachelor, were living in it that winter,
+and they vacated for Mr. Crewe. He travelled to the capital on the
+legislative pass the Northeastern Railroads had so kindly given him, and
+brought down his horses and his secretary and servants from Leith a few
+days before the first of January, when the session was to open, and
+laid out his bills for the betterment of the State on that library
+table where Mr. Duncan had lovingly thumbed his folios. Mr. Crewe, with
+characteristic promptitude, set his secretary to work to make a list
+of the persons of influence in the town, preparatory to a series of
+dinner-parties; he dropped into the office of Mr. Ridout, the counsel
+of the Northeastern and of the Winona Corporation in the capital, to pay
+his respects as a man of affairs, and incidentally to leave copies of
+his bills for the improvement of the State. Mr. Ridout was politely
+interested, and promised to read the bills, and agreed that they ought
+to pass.
+
+Mr. Crewe also examined the Pelican Hotel, so soon to be a hive, and
+stood between the snow-banks in the capital park contemplating the
+statue of the great statesman there, and repeating to himself the
+quotation inscribed beneath. "The People's Government, made for the
+People, made by the People, and answerable to the People." And he
+wondered, idly,--for the day was not cold,--how he would look upon a
+pedestal with the Gladstone collar and the rough woollen coat that would
+lend themselves so readily to reproduction in marble. Stranger things
+had happened, and grateful States had been known to reward benefactors.
+
+At length comes the gala night of nights,--the last of the old
+year,--and the assembling of the five hundred legislators and of the
+army that is wont to attend them. The afternoon trains, steaming hot,
+are crowded to the doors, the station a scene of animation, and Main
+Street, dazzling in snow, is alive with a stream of men, with eddies
+here and there at the curbs and in the entries. What handshaking, and
+looking over of new faces, and walking round and round! What sightseeing
+by the country members and their wives who have come to attend the
+inauguration of the new governor, the Honourable Asa P. Gray! There he
+is, with the whiskers and the tall hat and the comfortable face, which
+wears already a look of gubernatorial dignity and power. He stands for
+a moment in the lobby of the Pelican Hotel,--thronged now to
+suffocation,--to shake hands genially with new friends, who are led
+up by old friends with two fingers on the elbow. The old friends crack
+jokes and whisper in the ear of the governor-to-be, who presently goes
+upstairs, accompanied by the Honourable Hilary Vane, to the bridal
+suite, which is reserved for him, and which has fire-proof carpet on the
+floor. The Honourable Hilary has a room next door, connecting with the
+new governor's by folding doors, but this fact is not generally known to
+country members. Only old timers, like Bijah Bixby and Job Braden, know
+that the Honourable Hilary's room corresponds to one which in the old
+Pelican was called the Throne Room, Number Seven, where Jethro Bass sat
+in the old days and watched unceasingly the groups in the street from
+the window.
+
+But Jethro Bass has been dead these twenty years, and his lieutenants
+shorn of power. An empire has arisen out of the ashes of the ancient
+kingdoms. Bijah and Job are old, all-powerful still in Clovelly and
+Leith--influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up
+their heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still
+"going along by when they are talking sly." But there are no guerrillas
+now, no condottieri who can be hired: the empire has a paid and standing
+army, as an empire should. The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the
+clan warfare of bygone days, are generals now,--chiefs of staff. The
+captain-general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue,
+sits in Number Seven. A new Number Seven,--with electric lights and a
+bathroom and a brass bed. Tempora mutantur. There is an empire and a
+feudal system, did one but know it. The clans are part of the empire,
+and each chief is responsible for his clan--did one but know it. One
+doesn't know it.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, Duke of Putnam, member of the House, has
+arrived unostentatiously--as is his custom--and is seated in his own
+headquarters, number ten (with a bathroom). Number nine belongs from
+year to year to Mr. Manning, division superintendent of that part of
+the Northeastern which was the old Central,--a thin gentleman with
+side-whiskers. He loves life in the capital so much that he takes
+his vacations there in the winter,--during the sessions of the
+Legislature,--presumably because it is gay. There are other rooms,
+higher up, of important men, to be sure, but to enter which it is not so
+much of an honour. The Honourable Bill Fleming, postmaster of Brampton
+in Truro (Ephraim Prescott being long since dead and Brampton a large
+place now), has his vacation during the session in room thirty-six (no
+bathroom); and the Honourable Elisha Jane, Earl of Haines County in the
+North Country, and United States consul somewhere, is home on his annual
+vacation in room fifty-nine (no bath). Senator Whitredge has a room, and
+Senator Green, and Congressmen Eldridge and Fairplay (no baths, and only
+temporary).
+
+The five hundred who during the next three months are to register the
+laws find quarters as best they can. Not all of them are as luxurious as
+Mr. Crewe in the Duncan house, or the Honourable Brush Bascom in number
+ten of the Pelican, the rent of either of which would swallow the
+legislative salary in no time. The Honourable Nat Billings, senator from
+the Putnam County district, is comfortably installed, to be sure. By
+gradual and unexplained degrees, the constitution of the State has
+been changed until there are only twenty senators. Noble five hundred!
+Steadfast twenty!
+
+A careful perusal of the biographies of great men of the dynamic type
+leads one to the conclusion that much of their success is due to an
+assiduous improvement of every opportunity,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+certainly possessed this quality, also. He is in the Pelican Hotel this
+evening, meeting the men that count. Mr. Job Braden, who had come down
+with the idea that he might be of use in introducing the new member from
+Leith to the notables, was met by this remark:--"You can't introduce
+me to any of 'em--they all know who I am. Just point any of 'em out you
+think I ought to know, and I'll go up and talk to 'em. What? Come up
+to my house after a while and smoke a cigar. The Duncan house, you
+know--the big one with the conservatory."
+
+Mr. Crewe was right--they all knew him. The Leith millionaire, the
+summer resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the
+size of his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel
+that evening. Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the
+bridal suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe
+gained an entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the
+somewhat protracted felicitations of an Irish member of the Newcastle
+delegation.
+
+"How are you, Governor?" he said, with the bonhomie of a man of the
+world. "I'm Humphrey Crewe, from Leith. You got a letter from me, didn't
+you, congratulating you upon your election? We didn't do badly for you
+up there. What?"
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" said Mr. Gray, with dignified hospitality,
+while their fingers slid over each other's; "I'm glad to welcome you
+here. I've noticed the interest you've taken in the State, and the
+number of ahem--very useful societies to which you belong."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Crewe, "I do what I can. I just dropped in to shake
+your hand, and to say that I hope we'll pull together."
+
+The governor lifted his eyebrows a little.
+
+"Why, I hope so, I'm sere, Mr. Crewe," said he.
+
+"I've looked over the policy of the State for the last twenty years in
+regard to public improvements and the introduction of modern methods as
+concerns husbandry, and I find it deplorable. You and I, Governor, live
+in a progressive age, and we can't afford not to see something done.
+What? It is my desire to do what I can to help make your administration
+a notable advance upon those of your predecessors."
+
+"Why--I greatly appreciate it, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Gray.
+
+"I'm sure you do. I've looked over your record, and I find you've
+had experience in State affairs, and that you are a successful and
+conservative business man. That is the type we want--eh? Business men.
+You've read over the bills I sent you by registered mail?"
+
+"Ahem," said Mr. Gray, "I've been a good deal occupied since election
+day, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"Read 'em," said Mr. Crewe, "and I'll call in on you at the state-house
+day after to-morrow at five o'clock promptly. We'll discuss 'em,
+Governor, and if, by the light of your legislative experience, you have
+any suggestions to make, I shall be glad to hear 'em. Before putting the
+bills in their final shape I've taken the trouble to go over them with
+my friend, Mr. Flint--our mutual friend, let us say."
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Flint," said Mr. Gray.
+"I--ahem--can't say that I know him intimately."
+
+Mr. Crewe looked at Mr. Gray in a manner which plainly indicated that he
+was not an infant.
+
+"My relations with Mr. Flint and the Northeastern have been very
+pleasant," said Mr. Crewe. "I may say that I am somewhat of a practical
+railroad and business man myself."
+
+"We need such men," said Mr. Gray. "Why, how do you do, Cary? How are
+the boys up in Wheeler?"
+
+"Well, good-by, Governor. See you day after to-morrow at five
+precisely," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The next official call of Mr. Crewe was on the Speaker-to-be, Mr. Doby
+of Hale (for such matters are cut and dried), but any amount of pounding
+on Mr. Doby's door (number seventy-five) brought no response. Other
+rural members besides Mr. Crewe came and pounded on that door, and went
+away again; but Mr. Job Braden suddenly appeared from another part of
+the corridor, smiling benignly, and apparently not resenting the refusal
+of his previous offers of help.
+
+"W--want the Speaker?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Crewe acknowledged that he did.
+
+"Ed only sleeps there," said Mr. Braden. "Guess you'll find him in the
+Railroad-Room."
+
+"Railroad Room?"
+
+"Hilary Vane's, Number Seven." Mr. Braden took hold of the lapel of
+his fellow-townsman's coat. "Callated you didn't know it all," he said;
+"that's the reason I come down--so's to help you some."
+
+Mr. Crewe, although he was not wont to take a second place, followed
+Mr. Braden down the stairs to the door next to the governor's, where he
+pushed ahead of his guide, through the group about the doorway,--none of
+whom, however, were attempting to enter. They stared in some surprise
+at Mr. Crewe as he flung open the door without knocking, and slammed it
+behind him in Mr. Braden's face. But the bewilderment caused by this act
+of those without was as nothing to the astonishment of those within--had
+Mr. Crewe but known it. An oil painting of the prominent men gathered
+about the marble-topped table in the centre of the room, with an outline
+key beneath it, would have been an appropriate work of art to hang in
+the state-house, as emblematic of the statesmanship of the past twenty
+years. The Honourable Hilary Vane sat at one end in a padded chair; Mr.
+Manning, the division superintendent, startled out of a meditation, was
+upright on the end of the bed; Mr. Ridout, the Northeastern's capital
+lawyer, was figuring at the other end of the table; the Honourable Brush
+Bascom was bending over a wide, sad-faced gentleman of some two hundred
+and fifty pounds who sat at the centre in his shirt-sleeves, poring over
+numerous sheets in front of him which were covered with names of the
+five hundred. This gentleman was the Honourable Edward Doby of Hale,
+who, with the kind assistance of the other gentlemen above-named, was
+in this secluded spot making up a list of his committees, undisturbed
+by eager country members. At Mr. Crewe's entrance Mr. Bascom, with great
+presence of mind, laid down his hat over the principal list, while Mr.
+Ridout, taking the hint, put the Revised Statutes on the other. There
+was a short silence; and the Speaker-to-be, whose pencil had been
+knocked out of his hand; recovered himself sufficiently to relight an
+extremely frayed cigar.
+
+Not that Mr. Crewe was in the least abashed. He chose this opportunity
+to make a survey of the situation, nodded to Mr. Ridout, and walked up
+to the padded armchair.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Vane?" he said. "I thought I'd drop in to shake hands
+with you, especially as I have business with the Speaker, and heard he
+was here. But I'm glad to have met you for many reasons. I want you to
+be one of the vice-presidents of the State Economic League--it won't
+cost you anything. Ridout has agreed to let his name go on."
+
+The Honourable Hilary, not being an emotional man, merely grunted as he
+started to rise to his feet. What he was about to say was interrupted by
+a timid knock, and there followed another brief period of silence.
+
+"It ain't anybody," said Mr. Bascom, and crossing the room, turned the
+key in the lock. The timid knock was repeated.
+
+"I suppose you're constantly interrupted here by unimportant people,"
+Mr. Crewe remarked.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Vane, slowly, boring into Mr. Crewe with his eye, "that
+statement isn't far out of the way."
+
+"I don't believe you've ever met me, Mr. Vane. I'm Humphrey Crewe. We
+have a good friend in common in Mr. Flint."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's hand passed over Mr. Crewe's lightly.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Crewe," he said, and a faint twinkle appeared in
+his eye. "Job has told everybody you were coming down. Glad to welcome a
+man of your ahem--stamp into politics."
+
+"I'm a plain business man," answered Mr. Crewe, modestly; "and although
+I have considerable occupation, I believe that one in my position has
+duties to perform. I've certain bills--"
+
+"Yes, yes," agreed the Honourable Hilary; "do you know Mr. Brush Bascom
+and Mr. Manning? Allow me to introduce you,--and General Doby."
+
+"How are you, General?" said Mr. Crewe to the Speaker-to-be, "I'm always
+glad to shake the hand of a veteran. Indeed, I have thought that a
+society--"
+
+"I earned my title," said General Doby, somewhat sheepishly, "fighting
+on Governor Brown's staff. There were twenty of us, and we were
+resistless, weren't we, Brush?"
+
+"Twenty on a staff!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh, we furnished our own uniforms and paid our own way--except those
+of us who had passes," declared the General, as though the memory of his
+military career did not give him unalloyed pleasure. "What's the use
+of State sovereignty if you can't have a glittering army to follow the
+governor round?"
+
+Mr. Crewe had never considered this question, and he was not the man to
+waste time in speculation.
+
+"Doubtless you got a letter from me, General Doby," he said. "We did
+what we could up our way to put you in the Speaker's chair."
+
+General Doby creased a little in the middle, to signify that he was
+bowing.
+
+"I trust it will be in my power to reciprocate, Mr. Crewe," he replied.
+
+"We want to treat Mr. Crewe right," Mr. Bascom put in.
+
+"You have probably made a note of my requests," Mr. Crewe continued. "I
+should like to be on the Judiciary Committee, for one thing. Although
+I am not a lawyer, I know something of the principles of law, and I
+understand that this and the Appropriations Committee are the most
+important. I may say with truth that I should be a useful member of
+that, as I am accustomed to sitting on financial boards. As my bills
+are of some considerable importance and deal with practical progressive
+measures, I have no hesitation in asking for the chairmanship of
+Public Improvements,--and of course a membership in the Agricultural is
+essential, as I have bills for them. Gentlemen," he added to the room
+at large, "I have typewritten manifolds of those bills which I shall
+be happy to leave here--at headquarters." And suiting the action to the
+word, he put down a packet on the table.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, accompanied by Mr. Ridout, walked to the
+window and stood staring at the glitter of the electric light on the
+snow. The Honourable Hilary gazed steadily at the table, while General
+Doby blew his nose with painful violence.
+
+"I'll do what I can for you, certainly, Mr. Crewe," he said. "But--what
+is to become of the other four hundred and ninety-nine? The ways of a
+Speaker are hard, Mr. Crewe, and I have to do justice to all."
+
+"Well," answered Mr. Crewe, "of course I don't want to be unreasonable,
+and I realize the pressure that's put upon you. But when you consider
+the importance of the work I came down here to do--"
+
+"I do consider it," said the Speaker, politely. "It's a little early to
+talk about the make-up of committees. I hope to be able to get at them
+by Sunday. You may be sure I'll do my best for you."
+
+"We'd better make a note of it," said Mr. Crewe; "give me some paper,"
+and he was reaching around behind General Doby for one of the precious
+sheets under Mr. Bascom's hat, when the general, with great presence of
+mind, sat on it. We have it, from a malicious and untrustworthy source,
+that the Northeastern Railroads paid for a new one.
+
+"Here, here," cried the Speaker, "make the memorandum here."
+
+At this critical juncture a fortunate diversion occurred. A rap--three
+times--of no uncertain quality was heard at the door, and Mr. Brush
+Bascom hastened to open it. A voice cried out:--"Is Manning here? The
+boys are hollering for those passes," and a wiry, sallow gentleman
+burst in, none other than the Honourable Elisha Jane, who was taking his
+consular vacation. When his eyes fell upon Mr. Crewe he halted abruptly,
+looked a little foolish, and gave a questioning glance at the Honourable
+Hilary.
+
+"Mountain passes, Lish? Sit down. Did I ever tell you that story about
+the slide in Rickets Gulch?" asked the Honourable Brush Bascom. "But
+first let me make you acquainted with Mr. Humphrey Crewe of Leith. Mr.
+Crewe has come down here with the finest lot of bills you ever saw, and
+we're all going to take hold and put 'em through. Here, Lish, I'll give
+you a set."
+
+"Read 'em, Mr. Jane," urged Mr. Crewe. "I don't claim much for 'em, but
+perhaps they will help to set a few little matters right--I hope so."
+
+Mr. Jane opened the bills with deliberation, and cast his eyes over the
+headings.
+
+"I'll read 'em this very night, Mr. Crewe," he said solemnly; "this
+meeting you is a particular pleasure, and I have heard in many quarters
+of these measures."
+
+"Well," admitted Mr. Crewe, "they may help some. I have a few other
+matters to attend to this evening, so I must say good-night, gentlemen.
+Don't let me interfere with those I mountain passes, Mr. Manning."
+
+With this parting remark, which proved him to be not merely an idealist
+in politics, but a practical man, Mr. Crewe took his leave. And he was
+too much occupied with his own thoughts to pay any attention to the
+click of the key as it turned in the lock, or to hear United States
+Senator Whitredge rap (three times) on the door after he had turned the
+corner, or to know that presently the sliding doors into the governor's
+bridal suite--were to open a trifle, large enough for the admission of
+the body of the Honourable Asa P. Gray.
+
+Number Seven still keeps up its reputation as the seat of benevolence,
+and great public benefactors still meet there to discuss the welfare of
+their fellow-men: the hallowed council chamber now of an empire, seat of
+the Governor-general of the State, the Honourable Hilary Vane, and his
+advisers. For years a benighted people, with a fond belief in their
+participation of Republican institutions, had elected the noble five
+hundred of the House and the stanch twenty of the Senate. Noble five
+hundreds (biggest Legislature in the world) have come and gone; debated,
+applauded, fought and on occasions denounced, kicked over the traces,
+and even wept--to no avail. Behold that political institution of man,
+representative government There it is on the stage, curtain up, a
+sublime spectacle for all men to see, and thrill over speeches about the
+Rights of Man, and the Forefathers in the Revolution; about Constituents
+who do not constitute. The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it
+is well for the atoms that they think themselves free American
+representatives, that they do not feel the string of predestination
+around their ankles. The senatorial twenty, from their high carved
+seats, see the strings and smile, too; yes, and see their own strings,
+and smile. Wisdom does not wish for flight. "The people" having changed
+the constitution, the blackbirds are reduced from four and forty to a
+score. This is cheaper--for the people.
+
+Democracy on the front of the stage before an applauding audience;
+performers absorbed in their parts, forgetting that the landlord has to
+be paid in money yet to be earned. Behind the stage, the real play,
+the absorbing interest, the high stakes--occasional discreet laughter
+through the peep-hole when an actor makes an impassioned appeal to
+the gods. Democracy in front, the Feudal System, the Dukes and Earls
+behind--but in plain clothes; Democracy in stars and spangles and
+trappings and insignia. Or, a better figure, the Fates weaving the web
+in that mystic chamber, Number Seven, pausing now and again to smile as
+a new thread is put in. Proclamations, constitutions, and creeds crumble
+before conditions; the Law of Dividends is the high law, and the Forum
+an open vent through which the white steam may rise heavenward and be
+resolved again into water.
+
+Mr. Crewe took his seat in the popular assemblage next day, although
+most of the five hundred gave up theirs to the ladies who had come to
+hear his Excellency deliver his inaugural. The Honourable Asa made a
+splendid figure, all agreed, and read his speech in a firm and manly
+voice. A large part of it was about the people; some of it about the
+sacred government they had inherited from their forefathers; still
+another concerned the high character and achievements of the inhabitants
+within the State lines; the name of Abraham Lincoln was mentioned, and,
+with even greater reverence and fervour, the Republican party which had
+ennobled and enriched the people--and incidentally elected the governor.
+There was a noble financial policy, a curtailment of expense. The
+forests should be protected, roads should be built, and, above all,
+corporations should be held to a strict accounting.
+
+Needless to say, the speech gave great satisfaction to all, and many old
+friends left the hall exclaiming that they didn't believe Asa had it in
+him. As a matter of fact (known only to the initiated), Asa didn't have
+it in him until last night, before he squeezed through the crack in the
+folding doors from room number six to room Number Seven. The inspiration
+came to him then, when he was ennobled by the Governor-general, who
+represents the Empire. Perpetual Governor-general, who quickens into
+life puppet governors of his own choosing Asa has agreed, for the honour
+of the title of governor of his State, to act the part, open the fairs,
+lend his magnificent voice to those phrases which it rounds so well.
+It is fortunate, when we smoke a fine cigar from Havana, that we cannot
+look into the factory. The sight would disturb us. It was well for the
+applauding, deep-breathing audience in the state-house that first of
+January that they did not have a glimpse in room Number Seven the
+night before, under the sheets that contained the list of the Speaker's
+committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the
+offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting
+was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him
+by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none
+other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel!
+The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself--the
+Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was
+put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: Augustus P.
+Flint, Pres't United Northeastern Railroads, New York. And came back
+with certain annotations on the margin, which were duly incorporated
+into it. This is the private history (which must never be told) of the
+document which on January first became, as far as fame and posterity is
+concerned, the Honourable Asa P. Gray's--forever and forever.
+
+Mr. Crewe liked the inaugural, and was one of the first to tell Mr. Gray
+so, and to express his pleasure and appreciation of the fact that his
+request (mailed in November) had been complied with, that the substance
+of his bills had been recommended in the governor's programme.
+
+He did not pause to reflect on the maxim, that platforms are made to get
+in by and inaugurals to get started by.
+
+Although annual efforts have been made by various public-spirited
+citizens to build a new state-house, economy--with assistance from room
+Number Seven has triumphed. It is the same state-house from the gallery
+of which poor William Wetherell witnessed the drama of the Woodchuck
+Session, although there are more members now, for the population of the
+State has increased to five hundred thousand. It is well for General
+Doby, with his two hundred and fifty pounds, that he is in the Speaker's
+chair; five hundred seats are a good many for that hall, and painful
+in a long session. The Honourable Brush Bascom can stretch his legs,
+because he is fortunate enough to have a front seat. Upon inquiry,
+it turns out that Mr. Bascom has had a front seat for the last twenty
+years--he has been uniformly lucky in drawing. The Honourable Jacob
+Botcher (ten years' service) is equally fortunate; the Honourable Jake
+is a man of large presence, and a voice that sounds as if it came,
+oracularly, from the caverns of the earth. He is easily heard by the
+members on the back seats, while Mr. Bascom is not. Mr. Ridout, the
+capital lawyer, is in the House this year, and singularly enough has a
+front seat likewise. It was Mr. Crewe's misfortune to draw number 415,
+in the extreme corner of the room, and next the steam radiator. But he
+was not of the metal to accept tamely such a ticketing from the hat
+of destiny (via the Clerk of the House). He complained, as any man of
+spirit would, and Mr. Utter, the polite clerk, is profoundly sorry,--and
+says it maybe managed. Curiously enough, the Honourable Brush Bascom
+and the Honourable Jacob Botcher join Mr. Crewe in his complaint, and
+reiterate that it is an outrage that a man of such ability and deserving
+prominence should be among the submerged four hundred and seventy. It
+is managed in a mysterious manner we don't pretend to fathom, and behold
+Mr. Crewe in the front of the Forum, in the seats of the mighty, where
+he can easily be pointed out from the gallery at the head of the
+five hundred, between those shining leaders and parliamentarians, the
+Honourables Brush Bascom and Jake Botcher.
+
+For Mr. Crewe has not come to the Legislature, like the country members
+in the rear, to acquire a smattering of parliamentary procedure by
+the day the Speaker is presented with a gold watch, at the end of the
+session. Not he! Not the practical business man, the member of boards,
+the chairman and president of societies. He has studied the Rules of
+the House and parliamentary law, you may be sure. Genius does not
+come unprepared, and is rarely caught napping. After the Legislature
+adjourned that week the following telegram was sent over the wires:--
+
+   Augustus P. Flint, New York.
+
+   Kindly use your influence with Doby to secure my committee
+   appointments. Important as per my conversation with you.
+
+                       Humphrey Crewe.
+
+Nor was Mr. Crewe idle from Saturday to Monday night, when the
+committees were to be announced. He sent to the State Tribune office
+for fifty copies of that valuable paper, which contained a
+two-column-and-a-half article on Mr. Crewe as a legislator and financier
+and citizen, with a summary of his bills and an argument as to how the
+State would benefit by their adoption; an accurate list of Mr. Crewe's
+societies was inserted, and an account of his life's history, and of
+those ancestors of his who had been born or lived within the State.
+Indeed, the accuracy of this article as a whole did great credit to the
+editor of the State Tribune, who must have spent a tremendous amount of
+painstaking research upon it; and the article was so good that Mr. Crewe
+regretted (undoubtedly for the editor's sake) that a request could not
+be appended to it such as is used upon marriage and funeral notices:
+"New York, Boston, and Philadelphia papers please copy."
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it his duty to remedy as much as possible the
+unfortunate limited circulation of the article, and he spent as much
+as a whole day making out a list of friends and acquaintances whom
+he thought worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune--marked personal.
+Victoria Flint got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast
+table. (Mr. Flint did not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man
+in his obscure and helpless position should have been honoured, but
+honoured he was. He sent his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find
+that she knew his handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for
+it: a letter which provoked on his part much laughter, and elements
+of other sensations which, according to Charles Reade, should form the
+ingredients of a good novel. But of this matter later.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret and Alice each got one, and each wrote Mr. Crewe
+appropriate congratulations. (Alice's answer supervised.) Mrs.
+Chillingham got one; the Honourable Hilary Vane got one--marked in red
+ink, lest he should have skipped it in his daily perusal of the
+paper. Mr. Brush, Bascom got one likewise. But the list of Mr. Crewe's
+acquaintances is too long and too broad to dwell upon further in these
+pages.
+
+The Monday-night session came at last, that sensational hour when the
+Speaker makes those decisions to which he is supposed to have given
+birth over Sunday in the seclusion of his country home at Hale.
+Monday-night sessions are, as a rule, confined in attendance to the
+Honourable Brush Bascom and Mr. Ridout and a few other conscientious
+members who do not believe in cheating the State, but to-night all is
+bustle and confusion, and at least four hundred members are pushing
+down the aisles and squeezing past each other into the narrow seats,
+and reading the State Tribune or the ringing words of the governor's
+inaugural which they find in the racks on the back of the seats before
+them. Speaker Doby, who has been apparently deep in conference with the
+most important members (among them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered
+that a violent snow-storm is raging in Hale), raps for order; and after
+a few preliminaries hands to Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless
+silence, the paper on which the parliamentary career of so many
+ambitious statesmen depends.
+
+It is not a pleasure to record the perfidy of man, nor the lack
+of judgment which prevents him, in his circumscribed lights, from
+recognizing undoubted geniuses when he sees them. Perhaps it was
+jealousy on General Doby's part, and a selfish desire to occupy the
+centre of the stage himself, but at any rate we will pass hastily over
+the disagreeable portions of this narrative. Mr. Crewe settled himself
+with his feet extended, and with a complacency which he had rightly
+earned by leaving no stone unturned, to listen. He sat up a little when
+the Appropriations Committee, headed by the Honourable Jake Botcher, did
+not contain his name--but it might have been an oversight of Mr. Utters;
+when the Judiciary (Mr. Ridout's committee) was read it began to look
+like malice; committee after committee was revealed, and the name of
+Humphrey Crewe might not have been contained in the five hundred except
+as the twelfth member of forestry, until it appeared at the top of
+National Affairs. Here was a broad enough field, certainly,--the Trusts,
+the Tariff, the Gold Standard, the Foreign Possessions,--and Mr. Crewe's
+mind began to soar in spite of himself. Public Improvements was reached,
+and he straightened. Mr. Beck, a railroad lawyer from Belfast, led it.
+Mr. Crewe arose, as any man of spirit would, and walked with dignity up
+the aisle and out of the house. This deliberate attempt to crush genius
+would inevitably react on itself. The Honourable Hilary Vane and Mr.
+Flint should be informed of it at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. "FOR BILLS MAY COME, AND BILLS MAY GO"
+
+A man with a sense of humour once went to the capital as a member of the
+five hundred from his town, and he never went back again. One reason for
+this was that he died the following year, literally, the doctors said,
+from laughing too much. I know that this statement will be received
+incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good
+thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing. He
+was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning
+thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester. But
+many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless. He wrote a poem, said to
+be a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this
+chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever."
+The first person singular is supposed to relate to the United
+Northeastern Railroads. It was a poor joke at best.
+
+It is needless to say that the gentleman referred to had a back seat
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy,--and that he kept it.
+No discerning and powerful well-wishers came forward and said to him,
+"Friend, go up higher." He sat, doubled up, in number, and the gods gave
+him compensation in laughter; he disturbed the Solons around him, who
+were interested in what was going on in front, and trying to do their
+duty to their constituents by learning parliamentary procedure before
+the Speaker got his gold watch and shed tears over it.
+
+The gentleman who laughed and died is forgotten, as he deserves to be,
+and it never occurred to anybody that he might have been a philosopher,
+after all. There is something irresistibly funny about predestination;
+about men who are striving and learning and soberly voting upon measures
+with which they have as little to do as guinea-pigs. There were certain
+wise and cynical atheists who did not attend the sessions at all except
+when they received mysterious hints to do so. These were chiefly from
+Newcastle. And there were others who played poker in the state-house
+cellar waiting for the Word to come to them, when they went up and
+voted (prudently counting their chips before they did so), and descended
+again. The man with a sense of humour laughed at these, too, and at the
+twenty blackbirds in the Senate,--but not so heartily. He laughed at
+their gravity, for no gravity can equal that of gentlemen who play with
+stacked cards.
+
+The risible gentleman laughed at the proposed legislation, about which
+he made the song, and he likened it to a stream that rises hopefully in
+the mountains, and takes its way singing at the prospect of reaching
+the ocean, but presently flows into a hole in the ground to fill the
+forgotten caverns of the earth, and is lost to the knowledge and sight
+of man. The caverns he labelled respectively Appropriations, Railroad,
+Judiciary, and their guardians were unmistakably the Honourables Messrs.
+Bascom, Botcher, and Ridout. The greatest cavern of all he called "The
+Senate."
+
+If you listen, you can hear the music of the stream of bills as it is
+rising hopefully and flowing now: "Mr. Crewe of Leith gives notice that
+on to-morrow or some subsequent day he will introduce a bill entitled,
+'An act for the Improvement of the State Highways.' Mr. Crewe of Leith
+gives notice, etc. 'An act for the Improvement of the Practice of
+Agriculture.' 'An act relating to the State Indebtedness.' 'An act
+to increase the State Forest Area.' 'An act to incorporate the State
+Economic League.' 'An act to incorporate the State Children's Charities
+Association.' 'An act in relation to Abandoned Farms.'" These were some
+of the most important, and they were duly introduced on the morrow,
+and gravely referred by the Speaker to various committees. As might be
+expected, a man whose watchword is, "thorough" immediately got a list
+of those committees, and lost no time in hunting up the chairmen and the
+various available members thereof.
+
+As a man of spirit, also, Mr. Crewe wrote to Mr. Flint, protesting as
+to the manner in which he had been treated concerning committees. In the
+course of a week he received a kind but necessarily brief letter from
+the Northeastern's president to remind him that he persisted in a
+fallacy; as a neighbour, Mr. Flint would help him to the extent of his
+power, but the Northeastern Railroads could not interfere in legislative
+or political matters. Mr. Crewe was naturally pained by the lack of
+confidence of his friend; it seems useless to reiterate that he was far
+from being a fool, and no man could be in the capital a day during the
+session without being told of the existence of Number Seven, no matter
+how little the informant might know of what might be going on there.
+Mr. Crewe had been fortunate enough to see the inside of that mysterious
+room, and, being a sufficiently clever man to realize the importance and
+necessity of government by corporations, had been shocked at nothing he
+had seen or heard. However, had he had a glimpse of the Speaker's lists
+under the hopelessly crushed hat of Mr. Bascom, perhaps he might have
+been shocked, after all.
+
+It was about this time that a touching friendship began which ought, in
+justice, to be briefly chronicled. It was impossible for the Honourable
+Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher to have Mr. Crewe sitting
+between them and not conceive a strong affection for him. The Honourable
+Brush, though not given to expressing his feelings, betrayed some
+surprise at the volumes Mr. Crewe had contributed to the stream of
+bills; and Mr. Botcher, in a Delphic whisper, invited Mr. Crewe to visit
+him in room forty-eight of the Pelican that evening. To tell the truth,
+Mr. Crewe returned the feeling of his companions warmly, and he had even
+entertained the idea of asking them both to dine with him that evening.
+
+Number forty-eight (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy
+democratic resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn
+the key here. Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard
+Mr. Botcher's hearty voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed
+transom. The Honourable Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom,
+and none but his intimate friends ever looked in the third from the top
+bureau drawer.
+
+The proprietor of the Pelican, who in common with the rest of humanity
+had fallen a victim to the rough and honest charms and hearty good
+fellowship of the Honourable Jake, always placed a large padded
+arm-chair in number forty-eight before the sessions, knowing that the
+Honourable Jake's constituency would be uniformly kind to him. There Mr.
+Botcher was wont to sit (when he was not depressing one of the tiles
+in the rotunda), surrounded by his friends and their tobacco smoke,
+discussing in his frank and manly fashion the public questions of the
+day.
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it a little strange that, whenever he entered a room
+in the Pelican, a silence should succeed the buzz of talk which he had
+heard through the closed transom; but he very naturally attributed this
+to the constraint which ordinary men would be likely to feel in his
+presence. In the mouth of one presumptuous member the word "railroad"
+was cut in two by an agate glance from the Honourable Brush, and Mr.
+Crewe noted with some surprise that the Democratic leader of the House,
+Mr. Painter, was seated on Mr. Botcher's mattress, with an expression
+that was in singular contrast to the look of bold defiance which he had
+swept over the House that afternoon in announcing his opposition policy.
+The vulgar political suggestion might have crept into a more trivial
+mind than Mr. Crewe's that Mr. Painter was being, "put to bed," the bed
+being very similar to that of Procrustes. Mr. Botcher extracted himself
+from the nooks and crannies of his armchair.
+
+"How are you, Crewe?" he said hospitably; "we're all friends here--eh,
+Painter? We don't carry our quarrels outside the swinging doors. You
+know Mr. Crewe--by sight, of course. Do you know these other gentlemen,
+Crewe? I didn't expect you so early."
+
+The "other gentlemen" said that they were happy to make the acquaintance
+of their fellow-member from Leith, and seemingly with one consent began
+to edge towards the door.
+
+"Don't go, boys," Mr. Bascom protested. "Let me finish that story."
+
+Some of "the boys" seemed to regard this statement as humorous,--more
+humorous, indeed, than the story itself. And when it was finished they
+took their departure, a trifle awkwardly, led by Mr. Painter.
+
+"They're a little mite bashful," said Mr. Botcher, apologetically.
+
+"How many more of those bills have you got?" demanded Mr. Bascom, from
+the steam radiator, with characteristic directness.
+
+"I put 'em all in this morning," said Mr. Crewe, "but I have thought
+since of two or three other conditions which might be benefited by
+legislation."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Bascom, kindly, "if you have any more I was going to
+suggest that you distribute 'em round among the boys. That's the way I
+do, and most folks don't guess they're your bills. See?"
+
+"What harm is there in that?" demanded Mr. Crewe. "I'm not ashamed of
+'em."
+
+"Brush was only lookin' at it from the point of view of gettin' 'em
+through," honest Mr. Botcher put in, in stentorian tones. "It doesn't do
+for a new member to be thought a hog about legislation."
+
+Now the Honourable Jacob only meant this in the kindest manner, as we
+know, and to give inexperience a hint from well-intentioned experience.
+On the other hand, Mr. Crewe had a dignity and a position to uphold.
+He was a personality. People who went too far with him were apt to be
+rebuked by a certain glassy quality in his eye, and this now caused the
+Honourable Jake to draw back perceptibly.
+
+"I see no reason why a public-spirited man should be open to such an
+imputation," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Certainly not, certainly not," said Mr. Botcher, in stentorian tones of
+apology, "I was only trying to give you a little friendly advice, but
+I may have put it too strong. Brush and I--I may as well be plain
+about it, Mr. Crewe--have taken a liking to you. Couldn't help it, sir,
+sitting next to you as we do. We take an interest in your career, and we
+don't want you to make any mistakes. Ain't that about it, Brush?"
+
+"That's about it," said Mr. Bascom.
+
+Mr. Crewe was to big a man not to perceive and appreciate the sterling
+philanthropy which lay beneath the exteriors of his new friends, who
+scorned to flatter him.
+
+"I understand the spirit in which your advice is given, gentlemen," he
+replied magnanimously, "and I appreciate it. We are all working for the
+same things, and we all believe that they must be brought about in the
+same practical way. For instance, we know as practical men that the
+railroad pays a large tax in this State, and that property must take
+a hand--a very considerable hand--in legislation. You gentlemen, as
+important factors in the Republican organization, are loyal to--er--that
+property, and perhaps for wholly desirable reasons cannot bring forward
+too many bills under your own names. Whereas I--"
+
+At this point in Mr. Crewe's remarks the Honourable Jacob Botcher
+was seized by an appalling coughing fit which threatened to break his
+arm-chair, probably owing to the fact that he had swallowed something
+which he had in his mouth the wrong way. Mr. Bascom, assisted by Mr.
+Crewe, pounded him relentlessly on the back.
+
+"I read that article in the 'Tribune' about you with great interest,"
+said Mr. Bascom, when Mr. Botcher's coughing had subsided. "I had no
+idea you were so--ahem--well equipped for a political career. But what
+we wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued, as Mr. Crewe
+showed signs of breaking in, "those committee appointments you desired."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, with some pardonable heat, "the Speaker doesn't
+seem to know which side his bread's buttered on."
+
+"What I was going to say," proceeded Mr. Bascom, "was that General Doby
+is a pretty good fellow. Personally, I happen to know that the general
+feels very badly that he couldn't give you what you wanted. He took a
+shine to you that night you saw him."
+
+"Yes," Mr. Botcher agreed, for he had quite recovered, "the general
+felt bad--feels bad, I should say. He perceived that you were a man of
+ability, sir--"
+
+"And that was just the reason," said the Honourable Brush, "that he
+couldn't make you more useful just now."
+
+"There's a good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of
+ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones.
+"The competition amongst those--er--who have served the party is very
+keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the
+general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of
+your--er--well-wishers persuaded him to take you off for your own good."
+
+"It wouldn't do for the party leaders to make you too prominent all at
+once," said Mr. Bascom. "You are bound to take an active part in what
+passes here. The general said, 'At all events I will give Mr. Crewe
+one chairmanship by which he can make a name for himself suited to his
+talents,' and he insisted on giving you, in spite of some remonstrances
+from your friends, National Affairs. The general urged, rightly, that
+with your broad view and knowledge of national policy, it was his duty
+to put you in that place whatever people might say."
+
+Mr. Crewe listened to these explanations in some surprise; and being a
+rational man, had to confess that they were--more or less reasonable.
+
+"Scarcely any bills come before that committee," he objected.
+
+"Ah," replied Mr. Bascom, "that is true. But the chairman of that
+committee is generally supposed to be in line for--er--national honours.
+It has not always happened in the past, because the men have not proved
+worthy. But the opportunity is always given to that chairman to make
+a speech upon national affairs which is listened to with the deepest
+interest.
+
+"Is that so?" said Mr. Crewe. He wanted to be of service, as we know. He
+was a man of ideas, and the opening sentences of the speech were already
+occurring to him.
+
+"Let's go upstairs and see the general now," suggested Mr. Botcher,
+smiling that such a happy thought should have occurred to him.
+
+"Why, I guess we couldn't do any better," Mr. Bascom agreed.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm willing to hear what he's got to say,
+anyway."
+
+Taking advantage of this generous concession, Mr. Botcher hastily locked
+the door, and led the way up the stairway to number seventy-five. After
+a knock or two here, the door opened a crack, disclosing, instead of
+General Doby's cherubic countenance, a sallow face with an exceedingly
+pointed nose. The owner of these features, having only Mr. Botcher in
+his line of vision, made what was perhaps an unguarded remark.
+
+"Hello, Jake, the general's in number nine--Manning sent for him about
+half an hour ago."
+
+It was Mr. Botcher himself who almost closed the door on the gentleman's
+sharp nose, and took Mr. Crewe's arm confidingly.
+
+"We'll go up to the desk and see Doby in the morning,--he's busy," said
+the Honourable Jake.
+
+"What's the matter with seeing him now?" Mr. Crewe demanded. "I know
+Manning. He's the division superintendent, isn't he?"
+
+Mr. Botcher and Mr. Bascom exchanged glances.
+
+"Why, yes--" said Mr. Bascom, "yes, he is. He's a great friend of
+General Doby's, and their wives are great friends."
+
+"Intimate friends, sir," said the Honourable Jake
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "we won't bother 'em but a moment."
+
+It was he who led the way now, briskly, the Honourable Brush and the
+Honourable Jake pressing closely after him. It was Mr. Crewe who,
+without pausing to knock, pushed open the door of number nine, which was
+not quite closed; and it was Mr. Crewe who made the important discovery
+that the lugubrious division superintendent had a sense of humour. Mr.
+Manning was seated at a marble-topped table writing on a salmon-coloured
+card, in the act of pronouncing these words:--"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs.
+Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New York and return."
+
+Mr. Speaker Doby, standing before the marble-topped table with his hands
+in his pockets, heard the noise behind him and turned, and a mournful
+expression spread over his countenance.
+
+"Don't mind me," said Mr. Crewe, waving a hand in the direction of the
+salmon-coloured tickets; "I hope you have a good time, General. When do
+you go?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed the Speaker, "how are you, Mr. Crewe, how are you? It's
+only one of Manning's little jokes."
+
+"That's all right, General," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't been a director
+in railroads for nothing. I'm not as green as he thinks. Am I, Mr.
+Manning?"
+
+"It never struck me that green was your colour, Mr. Crewe," answered the
+division superintendent, smiling a little as he tore the tickets into
+bits and put them in the waste-basket.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "you needn't have torn 'em up on my account. I
+travel on the pass which the Northeastern gives me as a legislator, and
+I'm thinking seriously of getting Mr. Flint to send me an annual, now
+that I'm in politics and have to cover the State."
+
+"We thought you were a reformer, Mr. Crewe," the Honourable Brush Bascom
+remarked.
+
+"I am a practical man," said Mr. Crewe; "a railroad man, a business mark
+and as such I try to see things as they are."
+
+"Well," said General Doby, who by this time had regained his usual
+genial air of composure, "I'm glad you said that, Mr. Crewe. As these
+gentlemen will tell you, if I'd had my wish I'd have had you on every
+important committee in the House."
+
+"Chairman of every important committee, General," corrected the
+Honourable Jacob Botcher.
+
+"Yes, chairman of 'em," assented the general, after a glance at Mr.
+Crewe's countenance to see how this statement fared. "But the fact is,
+the boys are all jealous of you--on the quiet. I suppose you suspected
+something of the kind."
+
+"I should have imagined there might be some little feeling," Mr. Crewe
+assented modestly.
+
+"Exactly," cried the general, "and I had to combat that feeling when I
+insisted upon putting you at the head of National Affairs. It does not
+do for a new member, whatever his prominence in the financial world,
+to be pushed forward too quickly. And unless I am mighty mistaken, Mr.
+Crewe," he added, with his hand on the new member's shoulder, "you will
+make yourself felt without any boosting from me."
+
+"I did not come here to remain idle, General," answered Mr. Crewe,
+considerably mollified.
+
+"Certainly not," said the general, "and I say to some of those men,
+'Keep your eye on the gentleman who is Chairman of National Affairs.'"
+
+After a little more of this desultory and pleasant talk, during which
+recourse was, had to the bathroom for several tall and thin glasses
+ranged on the shelf there, Mr. Crewe took his departure in a most
+equable frame of mind. And when the door was closed and locked behind
+him, Mr. Manning dipped his pen in the ink, once more produced from a
+drawer in the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at
+the general with a smile.
+
+"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
+York and return."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE HOPPER
+
+It is certainly not the function of a romance to relate, with the
+exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature. Somebody
+has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody
+ground over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,--no
+place for an innocent and unselfish bystander like Mr. Crewe, who
+desired only to make of his State an Utopia; whose measures were for the
+public good--not his own. But if any politician were fatuous enough
+to believe that Humphrey Crewe was a man to introduce bills and calmly
+await their fate; a man who, like Senator Sanderson, only came down
+to the capital when he was notified by telegram, that politician was
+entirely mistaken.
+
+No sooner had his bills been assigned to the careful and just
+consideration of the committees in charge of the Honourable Brush
+Bascom, Mr. Botcher, and others than Mr. Crewe desired of each a day for
+a hearing. Every member of the five hundred was provided with a copy;
+nay, nearly every member was personally appealed to, to appear and speak
+for the measures. Foresters, road builders, and agriculturists (expenses
+paid) were sent for from other States; Mr. Ball and others came down
+from Leith, and gentlemen who for a generation had written letters to
+the newspapers turned up from other localities. In two cases the largest
+committee rooms proved too small for the gathering which was the result
+of Mr. Crewe's energy, and the legislative hall had to be lighted. The
+State Tribune gave column reports of the hearings, and little editorial
+pushes besides. And yet, when all was over, when it had been proved
+beyond a doubt that, if the State would consent to spend a little
+money, she would take the foremost rank among her forty odd sisters
+for progression, the bills were still under consideration by those
+hardheaded statesmen, Mr. Bascom and Mr. Botcher and their associates.
+
+It could not be because these gentlemen did not know the arguments and
+see the necessity. Mr. Crewe had had them to dinner, and had spent so
+much time in their company presenting his case--to which they absolutely
+agreed--that they took to a forced seclusion. The member from Leith also
+wrote letters and telegrams, and sent long typewritten arguments and
+documents to Mr. Flint. Mr. Crewe, although far from discouraged,
+began to think there was something mysterious about all this seemingly
+unnecessary deliberation.
+
+Mr. Crewe, though of great discernment, was only mortal, and while he
+was fighting his battle single-handed, how was he to know that the gods
+above him were taking sides and preparing for conflict? The gods do not
+give out their declarations of war for publication to the Associated
+Press; and old Tom Gaylord, who may be likened to Mars, had no intention
+of sending Jupiter notice until he got his cohorts into line. The
+strife, because it was to be internecine, was the more terrible.
+Hitherto the Gaylord Lumber Company, like the Winona Manufacturing
+Company of Newcastle (the mills of which extended for miles along the
+Tyne), had been a faithful ally of the Empire; and, on occasions when it
+was needed, had borrowed the Imperial army to obtain grants, extensions,
+and franchises.
+
+The fact is that old Tom Gaylord, in the autumn previous, had quarreled
+with Mr. Flint about lumber rates, which had been steadily rising.
+Mr. Flint had been polite, but firm; and old Tom, who, with all
+his tremendous properties, could ship by no other railroad than the
+Northeastern, had left the New York office in a black rage. A more
+innocent citizen than old Tom would have put his case (which was without
+doubt a strong one) before the Railroad Commission of the State, but
+old Tom knew well enough that the Railroad Commission was in reality
+an economy board of the Northeastern system, as much under Mr. Flint's
+orders as the conductors and brakemen. Old Tom, in consulting the map,
+conceived an unheard-of effrontery, a high treason which took away the
+breath of his secretary and treasurer when it was pointed out to him.
+The plan contemplated a line of railroad from the heart of the lumber
+regions down the south side of the valley of the Pingsquit to Kingston,
+where the lumber could take to the sea. In short, it was a pernicious
+revival of an obsolete state of affairs, competition, and if persisted
+in, involved nothing less than a fight to a finish with the army, the
+lobby of the Northeastern. Other favoured beings stood aghast when they
+heard of it, and hastened to old Tom with timely counsel; but he had
+reached a frame of mind which they knew well. He would listen to no
+reason, and maintained stoutly that there were other lawyers in the
+world as able in political sagacity and lobby tactics as Hilary Vane;
+the Honourable Galusha Hammer, for instance, an old and independent
+and wary war-horse who had more than once wrung compromises out of the
+Honourable Hilary. The Honourable Galusha Hammer was sent for, and was
+now industriously, if quietly and unobtrusively, at work. The Honourable
+Hilary was likewise at work, equally quietly and unobtrusively. When
+the powers fall out, they do not open up at once with long-distance
+artillery. There is always a chance of a friendly settlement. The news
+was worth a good deal, for instance, to Mr. Peter Pardriff (brother of
+Paul, of Ripton), who refrained, with praiseworthy self-control, from
+publishing it in the State Tribune, although the temptation to do so
+must have been great. And most of the senatorial twenty saw the trouble
+coming and braced their backs against it, but in silence. The capital
+had seen no such war as this since the days of Jethro Bass.
+
+In the meantime Mr. Crewe, blissfully ignorant of this impending
+conflict, was preparing a speech on national affairs and national
+issues which was to startle an unsuspecting State. Mrs. Pomfret, who had
+received many clippings and pamphlets, had written him weekly letters
+of a nature spurring to his ambition, which incidentally contained many
+references to Alice's interest in his career. And Mr. Crewe's mind,
+when not intent upon affairs of State, sometimes reverted pleasantly to
+thoughts of Victoria Flint; it occurred to him that the Duncan house was
+large enough for entertaining, and that he might invite Mrs. Pomfret to
+bring Victoria and the inevitable Alice to hear his oration, for which
+Mr. Speaker Doby had set a day.
+
+In his desire to give other people pleasure, Mr. Crewe took the trouble
+to notify a great many of his friends and acquaintances as to the day of
+his speech, in case they might wish to travel to the State capital and
+hear him deliver it. Having unexpectedly received in the mail a cheque
+from Austen Vane in settlement of the case of the injured horse, Austen
+was likewise invited.
+
+Austen smiled when he opened the letter, and with its businesslike
+contents there seemed to be wafted from it the perfume and suppliance
+of a September day in the Vale of the Blue. From the window of his back
+office, looking across the railroad tracks, he could see Sawanec, pale
+in her winter garb against a pale winter sky, and there arose in him the
+old restless desire for the woods and fields which at times was almost
+irresistible. His thoughts at length descending from the azure above
+Sawanec, his eyes fell again on Mr. Crewe's typewritten words: "It may
+be of interest to you that I am to deliver, on the 15th instant, and as
+the Chairman of the House Committee on National Affairs, a speech upon
+national policies which is the result of much thought, and which touches
+upon such material needs of our State as can be supplied by the Federal
+Government."
+
+Austen had a brief fancy, whimsical as it was, of going to hear him. Mr.
+Crewe, as a type absolutely new to him, interested him. He had followed
+the unusual and somewhat surprising career of the gentleman from Leith
+with some care, even to the extent of reading of Mr. Crewe's activities
+in the State Tribunes which had been sent him. Were such qualifications
+as Mr. Crewe possessed, he wondered, of a kind to sweep their possessor
+into high office? Were industry, persistency, and a capacity for taking
+advantage of a fair wind sufficient?
+
+Since his return from Pepper County, Austen Vane had never been to the
+State capital during a session, although it was common for young lawyers
+to have cases before the Legislature. It would have been difficult to
+say why he did not take these cases, aside from the fact that they were
+not very remunerative. On occasions gentlemen from different parts of
+the State, and some from outside of it who had certain favours to ask at
+the hands of the lawmaking body, had visited his back office and closed
+the door after them, and in the course of the conversation had referred
+to the relationship of the young lawyer to Hilary Vane. At such times
+Austen would freely acknowledge the debt of gratitude he owed his father
+for being in the world--and refer them politely to Mr. Hilary Vane
+himself. In most cases they had followed his advice, wondering not a
+little at this isolated example of quixotism.
+
+During the sessions, except for a day or two at week ends which were
+often occupied with conferences, the Honourable Hilary's office was
+deserted; or rather, as we have seen, his headquarters were removed to
+room Number Seven in the Pelican Hotel at the capital. Austen got
+many of the lay clients who came to see his father at such times;
+and--without giving an exaggerated idea of his income--it might be said
+that he was beginning to have what may be called a snug practice for a
+lawyer of his experience. In other words, according to Mr. Tooting, who
+took an intense interest in the matter, "not wearing the collar" had
+been more of a financial success for Austen than that gentleman had
+imagined. There proved to be many clients to whom the fact that young
+Mr. Vane did not carry a "retainer pass" actually appealed. These
+clients paid their bills, but they were neither large nor influential,
+as a rule, with the notable exception of the Gaylord Lumber Company,
+where the matters for trial were not large. If young Tom Gaylord had had
+his way, Austen would have been the chief counsel for the corporation.
+
+To tell the truth, Austen Vane had a secret aversion to going to the
+capital during a session, a feeling that such a visit would cause him
+unhappiness. In spite of his efforts, and indeed in spite of Hilary's,
+Austen and his father had grown steadily apart. They met in the office
+hallway, in the house in Hanover Street when Hilary came home to sleep,
+and the elder Mr. Vane was not a man to thrive on small talk. His world
+was the battlefield from which he directed the forces of the great
+corporation which he served, and the cherished vision of a son in whom
+he could confide his plans, upon whose aid and counsel he could lean,
+was gone forever. Hilary Vane had troublesome half-hours, but on the
+whole he had reached the conclusion that this son, like Sarah Austen,
+was one of those inexplicable products in which an extravagant and
+inscrutable nature sometimes indulged. On the rare evenings when the two
+were at home together, the Honourable Hilary sat under one side of the
+lamp with a pile of documents and newspapers, and Austen under the other
+with a book from the circulating library. No public questions could be
+broached upon which they were not as far apart as the poles, and the
+Honourable Hilary put literature in the same category as embroidery.
+Euphrasia, when she paused in her bodily activity to darn their
+stockings, used to glance at them covertly from time to time, and many a
+silent tear of which they knew nothing fell on her needle.
+
+On the subject of his protracted weekly absences at the State capital,
+the Honourable Hilary was as uncommunicative as he would have been had
+he retired for those periods to a bar-room. He often grunted and cleared
+his throat and glanced at his son when their talk bordered upon these
+absences; and he was even conscious of an extreme irritation against
+himself as well as Austen because of the instinct that bade him keep
+silent. He told himself fiercely that he had nothing to be ashamed of,
+nor would he have acknowledged that it was a kind of shame that bade him
+refrain even from circumstantial accounts of what went on in room Number
+Seven of the Pelican. He had an idea that Austen knew and silently
+condemned; and how extremely maddening was this feeling to the
+Honourable Hilary may well be imagined. All his life long he had deemed
+himself morally invulnerable, and now to be judged and ethically found
+wanting by the son of Sarah Austen was, at times, almost insupportable.
+Were the standards of a long life to be suddenly reversed by a prodigal
+son?
+
+To get back to Austen. On St. Valentine's Day of that year when, to tell
+the truth, he was seated in his office scribbling certain descriptions
+of nature suggested by the valentines in Mr. Hayman's stationery store,
+the postman brought in a letter from young Tom Gaylord. Austen laughed
+as he read it. "The Honourable Galusha Hammer is well named," young Tom
+wrote, "but the conviction has been gaining ground with me that a hammer
+is about as much use as a shovel would be at the present time. It is not
+the proper instrument." "But the 'old man'" (it was thus young Tom was
+wont to designate his parent) "is pig-headed when he gets to fighting,
+and won't listen to reason. If he believes he can lick the Northeastern
+with a Hammer, he is durned badly mistaken, and I told him so. I have
+been giving him sage advice in little drops--after meals. I tell him
+there is only one man in the State who has sense enough even to shake
+the Northeastern, and that's you. He thinks this a pretty good joke. Of
+course I realize where your old man is planted, and that you might have
+some natural delicacy and wish to refrain from giving him a jar. But
+come down for an hour and let me talk to you, anyway. The new statesman
+from Leith is cutting a wide swath. Not a day passes but his voice is
+heard roaring in the Forum; he has visited all the State institutions,
+dined and wined the governor and his staff and all the ex-governors
+he can lay his hands on, and he has that hard-headed and caustic
+journalist, Mr. Peter Pardriff, of the State Tribune, hypnotized. He
+has some swells up at his house to hear his speech on national affairs,
+among them old Flint's daughter, who is a ripper to look at, although I
+never got nearer to her than across the street. As you may guess, it is
+something of a card for Crewe to have Flint's daughter here."
+
+Austen sat for a long time after reading this letter, idly watching
+the snow-clouds gathering around Sawanec. Then he tore up the paper,
+on which he had been scribbling, into very small bits, consulted a
+time-table, and at noon, in a tumult of feelings, he found himself in a
+back seat of the express, bound for the capital.
+
+Arriving at the station, amidst a hurry and bustle of legislators and
+politicians coming and going, many of whom nodded to him, he stood for a
+minute in the whirling snow reflecting. Now that he was here, where was
+he to stay? The idea of spending the night at the Pelican was repellent
+to him, and he was hesitating between two more modest hostelries when he
+was hailed by a giant with a flowing white beard, a weather-beaten face,
+and a clear eye that shone with a steady and kindly light. It was James
+Redbrook, the member from Mercer.
+
+"Why, how be you, Austen?" he cried, extending a welcome hand; and, when
+Austen had told him his dilemma: "Come right along up to my lodgings. I
+live at the Widow Peasley's, and there's a vacant room next to mine."
+
+Austen accepted gratefully, and as they trudged through the storm up the
+hill, he inquired how legislative matters were progressing. Whereupon
+Mr. Redbrook unburdened himself.
+
+"Say, I just warmed up all over when I see you, Austen. I'm so glad to
+run across an honest man. We ain't forgot in Mercer what you did for Zeb
+Meader, and how you went against your interests. And I guess it ain't
+done you any harm in the State. As many as thirty or forty members have
+spoke to me about it. And down here I've got so I just can't hold in any
+more."
+
+"Is it as bad as that, Mr. Redbrook?" asked Austen, with a serious
+glance at the farmer's face.
+
+"It's so bad I don't know how to begin," said the member from Mercer,
+and paused suddenly. "But I don't want to hurt your feelings, Austen,
+seeing your father is--where he is."
+
+"Go on," said Austen, "I understand."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Redbrook, "it just makes me tremble as an American
+citizen. The railrud sends them slick cusses down here that sit in the
+front seats who know all this here parliamentary law and the tricks of
+the trade, and every time any of us gets up to speak our honest minds,
+they have us ruled out of order or get the thing laid on the table until
+some Friday morning when there ain't nobody here, and send it along
+up to the Senate. They made that fat feller, Doby, Speaker, and he's
+stuffed all the important committees so that you can't get an honest
+measure considered. You can talk to the committees all you've a mind to,
+and they'll just listen and never do anything. There's five hundred in
+the House, and it ain't any more of a Legislature than a camp-meetin'
+is. What do you suppose they done last Friday morning, when there wahn't
+but twenty men at the session? We had an anti-pass law, and all these
+fellers were breakin' it. It forbid anybody riding on a pass except
+railroad presidents, directors, express messengers, and persons in
+misfortune, and they stuck in these words, 'and others to whom passes
+have been granted by the proper officers.' Ain't that a disgrace to
+the State? And those twenty senators passed it before we got back on
+Tuesday. You can't get a bill through that Legislature unless you go up
+to the Pelican and get permission of Hilary--"
+
+Here Mr. Redbrook stopped abruptly, and glanced contritely at his
+companion.
+
+"I didn't mean to get goin' so," he said, "but sometimes I wish this
+American government'd never been started."
+
+"I often feel that way myself, Mr. Redbrook," said Austen.
+
+"I knowed you did. I guess I can tell an honest man when I see one. It's
+treason to say anything against this Northeastern louder than a whisper.
+They want an electric railrud bad up in Greenacre, and when some of us
+spoke for it and tried to get the committee to report it, those cheap
+fellers from Newcastle started such a catcall we had to set down."
+
+By this time they were at the Widow Peasley's, stamping the snow from
+off their boots.
+
+"How general is this sentiment?" Austen asked, after he had set down his
+bag in the room he was to occupy.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Redbrook, with conviction, "there's enough feel as I do
+to turn that House upside down--if we only had a leader. If you was only
+in there, Austen."
+
+"I'm afraid I shouldn't be of much use," Austen answered. "They'd have
+given me a back seat, too."
+
+The Widow Peasley's was a frame and gabled house of Revolutionary days
+with a little terrace in front of it and a retaining wall built up from
+the sidewalk. Austen, on the steps, stood gazing across at a square
+mansion with a wide cornice, half hidden by elms and maples and
+pines. It was set far back from the street, and a driveway entered the
+picket-fence and swept a wide semicircle to the front door and back
+again. Before the door was a sleigh of a pattern new to him, with a
+seat high above the backs of two long-bodied, deep-chested horses, their
+heads held with difficulty by a little footman with his arms above him.
+At that moment two figures in furs emerged from the house. The young
+woman gathered up the reins and leaped lightly to the box, the man
+followed; the little groom touched his fur helmet and scrambled aboard
+as the horses sprang forward to the music of the softest of bells. The
+sleigh swept around the curve, avoided by a clever turn a snow-pile at
+the entrance, the young woman raised her eyes from the horses, stared at
+Austen, and bowed. As for Austen, he grew warm as he took off his hat,
+and he realized that his hand was actually trembling. The sleigh flew on
+up the hill, but she turned once more to look behind her, and he still
+had his hat in his hand, the snowflakes falling on his bared head. Then
+he was aware that James Redbrook was gazing at him curiously.
+
+"That's Flint's daughter, ain't it?" inquired the member from Mercer.
+"Didn't callate you'd know her."
+
+Austen flushed. He felt exceedingly foolish, but an answer came to him.
+
+"I met her in the hospital. She used to go there to see Zeb Meader."
+
+"That's so," said Mr. Redbrook; "Zeb told me about it, and she used to
+come to Mercer to see him after he got out. She ain't much like the old
+man, I callate."
+
+"I don't think she is," said Austen.
+
+"I don't know what she's stayin' with that feller Crewe for," the farmer
+remarked; "of all the etarnal darn idiots--why, Brush Bascom and that
+Botcher and the rest of 'em are trailin' him along and usin' him for the
+best thing that ever came down here. He sets up to be a practical man,
+and don't know as much as some of us hayseeds in the back seats. Where
+be you goin'?"
+
+"I was going to the Pelican."
+
+"Well, I've got a committee meetin' of Agriculture," said Mr. Redbrook.
+"Could you be up here at Mis' Peasley's about eight to-night?"
+
+"Why, yes," Austen replied, "if you want to see me."
+
+"I do want to see you," said Mr. Redbrook, significantly, and waved a
+farewell.
+
+Austen took his way slowly across the state-house park, threading among
+the groups between the snow-banks towards the wide facade of the Pelican
+Hotel. Presently he paused, and then with a sudden determination crossed
+the park diagonally into Main Street, walking rapidly southward and
+scrutinizing the buildings on either side until at length these began to
+grow wide apart, and he spied a florist's sign with a greenhouse behind
+it. He halted again, irresolutely, in front of it, flung open the door,
+and entered a boxlike office filled with the heated scents of flowers.
+A little man eyed him with an obsequious interest which he must have
+accorded to other young men on similar errands. Austen may be spared a
+repetition of the very painful conversation that ensued; suffice it
+to say that, after mature deliberation, violets were chosen. He had
+a notion--not analyzed--that she would prefer violets to roses. The
+information that the flowers were for the daughter of the president of
+the Northeastern Railroads caused a visible quickening of the little
+florist's regard, an attitude which aroused a corresponding disgust and
+depression in Austen.
+
+"Oh, yes," said the florist, "she's up at Crewe's." He glanced at Austen
+apologetically. "Excuse me," he said, "I ought to know you. Have you a
+card?"
+
+"No," said Austen, with emphasis.
+
+"And what name, please?"
+
+"No name," said the donor, now heartily repenting of his rashness, and
+slamming the glass door in a manner that made the panes rattle behind
+him.
+
+As he stood hesitating on the curb of the crossing, he began to wish
+that he had not left Ripton.
+
+"Hello, Austen," said a voice, which he recognized as the Honourable
+Brush Bascom's, "didn't know you ever came down here in session time."
+
+"What are you doing down here, Brush?" Austen asked.
+
+Mr. Bascom grinned in appreciation of this pleasantry.
+
+"I came for my health," he said; "I prefer it to Florida."
+
+"I've heard that it agrees with some people," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Bascom grinned again.
+
+"Just arrived?" he inquired.
+
+"Just," said Austen.
+
+"I thought you'd get here sooner or later," said Mr. Bascom. "Some folks
+try stayin' away, but it ain't much use. You'll find the honourable
+Hilary doing business at the same old stand, next to the governor, in
+Number Seven up there." And Mr. Bascom pointed to the well-known window
+on the second floor.
+
+"Thanks, Brush," said Austen, indifferently. "To tell the truth, I came
+down to hear that promising protege of yours speak on national affairs.
+I understand you're pushing his bills along."
+
+Mr. Bascom, with great deliberation, shut one of his little eyes.
+
+"So long," he said, "come and see me when you get time."
+
+Austen went slowly down the street and entered the smoke-clouded lobby
+of the Pelican. He was a man to draw attention, and he was stared at
+by many politicians there and spoken to by some before he reached the
+stairs. Mounting, he found the door with the numeral, and knocked. The
+medley of voices within ceased; there were sounds of rattling papers,
+and of closing of folding doors. The key turned in the lock, and State
+Senator Nathaniel Billings appeared in the doorway, with a look of
+polite inquiry on his convivial face. This expression, when he saw
+Austen, changed to something like consternation.
+
+"Why, hello, hello," said the senator. "Come in, come in. The Honourable
+Hilary's here. Where'd you come down?"
+
+"Hello, Nat," said Austen, and went in.
+
+The Honourable Hilary sat in his usual arm-chair; Mr. Botcher severely
+strained the tensile strength of the bedsprings; Mr. Hamilton Tooting
+stood before the still waving portieres in front of the folding doors;
+and Mr. Manning, the division superintendent, sat pensively, with his
+pen in his mouth, before the marble-topped table from which everything
+had been removed but a Bible. Two gentlemen, whom Austen recognized
+as colleagues of Mr. Billings in the State Senate, stood together in a
+window, pointing out things of interest in the street. Austen walked up
+to his father and laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"How are you, Judge?" he said. "I only came into pay my respects. I
+hope I have not disturbed any--entertainment going on here," he added,
+glancing in turn at the thoughtful occupants of the room, and then
+at the curtains which hid the folding doors to the apartment of his
+Excellency.
+
+"Why, no," answered the Honourable Hilary, his customary grunt being the
+only indication of surprise on his part; "didn't know you were coming
+down."
+
+"I didn't know it myself until this morning," said Austen.
+
+"Legislative case, I suppose," remarked the Honourable Jacob Botcher, in
+his deep voice.
+
+"No, merely a pleasure trip, Mr. Botcher."
+
+The Honourable Jacob rubbed his throat, the two State senators in the
+window giggled, and Mr. Hamilton Tooting laughed.
+
+"I thought you took to the mountains in such cases, sir," said Mr.
+Botcher.
+
+"I came for intellectual pleasure this time," said Austen. "I understand
+that Mr. Crewe is to deliver an epoch-making speech on the national
+situation to-morrow."
+
+This was too much even for the gravity of Mr. Manning; Mr. Tooting
+and Mr. Billings and his two colleagues roared, though the Honourable
+Jacob's laugh was not so spontaneous.
+
+"Aust," said Mr. Tooting, admiringly, "you're all right."
+
+"Well, Judge," said Austen, patting his father's shoulder again, "I'm
+glad to see you so comfortably fixed. Good-by, and give my regards to
+the governor. I'm sorry to have missed him," he added, glancing at the
+portieres that hid the folding doors.
+
+"Are you stopping here?" asked the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"No, I met Mr. Redbrook of Mercer, and he took me up to his lodgings. If
+I can do anything for you, a message will reach me there."
+
+"Humph," said the Honourable Hilary, while the others exchanged
+significant glances.
+
+Austen had not gone half the length of the hall when he was overtaken by
+Mr. Tooting.
+
+"Say, Aust, what's up between you and Redbrook?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing. Why?" Austen asked, stopping abruptly.
+
+"Well, I suppose you know there's an anti-railroad feeling growing in
+that House, and that Redbrook has more influence with the farmers than
+any other man."
+
+"I didn't know anything about Mr. Redbrook's influence," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Tooting looked unconvinced.
+
+"Say, Aust, if anything's in the wind, I wish you'd let me know. I'll
+keep it quiet."
+
+"I think I shall be safe in promising that, Ham," said Austen. "When
+there's anything in the wind, you generally find it out first."
+
+"There's trouble coming for the railroad," said Mr. Tooting. "I can see
+that. And I guess you saw it before I did."
+
+"They say a ship's about to sink when the rats begin to leave it," said
+Austen.
+
+Although Austen spoke smilingly, Mr. Tooting looked pained.
+
+"There's no chance for young men in that system," he said.
+
+"Young men write the noble parts of the governor's inaugurals," said
+Austen.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Tooting, bitterly, "but you never get to be governor and
+read 'em. You've got to be a 'come on' with thirty thousand dollars to
+be a Northeastern governor and live next door to the Honourable Hilary
+in the Pelican. Well, so long, Aust. If anything's up, give me the tip,
+that's all I ask."
+
+Reflecting on the singular character of Mr. Tooting, Austen sought the
+Gaylords' headquarters, and found them at the furthermost end of the
+building from the Railroad Room. The door was opened by young Tom
+himself, whose face became wreathed in smiles when he saw who the
+visitor was.
+
+"It's Austen!" he cried. "I thought you'd come down when you got that
+appeal of mine."
+
+Austen did not admit the self-sacrifice as he shook Tom's hand;
+but remembered, singularly enough, the closing sentences of Tom's
+letter--which had nothing whatever to do with the Gaylord bill.
+
+At this moment a commotion arose within the room, and a high, tremulous,
+but singularly fierce and compelling voice was heard crying out:--"Get
+out! Get out, d----n you, all of you, and don't come back until you've
+got some notion of what you're a-goin' to do. Get out, I say!"
+
+These last words were pronounced with such extraordinary vigour that
+four gentlemen seemed to be physically impelled from the room. Three of
+them Austen recognized as dismissed and disgruntled soldiers from the
+lobby army of the Northeastern; the fourth was the Honourable Galusha
+Hammer, whose mode of progress might be described as "stalking," and
+whose lips were forming the word "intolerable." In the corner old Tom
+himself could be seen, a wizened figure of wrath.
+
+"Who's that?" he demanded of his son, "another d-d fool?"
+
+"No," replied young Tom, "it's Austen Vane."
+
+"What's he doin' here?" old Tom demanded, with a profane qualification
+as to the region. But young Tom seemed to be the only being capable of
+serenity amongst the flames that played around him.
+
+"I sent for him because he's got more sense than Galusha and all the
+rest of 'em put together," he said.
+
+"I guess that's so," old Tom agreed unexpectedly, "but it ain't sayin'
+much. Bring him in--bring him in, and lock the door."
+
+In obedience to these summons, and a pull from young Tom, Austen entered
+and sat down.
+
+"You've read the Pingsquit bill?" old Tom demanded.
+
+"Yes," said Austen.
+
+"Just because you won a suit against the Northeastern, and nearly killed
+a man out West, Tom seems to think you can do anything. He wouldn't,
+give me any peace until I let him send for you," Mr. Gaylord remarked
+testily. "Now you're down here, what have you got to propose?"
+
+"I didn't come here to propose anything, Mr. Gaylord," said Austen.
+
+"What!" cried Mr. Gaylord, with one of his customary and forceful
+exclamations. "What'd you come down for?"
+
+"I've been asking myself that question ever since I came, Mr. Gaylord,"
+said Austen, "and I haven't yet arrived at any conclusion."
+
+Young Tom looked at his friend and laughed, and Mr. Gaylord, who at
+first gave every indication of being about to explode with anger,
+suddenly emitted a dry cackle.
+
+"You ain't a d-n fool, anyway," he declared.
+
+"I'm beginning to think I am," said Austen.
+
+"Then you've got sense enough to know it," retorted old Tom. "Most
+of 'em haven't." And his glance, as it fell upon the younger man, was
+almost approving. Young Tom's was distinctly so.
+
+"I told you Austen was the only lawyer who'd talk common sense to you,"
+he said.
+
+"I haven't heard much of it yet," said old Tom.
+
+"Perhaps I ought to tell you, Mr. Gaylord," said Austen, smiling a
+little, "that I didn't come down in any legal capacity. That's only one
+of Tom's jokes."
+
+"Then what in h--l did you bring him in here for?" demanded old Tom of
+his son.
+
+"Just for a quiet little powwow," said young Tom, "to make you laugh.
+He's made you laugh before."
+
+"I don't want to laugh," said old Tom, pettishly. Nevertheless, he
+seemed to be visibly cooling. "If you ain't in here to make money," he
+added to Austen, "I don't care how long you stay."
+
+"Say, Austen," said young Tom, "do you remember the time we covered the
+old man with shavings at the mills in Avalon, and how he chased us with
+a two-by-four scantling?"
+
+"I'd made pulp out'n you if I'd got you," remarked Mr. Gaylord, with
+a reminiscent chuckle that was almost pleasant. "But you were always
+a goldurned smart boy, Austen, and you've done well with them little
+suits." He gazed at Austen a moment with his small, filmy-blue eye. "I
+don't know but what you might take hold here and make it hot for those
+d-d rascals in the Northeastern, after all. You couldn't botch it worsen
+Hammer has, and you might do some good. I said I'd make 'em dance, and
+by G-d, I'll do it, if I have to pay that Teller Levering in New York,
+and it takes the rest of my life. Look the situation over, and come back
+to-morrow and tell me what you think of it."
+
+"I can tell you what I think of it now, Mr. Gaylord," said Austen.
+
+"What's that?" old Tom demanded sharply.
+
+"That you'll never get the bill passed, this session or next, by
+lobbying."
+
+For the moment the elder Mr. Gaylord was speechless, but young Tom
+Gaylord clapped his hand heartily on his friend's shoulder.
+
+"That's the reason I wanted to get you down here, Austen," he cried;
+"that's what I've been telling the old man all along--perhaps he'll
+believe you."
+
+"Then you won't take hold?" said Mr. Gaylord, his voice trembling on the
+edge of another spasm. "You refuse business?"
+
+"I refuse that kind of business, Mr. Gaylord," Austen answered quietly,
+though there was a certain note in his voice that young Tom knew well,
+and which actually averted the imminent explosion from Mr. Gaylord,
+whose eyes glared and watered. "But aside from that, you must know that
+the Republican party leaders in this State are the heads of the lobby of
+the Northeastern Railroads."
+
+"I guess I know about Number Seven as well as you do," old Tom
+interjected.
+
+Austen's eye flashed.
+
+"Now hold on, father," said young Tom, "that's no way to talk to
+Austen."
+
+"Knowing Number Seven," Austen continued, "you probably realize that the
+political and business future of nearly every one of the twenty State
+senators depends upon the favour of the Northeastern Railroads."
+
+"I know that the d-d fools won't look at money," said Mr. Gaylord;
+"Hammer's tried 'em."
+
+"I told you that before you started in," young Tom remarked, "but when
+you get mad, you won't listen to sense. And then there's the Honourable
+Asa Gray, who wants to represent the Northeastern some day in the United
+States Senate."
+
+"The bill ought to pass," shrieked old Tom; "it's a d-d outrage. There's
+no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to build a railroad if I've got the
+money to do it. What in blazes are we comin' to in this country if we
+can't git competition? If Flint stops that bill, I'll buy a newspaper
+and go to the people with the issue and throw his d-d monopoly into
+bankruptcy."
+
+"It's all very well to talk about competition and monopolies and
+lobbies," said young Tom, "but how about the Gaylord Lumber Company? How
+about the time you used the lobby, with Flint's permission? This kind
+of virtuous talk is beautiful to listen to when you and Flint get into a
+row."
+
+At this remark of his son's, the intermittent geyser of old Tom's wrath
+spouted up again with scalding steam, and in a manner utterly impossible
+to reproduce upon paper. Young Tom waited patiently for the exhibition
+to cease, which it did at length in a coughing fit of sheer exhaustion
+that left his father speechless, if not expressionless, pointing a lean
+and trembling finger in the direction of a valise on the floor.
+
+"You'll go off in a spell of that kind some day," said young Tom,
+opening the valise and extracting a bottle. Uncorking it, he pressed it
+to his father's lips, and with his own pocket-handkerchief (old Tom not
+possessing such an article) wiped the perspiration from Mr. Gaylord's
+brow and the drops from his shabby black coat. "There's no use gettin'
+mad at Austen. He's dead right--you can't lobby this thing through,
+and you knew it before you started. If you hadn't lost your temper, you
+wouldn't have tried."
+
+"We'll see, by G-d, we'll see," said the indomitable old Tom, when he
+got his breath. "You young men think you know a sight, but you haven't
+got the stuff in you we old Tellers have. Where would I be if it wasn't
+for fightin'? You mark my words, before this session's ended I'll scare
+h-l out of Flint--see if I don't."
+
+Young Tom winked at his friend.
+
+"Let's go down to supper," he said.
+
+The dining room of the Pelican Hotel during a midweek of a busy session
+was a scene of bustle and confusion not likely to be forgotten. Every
+seat was taken, and gentlemen waited their turn in the marble-flagged
+rotunda who had not the honour of being known to Mr. Giles, the head
+waiter. If Mr. Hamilton Tooting were present, and recognized you,
+he would take great pleasure in pointing out the celebrities, and
+especially that table over which the Honourable Hilary Vane presided,
+with the pretty, red-checked waitress hovering around it. At the
+Honourable Hilary's right hand was the division superintendent, and at
+his left, Mr. Speaker Doby--a most convenient and congenial arrangement;
+farther down the board were State Senator Nat Billings, Mr. Ridout (when
+he did not sup at home), the Honourables Brush Bascom and Elisha Jane,
+and the Honourable Jacob Botcher made a proper ballast for the foot.
+This table was known as the Railroad Table, and it was very difficult,
+at any distance away from it, to hear what was said, except when the
+Honourable Jacob Botcher made a joke. Next in importance and situation
+was the Governor's Table--now occupied by the Honourable Asa Gray. Mr.
+Tooting's description would not have stopped here.
+
+Sensations are common in the Pelican Hotel, but when Austen Vane walked
+in that evening between the Gaylords, father and son, many a hungry
+guest laid down his knife and fork and stared. Was the younger Vane
+(known to be anti-railroad) to take up the Gaylords' war against his own
+father? All the indications were that way, and a rumour flew from table
+to table-leaping space, as rumours will--that the Gaylords had sent to
+Ripton for Austen. There was but one table in the room the occupants of
+which appeared not to take any interest in the event, or even to grasp
+that an event had occurred. The Railroad Table was oblivious.
+
+After supper Mr. Tooting found Austen in the rotunda, and drew him
+mysteriously aside.
+
+"Say, Aust, the Honourable Hilary wants to see you to-night," he
+whispered.
+
+"Did he send you with the message?" Austen demanded.
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Tooting. "I guess you know what's up."
+
+Austen did not answer. At the foot of the stairway was the tall form of
+Hilary Vane himself, and Austen crossed the rotunda.
+
+"Do you want to see me, Judge?" he asked.
+
+The Honourable Hilary faced about quickly.
+
+"Yes, if you've got any spare time."
+
+"I'll go to your room at half-past nine to-night, if that's convenient."
+
+"All right," said the Honourable Hilary, starting up the stairs.
+
+Austen turned, and found Mr. Hamilton Tooting at his elbow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. Mr. REDBROOK'S PARTY
+
+The storm was over, and the bare trees, when the moon shone between the
+hurrying clouds, cast lacelike shadows on the white velvet surface of
+the snow as Austen forged his way up the hill to the Widow Peasley's in
+keeping with his promise to Mr. Redbrook. Across the street he paused
+outside the picket-fence to gaze at the yellow bars of light between the
+slats of the windows of the Duncan house. It was hard to realize that
+she was there, within a stone's throw of where he was to sleep; but the
+strange, half-startled expression in her eyes that afternoon and the
+smile--which had in it a curious quality he could not analyze--were
+so vivid in his consciousness as to give him pain. The incident, as he
+stood there ankle-deep in the snow, seemed to him another inexplicable
+and uselessly cruel caprice of fate.
+
+As he pictured her in the dining room behind Mr. Crewe's silver and
+cut glass and flowers, it was undoubtedly natural that he should
+wonder whether she were thinking of him in the Widow Peasley's lamp-lit
+cottage, and he smiled at the contrast. After all, it was the contrast
+between his life and hers. As an American of good antecedents and
+education, with a Western experience thrown in, social gulfs, although
+awkward, might be crossed in spite of opposition from ladies like the
+Rose of Sharon,--who had crossed them. Nevertheless, the life which
+Victoria led seemingly accentuated--to a man standing behind a
+picket-fence in the snow--the voids between.
+
+A stamping of feet in the Widow Peasley's vestibule awoke in him that
+sense of the ridiculous which was never far from the surface, and he
+made his way thither in mingled amusement and pain. What happened there
+is of interest, but may be briefly chronicled. Austen was surprised, on
+entering, to find Mrs. Peasley's parlour filled with men; and a single
+glance at their faces in the lamplight assured him that they were of a
+type which he understood--countrymen of that rugged New England stock to
+which he himself belonged, whose sons for generations had made lawyers
+and statesmen and soldiers for the State and nation. Some were talking
+in low voices, and others sat silent on the chairs and sofa, not
+awkwardly or uncomfortably, but with a characteristic self-possession
+and repose. Mr. Redbrook, towering in front of the stove, came forward.
+
+"Here you be," he said, taking Austen's hand warmly and a little
+ceremoniously; "I asked 'em here to meet ye."
+
+"To meet me!" Austen repeated.
+
+"Wanted they should know you," said Mr. Redbrook.
+
+"They've all heard of you and what you did for Zeb."
+
+Austen flushed. He was aware that he was undergoing a cool and critical
+examination by those present, and that they were men who used all their
+faculties in making up their minds.
+
+"I'm very glad to meet any friends of yours, Mr. Redbrook," he said.
+"What I did for Meader isn't worth mentioning. It was an absolutely
+simple case."
+
+"Twahn't so much what ye did as how ye did it," said Mr. Redbrook. "It's
+kind of rare in these days," he added, with the manner of commenting to
+himself on the circumstance, "to find a young lawyer with brains that
+won't sell 'em to the railrud. That's what appeals to me, and to some
+other folks I know--especially when we take into account the situation
+you was in and the chances you had."
+
+Austen's silence under this compliment seemed to create an indefinable
+though favourable impression, and the member from Mercer permitted
+himself to smile.
+
+"These men are all friends of mine, and members of the House," he said,
+"and there's more would have come if they'd had a longer notice. Allow
+me to make you acquainted with Mr. Widgeon of Hull."
+
+"We kind of wanted to look you over," said Mr. Widgeon, suiting the
+action to the word. "That's natural ain't it?"
+
+"Kind of size you up," added Mr. Jarley of Wye, raising his eyes.
+"Callate you're sizable enough."
+
+"Wish you was in the House," remarked Mr. Adams of Barren. "None of us
+is much on talk, but if we had you, I guess we could lay things wide
+open."
+
+"If you was thar, and give it to 'em as hot as you did when you was
+talkin' for Zeb, them skunks in the front seats wouldn't know whether
+they was afoot or hossback," declared Mr. Williams of Devon, a town
+adjoining Mercer.
+
+"I used to think railrud gov'ment wahn't so bad until I come to the
+House this time," remarked a stocky member from Oxford; "it's sheer
+waste of money for the State to pay a Legislature. They might as well
+run things from the New York office--you know that."
+
+"We might as well wear so many Northeastern uniforms with brass
+buttons," a sinewy hill farmer from Lee put in. He had a lean face that
+did not move a muscle, but a humorous gray eye that twinkled.
+
+In the meantime Mr. Redbrook looked on with an expression of approval
+which was (to Austen) distinctly pleasant, but more or less mystifying.
+
+"I guess you ain't disappointed 'em much," he declared, when the round
+was ended; "most of 'em knew me well enough to understand that cattle
+and live stock in general, includin' humans, is about as I represent 'em
+to be."
+
+"We have some confidence in your judgment, Brother Redbrook," answered
+Mr. Terry of Lee, "and now we've looked over the goods, it ain't set
+back any, I callate."
+
+This observation, which seemed to meet with a general assent, was to
+Austen more mystifying than ever. He laughed.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I feel as though some expression of thanks were
+due you for this kind and most unexpected reception." Here a sudden
+seriousness came into his eyes which served, somehow, only to enhance
+his charm of manner, and a certain determined ring into his voice. "You
+have all referred to a condition of affairs," he added, "about which
+I have thought a great deal, and which I deplore as deeply as you
+do. There is no doubt that the Northeastern Railroads have seized
+the government of this State for three main reasons: to throttle
+competition; to control our railroad commission in order that we may
+not get the service and safety to which we are entitled,--so increasing
+dividends; and to make and maintain laws which enable them to bribe with
+passes, to pay less taxes than they should, and to manipulate political
+machinery."
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Jarley of Wye, with a decided emphasis.
+
+"That's the kind of talk I like to hear," exclaimed Mr. Terry.
+
+"And nobody's had the gumption to fight 'em," said Mr. Widgeon.
+
+"It looks," said Austen, "as though it must come to a fight in the end.
+I do not think they will listen to reason. I mean," he added, with a
+flash of humour, "that they will listen to it, but not act upon it.
+Gentlemen, I regret to have to say, for obvious reasons, something which
+you all know, that my father is at the head of the Northeastern machine,
+which is the Republican party organization."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"You went again' him, and we honour you for it, Austen," said Mr.
+Redbrook, at length.
+
+"I want to say," Austen continued, "that I have tried to look at things
+as Mr. Vane sees them, and that I have a good deal of sympathy for his
+point of view. Conditions as they exist are the result of an evolution
+for which no one man is responsible. That does not alter the fact that
+the conditions are wrong. But the railroads, before they consolidated,
+found the political boss in power, and had to pay him for favours. The
+citizen was the culprit to start with, just as he is the culprit now,
+because he does not take sufficient interest in his government to make
+it honest. We mustn't blame the railroads too severely, when they grew
+strong enough, for substituting their own political army to avoid being
+blackmailed. Long immunity has reenforced them in the belief that they
+have but one duty to pay dividends. I am afraid," he added, "that they
+will have to be enlightened somewhat as Pharaoh was enlightened."
+
+"Well, that's sense, too," said Mr. Widgeon; "I guess you're the man to
+enlighten 'em."
+
+"Moderate talk appeals to me," declared Mr. Jarley.
+
+"And when that fails," said Mr. Terry, "hard, tellin' blows."
+
+"Don't lose track of the fact that we've got our eye on you," said Mr.
+Emerson of Oxford, who had a blacksmith's grip, and came back to renew
+it after he had put on his overshoes. He was the last to linger, and
+when the door had closed on him Austen turned to Mr. Redbrook.
+
+"Now what does all this mean?" he demanded.
+
+"It means," said Mr. Redbrook, "that when the time comes, we want you to
+run for governor."
+
+Austen went to the mantelpiece, and stood for a long time with his back
+turned, staring at a crayon portrait of Colonel Peasley, in the uniform
+in which he had fallen at the battle of Gettysburg. Then he swung about
+and seized the member from Mercer by both broad shoulders.
+
+"James Redbrook," he said, "until to-night I thought you were about as
+long-headed and sensible a man as there was in the State."
+
+"So I be," replied Mr. Redbrook, with a grin. "You ask young Tom
+Gaylord."
+
+"So Tom put you up to this nonsense."
+
+"It ain't nonsense," retorted Mr. Redbrook, stoutly, "and Tom didn't put
+me up to it. It's the' best notion that ever came into my mind."
+
+Austen, still clinging to Mr. Redbrook's shoulders, shook his head
+slowly.
+
+"James," he said, "there are plenty of men who are better equipped than
+I for the place, and in a better situation to undertake it. I--I'm
+much obliged to you. But I'll help. I've got to go," he added; "the
+Honourable Hilary wants to see me."
+
+He went into the entry and put on his overshoes and his coat, while
+James Redbrook regarded him with a curious mingling of pain and
+benevolence on his rugged face.
+
+"I won't press you now, Austen," he said, "but think on it. For God's
+sake, think on it."
+
+Outside, Austen paused in the snow once more, his brain awhirl with a
+strange exaltation the like of which he had never felt before. Although
+eminently human, it was not the fact that honest men had asked him to be
+their governor which uplifted him,--but that they believed him to be as
+honest as themselves. In that hour he had tasted life as he had never
+yet tasted it, he had lived as he might never live again. Not one of
+them, he remembered suddenly, had uttered a sentence of the political
+claptrap of which he had heard so much. They had spoken from the soul;
+not bitterly, not passionately, but their words had rung with the
+determination which had made their forefathers and his leave home,
+toil, and kindred to fight and die at Bunker Hill and Gettysburg for a
+principle. It had bean given him to look that eight into the heart of a
+nation, and he was awed.
+
+As he stood there under the winter moon, he gradually became conscious
+of music, of an air that seemed the very expression of his mood. His
+eyes, irresistibly drawn towards the Duncan house, were caught by the
+fluttering of lace curtains at an open window. The notes were those of
+a piano,--though the instrument mattered little,--that with which they
+were charged for him set the night wind quivering. It was not simple
+music, although it had in it a grand simplicity. At times it rose,
+vibrant with inexpressible feeling, and fell again into gentler,
+yearning cadences that wrung the soul with a longing that was world-old
+and world-wide, that reached out towards the unattainable stare--and,
+reaching, became immortal. Thus was the end of it, fainting as it
+drifted heavenward.
+
+Then the window was closed.
+
+Austen walked on; whither, he knew not. After a certain time of which he
+had no cognizance he found himself under the glaring arc-light that hung
+over Main Street before the Pelican Hotel, in front of what was known
+as the ladies' entrance. He slipped in there, avoiding the crowded lobby
+with its shifting groups and its haze of smoke,--plainly to be seen
+behind the great plates of glass,--went upstairs, and gained room
+Number. Seven unnoticed. Then, after the briefest moment of hesitation,
+he knocked. A voice responded--the Honourable Hilary's. There was but
+one light burning in the room, and Mr. Vane sat in his accustomed chair
+in the corner, alone. He was not reading, nor was he drowsing, but his
+head was dropped forward a little on his breast. He raised it slowly at
+his son's entrance, and regarded Austen fixedly, though silently.
+
+"You wanted to see me, Judge?" said Austen.
+
+"Come at last, have you?" said Mr. Vane.
+
+"I didn't intend to be late," said Austen.
+
+"Seem to have a good deal of business on hand these days," the
+Honourable Hilary remarked.
+
+Austen took a step forward, and stopped. Mr. Vane was preparing a piece
+of Honey Dew.
+
+"If you would like to know what the business was, Judge, I am here to
+tell you."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted.
+
+"I ain't good enough to be confided in, I guess," he said; "I wouldn't
+understand motives from principle."
+
+Austen looked at his father for a few moments in silence. To-night he
+seemed at a greater distance than ever before, and more lonely than
+ever. When Austen had entered the room and had seen him sitting with
+his head bowed forward, the hostility of months of misunderstanding had
+fallen away from the son, and he had longed to fly to him as he had as a
+child after punishment. Differences in after life, alas, are not always
+to be bridged thus.
+
+"Judge," he said slowly, with an attempt to control his voice, "wouldn't
+it have been fairer to wait awhile, before you made a remark like that?
+Whatever our dealings may have been, I have never lied to you. Anything
+you may want to know, I am here to tell you."
+
+"So you're going to take up lobbying, are you? I had a notion you were
+above lobbying."
+
+Austen was angered. But like all men of character, his face became stern
+under provocation, and he spoke more deliberately.
+
+"Before we go any farther," he said, "would you mind telling me who your
+informant is on this point?"
+
+"I guess I don't need an informant. My eyesight is as good as ever,"
+said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Your deductions are usually more accurate. If any one has told you that
+I am about to engage in lobbying, they have lied to you."
+
+"Wouldn't engage in lobbying, would you?" the Honourable Hilary asked,
+with the air of making a casual inquiry.
+
+Austen flushed, but kept his temper.
+
+"I prefer the practice of law," he replied.
+
+"Saw you were associatin' with saints," his father remarked.
+
+Austen bit his lip, and then laughed outright,--the canonization of old
+Tom Gaylord being too much for him.
+
+"Now, Judge," he said, "it isn't like you to draw hasty conclusions.
+Because I sat down to supper with the Gaylords it isn't fair to infer
+that they have retained me in a legislative case."
+
+The Honourable Hilary did not respond to his son's humour, but shifted
+the Honey Dew to the left cheek.
+
+"Old Tom going in for reform?"
+
+"He may bring it about," answered Austen, instantly becoming serious
+again, "whether he's going in for it or not."
+
+For the first time the Honourable Hilary raised his eyes to his son's
+face, and shot at him a penetrating look of characteristic shrewdness.
+But he followed in conversation the same rule as in examining a witness,
+rarely asking a direct question, except as a tactical surprise.
+
+"Old Tom ought to have his railroad, oughtn't he?"
+
+"So far as I can see, it would be a benefit to the people of that part
+of the State," said Austen.
+
+"Building it for the people, is he?"
+
+"His motive doesn't count. The bill should be judged on its merits, and
+proper measures for the safeguarding of public interests should be put
+into it."
+
+"Don't think the bill will be judged on its merits, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't," replied Austen, "and neither do you."
+
+"Did you tell old Tom so?" asked Mr. Vane, after a pause. "Did you tell
+old Tom so when he sent for you to take hold?"
+
+"He didn't send for me," answered Austen, quietly, "and I have no
+business dealings with him except small suits. What I did tell him
+was that he would never get the bill through this session or next by
+lobbying."
+
+The Honourable Hilary never showed surprise. He emitted a grunt which
+evinced at once impatience and amusement.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Well, Judge, I'll tell you what I told him--although you both know.
+It's because the Northeastern owns the Republican party machine,
+which is the lobby, and because most of the twenty State senators are
+dependent upon the Northeastern for future favours."
+
+"Did you tell Tom Gaylord that?" demanded Mr. Vane. "What did he say?"
+
+Austen braced himself. He did not find the answer easy.
+
+"He said he knew about Number Seven as well as I did."
+
+The Honourable Hilary rose abruptly--perhaps in some secret
+agitation--Austen could not discern. His father walked as far as the
+door, and turned slowly and faced him, but he did not speak. His mouth
+was tightly closed, almost as in pain, and Austen went towards him,
+appealingly.
+
+"Judge," he said, "you sent for me. You have asked me questions which I
+felt obliged in honesty to answer. God knows I don't wish to differ with
+you, but circumstances seem always against us. I will talk plainly, if
+you will let me. I try to look at things from your point of view. I know
+that you believe that a political system should go hand in hand with the
+great commercial system which you are engaged in building. I disagree
+with your beliefs, but I do not think that your pursuit of them has not
+been sincere, and justified by your conscience. I suppose that you sent
+for me to know whether Mr. Gaylord has employed me to lobby for his
+bill. He has not, because I refused that employment. But I will tell you
+that, in my opinion, if a man of any ability whatever should get up on
+the floor of the House and make an argument for the Pingsquit bill, the
+sentiment against the Northeastern and its political power is so great
+that the House would compel the committee to report the bill, and pass
+it. You probably know this already, but I mention it for your own good
+if you do not, in the hope that, through you, the Northeastern Railroads
+may be induced to relax their grip upon the government of this State."
+
+The Honourable Hilary advanced, until only the marble-topped table was
+between himself and his son. A slight noise in the adjoining room caused
+him to turn his head momentarily. Then he faced Austen again.
+
+"Did you tell Gaylord this?" he asked.
+
+Austen made a gesture of distaste, and turned away.
+
+"No," he said, "I reserved the opinion, whatever it is worth, for your
+ears alone."
+
+"I've heard that kind of calculation before," said the Honourable
+Hilary. "My experience is that they never come to much. As for this
+nonsense about the Northeastern Railroads running things," he added more
+vigorously, "I guess when it's once in a man's head there's no getting
+it out. The railroad employs the best lawyers it can find to look after
+its interests. I'm one of 'em, and I'm proud of it. If I hadn't been one
+of 'em, the chances are you'd never be where you are, that you'd never
+have gone to college and the law school. The Republican party realizes
+that the Northeastern is most vitally connected with the material
+interests of this State; that the prosperity of the road means the
+prosperity of the State. And the leaders of the party protect the road
+from vindictive assaults on it like Gaylord's, and from scatterbrains
+and agitators like your friend Redbrook."
+
+Austen shook his head sadly as he gazed at his father. He had always
+recognized the futility of arguments, if argument on this point ever
+arose between them.
+
+"It's no use, Judge," he said. "If material prosperity alone were to be
+considered, your contention would have some weight. The perpetuation of
+the principle of American government has to be thought of. Government by
+a railroad will lead in the end to anarchy. You are courting destruction
+as it is."
+
+"If you came in here to quote your confounded Emerson--" the Honourable
+Hilary began, but Austen slipped around the table and took him by the
+arm and led him perforce to his chair.
+
+"No, Judge, that isn't Emerson," he answered. "It's just common sense,
+only it sounds to you like drivel. I'm going now,--unless you want to
+hear some more about the plots I've been getting into. But I want to say
+this. I ask you to remember that you're my father, and that--I'm fond
+of you. And that, if you and I happen to be on opposite sides, it won't
+make any difference as far as my feelings are concerned. I'm always
+ready to tell you frankly what I'm doing, if you wish to know. Good-by.
+I suppose I'll see you in Ripton at the end of the week." And he pressed
+his father's shoulder.
+
+Mr. Vane looked up at his son with a curious expression. Perhaps (as
+when Austen returned from the shooting of Mr. Blodgett in the West)
+there was a smattering of admiration and pride in that look, and
+something of an affection which had long ceased in its strivings for
+utterance. It was the unconscious tribute, too,--slight as was its
+exhibition,--of the man whose life has been spent in the conquest of
+material things to the man who has the audacity, insensate though it
+seem, to fling these to the winds in his search after ideals.
+
+"Good-by, Austen," said Mr. Vane.
+
+Austen got as far as the door, cast another look back at his
+father,--who was sitting motionless, with head bowed, as when he
+came,--and went out. So Mr. Vane remained for a full minute after the
+door had closed, and then he raised his head sharply and gave a piercing
+glance at the curtains that separated Number Seven from the governor's
+room. In three strides he had reached them, flung them open, and the
+folding doors behind them, already parted by four inches. The gas was
+turned low, but under the chandelier was the figure of a young man
+struggling with an overcoat. The Honourable Hilary did not hesitate, but
+came forward with a swiftness that paralyzed the young man, who turned
+upon him a face on which was meant to be written surprise and a just
+indignation, but in reality was a mixture of impudence and pallid
+fright. The Honourable Hilary, towering above him, and with that grip on
+his arm, was a formidable person.
+
+"Listening, were you, Ham?" he demanded.
+
+"No," cried Mr. Tooting, with a vehemence he meant for force. "No, I
+wasn't. Listening to who?"
+
+"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary, still retaining with one hand the
+grip on Mr. Tooting 's arm, and with the other turning up the gas until
+it flared in Mr. Tooting's face. "What are you doing in the governor's
+room?"
+
+"I left my overcoat in here this afternoon when you sent me to bring up
+the senator."
+
+"Ham," said Mr. Vane, "it isn't any use lying to me."
+
+"I ain't lying to you," said Mr. Tooting, "I never did. I often lied for
+you," he added, "and you didn't raise any objections that I remember."
+
+Mr. Vane let go of the arm contemptuously.
+
+"I've done dirty work for the Northeastern for a good many years," cried
+Mr. Tooting, seemingly gaining confidence now that he was free; "I've
+slaved for 'em, and what have they done for me? They wouldn't even back
+me for county solicitor when I wanted the job."
+
+"Turned reformer, Ham?"
+
+"I guess I've got as much right to turn reformer as some folks I know."
+
+"I guess you have," agreed the Honourable Hilary; unexpectedly. He
+seated himself on a chair, and proceeded to regard Mr. Tooting in
+a manner extremely disconcerting to that gentleman. This quality of
+impenetrability, of never being sure when he was angry, had baffled more
+able opponents of Hilary Vane than Mr. Hamilton Tooting.
+
+"Good-night, Ham."
+
+"I want to say--" Mr. Tooting began.
+
+"Good-night, Ham," said Mr. Vane, once more.
+
+Mr. Tooting looked at him, slowly buttoned up his overcoat, and
+departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE REALM OF PEGASUS
+
+The eventful day of Mr. Humphrey Crewe's speech on national affairs
+dawned without a cloud in the sky. The snow was of a dazzling whiteness
+and sprinkled with diamond dust; and the air of such transcendent
+clearness that Austen could see--by leaning a little out of the Widow
+Peasley's window--the powdered top of Holdfast Mountain some thirty
+miles away. For once, a glance at the mountain sufficed him; and he
+directed his gaze through the trees at the Duncan house, engaging in a
+pleasant game of conjecture as to which was her window. In such weather
+the heights of Helicon seemed as attainable as the peak of Holdfast; and
+he had but to beckon a shining Pegasus from out a sun-shaft in the sky.
+Obstacles were mere specks on the snow.
+
+He forgot to close the window, and dressed in a temperature which
+would have meant, for many mortals, pneumonia. The events of yesterday;
+painful and agitating as they had been, had fallen away in the prospect
+that lay before him--he would see her to-day, and speak with her. These
+words, like a refrain; were humming in his head as honest Mr. Redbrook
+talked during breakfast, while Austen's answers may have been both
+intelligent and humorous. Mr. Redbrook, at least; gave no sign that they
+were not. He was aware that Mr. Redbrook was bringing arguments to bear
+on the matter of the meeting of the evening before, but he fended these
+lightly, while in spirit he flung a gem-studded bridle aver the neck of
+Pegasus.
+
+And after breakfast--away from the haunts of men! Away from the
+bickerings, the subjection of mean spirits; material loss and gain and
+material passion! By eight o'clock (the Widow Peasley's household
+being an early and orderly one) he was swinging across the long hills,
+cleaving for himself a furrowed path in the untrodden snow, breathing
+deep as he gazed across the blue spaces from the crests. Bellerophon or
+Perseus, aided by immortals, felt no greater sense of achievements to
+come than he. Out here, on the wind-swept hills that rolled onward and
+upward to the mountains, the world was his.
+
+With the same speed he returned, still by untrodden paths until he
+reached the country road that ended in the city street. Some who saw him
+paused in their steps, caught unconsciously by the rhythmic perfection
+of his motion. Ahead of him he beheld the state-house, its dial aflame
+in the light, emblematic to him of the presence within it of a spirit
+which cleansed it of impurities. She would be there; nay, when he looked
+at the dial from a different angle, was there. As he drew nearer, there
+rose out of the void her presence beside him which he had daily tried to
+summon since that autumn afternoon--her voice and her eyes, and many of
+the infinite expressions of each and both. Sprites that they were, they
+had failed him until to-day, when he was to see her again!
+
+And then, somehow, he had threaded the groups beside the battle-flags
+in the corridor, and mounted the stairway. The doorkeeper of the House
+looked into his face, and, with that rare knowledge of mankind which
+doorkeepers possess, let him in. There were many ladies on the floor
+(such being the chivalrous custom when a debate or a speech of the
+importance of Mr. Crewe's was going on), but Austen swept them with a
+glance of disappointment. Was it possible, after all, that she had not
+come, or--more agitating thought--had gone back to New York?
+
+At this disturbing point in his reflections Austen became aware that the
+hall was ringing with a loud and compelling voice which originated in
+front of the Speaker's desk.
+
+The Honourable Humphrey Crewe was delivering his long-heralded speech on
+national affairs, and was arrayed for the occasion in a manner befitting
+the American statesman, with the conventional frock coat, which he
+wore unbuttoned. But the Gladstone collar and a tie gave the touch of
+individuality to his dress which was needed to set him aside as a marked
+man. Austen suddenly remembered, with an irresistible smile, that one
+of the reasons which he had assigned for his visit to the capital was
+to hear this very speech, to see how Mr. Crewe would carry off what
+appeared to be a somewhat difficult situation. Whether or not this
+motive had drawn others,--for the millionaire's speech had not lacked
+advertisement,--it is impossible to say, but there was standing room
+only on the floor of the House that day.
+
+The fact that Mr. Crewe was gratified could not be wholly concealed. The
+thing that fascinated Austen Vane and others who listened was the aplomb
+with which the speech was delivered. The member from Leith showed no
+trace of the nervousness naturally to be expected in a maiden effort,
+but spoke with the deliberation of an old campaigner, of the man of
+weight and influence that he was. He leaned, part of the time, with his
+elbow on the clerk's desk, with his feet crossed; again, when he wished
+to emphasize a point, he came forward and seized with both hands the
+back of his chair. Sometimes he thrust his thumb in his waistcoat
+pocket, and turned with an appeal to Mr. Speaker Doby, who was
+apparently too thrilled and surprised to indulge in conversation
+with those on the bench beside him, and who made no attempt to quell
+hand-clapping and even occasional whistling; again, after the manner of
+experts, Mr. Crewe addressed himself forcibly to an individual in the
+audience, usually a sensitive and responsive person like the Honourable
+Jacob Botcher, who on such occasions assumed a look of infinite wisdom
+and nodded his head slowly. There was no doubt about it that the
+compelling personality of Mr. Humphrey Crewe was creating a sensation.
+Genius is sure of itself, and statesmen are born, not made.
+
+Able and powerful as was Mr. Crewe's discourse, the man and not the
+words had fastened the wandering attention of Austen Vane. He did not
+perceive his friend of the evening before, Mr. Widgeon, coming towards
+him up the side aisle, until he felt a touch on the arm.
+
+"Take my seat. It ain't exactly a front one," whispered the member from
+Hull, "my wife's cousin's comin' on the noon train. Not a bad speech, is
+it?" he added. "Acts like a veteran. I didn't callate he had it in him."
+
+Thus aroused, Austen made his way towards the vacant chair, and when
+he was seated raised his eyes to the gallery rail, and Mr. Crewe, the
+legislative chamber, and its audience ceased to exist. It is quite
+impossible--unless one is a poetical genius--to reproduce on paper that
+gone and sickly sensation which is, paradoxically, so exquisite. The
+psychological cause of it in this instance was, primarily, the sight,
+by Austen Vane, of his own violets on a black, tailor-made gown trimmed
+with wide braid, and secondarily of an oval face framed in a black hat,
+the subtle curves of which no living man could describe. The face
+was turned in his direction, and he felt an additional thrill when he
+realized that she must have been watching him as he came in, for she was
+leaning forward with a gloved hand on the railing.
+
+He performed that act of conventionality known as a bow, and she nodded
+her head--black hat and all. The real salutation was a divine ray which
+passed between their eyes--hers and his--over the commonplace mortals
+between. And after that, although the patient legislative clock in the
+corner which had marked the space of other great events (such as the
+Woodchuck Session) continued to tick, undisturbed in this instance
+by the pole of the sergeant-at-arms, time became a lost dimension for
+Austen Vane. He made a few unimportant discoveries such as the fact that
+Mrs. Pomfret and her daughter were seated beside Victoria, listening
+with a rapt attention; and that Mr. Crewe had begun to read statistics;
+and that some people were gaping and others leaving. He could look up
+at the gallery without turning his head, and sometimes he caught her
+momentary glance, and again, with her chin in her hand, she was watching
+Mr. Crewe with a little smile creasing the corners of her eyes.
+
+A horrible thought crossed Austen's mind--perhaps they were not his
+violets after all! Because she had smiled at him, yesterday and to-day,
+he had soared heavenwards on wings of his own making. Perhaps they were
+Mr. Crewe's violets. Had she not come to visit Mr. Crewe, to listen to
+his piece de resistance, without knowing that he, Austen Vane, would be
+in the capital? The idea that her interest in Austen Vane was possibly
+connected with the study of mankind had a sobering effect on him; and
+the notion that she had another sort of interest in Mr. Crewe seemed
+ridiculous enough, but disturbing, and supported by feats.
+
+Austen had reached this phase in his reflections when he was aroused by
+a metallic sound which arose above the resonant tones of the orator
+of the day. A certain vessel, to the use of which, according to Mr.
+Dickens, the satire male portion of the American nation was at one time
+addicted,--a cuspidor, in plain language,--had been started, by some
+unknown agency in the back seats, rolling down the centre aisle, and
+gathering impetus as it went, bumped the louder on each successive step
+until it hurled itself with a clash against the clerk's desk, at the
+feet of the orator himself. During its descent a titter arose which
+gradually swelled into a roar of laughter, and Austen's attention was
+once more focused upon the member from Leith. But if any man had so
+misjudged the quality of Humphrey Crewe as to suppose for an instant
+that he could be put out of countenance by such a manoeuvre, that man
+was mightily mistaken. Mr. Crewe paused, with his forefinger on the
+page, and fixed a glassy eye on the remote neighbourhood in the back
+seats where the disturbance had started.
+
+"I am much obliged to the gentleman," he said coldly, "but he has sent
+me an article which I never use, under any conditions. I would not
+deprive him of its convenience."
+
+Whereupon, it is not too much to say, Mr. Crews was accorded an ovation,
+led by his stanch friend and admirer, the Honourable Jacob Botcher,
+although that worthy had been known to use the article in question.
+
+Mr. Speaker Doby glanced at the faithful clock, and arose majestically.
+
+"I regret to say," he announced, "that the time of the gentleman from
+Leith is up."
+
+Mr. Botcher rose slowly to his feet.
+
+"Mr. Speaker," he began, in a voice that rumbled through the crevices of
+the gallery, "I move you, sir, that a vote of thanks be accorded to the
+gentleman from Leith for his exceedingly able and instructive speech on
+national affairs."
+
+"Second the motion," said the Honourable Brush Bascom, instantly.
+
+"And leave to print in the State Tribune!" cried a voice from somewhere
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy.
+
+"Gentlemen of the House," said Mr. Crewe, when the laughter had
+subsided, "I have given you a speech which is the result of much thought
+and preparation on my part. I have not flaunted the star-spangled banner
+in your faces, or indulged in oratorical fireworks. Mine have been
+the words of a plain business man, and I have not indulged in wild
+accusations or flights of imagination. Perhaps, if I had," he added,
+"there are some who would have been better pleased. I thank my friends
+for their kind attention and approbation."
+
+Nevertheless, amidst somewhat of a pandemonium, the vote of thanks was
+given and the House adjourned; while Mr. Crewe's friends of whom he had
+spoken could be seen pressing around him and shaking him by the hand.
+Austen got to his feet, his eyes again sought the gallery, whence he
+believed he received a look of understanding from a face upon which
+amusement seemed plainly written. She had turned to glance down at
+him, despite the fact that Mrs. Pomfret was urging her to leave. Austen
+started for the door, and managed to reach it long before his neighbours
+had left the vicinity of their seats. Once in the corridor, his eye
+singled her out amongst those descending the gallery stairs, and he had
+a little thrill of pride and despair when he realized that she was
+the object of the scrutiny, too, of the men around him; the women
+were interested, likewise, in Mrs. Pomfret, whose appearance, although
+appropriate enough for a New York matinee, proclaimed her as hailing
+from that mysterious and fabulous city of wealth. This lady, with her
+lorgnette, was examining the faces about her in undisguised curiosity,
+and at the same time talking to Victoria in a voice which she took no
+pains to lower.
+
+"I think it outrageous," she was saying. "If some Radical member had
+done that in Parliament, he would have been expelled from the House. But
+of course in Parliament they wouldn't have those horrid things to
+roll down the aisles. Poor dear Humphrey! The career of a gentleman in
+politics is a thankless one in this country. I wonder at his fortitude."
+
+Victoria's eyes alone betokened her amusement.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said. "I'm so glad to see you again."
+
+Austen said something which he felt was entirely commonplace and
+inadequate to express his own sentiments, while Alice gave him an
+uncertain bow, and Mrs. Pomfret turned her glasses upon him.
+
+"You remember Mr. Vane," said Victoria; "you met him at Humphrey's."
+
+"Did I?" answered Mrs. Pomfret. "How do you do? Can't something be done
+to punish those rowdies?"
+
+Austen grew red.
+
+"Mr. Vane isn't a member of the House," said Victoria.
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret. "Something ought to be done about it.
+In England such a thing wouldn't be allowed to drop for a minute. If I
+lived in this State, I think I should do something. Nobody in America
+seems to have the spirit even to make a protest."
+
+Austen turned quietly to Victoria.
+
+"When are you going away?" he asked.
+
+"To-morrow morning--earlier than I like to think of. I have to be in New
+York by to-morrow night."
+
+She flashed at him a look of approbation for his self-control, and
+then, by a swift transition which he had often remarked, her expression
+changed to one of amusement, although a seriousness lurked in the depths
+of her eyes. Mrs. Pomfret had gone on, with Alice, and they followed.
+
+"And--am I not to see you again before you go?" he exclaimed.
+
+He didn't stop to reason than upon the probable consequences of his act
+in seeking her. Nature, which is stronger than reason, was compelling
+him.
+
+"That depends," said Victoria.
+
+"Upon whom?"
+
+"Upon you."
+
+They were on the lower stairs by this times, and there was silence
+between then for a few moments as they descended,--principally because,
+after this exalting remark, Austen could not trust himself to speak.
+
+"Will you go driving with me?" he asked, and was immediately
+thunderstruck at his boldness.
+
+"Yes," she answered, simply.
+
+"How soon may I come?" he demanded.
+
+She laughed softly, but with a joyous note which was not hidden from him
+as they stepped out of the darkened corridor into the dazzling winter
+noonday.
+
+"I will be ready at three o'clock," she said.
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"Two hours and a half!" he cried.
+
+"If that is too early," she said mischievously, "we can go later."
+
+"Too early!" he repeated. But the rest of his protest was cut short by
+Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Hello, Victoria, what did you think of my speech?"
+
+"The destinies of the nation are settled," said Victoria. "Do you know
+Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Oh, yes, how are you?" said Mr. Crewe; "glad to see you," and he
+extended a furred glove. "Were you there?"
+
+"Yes," said Austen.
+
+"I'll send you a copy. I'd like to talk it over with you. Come on,
+Victoria, I've arranged for an early lunch. Come on, Mrs. Pomfret--get
+in, Alice."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, still protesting against the profane interruption to Mr.
+Crewe's speech, bent her head to enter Mr. Crewe's booby sleigh, which
+had his crest on the panel. Alice was hustled in next, but Victoria
+avoided his ready assistance and got in herself, Mr. Crewe getting in
+beside her.
+
+"Au revoir," she called out to Austen, as the door slammed. The coachman
+gathered his horses together, and off they went at a brisk trot. Then
+the little group which had been watching the performance dispersed.
+Halfway across the park Austen perceived some one signaling violently to
+him, and discovered his friend, young Tom Gaylord.
+
+"Come to dinner with me," said young Tom, "and tell me whether the
+speech of your friend from Leith will send him to Congress. I saw you
+hobnobbing with him just now. What's the matter, Austen? I haven't seen
+that guilty expression on your face since we were at college together."
+
+"What's the best livery-stable in town?" Austen asked.
+
+"By George, I wondered why you came down here. Who are you going to take
+out in a sleigh? There's a girl in it, is there?"
+
+"Not yet, Tom," said Austen.
+
+"I've often asked myself why I ever had any use for such a secretive
+cuss as you," declared young Mr. Gaylord. "But if you're really goin' to
+get interested in girls, you ought to see old Flint's daughter. I wrote
+you about her. Why," exclaimed Tom, "wasn't she one of those that got
+into Crewe's sleigh?"
+
+"Tom," said Austen, "where did you say that livery-stable was?"
+
+"Oh, dang the livery-stable!" answered Mr. Gaylord. "I hear there's
+quite a sentiment for you for governor. How about it? You know I've
+always said you could be United States senator and President. If you'll
+only say the word, Austen, we'll work up a movement around the State
+that'll be hard to beat."
+
+"Tom," said Austen, laying his hand on young Mr. Gaylord's farther
+shoulder, "you're a pretty good fellow. Where did you say that
+livery-stable was?
+
+"I'll go sleigh-riding with you," said Mr. Gaylord. "I guess the
+Pingsquit bill can rest one afternoon."
+
+"Tom, I don't know any man I'd rather take than you," said Austen.
+
+The unsuspecting Tom was too good-natured to be offended, and shortly
+after dinner Austen found himself in the process of being looked over
+by a stout gentleman named Putter, proprietor of Putter's Livery, who
+claimed to be a judge of men as well as horses. Austen had been through
+his stalls and chosen a mare.
+
+"Durned if you don't look like a man who can handle a horse," said Mr.
+Putter. "And as long as you're a friend of Tom Gaylord's I'll let you
+have her. Nobody drives that mare but me. What's your name?"
+
+"Vane."
+
+"Ain't any relation to old Hilary, be you?"
+
+"I'm his son," said Austen, "only he doesn't boast about it."
+
+"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Putter, with a broad grin, "I guess you kin
+have her. Ain't you the man that shot a feller out West? Seems to me I
+heerd somethin' about it."
+
+"Which one did you hear about?" Austen asked.
+
+"Good Lord!" said Mr. Putter, "you didn't shoot more'n one, did you?"
+
+It was just three o'clock when Austen drove into the semicircle opposite
+the Widow Peasley's, rang Mr. Crewe's door-bell, and leaped into the
+sleigh once more, the mare's nature being such as to make it undesirable
+to leave her. Presently Mr. Crewe's butler appeared, and stood dubiously
+in the vestibule.
+
+"Will you tell Miss Flint that Mr. Vane has called for her, and that I
+cannot leave the horse?"
+
+The man retired with obvious disapproval. Then Austen heard Victoria's
+voice in the hallway:--"Don't make a goose of yourself, Humphrey." Here
+she appeared, the colour fresh in her cheeks, her slender figure clad in
+a fur which even Austen knew was priceless. She sprang into the sleigh,
+the butler, with annoying deliberation, and with the air of saying that
+this was an affair of which he washed his hands, tucked in Mr. Putter's
+best robe about her feet, the mare leaped forward, and they were off,
+out of the circle and flying up the hill on the hard snow-tracks.
+
+"Whew!" exclaimed Victoria, "what a relief! Are you staying in that dear
+little house?" she asked, with a glance at the Widow Peasley's.
+
+"Yes," said Austen.
+
+"I wish I were."
+
+He looked at her shyly. He was not a man to do homage to material gods,
+but the pomp and circumstance with which she was surrounded had had a
+sobering effect upon him, and added to his sense of the instability
+and unreality of the present moment. He had an almost guilty feeling
+of having broken an unwritten law, of abducting a princess, and the old
+Duncan house had seemed to frown protestingly that such an act should
+have taken place under its windows. If Victoria had been--to him--an
+ordinary mortal in expensive furs instead of a princess, he would have
+snapped his fingers at the pomp and circumstance. These typified the
+comforts which, in a wild and forgetful moment, he might ask her to
+leave. Not that he believed she would leave them. He had lived long
+enough to know that an interest by a woman in a man--especially a man
+beyond the beaten track of her observation--did not necessarily mean
+that she might marry him if he asked her. And yet--oh, Tantalus! here
+she was beside him, for one afternoon again his very own, their two
+souls ringing with the harmony of whirling worlds in sunlit space. He
+sought refuge in thin thought; he strove, in oblivion, to drain the cup
+of the hour of its nectar, even as he had done before. Generations of
+Puritan Vanes (whose descendant alone had harassed poor Sarah Austere)
+were in his blood; and there they hung in the long gallery of Time,
+mutely but sternly forbidding when he raised his hand to the stem.
+
+In silence they reached the crest where the little city ended abruptly
+in view of the paradise of the silent hills,--his paradise, where there
+were no palaces or thought of palaces. The wild wind of the morning was
+still. In this realm at least, a heritage from his mother, seemingly
+untrodden by the foot of man, the woman at his side was his. From
+Holdfast over the spruces to Sawanec in the blue distance he was lord,
+a domain the wealth of which could not be reckoned in the coin of Midas.
+He turned to her as they flew down the slope, and she averted her
+face, perchance perceiving in that look a possession from which a woman
+shrinks; and her remark, startlingly indicative of the accord between
+them, lent a no less startling reality to the enchantment.
+
+"This is your land, isn't it?" she said.
+
+"I sometimes feel as though it were," he answered. "I was out here this
+morning, when the wind was at play," and he pointed with his whip at a
+fantastic snowdrift, "before I saw you."
+
+"You looked as though you had come from it," she answered. "You seemed--I
+suppose you will think me silly--but you seemed to bring something of
+this with you into that hail. I always think of you as out on the hills
+and mountains."
+
+"And you," he said, "belong here, too."
+
+She drew a deep breath.
+
+"I wish I did. But you--you really do belong here. You seem to have
+absorbed all the clearness of it, and the strength and vigour. I was
+watching you this morning, and you were so utterly out of place in those
+surroundings." Victoria paused, her colour deepening.
+
+His blood kept pace with the mare's footsteps, but he did not reply.
+
+"What did you think of Humphrey's speech?" she asked, abruptly changing
+the subject.
+
+"I thought it a surprisingly good one,--what I heard of it," he
+answered. "That wasn't much. I didn't think he'd do as well."
+
+"Humphrey's clever in a great many ways," Victoria agreed. "If he didn't
+have such an impenetrable conceit, he might go far, because he learns
+quickly, and has an industry that is simply appalling. But he hasn't
+quite the manner for politics, has he?"
+
+"I think I should call his manner a drawback," said Austen, "though not
+by any means an insurmountable one."
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"The other qualities all need to be very great," she said. "He was
+furious at me for coming out this afternoon. He had it all arranged to
+drive over to the Forge, and had an early lunch."
+
+"And I," said Austen, "have all the more reason to be grateful to you."
+
+"Oh, if you knew the favour you were doing me," she cried, "bringing
+me out here where I can breathe. I hope you don't think I dislike
+Humphrey," she went on. "Of course, if I did, I shouldn't visit him. You
+see, I have known him for so long."
+
+"I hadn't a notion that you disliked him," said Austen. "I am curious
+about his career; that's one reason I came down. He somehow inspires
+curiosity."
+
+"And awe," she added. "Humphrey's career has all the fascination of a
+runaway locomotive. One watches it transfixed, awaiting the inevitable
+crash."
+
+Their eyes met, and they both laughed.
+
+"It's no use trying to be a humbug," said Victoria, "I can't. And I do
+like Humphrey, in spite of his career."
+
+And they laughed again. The music of the bells ran faster and faster
+still, keeping time to a wilder music of the sunlit hills and sky; nor
+was it strange that her voice, when she spoke, did not break the spell,
+but laid upon him a deeper sense of magic.
+
+"This brings back the fairy books," she said, "and all those wonderful
+and never-to-be-forgotten sensations of the truant, doesn't it? You've
+been a truant--haven't you?"
+
+"Yes," he laughed, "I've been a truant, but I never quite realized the
+possibilities of the part--until to-day."
+
+She was silent a moment, and turned away her head, surveying the
+landscape that fell away for miles beyond.
+
+"When I was a child," she said, "I used to think that by opening a door
+I could step into an enchanted realm like this. Only I could never
+find the door. Perhaps," she added, gayly pursuing the conceit, "it was
+because you had the key, and I didn't know you in those days." She
+gave him a swift, searching look, smiling, whimsical yet startled,--so
+elusive that the memory of it afterwards was wont to come and go like a
+flash of light. "Who are you?" she asked.
+
+His blood leaped, but he smiled in delighted understanding of her mood.
+Sarah Austen had brought just such a magic touch to an excursion, and
+even at that moment Austen found himself marvelling a little at the
+strange resemblance between the two.
+
+"I am a plain person whose ancestors came from a village called Camden
+Street," he replied. "Camden Street is there, on a shelf of the hills,
+and through the arch of its elms you can look off over the forests of
+the lowlands until they end in the blue reaches of the ocean,--if you
+could see far enough."
+
+"If you could see far enough," said Victoria, unconsciously repeating
+his words. "But that doesn't explain you," she exclaimed: "You are like
+nobody I ever met, and you have a supernatural faculty of appearing
+suddenly, from nowhere, and whisking me away like the lady in the fable,
+out of myself and the world I live in. If I become so inordinately
+grateful as to talk nonsense, you mustn't blame me. Try not to think of
+the number of times I've seen you, or when it was we first met."
+
+"I believe," said Austen, gravely, "it was when a mammoth beast had his
+cave on Holdfast, and the valleys were covered with cocoanut-palms."
+
+"And you appeared suddenly then, too, and rescued me. You have always
+been uniformly kind," she said, "but--a little intangible."
+
+"A myth," he suggested, "with neither height, breadth, nor thickness."
+
+"You have height and breadth," she answered, measuring him swiftly with
+her eye; "I am not sure about the thickness. Perhaps. What I mean to say
+is, that you seem to be a person in the world, but not of it. Your
+exits and entrances are too mysterious, and then you carry me out of
+it,--although I invite myself, which is not at all proper."
+
+"I came down here to see you," he said, and took a firmer grip on the
+reins. "I exist to that extent."
+
+"That's unworthy of you," she cried. "I don't believe you--would have
+known I was here unless you had caught eight of me."
+
+"I should have known it," he said.
+
+"How?"
+
+"Because I heard you playing. I am sure it was you playing."
+
+"Yes, it was I," she answered simply, "but I did not know that--you
+heard. Where were you?
+
+"I suppose," he replied, "a sane witness would have testified that I
+was in the street--one of those partial and material truths which are so
+misleading."
+
+She laughed again, joyously.
+
+"Seriously, why did you come down here?" she insisted. "I am not so
+absorbed in Humphrey's career that I cannot take an interest in yours.
+In fact, yours interests me more, because it is more mysterious.
+Humphrey's," she added, laughing, "is charted from day to day, and
+announced in bulletins. He is more generous to his friends than--you."
+
+"I have nothing to chart," said Austen, "except such pilgrimages as
+this,--and these, after all, are unchartable. Your friend, Mr. Crewe,
+on the other hand, is well away on his voyage after the Golden Fleece. I
+hope he is provided with a Lynceus."
+
+She was silent for a long time, but he was feverishly conscious of her
+gaze upon him, and did not dare to turn his eyes to hers. The look in
+them he beheld without the aid of physical vision, and in that look was
+the world-old riddle of her sex typified in the image on the African
+desert, which Napoleon had tried to read, and failed. And while wisdom
+was in the look, there was in it likewise the eternal questioning of a
+fate quite as inscrutable, against which wisdom would avail nothing.
+It was that look which, for Austen, revealed in her in their infinite
+variety all women who had lived; those who could resist, and those
+who could yield, and yielding all, bestow a gift which left them still
+priceless; those to whom sorrow might bring sadness, and knowledge
+mourning, and yet could rob them of no jot of sweetness. And knowing
+this, he knew that to gain her now (could such a high prize be gained!)
+would be to lose her. If he were anything to her (realize it or not as
+she might), it was because he found strength to resist this greatest
+temptation of his life. Yield, and his guerdon was lost, and he would be
+Austen Vane no longer--yield, and his right to act, which would make him
+of value in her eyes as well as in his own, was gone forever.
+
+Well he knew what the question in her eyes meant or something of what
+it meant, so inexplicably is the soul of woman linked to events. He had
+pondered often on that which she had asked him when he had brought her
+home over the hills in the autumn twilight. He remembered her words, and
+the very inflection of her voice. "Then you won't tell me?" How could he
+tell her? He became aware that she was speaking now, in an even tone.
+
+"I had an odd experience this morning, when I was waiting for Mrs.
+Pomfret outside the state-house," she said. "A man was standing looking
+up at the statue of the patriot with a strange, rapt expression on
+his face,--such a good face,--and he was so big and honest and
+uncompromising I wanted to talk to him. I didn't realize that I was
+staring at him so hard, because I was trying to remember where I had
+seen him before,--and then I remembered suddenly that it was with you."
+
+"With me?" Austen repeated.
+
+"You were standing with him, in front of the little house, when I save
+you yesterday. His name was Redbrook. It appears that he had seen me,"
+Victoria replied, "when I went to Mercer to call on Zeb Meader. And he
+asked me if I knew you."
+
+"Of course you denied it," said Austen.
+
+"I couldn't, very well," laughed Victoria, "because you had confessed to
+the acquaintance first."
+
+"He merely wished to have the fact corroborated. Mr. Redbrook is a man
+who likes to be sure of his ground."
+
+"He told me a very interesting thing about you," she continued slowly,
+with her eye upon. Austen's profile. "He said that a great many men
+wanted you to be their candidate for governor of the State,--more than
+you had any idea of,--and that you wouldn't consent. Mr. Redbrook grew
+so enthusiastic that he forgot, for the moment, my--relationship to
+the railroad. He is not the only person with whom I have talked who
+has--forgotten it, or hasn't known of it."
+
+Austen was silent.
+
+"Why won't you be a candidate," she asked, in a low voice, "if such men
+as that want you?"
+
+"I am afraid Mr. Redbrook exaggerates," he said. "The popular demand of
+which he spoke is rather mythical. And I should be inclined to accuse
+him, too, of a friendly attempt to install me in your good graces."
+
+"No," answered Victoria, smiling, with serious eyes, "I won't be put off
+that way. Mr. Redbrook isn't the kind of man that exaggerates--I've seen
+enough of his type to know that. And he told me about your--reception
+last night at the Widow Peasley's. You wouldn't have told me," she added
+reproachfully.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"It was scarcely a subject I could have ventured," he said.
+
+"But I asked you," she objected. "Now tell me, why did you refuse to be
+their candidate? It wasn't because you were not likely to get elected,
+was it?"
+
+He permitted himself a glance which was a tribute of admiration--a
+glance which she returned steadfastly.
+
+"It isn't likely that I should have been elected," he answered, "but you
+are right--that is not the reason I refused."
+
+"I thought not," she said, "I did not believe you were the kind of man
+to refuse for that reason. And you would have been elected."
+
+"What makes you think so?" he asked curiously.
+
+"I have been thinking since I saw you last--yes, and I have been making
+inquiries. I have been trying to find out things--which you will not
+tell me." She paused, with a little catch of her breath, and went on
+again. "Do you believe I came all the way up here just to hear Humphrey
+Crewe make a speech and to drive with him in a high sleigh and listen
+to him talk about his career? When serious men of the people like Mr.
+Redbrook and that nice Mr. Jenney at Leith and a lot of others who do
+not ordinarily care for politics are thinking and indignant, I have
+come to the conclusion there must be a cause for it. They say that the
+railroad governs them through disreputable politicians,--and I--I am
+beginning to believe it is true. I have had some of the politicians
+pointed out to me in the Legislature, and they look like it."
+
+Austen did not smile. She was speaking quietly, but he saw that she was
+breathing deeply, and he knew that she possessed a courage which went
+far beyond that of most women, and an insight into life and affairs.
+
+"I am going to find out," she said, "whether these things are true."
+
+"And then?" he asked involuntarily.
+
+"If they are true, I am going to tell my father about them, and ask him
+to investigate. Nobody seems to have the courage to go to him."
+
+Austen did not answer. He felt the implication; he knew that, without
+realizing his difficulties, and carried on by a feeling long pent up,
+she had measured him unjustly, and yet he felt no resentment, and no
+shock. Perhaps he might feel that later. Now he was filled only with a
+sympathy that was yet another common bond between them. Suppose she did
+find out? He knew that she would not falter until she came to the end
+of her investigation, to the revelation of Mr. Flint's code of business
+ethics. Should the revolt take place, she would be satisfied with
+nothing less than the truth, even as he, Austen Vane, had not been
+satisfied. And he thought of the life-long faith that would be broken
+thereby.
+
+They had made the circle of the hills, and the sparkling lights of the
+city lay under them like blue diamond points in the twilight of the
+valley. The crests behind them deepened in purple as the saffron faded
+in the west, and a gossamer cloud of Tyrian dye floated over Holdfast.
+In silence they turned for a last lingering look, and in silence went
+down the slope into the world again, and through the streets to the
+driveway of the Duncan house. It was only when they had stopped before
+the door that she trusted herself to speak.
+
+"I ought not to have said what I did," she began, in a low voice; "I
+didn't realize--but I cannot understand you."
+
+"You have said nothing which you need ever have cause to regret," he
+replied. He was too great for excuses, too great for any sorrow save
+what she herself might feel, as great as the silent hills from which he
+came.
+
+She stood for a moment on the edge of the steps, her eyes lustrous,--yet
+gazing into his with a searching, troubled look that haunted him for
+many days. But her self-command was unshaken, her power to control
+speech was the equal of his. And this power of silence in her revealed
+in such instants--was her greatest fascination for Austen, the thing
+which set her apart among women; which embodied for him the whole charm
+and mystery of her sex.
+
+"Good-by," she said simply.
+
+"Good-by," he said, and seized her hand--and drove away.
+
+Without ringing the bell Victoria slipped into the hall,--for the latch
+was not caught,--and her first impulse was to run up the staircase to
+her room. But she heard Mrs. Pomfret's voice on the landing above and
+fled, as to a refuge, into the dark drawing-room, where she stood for a
+moment motionless, listening for the sound of his sleigh-bells as they
+fainted on the winter's night. Then she seated herself to think, if she
+could, though it is difficult to think when one's heart is beating a
+little wildly. It was Victoria's nature to think things out. For the
+first time in her life she knew sorrow, and it made it worse that that
+sorrow was indefinable. She felt an accountable attraction for this man
+who had so strangely come into her life, whose problems had suddenly
+become her problems. But she did not connect the attraction for Austen
+Vane with her misery. She recalled him as he had left her, big and
+strong and sorrowful, with a yearning look that was undisguised,
+and while her faith in him came surging back again, she could not
+understand.
+
+Gradually she became aware of men's voices, and turned with a start to
+perceive that the door of the library was open, and that Humphrey Crewe
+and another were standing in the doorway against the light. With an
+effort of memory she identified the other man as the Mr. Tooting who had
+made himself so useful at Mr. Crewe's garden party.
+
+"I told you I could make you governor, Mr. Crewe," Mr. Tooting was
+saying. "Say, why do you think the Northeastern crowd--why do you think
+Hilary Vane is pushing your bills down the sidings? I'll tell you,
+because they know you're a man of ability, and they're afraid of you,
+and they know you're a gentleman, and can't be trusted with their deals,
+so they just shunted you off at Kodunk with a jolly about sendin' you
+to Congress if you made a hit on a national speech. I've been in the
+business a good many years, and I've seen and done some things for the
+Northeastern that stick in my throat"--(at this point Victoria sat down
+again and gripped the arms of her chair), "I don't like to see a decent
+man sawbucked the way they're teeterin' you, Mr. Crewe. I know what I'm
+talkin' about, and I tell you that Ridout and Jake Botcher and Brush
+Bascom haven't any more notion of lettin' your bills out of committee
+than they have Gaylord's. Why? Because they've got orders not to."
+
+"You're making some serious charges, Mr. Tooting," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"And what's more, I can prove 'em. You know yourself that anybody who
+talks against the Northeastern is booted down and blacklisted. You've
+seen that, haven't you?"
+
+"I have observed," said Mr. Crewe, "that things do not seem to be as
+they should in a free government."
+
+"And it makes your blood boil as an American citizen, don't it? It does
+mine," said Mr. Tooting, with fine indignation. "I was a poor boy, and
+had to earn my living, but I've made up my mind I've worn the collar
+long enough--if I have to break rocks. And I want to repeat what I
+said a little while ago," he added, weaving his thumb into Mr. Crewe's
+buttonhole; "I know a thing or two, and I've got some brains, as they
+know, and I can make you governor of this State if you'll only say the
+word. It's a cinch."
+
+Victoria started to rise once more, and realized that to escape she
+would have to cross the room directly in front of the two men. She
+remained sitting where she was in a fearful fascination, awaiting
+Humphrey Crewe's answer. There was a moment's pause.
+
+"I believe you made the remark, Mr. Tooting," he said, "that in your
+opinion there is enough anti-railroad sentiment in the House to pass any
+bill which the railroad opposes."
+
+"If a leader was to get up there, like you, with the arguments I
+could put into his hands, they would make the committee discharge that
+Pingsquit bill of the Gaylords', and pass it."
+
+"On what do you base your opinion?" asked Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Tooting, "I guess I'm a pretty shrewd observer and have
+had practice enough. But you know Austen Vane, don't you?"
+
+Victoria held her breath.
+
+"I've a slight acquaintance with him," replied Mr. Crewe; "I've
+helped him along in one or two minor legal matters. He seems to be a
+little--well, pushing, you might say."
+
+"I want to tell you one thing about Austen," continued Mr. Tooting.
+"Although I don't stand much for old Hilary, I'd take Austen Vane's
+opinion on most things as soon as that of any man in the State. If
+he only had some sense about himself, he could be governor next
+time--there's a whole lot that wants him. I happen to know some of 'em
+offered it to him last night."
+
+"Austen Vane governor!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, with a politely deprecating
+laugh.
+
+"It may sound funny," said Mr. Tooting, stoutly; "I never understood
+what he has about him. He's never done anything but buck old Hilary in
+that damage case and send back a retainer pass to old Flint, but he's
+got something in his make-up that gets under your belt, and a good many
+of these old hayseeds'll eat out of his hand, right now. Well, I don't
+want this to go any farther, you're a gentleman,--but Austen came down
+here yesterday and had the whole thing sized up by last night. Old
+Hilary thought the Gaylords sent for him to lobby their bill through.
+They may have sent for him, all right, but he wouldn't lobby for 'em. He
+could have made a pile of money out of 'em. Austen doesn't seem to care
+about money--he's queer. He says as long as he has a horse and a few
+books and a couple of sandwiches a day he's all right. Hilary had him
+up in Number Seven tryin' to find out what he came down for, and Austen
+told him pretty straight--what he didn't tell the Gaylords, either. He
+kind of likes old Hilary,--because he's his father, I guess,--and he
+said there were enough men in that House to turn Hilary and his crowd
+upside down. That's how I know for certain. If Austen Vane said it, I'll
+borrow money to bet on it," declared Mr. Tooting.
+
+"You don't think young Vane is going to get into the race?" queried Mr.
+Crewe.
+
+"No," said Mr. Tooting, somewhat contemptuously. "No, I tell you he
+hasn't got that kind of sense. He never took any trouble to get ahead,
+and I guess he's sort of sensitive about old Hilary. It'd make a
+good deal of a scandal in the family, with Austen as an anti-railroad
+candidate." Mr. Tooting lowered his voice to a tone that was caressingly
+confidential. "I tell you, and you sleep on it, a man of your brains and
+money can't lose. It's a chance in a million, and when you win
+you've got this little State tight in your pocket, and a desk in the
+millionaire's club at Washington. Well, so long," said Mr. Tooting, "you
+think that over."
+
+"You have, at least, put things in a new and interesting light," said
+Mr. Crewe. "I will try to decide what my duty is."
+
+"Your duty's pretty plain to me," said Mr. Tooting. "If I had money, I'd
+know that the best way to use it is for the people,--ain't that so?"
+
+"In the meantime," Mr. Crewe continued, "you may drop in to-morrow at
+three."
+
+"You'd better make it to-morrow night, hadn't you?" said Mr. Tooting,
+significantly. "There ain't any back way to this house."
+
+"As you choose," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+They passed within a few feet of Victoria, who resisted an almost
+uncontrollable impulse to rise and confront them. The words given her to
+use were surging in her brain, and yet she withheld them why, she knew
+not. Perhaps it was because, after such communion as the afternoon had
+brought, the repulsion she felt for Mr. Tooting aided her to sit where
+she was. She heard the outside door open and close, and she saw Humphrey
+Crewe walk past her again into his library, and that door closed, and
+she was left in darkness. Darkness indeed for Victoria, who throughout
+her life had lived in light alone; in the light she had shed, and
+the light which she had kindled in others. With a throb which was an
+exquisite pain, she understood now the compassion in Austen's eyes, and
+she saw so simply and so clearly why he had not told her that her face
+burned with the shame of her demand. The one of all others to whom she
+could go in this trouble was denied her, and his lips were sealed, who
+would have spoken honestly and without prejudice. She rose and went
+quietly out into the biting winter night, and stood staring through the
+trees at the friendly reddened windows of the little cottage across the
+way with a yearning that passed her understanding. Out of those windows,
+to Victoria, shone honesty and truth, and the peace which these alone
+may bring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. THE DESCENDANTS OF HORATIUS
+
+So the twenty honourable members of the State Senate had been dubbed
+by the man who had a sense of humour and a smattering of the classics,
+because they had been put there to hold the bridge against the Tarquins
+who would invade the dominions of the Northeastern. Twenty picked men,
+and true they were indeed, but a better name for their body would have
+been the 'Life Guard of the Sovereign.' The five hundred far below them
+might rage and at times revolt, but the twenty in their shining armour
+stood undaunted above the vulnerable ground and smiled grimly at the
+mob. The citadel was safe.
+
+The real Horatius of the stirring time of which we write was that old
+and tried veteran, the Honourable Brush Bascom; and Spurius Lartius
+might be typified by the indomitable warrior, the Honourable Jacob
+Botcher, while the Honourable Samuel Doby of Hale, Speaker of the House,
+was unquestionably Herminius. How the three held the bridge that year
+will be told in as few and as stirring words as possible. A greater than
+Porsena confronted them, and well it was for them, and for the Empire,
+that the Body Guard of the Twenty stood behind them.
+
+        "Lars Porsena of Clusium,
+        By the Nine Gods he swore."
+
+The morning after the State Tribune had printed that memorable speech on
+national affairs--statistics and all, with an editorial which gave every
+evidence of Mr. Peter Pardriff's best sparkle--Mr. Crewe appeared on the
+floor of the House with a new look in his eye which made discerning men
+turn and stare at him. It was the look of the great when they are justly
+indignant, when their trust--nobly given--has been betrayed. Washington,
+for instance, must have had just such a look on the battlefield of
+Trenton. The Honourable Jacob Botcher, pressing forward as fast as his
+bulk would permit and with the newspaper in his hand, was met by a calm
+and distant manner which discomposed that statesman, and froze his stout
+index finger to the editorial which "perhaps Mr. Crewe had not seen."
+
+Mr. Crewe was too big for resentment, but he knew how to meet people who
+didn't measure up to his standards. Yes, he had seen the editorial, and
+the weather still continued fine. The Honourable Jacob was left behind
+scratching his head, and presently he sought a front seat in which
+to think, the back ones not giving him room enough. The brisk, cheery
+greeting of the Honourable Brush Bascom fared no better, but Mr. Bascom
+was a philosopher, and did not disturb the great when their minds were
+revolving on national affairs and the welfare of humanity in general.
+Mr. Speaker Doby and Mr. Ridout got but abstract salutations also, and
+were correspondingly dismayed.
+
+That day, and for many days thereafter, Mr. Crewe spent some time--as
+was entirely proper--among the back seats, making the acquaintance of
+his humbler fellow members of the submerged four hundred and seventy. He
+had too long neglected this, so he told them, but his mind had been on
+high matters. During many of his mature years he had pondered as to how
+the welfare of community and State could be improved, and the result
+of that thought was embodied in the bills of which they had doubtless
+received copies. If not, down went their names in a leather-bound
+memorandum, and they got copies in the next mails.
+
+The delight of some of the simple rustic members at this unbending of
+a great man may be imagined. To tell the truth, they had looked with
+little favour upon the intimacy which had sprung up between him and
+those tyrannical potentates, Messrs. Botcher and Bascom, and many
+who had the courage of their convictions expressed then very frankly.
+Messrs. Botcher and Bascom were, when all was said, mere train
+despatchers of the Northeastern, who might some day bring on a wreck
+the like of which the State had never seen. Mr. Crewe was in a
+receptive mood; indeed his nature, like Nebuchadnezzar's, seemed to have
+experienced some indefinable and vital change. Was this the Mr. Crewe
+the humble rural members had pictured to themselves? Was this the Mr.
+Crewe who, at the beginning of the session, had told them roundly it was
+their duty to vote for his bills?
+
+Mr. Crewe was surprised, he said, to hear so much sentiment against the
+Northeastern Railroads. Yes, he was a friend of Mr. Flint's--they were
+neighbours in the country. But if these charges had any foundation
+whatever, they ought to be looked into--they ought to be taken up. A
+sovereign people should not be governed by a railroad. Mr. Crewe was a
+business man, but first of all he was a citizen; as a business man he
+did not intend to talk vaguely, but to investigate thoroughly. And then,
+if charges should be made, he would make them specifically, and as a
+citizen contend for the right.
+
+It is difficult to restrain one's pen in dealing with a hero, but it is
+not too much to say that Mr. Crewe impressed many of the country members
+favourably. How, indeed, could he help doing so? His language was
+moderate, his poise that of a man of affairs, and there was a look
+in his eye and a determination in his manner that boded ill for the
+Northeastern if he should, after weighing the facts, decide that they
+ought to be flagellated. His friendship with Mr. Flint and the suspicion
+that he might be inclined to fancy Mr. Flint's daughter would not
+influence him in the least; of that many of his hearers were sure. Not
+a few of them were invited to dinner at the Duncan house, and shown the
+library and the conservatory.
+
+"Walk right in," said Mr. Crewe. "You can't hurt the flowers unless you
+bump against the pots, and if you walk straight you can't do that. I
+brought the plants down from my own hothouse in Leith. Those are French
+geraniums--very hard to get. They're double, you see, and don't
+look like the scrawny things you see in this country. Yes (with a
+good-natured smile), I guess they do cost something. I'll ask my
+secretary what I paid for that plant. Is that dinner, Waters? Come right
+in, gentlemen, we won't wait for ceremony."
+
+Whereupon the delegation would file into the dining room in solemn
+silence behind the imperturbable Waters, with dubious glances at Mr.
+Waters' imperturbable understudy in green and buff and silver buttons.
+Honest red hands, used to milking at five o'clock in the morning,
+and hands not so red that measured dry goods over rural counters for
+insistent female customers fingered in some dismay what seemed an
+inexplicable array of table furniture.
+
+"It don't make any difference which fork you take," said the
+good-natured owner of this palace of luxury, "only I shouldn't advise
+you to use one for the soup you wouldn't get much of it--what? Yes, this
+house suits me very well. It was built by old man Duncan, you know,
+and his daughter married an Italian nobleman and lives in a castle. The
+State ought to buy the house for a governor's mansion. It's a disgrace
+that our governor should have to live in the Pelican Hotel, and
+especially in a room next to that of the chief counsel of the
+Northeastern, with only a curtain and a couple of folding doors
+between."
+
+"That's right," declared an up-state member, "the governor hadn't ought
+to live next to Vane. But as to gettin' him a house like this--kind of
+royal, ain't it? Couldn't do justice to it on fifteen hundred a year,
+could he? Costs you a little mite more to live in it, don't it?"
+
+"It costs me something," Mr. Crewe admitted modestly. "But then
+our governors are all rich men, or they couldn't afford to pay the
+Northeastern lobby campaign expenses. Not that I believe in a rich man
+for governor, gentlemen. My contention is that the State should pay
+its governors a sufficient salary to make them independent of the
+Northeastern, a salary on which they can live as befits a chief
+executive."
+
+These sentiments, and others of a similar tenor, were usually received
+in silence by his rural guests, but Mr. Crewe, being a broad-minded
+man of human understanding, did not set down their lack of response to
+surliness or suspicion of a motive, but rather to the innate caution of
+the hill farmer; and doubtless, also, to a natural awe of the unwonted
+splendour with which they were surrounded. In a brief time his kindly
+hospitality became a byword in the capital, and fabulous accounts of it
+were carried home at week ends to toiling wives and sons and daughters,
+to incredulous citizens who sat on cracker boxes and found the Sunday
+papers stale and unprofitable for weeks thereafter. The geraniums--the
+price of which Mr. Crewe had forgotten to find out--were appraised at
+four figures, and the conservatory became the hanging gardens of Babylon
+under glass; the functionary in buff and green and silver buttons and
+his duties furnished the subject for long and heated arguments. And
+incidentally everybody who had a farm for sale wrote to Mr. Crewe. Since
+the motives of every philanthropist and public benefactor are inevitably
+challenged by cynics, there were many who asked the question, "What did
+Mr. Crewe want?" It is painful even to touch upon this when we know that
+Mr. Crewe was merely doing his duty as he saw it, when we know that he
+spelled the word, mentally, with a capital D.
+
+There were many, too, who remarked that a touching friendship in the
+front seats (formerly plainly visible to the naked eye from the back)
+had been strained--at least. Mr. Crewe still sat with Mr. Botcher and
+Mr. Bascom, but he was not a man to pretend after the fires had cooled.
+The Honourable Jacob Botcher, with his eyes shut so tight, that his
+honest face wore an expression of agony, seemed to pray every morning
+for the renewal of that friendship when the chaplain begged the Lord to
+guide the Legislature into the paths of truth; and the Honourable Brush
+Bascom wore an air of resignation which was painful to see. Conversation
+languished, and the cosey and familiar haunts of the Pelican knew Mr.
+Crewe no more.
+
+Mr. Crewe never forgot, of course, that he was a gentleman, and a
+certain polite intercourse existed. During the sessions, as a matter
+of fact, Mr. Bascom had many things to whisper to Mr. Botcher, and Mr.
+Butcher to Mr. Bascom, and in order to facilitate this Mr. Crewe changed
+seats with the Honourable Jacob. Neither was our hero a man to neglect,
+on account of strained relations, to insist upon his rights. His eyes
+were open now, and he saw men and things political as they were; he knew
+that his bills for the emancipation of the State were prisoners in
+the maw of the dragon, and not likely to see the light of law. Not
+a legislative day passed that he did not demand, with a firmness and
+restraint which did him infinite credit, that Mr. Bascom's and Mr.
+Butcher's committees report those bills to the House either favourably
+or unfavourably. And we must do exact justice, likewise, to Messrs.
+Bascom and Butcher; they, too, incited perhaps thereto by Mr. Crewe's
+example, answered courteously that the very excellent bills in question
+were of such weight and importance as not to be decided on lightly,
+and that there were necessary State expenditures which had first to be
+passed upon. Mr. Speaker Doby, with all the will in the world, could
+do nothing: and on such occasions (Mr. Crewe could see) Mr. Doby bore
+a striking resemblance to the picture of the mockturtle in "Alice m
+Wonderland"--a fact which had been pointed out by Miss Victoria Flint.
+In truth, all three of these gentlemen wore, when questioned, such a
+sorrowful and injured air as would have deceived a more experienced
+politician than the new member from Leith. The will to oblige was
+infinite.
+
+There was no doubt about the fact that the session was rapidly drawing
+to a close; and likewise that the committees guided by the Honourables
+Jacob Butcher and Brush Bascom, composed of members carefully picked by
+that judge of mankind, Mr. Doby, were wrestling day and night (behind
+closed doors) with the intellectual problems presented by the bills
+of the member from Leith. It is not to be supposed that a man of Mr.
+Crewe's shrewdness would rest at the word of the chairmen. Other members
+were catechized, and in justice to Messrs. Bascom and Botcher it must
+be admitted that the assertions of these gentlemen were confirmed. It
+appeared that the amount of thought which was being lavished upon these
+measures was appalling.
+
+By this time Mr. Crewe had made some new friends, as was inevitable when
+such a man unbent. Three of these friends owned, by a singular
+chance, weekly newspapers, and having conceived a liking as well as
+an admiration for him, began to say pleasant things about him in their
+columns--which Mr. Crewe (always thoughtful) sent to other friends of
+his. These new and accidental newspaper friends declared weekly that
+measures of paramount importance were slumbering in committees, and
+cited the measures. Other friends of Mr. Crewe were so inspired by
+affection and awe that they actually neglected their business and spent
+whole days in the rural districts telling people what a fine man Mr.
+Crewe was and circulating petitions for his bills; and incidentally
+the committees of Mr. Butcher and Mr. Bascom were flooded with these
+petitions, representing the spontaneous sentiment of an aggrieved
+populace.
+
+        "Just then a scout came flying,
+         All wild with haste and fear
+        To arms! to arms! Sir Consul
+         Lars Porsena is here.
+        On the low hills to westward
+         The Consul fixed his eye,
+        And saw the swarthy storm of dust
+         Rise fast along the sky."
+
+It will not do to push a comparison too far, and Mr. Hamilton Tooting,
+of course, ought not to be made to act the part of Tarquin the Proud.
+Like Tarquin, however, he had been deposed--one of those fatuous acts
+which the wisest will commit. No more could the Honourable Hilary well
+be likened to Pandora, for he only opened the box wide enough to allow
+one mischievous sprite to take wings--one mischievous sprite that was
+to prove a host. Talented and invaluable lieutenant that he was, Mr.
+Tooting had become an exile, to explain to any audience who should make
+it worth his while the mysterious acts by which the puppets on the stage
+were moved, and who moved them; who, for instance, wrote the declamation
+which his Excellency Asa Gray recited as his own. Mr. Tooting, as we
+have seen, had a remarkable business head, and combined with it--as
+Austen Vane remarked--the rare instinct of the Norway rat which goes
+down to the sea in ships--when they are safe. Burrowing continually
+amongst the bowels of the vessel, Mr. Tooting knew the weak timbers
+better than the Honourable Hilary Vanes who thought the ship as sound as
+the day Augustus Flint had launched her. But we have got a long way from
+Horatius in our imagery.
+
+Little birds flutter around the capital, picking up what crumbs they
+may. One of them, occasionally fed by that humanitarian, the Honourable
+Jacob Botcher, whispered a secret that made the humanitarian knit his
+brows. He was the scout that came flying (if by a burst of imagination
+we can conceive the Honourable Jacob in this aerial act)--came flying to
+the Consul in room Number Seven with the news that Mr. Hamilton Tooting
+had been detected on two evenings slipping into the Duncan house. But
+the Consul--strong man that he was--merely laughed. The Honourable
+Elisha Jane did some scouting on his own account. Some people are so
+small as to be repelled by greatness, to be jealous of high gifts and
+power, and it was perhaps inevitable that a few of the humbler members
+whom Mr. Crewe had entertained should betray his hospitality, and
+misinterpret his pure motives.
+
+It was a mere coincidence, perhaps, that after Mr. Jane's investigation
+the intellectual concentration which one of the committees had bestowed
+on two of Mr. Crewe's bills came to an end. These bills, it is
+true, carried no appropriation, and, were, respectively, the acts to
+incorporate the State Economic League and the Children's Charities
+Association. These suddenly appeared in the House one morning, with
+favourable recommendations, and, mirabile dicta, the end of the day saw
+them through the Senate and signed by the governor. At last Mr. Crewe by
+his Excellency had stamped the mark of his genius on the statute books,
+and the Honourable Jacob Botcher, holding out an olive branch, took the
+liberty of congratulating him.
+
+A vainer man, a lighter character than Humphrey Crewe, would have been
+content to have got something; and let it rest at that. Little Mr.
+Butcher or Mr. Speaker Doby, with his sorrowful smile, guessed the iron
+hand within the velvet glove of the Leith statesman; little they knew
+the man they were dealing with. Once aroused, he would not be pacified
+by bribes of cheap olive branches and laurels. When the proper time
+came, he would fling down the gauntlet--before Rome itself, and then let
+Horatius and his friends beware.
+
+The hour has struck at last--and the man is not wanting. The French
+Revolution found Napoleon ready, and our own Civil War General Ulysses
+Grant. Of that ever memorable session but three days remained, and
+those who had been prepared to rise in the good cause had long since
+despaired. The Pingsquit bill, and all other bills that spelled liberty,
+were still prisoners in the hands of grim jailers, and Thomas Gaylord,
+the elder, had worn several holes in the carpet of his private room in
+the Pelican, and could often be descried from Main Street running up
+and down between the windows like a caged lion, while young Tom had been
+spied standing, with his hands in his pockets, smiling on the world.
+
+Young Tom had his own way of doing things, though he little dreamed of
+the help Heaven was to send him in this matter. There was, in the lower
+House, a young man by the name of Harper, a lawyer from Brighton, who
+was sufficiently eccentric not to carry a pass. The light of fame, as
+the sunset gilds a weathercock on a steeple, sometimes touches such
+men for an instant and makes them immortal. The name of Mr. Harper is
+remembered, because it is linked with a greater one. But Mr. Harper was
+the first man over the wall.
+
+History chooses odd moments for her entrances. It was at the end of
+one of those busy afternoon sessions, with a full house, when Messrs.
+Bascom, Botcher, and Ridout had done enough of blocking and hacking and
+hewing to satisfy those doughty defenders of the bridge, that a slight,
+unprepossessing-looking young man with spectacles arose to make a
+motion. The Honourable Jacob Botcher, with his books and papers under
+his arm, was already picking his way up the aisle, nodding genially to
+such of the faithful as he saw; Mr. Bascom was at the Speaker's desk,
+and Mr. Ridout receiving a messenger from the Honourable Hilary at the
+door. The Speaker, not without some difficulty, recognized Mr. Harper
+amidst what seemed the beginning of an exodus--and Mr. Harper read his
+motion.
+
+Men halted in the aisles, and nudged other men to make them stop
+talking. Mr. Harper's voice was not loud, and it shook a trifle with
+excitement, but those who heard passed on the news so swiftly to those
+who had not that the House was sitting (or standing) in amazed silence
+by the time the motion reached the Speaker, who had actually risen to
+receive it. Mr. Doby regarded it for a few seconds and raised his eyes
+mournfully to Mr. Harper himself, as much as to say that he would give
+the young man a chance to take it back if he could--if the words had not
+been spoken which would bring the offender to the block in the bloom
+and enthusiasm of youth. Misguided Mr. Harper had committed unutterable
+treason to the Empire!
+
+"The gentleman from Brighton, Mr. Harper," said the Speaker, sadly,
+"offers the following resolution, and moves its adoption: 'Resolved,
+that the Committee on Incorporations be instructed to report House bill
+number 302, entitled "An act to incorporate the Pingsquit Railroad," by
+eleven-thirty o'clock to-morrow morning'--the gentleman from Putnam, Mr.
+Bascom."
+
+The House listened and looked on entranced, as though they were the
+spectators to a tragedy. And indeed it seemed as though they were. Necks
+were craned to see Mr. Harper; he didn't look like a hero, but one
+never can tell about these little men. He had hurled defiance at the
+Northeastern Railroads, and that was enough for Mr. Redbrook and Mr.
+Widgeon and their friends, who prepared to rush into the fray trusting
+to Heaven for speech and parliamentary law. O for a leader now! Horatius
+is on the bridge, scarce concealing his disdain for this puny opponent,
+and Lartius and Herminius not taking the trouble to arm. Mr. Bascom will
+crush this one with the flat of his sword.
+
+"Mr. Speaker," said that gentleman, informally, "as Chairman of
+the Committee on Incorporations, I rise to protest against such an
+unheard-of motion in this House. The very essence of orderly procedure,
+of effective business, depends on the confidence of the House in its
+committees, and in all of my years as a member I have never known of
+such a thing. Gentlemen of the House, your committee are giving to this
+bill and other measures their undivided attention, and will report them
+at the earliest practicable moment. I hope that this motion will be
+voted down."
+
+Mr. Bascom, with a glance around to assure himself that most of the
+hundred members of the Newcastle delegation--vassals of the Winona
+Corporation and subject to the Empire--had not made use of their passes
+and boarded, as usual, the six o'clock train, took his seat. A buzz of
+excitement ran over the house, a dozen men were on their feet, including
+the plainly agitated Mr. Harper himself. But who is this, in the lunar
+cockpit before the Speaker's desk, demanding firmly to be heard--so
+firmly that Mr. Harper, with a glance at him, sits down again; so firmly
+that Mr. Speaker Doby, hypnotized by an eye, makes the blunder that will
+eventually cost him his own head?
+
+"The gentleman from Leith, Mr. Crewe."
+
+As though sensing a drama, the mutterings were hushed once more. Mr.
+Jacob Botcher leaned forward, and cracked his seat; but none, even those
+who had tasted of his hospitality, recognized that the Black Knight had
+entered the lists--the greatest deeds of this world, and the heroes of
+them, coming unheralded out of the plain clay. Mr. Crewe was the calmest
+man under the roof as he saluted the Speaker, walked up to the clerk's
+desk, turned his back to it, and leaned both elbows on it; and he
+regarded the sea of faces with the identical self-possession he had
+exhibited when he had made his famous address on national affairs. He
+did not raise his voice at the beginning, but his very presence seemed
+to compel silence, and curiosity was at fever heat. What was he going to
+say?
+
+"Gentlemen of the House," said Mr. Crewe, "I have listened to the
+gentleman from Putnam with some--amusement. He has made the statement
+that he and his committee are giving to the Pingsquit bill and other
+measures--some other measures--their undivided attention. Of this I have
+no doubt whatever. He neglected to define the species of attention he is
+giving them--I should define it as the kindly care which the warden of a
+penitentiary bestows upon his charges."
+
+Mr. Crewe was interrupted here. The submerged four hundred and seventy
+had had time to rub their eyes and get their breath, to realize that
+their champion had dealt Mr. Bascom a blow to cleave his helm, and a
+roar of mingled laughter and exultation arose in the back seats, and
+there was more craning to see the glittering eyes of the Honourable
+Brush and the expressions of his two companions-in-arms. Mr. Speaker
+Doby beat the stone with his gavel, while Mr. Crewe continued to lean
+back calmly until the noise was over.
+
+"Gentlemen," he went on, "I will enter at the proper time into a
+situation--known, I believe, to most of you--that brings about a
+condition of affairs by which the gentleman's committee, or the
+gentleman himself, with his capacious pockets, does not have to account
+to the House for every bill assigned to him by the Speaker. I have taken
+the trouble to examine a little into the gentleman's past record--he
+has been chairman of such committees for years past, and I find no trace
+that bills inimical to certain great interests have ever been reported
+back by him. The Pingsquit bill involves the vital principle of
+competition. I have read it with considerable care and believe it to be,
+in itself, a good measure, which deserves a fair hearing. I have had no
+conversation whatever with those who are said to be its promoters. If
+the bill is to pass, it has little enough time to get to the Senate. By
+the gentleman from Putnam's own statement his committee have given it
+its share of attention, and I believe this House is entitled to know
+the verdict, is entitled to accept or reject a report. I hope the motion
+will prevail."
+
+He sat down amidst a storm of applause which would have turned the head
+of a lesser man. No such personal ovation had been seen in the House
+for years. How the Speaker got order; how the Honourable Brush Bascom
+declared that Mr. Crewe would be called upon to prove his statements;
+how Mr. Botcher regretted that a new member of such promise should go
+off at half-cock; how Mr. Ridout hinted that the new member might
+think he had an animus; how Mr. Terry of Lee and Mr. Widgeon of Hull
+denounced, in plain hill language, the Northeastern Railroads and lauded
+the man of prominence who had the grit to oppose them, need not be gone
+into. Mr. Crewe at length demanded the previous question, which was
+carried, and the motion was carried, too, two hundred and fifty to one
+hundred and fifty-two. The House adjourned.
+
+We will spare the blushes of the hero of this occasion, who was
+threatened with suffocation by an inundation from the back seats. In
+answer to the congratulations and queries, he replied modestly that
+nobody else seemed to have had the sand to do it, so he did it himself.
+He regarded it as a matter of duty, however unpleasant and unforeseen;
+and if, as they said, he had been a pioneer, education and a knowledge
+of railroads and the world had helped him. Whereupon, adding tactfully
+that he desired the evening to himself to prepare for the battle of the
+morrow (of which he foresaw he was to bear the burden), he extricated
+himself from his admirers and made his way unostentatiously out of a
+side door into his sleigh. For the man who had kindled a fire--the blaze
+of which was to mark an epoch--he was exceptionally calm. Not so the
+only visitor whom Waters had instructions to admit that evening.
+
+"Say, you hit it just right," cried the visitor, too exultant to take
+off his overcoat. "I've been down through the Pelican, and there ain't
+been such excitement since Snow and Giddings had the fight for United
+States senator in the '80's. The place is all torn up, and you can't
+get a room there for love or money. They tell me they've been havin'
+conferences steady in Number Seven since the session closed, and Hilary
+Vane's sent for all the Federal and State office-holders to be here in
+the morning and lobby. Botcher and Jane and Bascom are circulatin' like
+hot water, tellin' everybody that because they wouldn't saddle the State
+with a debt with your bills you turned sour on 'em, and that you're more
+of a corporation and railroad man than any of 'em. They've got their
+machine to working a thousand to the minute, and everybody they have a
+slant on is going into line. One of them fellers, a conductor, told me
+he had to go with 'em. But our boys ain't idle, I can tell you that. I
+was in the back of the gallery when you spoke up, and I shook 'em off
+the leash right away."
+
+Mr. Crewe leaned back from the table and thrust his hands in his pockets
+and smiled. He was in one of his delightful moods.
+
+"Take off your overcoat, Tooting," he said; "you'll find one of my best
+political cigars over there, in the usual place."
+
+"Well, I guessed about right, didn't I?" inquired Mr. Tooting, biting
+off one of the political cigars. "I gave you a pretty straight tip,
+didn't I, that young Tom Gaylord was goin' to have somebody make that
+motion to-day? But say, it's funny he couldn't get a better one than
+that feller Harper. If you hadn't come along, they'd have smashed him
+to pulp. I'll bet the most surprised man in the State to-night, next to
+Brush Bascom, is young Tom Gaylord. It's a wonder he ain't been up here
+to thank you."
+
+"Maybe he has been," replied Mr. Crewe. "I told Waters to keep everybody
+out to-night because I want to know exactly what I'm going to say on the
+floor tomorrow. I don't want 'em to give me trouble. Did you bring some
+of those papers with you?"
+
+Mr. Tooting fished a bundle from his overcoat pocket. The papers
+in question, of which he had a great number stored away in Ripton,
+represented the foresight, on Mr. Tooting's part, of years. He was
+a young man with a praiseworthy ambition to get on in the world, and
+during his apprenticeship in the office of the Honourable Hilary
+Vane many letters and documents had passed through his hands. A less
+industrious person would have neglected the opportunity. Mr. Tooting
+copied them; and some, which would have gone into the waste-basket, he
+laid carefully aside, bearing in mind the adage about little scraps of
+paper--if there is one. At any rate, he now had a manuscript collection
+which was unique in its way, which would have been worth much to a great
+many men, and with characteristic generosity he was placing it at the
+disposal of Mr. Crewe.
+
+Mr. Crewe, in reading them, had other sensations. He warmed with
+indignation as an American citizen that a man should sit in a mahogany
+office in New York and dictate the government of a free and sovereign
+State; and he found himself in the grip of a righteous wrath when he
+recalled what Mr. Flint had written to him. "As a neighbour, it will
+give me the greatest pleasure to help you to the extent of my power, but
+the Northeastern Railroads cannot interfere in legislative or political
+matters." The effrontery of it was appalling! Where, he demanded of Mr.
+Tooting, did the common people come in? And this extremely pertinent
+question Mr. Tooting was unable to answer.
+
+But the wheels of justice had begun to turn.
+
+Mr. Tooting had not exaggerated the tumult and affright at the Pelican
+Hotel. The private telephone in Number Seven was busy all evening, while
+more or less prominent gentlemen were using continually the public
+ones in the boxes in the reading room downstairs. The Feudal system was
+showing what it could do, and the word had gone out to all the holders
+of fiefs that the vassals should be summoned. The Duke of Putnam had
+sent out a general call to the office-holders in that county. Theirs not
+to reason why--but obey; and some of them, late as was the hour, were
+already travelling (free) towards the capital. Even the congressional
+delegation in Washington had received telegrams, and sent them again to
+Federal office-holders in various parts of the State. If Mr. Crewe had
+chosen to listen, he could have heard the tramp of armed men. But he was
+not of the metal to be dismayed by the prospect of a great conflict.
+He was as cool as Cromwell, and after Mr. Tooting had left him to take
+charge once more of his own armies in the yield, the genlemon from Leith
+went to bed and slept soundly.
+
+The day of the battle dawned darkly, with great flakes flying. As early
+as seven o'clock the later cohorts began to arrive, and were soon as
+thick as bees in the Pelican, circulating in the lobby, conferring in
+various rooms of which they had the numbers with occupants in bed and
+out. A wonderful organization, that Feudal System, which could
+mobilize an army overnight! And each unit of it, like the bee, working
+unselfishly for the good of the whole; like the bee, flying straight for
+the object to be attained. Every member of the House from Putnam County,
+for instance, was seen by one of these indefatigable captains, and if
+the member had a mortgage or an ambition, or a wife and family that made
+life a problem, or a situation on the railroad or in some of the larger
+manufacturing establishments, let him beware! If he lived in lodgings
+in the town, he stuck his head out of the window to perceive a cheery
+neighbour from the country on his doorstep. Think of a system which
+could do this, not for Putnam County alone, but for all the counties in
+the State!
+
+The Honourable Hilary Vane, captain-general of the Forces, had had but
+four hours' sleep, and his Excellency, the Honourable Asa Gray, when he
+arose in the twilight of the morning, had to step carefully to avoid the
+cigar butts on the floor which--like so many empty cartridge shells were
+unpleasant reminders that a rebellion of no mean magnitude had arisen
+against the power to which he owed allegiance, and by the favour of
+which he was attended with pomp and circumstance wherever he chose to
+go.
+
+Long before eleven o'clock the paths to the state-house were thronged
+with people. Beside the office-holders and their friends who were in
+town, there were many residents of the capital city in the habit of
+going to hear the livelier debates. Not that the powers of the Empire
+had permitted debates on most subjects, but there could be no harm in
+allowing the lower House to discuss as fiercely as they pleased dog and
+sheep laws and hedgehog bounties. But now! The oldest resident couldn't
+remember a case of high treason and rebellion against the Northeastern
+such as this promised to be, and the sensation took on an added flavour
+from the fact that the arch rebel was a figure of picturesque interest,
+a millionaire with money enough to rent the Duncan house and fill its
+long-disused stable with horses, who was a capitalist himself and a
+friend of Mr. Flint's; of whom it was said that he was going to marry
+Mr. Flint's daughter!
+
+Long before eleven, too, the chiefs over tens and the chiefs over
+hundreds had gathered their men and marched them into the state-house;
+and Mr. Tooting, who was everywhere that morning, noticed that some
+of these led soldiers had pieces of paper in their hands. The chaplain
+arose to pray for guidance, and the House was crowded to its capacity,
+and the gallery filled with eager and expectant faces--but the hero of
+the hour had not yet arrived. When at length he did walk down the aisle,
+as unconcernedly as though he were an unknown man entering a theatre,
+feminine whispers of "There he is!" could plainly be heard above the
+buzz, and simultaneous applause broke out in spots, causing the Speaker
+to rap sharply with his gavel. Poor Mr. Speaker Doby! He looked more
+like the mock-turtle than ever! and might have exclaimed, too, that once
+he had been a real turtle: only yesterday, in fact, before he had made
+the inconceivable blunder of recognizing Mr. Humphrey Crewe. Mr. Speaker
+Doby had spent a part of the night in room Number Seven listening to
+things about himself. Herminius the unspeakable has given the enemy a
+foothold in Rome.
+
+Apparently unaware that he was the centre of interest, Mr. Crewe,
+carrying a neat little bag full of papers, took his seat beside the
+Honourable Jacob Botcher, nodding to that erstwhile friend as a man of
+the world should. And Mr. Botcher, not to be outdone, nodded back.
+
+We shall skip over the painful interval that elapsed before the bill in
+question was reached: painful, at least, for every one but Mr. Crewe,
+who sat with his knees crossed and his arms folded. The hosts were
+facing each other, awaiting the word; the rebels prayerfully watching
+their gallant leader; and the loyal vassals--whose wavering ranks had
+been added to overnight--with their eyes on Mr. Bascom. And in justice
+to that veteran it must be said, despite the knock-out blow he had
+received, that he seemed as debonair as ever.
+
+       "Now while the three were tightening
+        The harness on their backs."
+
+Mr. Speaker Doby read many committee reports, and at the beginning of
+each there was a stir of expectation that it might be the signal for
+battle. But at length he fumbled among his papers, cleared away the lump
+in his throat, and glanced significantly at Mr. Bascom.
+
+"The Committee on Incorporations, to whom was referred House bill number
+302, entitled "An act to incorporate the Pingsquit Railroad," having
+considered the same, report the same with the following resolution:
+'Resolved, that it is inexpedient to legislate. Brush Bascom, for the
+Committee.' Gentlemen, are you ready for the question? As many as are
+of opinion that the report of the Committee should be adopted--the
+gentleman from Putnam, Mr. Bascom."
+
+Again let us do exact justice, and let us not be led by our feelings to
+give a prejudiced account of this struggle. The Honourable Brush Bascom,
+skilled from youth in the use of weapons, opened the combat so adroitly
+that more than once the followers of his noble opponent winced and
+trembled. The bill, Mr. Bascom said, would have been reported that
+day, anyway--a statement received with mingled cheers and jeers. Then
+followed a brief and somewhat intimate history of the Gaylord Lumber
+Company, not at all flattering to that corporation. Mr. Bascom hinted,
+at an animus: there was no more need for a railroad in the Pingsquit
+Valley than there was for a merry-go-round in the cellar of the
+state-house. (Loud laughter from everybody, some irreverent person
+crying out that a merry-go-round was better than poker tables.) When Mr.
+Bascom came to discuss the gentleman from Leith, and recited the names
+of the committees for which Mr. Crewe--in his desire to be of service to
+the State had applied, there was more laughter, even amongst Mr. Crewe's
+friends, and Mr. Speaker Doby relaxed so far as to smile sadly. Mr.
+Bascom laid his watch on the clerk's desk and began to read the list of
+bills Mr. Crewe had introduced, and as this reading proceeded some of
+the light-minded showed a tendency to become slightly hysterical.
+Mr. Bascom said that he would like to see all those bills grow
+into laws,--with certain slight changes,--but that he could not
+conscientiously vote to saddle the people with another Civil War
+debt. It was well for the State, he hinted, that those committees
+were composed of stanch men who would do their duty in all weathers,
+regardless of demagogues who sought to gratify inordinate ambitions.
+
+The hope of the revolutionists bore these strokes and others as mighty
+with complacency, as though they had been so many playful taps; and
+while the battle surged hotly around him he sat calmly listening or
+making occasional notes with a gold pencil. Born leader that he was,
+he was biding his time. Mr. Bascom's attack was met valiantly, but
+unskillfully, from the back seats. The Honourable Jacob Botcher arose,
+and filled the hall with extracts from the "Book of Arguments"--in
+which he had been coached overnight by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Mr.
+Botcher's tone towards his erstwhile friend was regretful,--a good
+man gone wrong through impulse and inexperience. "I am, sir," said
+Mr. Bascom to the Speaker, "sincerely sorry--sincerely sorry that an
+individual of such ability as the member from Leith should be led,
+by the representations of political adventurers and brigands and
+malcontents, into his present deplorable position of criticising a State
+which is his only by adoption, the political conditions of which were as
+sound and as free from corporate domination, sir, as those of any State
+in the broad Union." (Loud cheers.) This appeal to State pride by Mr.
+Botches is a master stroke, and the friends of the champion of the
+liberties of the people are beginning (some of them) to be a little
+nervous and doubtful.
+
+Following Mr. Botches were wild and scattering speeches from the
+back benches--unskillful and pitiable counter-strokes. Where was the
+champion? Had he been tampered with overnight, and persuaded of the
+futility of rebellion? Persuaded that his head would be more useful on
+his own neck in the councils of the nation than on exhibition to the
+populace from the point of a pike? It looks, to a calm spectator from
+the gallery, as though the rebel forces are growing weaker and more
+demoralized every moment. Mr. Redbrook's speech, vehement and honest,
+helps a little; people listen to an honest and forceful man, however he
+may lack technical knowledge, but the majority of the replies are mere
+incoherent denunciations of the Northeastern Railroads.
+
+On the other hand, the astounding discipline amongst the legions of the
+Empire excites the admiration and despair even of their enemies; there
+is no random fighting here and breaking of ranks to do useless hacking.
+A grave farmer with a beard delivers a short and temperate speech (which
+he has by heart), mildly inquiring what the State would do without the
+Northeastern Railroads; and the very moderation of this query coming
+from a plain and hard-headed agriculturist (the boss of Grenville, if
+one but knew it!) has a telling effect. And then to cap the climax, to
+make the attitude of the rebels even more ridiculous in the minds of
+thinking people, Mr. Ridout is given the floor. Skilled in debate when
+he chooses to enter it, his knowledge of the law only exceeded by his
+knowledge of how it is to be evaded--to Lartius is assigned the task of
+following up the rout. And Mr. Crewe has ceased taking notes.
+
+When the House leader and attorney for the Northeastern took his
+seat, the victory to all appearances was won. It was a victory
+for conservatism and established order against sensationalism and
+anarchy--Mr. Ridout had contrived to make that clear without actually
+saying so. It was as if the Ute Indians had sought to capture Washington
+and conduct the government. Just as ridiculous as that! The debate
+seemed to be exhausted, and the long-suffering Mr. Doby was inquiring
+for the fiftieth time if the House were ready for the question, when Mr.
+Crewe of Leith arose and was recognized. In three months he had acquired
+such a remarkable knowledge of the game of parliamentary tactics as to
+be able, patiently, to wait until the bolt of his opponents had been
+shot; and a glance sufficed to revive the drooping spirits of his
+followers, and to assure them that their leader knew what he was about.
+
+"Mr. Speaker," he said, "I have listened with great care to the masterly
+defence of that corporation on which our material prosperity and civic
+welfare is founded (laughter); I have listened to the gentleman's
+learned discussion of the finances of that road, tending to prove that
+it is an eleemosynary institution on a grand scale. I do not wish to
+question unduly the intellects of those members of this House who by
+their votes will prove that they have been convinced by the gentleman's
+argument." Here Mr. Crewe paused and drew a slip of paper from his
+pocket and surveyed the back seats. "But I perceive," he continued,
+"that a great interest has been taken in this debate--so great an
+interest that since yesterday numbers of gentlemen have come in from
+various parts of the State to listen to it (laughter and astonishment),
+gentlemen who hold Federal and State offices. (Renewed laughter and
+searching of the House.) I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that I do not wish to
+question the intellects of my fellow-members, but I notice that many
+of them who are seated near the Federal and State office-holders in
+question have in their hands slips of paper similar to this. And I have
+reason to believe that these slips were written by somebody in room
+Number Seven of the Pelican Hotel." (Tremendous commotion, and craning
+to see whether one's neighbour has a slip. The faces of the redoubtable
+three a study.)
+
+"I procured one of these slips," Mr. Crewe continued, "through a
+fellow-member who has no use for it--whose intelligence, in fact, is
+underrated by the gentlemen in Number Seven. I will read the slip.
+
+"'Vote yes on the question. Yes means that the report of the Committee
+will be accepted, and that the Pingsquit bill will not pass. Wait for
+Bascom's signal, and destroy this paper."'
+
+There was no need, indeed, for Mr. Crewe to say any more than that--no
+need for the admirable discussion of railroad finance from an expert's
+standpoint which followed to controvert Mr. Ridout's misleading
+statements. The reading of the words on the slip of paper of which he
+had so mysteriously got possession (through Mr. Hamilton Tooting) was
+sufficient to bring about a disorder that for a full minute--Mr. Speaker
+Doby found it impossible to quell. The gallery shook with laughter,
+and honourable members with slips of paper in their hands were made as
+conspicuous as if they had been caught wearing dunces' caps.
+
+It was then only, with belated wisdom, that Mr. Bascom and his two noble
+companions gave up the fight, and let the horde across the bridge--too
+late, as we shall see. The populace, led by a redoubtable leader, have
+learned their strength. It is true that the shining senatorial twenty of
+the body-guard stand ready to be hacked to pieces at their posts before
+the Pingsquit bill shall become a law; and should unutterable treason
+take place here, his Excellency is prepared to be drawn and quartered
+rather than sign it. It is the Senate which, in this somewhat inaccurate
+repetition of history, hold the citadel if not the bridge; and in
+spite of the howling mob below their windows, scornfully refuse even to
+discuss the Pingsquit bill. The Honourable Hilary Vane, whose face they
+study at dinner time, is not worried. Popular wrath does not continue
+to boil, and many changes will take place in the year before the
+Legislature meets again.
+
+This is the Honourable Hilary's public face. But are there not
+private conferences in room Number Seven of which we can know
+nothing--exceedingly uncomfortable conferences for Horatius and his
+companions? Are there not private telegrams and letters to the president
+of the Northeastern in New York advising him that the Pingsquit bill has
+passed the House, and that a certain Mr. Crewe is primarily responsible?
+And are there not queries--which history may disclose in after years--as
+to whether Mr. Crewe's abilities as a statesman have not been seriously
+underrated by those who should have been the first to perceive them?
+Verily, pride goeth before a fall.
+
+In this modern version of ours, the fathers throng about another than
+Horatius after the session of that memorable morning. Publicly and
+privately, Mr. Crewe is being congratulated, and we know enough of his
+character to appreciate the modesty with which the congratulations are
+accepted. He is the same Humphrey Crewe that he was before he became the
+corner-stone of the temple; success is a mere outward and visible sign
+of intrinsic worth in the inner man, and Mr. Crewe had never for a
+moment underestimated his true value.
+
+"There's, no use wasting time in talking about it," he told the grateful
+members who sought to press his hands. "Go home and organize. I've got
+your name. Get your neighbours into line, and keep me informed. I'll pay
+for the postage-stamps. I'm no impractical reformer, and if we're going
+to do this thing, we'll have to do it right."
+
+They left him, impressed by the force of this argument, with an added
+respect for Mr. Crewe, and a vague feeling that they were pledged to
+something which made not a few of them a trifle uneasy. Mr. Redbrook was
+one of these.
+
+The felicitations of his new-found friend and convert, Mr. Tooting, Mr.
+Crewe cut short with the terseness of a born commander.
+
+"Never mind that," he said, "and follow 'em up and get 'em pledged if
+you can."
+
+Get 'em pledged! Pledged to what? Mr. Tooting evidently knew, for he
+wasted no precious moments in asking questions.
+
+There is no time at this place to go into the feelings of Mr. Tom
+Gaylord the younger when he learned that his bill had passed the House.
+He, too, meeting Mr. Crewe in the square, took the opportunity to
+express his gratitude to the member from Leith.
+
+"Come in on Friday afternoon, Gaylord," answered Mr. Crewe. "I've got
+several things to talk to you about. Your general acquaintance around
+the State will be useful, and there must be men you know of in the
+lumber sections who can help us considerably."
+
+"Help us?" repeated young Tom, in same surprise.
+
+"Certainly," replied Mr. Crewe; "you don't think we're going to drop the
+fight here, do you? We've got to put a stop in this State to political
+domination by a railroad, and as long as there doesn't seem to be anyone
+else to take hold, I'm going to. Your bill's a good bill, and we'll pass
+it next session."
+
+Young Tom regarded Mr. Crewe with a frank stare.
+
+"I'm going up to the Pingsquit Valley on Friday," he answered.
+
+"Then you'd better come up to Leith to see me as soon as you get back,"
+said Mr. Crewe. "These things can't wait, and have to be dealt with
+practically."
+
+Young Tom had not been the virtual head of the Gaylord Company for some
+years without gaining a little knowledge of politics and humanity. The
+invitation to Leith he valued, of course, but he felt that it would not
+do to accept it with too much ardour. He was, he said, a very busy man.
+
+"That's the trouble with most people," declared Mr. Crewe; "they won't
+take the time to bother about politics, and then they complain when
+things don't go right. Now I'm givin' my time to it, when I've got other
+large interests to attend to."
+
+On his way back to the Pelican, young Tom halted several times
+reflectively, as certain points in this conversation which he seemed to
+have missed at the time--came back to him. His gratitude to Mr. Crewe
+as a public benefactor was profound, of course; but young Tom's sense of
+humour was peculiar, and he laughed more than once, out loud, at nothing
+at all. Then he became grave again, and went into the hotel and wrote a
+long letter, which he addressed to Mr. Austen Vane.
+
+And now, before this chapter which contains these memorable events is
+closed, one more strange and significant fact is to be chronicled. On
+the evening of the day which saw Mr. Crewe triumphantly leading the
+insurgent forces to victory, that gentleman sent his private secretary
+to the office of the State Tribune to leave an order for fifty copies
+of the paper to be delivered in the morning. Morning came, and the fifty
+copies, and Mr. Crewe's personal copy in addition, were handed to him
+by the faithful Waters when he entered his dining room at an early hour.
+Life is full of disillusions. Could this be the State Tribune he held
+in his hand? The State Tribune of Mr. Peter Pardriff, who had stood so
+staunchly for Mr. Crewe and better things? Who had hitherto held the
+words of the Leith statesman in such golden estimate as to curtail
+advertising columns when it was necessary to print them for the public
+good?
+
+Mr. Crewe's eye travelled from column to column, from page to page,
+in vain. By some incredible oversight on the part of Mr. Pardriff, the
+ringing words were not there,--nay, the soul-stirring events of that
+eventful day appeared, on closer inspection, to have been deliberately
+edited out! The terrible indignation of the righteous arose as Mr.
+Crewe read (in the legislative proceedings of the day before) that the
+Pingsquit bill had been discussed by certain members--of whom he was
+one--and passed. This was all--literally all! If Mr. Pardriff had lived
+in the eighteenth century, he would probably have referred as casually
+to the Boston massacre as a street fight--which it was.
+
+Profoundly disgusted with human kind,--as the noblest of us will be at
+times,--Mr. Crewe flung down the paper, and actually forgot to send the
+fifty copies to his friends!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE DISTURBANCE OF JUNE SEVENTH
+
+After Mr. Speaker Doby had got his gold watch from an admiring and
+apparently reunited House, and had wept over it, the Legislature
+adjourned. This was about the first of April, that sloppiest and
+windiest of months in a northern climate, and Mr. Crewe had intended,
+as usual, to make a little trip southward to a club of which he was
+a member. A sense of duty, instead, took him to Leith, where he sat
+through the days in his study, dictating letters, poring over a great
+map of the State which he had hung on the wall, and scanning long
+printed lists. If we could stand behind him, we should see that these
+are what are known as check-lists, or rosters of the voters in various
+towns.
+
+Mr. Crewe also has an unusual number of visitors for this muddy
+weather, when the snow-water is making brooks of the roads. Interested
+observers--if there were any--might have remarked that his friendship
+with Mr. Hamilton Tooting had increased, that gentleman coming up from
+Ripton at least twice a week, and aiding Mr. Crewe to multiply his
+acquaintances by bringing numerous strangers to see him. Mr. Tooting, as
+we know, had abandoned the law office of the Honourable Hilary Vane and
+was now engaged in travelling over the State, apparently in search of
+health. These were signs, surely, which the wise might have read with
+profit: in the offices, for instance, of the Honourable Hilary Vane
+in Ripton Square, where seismic disturbances were registered; but the
+movement of the needle (to the Honourable Hilary's eye) was almost
+imperceptible. What observer, however experienced, would have believed
+that such delicate tracings could herald a volcanic eruption?
+
+Throughout the month of April the needle kept up its persistent
+registering, and the Honourable Hilary continued to smile. The
+Honourable Jacob Botcher, who had made a trip to Ripton and had cited
+that very decided earthquake shock of the Pingsquit bill, had been
+ridiculed for his pains, and had gone away again comforted by communion
+with a strong man. The Honourable Jacob had felt little shocks in his
+fief: Mr. Tooting had visited it, sitting with his feet on the tables of
+hotel waiting-rooms, holding private intercourse with gentlemen who had
+been disappointed in office. Mr. Tooting had likewise been a sojourner
+in the domain of the Duke of Putnam. But the Honourable Brush was not
+troubled, and had presented Mr. Tooting with a cigar.
+
+In spite of the strange omission of the State Tribune to print his
+speech and to give his victory in the matter of the Pingsquit bill
+proper recognition, Mr. Crewe was too big a man to stop his subscription
+to the paper. Conscious that he had done his duty in that matter,
+neither praise nor blame could affect him; and although he had not been
+mentioned since, he read it assiduously every afternoon upon its arrival
+at Leith, feeling confident that Mr. Peter Pardriff (who had always in
+private conversation proclaimed himself emphatically for reform) would
+not eventually refuse--to a prophet--public recognition. One afternoon
+towards the end of that month of April, when the sun had made the last
+snow-drift into a pool, Mr. Crewe settled himself on his south porch
+and opened the State Tribune, and his heart gave a bound as his eye fell
+upon the following heading to the leading editorial:--
+
+     A WORTHY PUBLIC SERVANT FOR GOVERNOR
+
+Had his reward come at last? Had Mr. Peter Pardriff seen the error of
+his way? Mr. Crewe leisurely folded back the sheet, and called to his
+secretary, who was never far distant.
+
+"Look here," he said, "I guess Pardriff's recovered his senses. Look
+here!"
+
+The tired secretary, ready with his pencil and notebook to order fifty
+copies, responded, staring over his employer's shoulder. It has been
+said of men in battle that they have been shot and have run forward some
+hundred feet without knowing what has happened to them. And so Mr. Crewe
+got five or six lines into that editorial before he realized in full the
+baseness of Mr. Pardriff's treachery.
+
+"These are times" (so ran Mr. Pardriff's composition) "when the sure and
+steadying hand of a strong man is needed at the helm of State. A man
+of conservative, business habits of mind; a man who weighs the value
+of traditions equally with the just demands of a new era; a man with a
+knowledge of public affairs derived from long experience;" (!!!) "a man
+who has never sought office, but has held it by the will of the people,
+and who himself is a proof that the conduct of State institutions in the
+past has been just and equitable. One who has served with distinction
+upon such boards as the Railroad Commission, the Board of Equalization,
+etc., etc." (!!!) "A stanch Republican, one who puts party before--"
+here the newspaper began to shake a little, and Mr. Crewe could not for
+the moment see whether the next word were place or principle. He skipped
+a few lines. The Tribune, it appeared, had a scintillating idea,
+which surely must have occurred to others in the State. "Why not the
+Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton for the next governor?"
+
+The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton!
+
+It is a pleasure to record, at this crisis, that Mr. Crewe fixed upon
+his secretary as steady an eye as though Mr. Pardriff's bullet had
+missed its mark.
+
+"Get me," he said coolly, "the 'State Encyclopaedia of Prominent Men.'"
+(Just printed. Fogarty and Co., Newcastle, publishers.)
+
+The secretary fetched it, open at the handsome and lifelike
+steel-engraving of the Honourable Adam, with his broad forehead and
+kindly, twinkling eyes, and the tuft of beard on his chin; with his
+ample statesman's coat in natural creases, and his white shirt-front
+and little black tie. Mr. Crewe gazed at this work of art long and
+earnestly. The Honourable Adam B. Hunt did not in the least have
+the appearance of a bolt from the blue. And then Mr. Crewe read his
+biography.
+
+Two things he shrewdly noted about that biography; it was placed, out of
+alphabetical order, fourth in the book, and it was longer than any other
+with one exception that of Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer. Mr. Ridout's
+place was second in this invaluable volume, he being preceded only by
+a harmless patriarch. These facts were laid before Mr. Tooting, who was
+directed by telephone to come to Leith as soon as he should arrive in
+Ripton from his latest excursion. It was nine o'clock at night when that
+long-suffering and mud-bespattered individual put in an appearance at
+the door of his friend's study.
+
+"Because I didn't get on to it," answered Mr. Tooting, in response to
+a reproach for not having registered a warning--for he was Mr. Crewe's
+seismograph. "I knew old Adam was on the Railroads' governor's bench,
+but I hadn't any notion he'd been moved up to the top of the batting
+list. I told you right. Ridout was going to be their next governor if
+you hadn't singed him with the Pingsquit bill. This was done pretty
+slick, wasn't it? Hilary got back from New York day before yesterday,
+and Pardriff has the editorial to-day. Say, I always told you Pardriff
+wasn't a reformer, didn't I?"
+
+Mr. Crewe looked pained.
+
+"I prefer to believe the best of people until I know the worst," he
+said. "I did not think Mr. Pardriff capable of ingratitude."
+
+What Mr. Crewe meant by this remark is enigmatical.
+
+"He ain't," replied Mr. Tooting, "he's grateful for that red ticket
+he carries around with him when he travels, and he's grateful to the
+Honourable Adam B. Hunt for favours to come. Peter Pardriff's a grateful
+cuss, all-right, all right."
+
+Mr. Crewe tapped his fingers on the desk thoughtfully.
+
+"The need of a reform campaign is more apparent than ever," he remarked.
+
+Mr. Tooting put his tongue in his cheek; and, seeing a dreamy expression
+on his friend's face, accidentally helped himself to a cigar out of the
+wrong box.
+
+"It's up to a man with a sense of duty and money to make it," Mr.
+Tooting agreed, taking a long pull at the Havana.
+
+"As for the money," replied Mr. Crewe, "the good citizens of the State
+should be willing to contribute largely. I have had a list of men of
+means prepared, who will receive notices at the proper time."
+
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting spread out his feet, and appeared to be studying
+them carefully.
+
+"It's funny you should have mentioned cash," he said, after a moment's
+silence, "and it's tough on you to have to be the public-spirited man
+to put it up at the start. I've got a little memorandum here," he added,
+fumbling apologetically in his pocket; "it certainly costs something to
+move the boys around and keep 'em indignant."
+
+Mr. Tooting put the paper on the edge of the desk, and Mr. Crewe,
+without looking, reached out his hand for it, the pained expression
+returning to his face.
+
+"Tooting," he said, "you've got a very flippant way of speaking of
+serious things. It strikes me that these expenses are out of all
+proportion to the simplicity of the task involved. It strikes me--ahem
+that you might find, in some quarters at least, a freer response to a
+movement founded on principle."
+
+"That's right," declared Mr. Tooting, "I've thought so myself. I've
+got mad, and told 'em so to their faces. But you've said yourself, Mr.
+Crewe, that we've got to deal with this thing practically."
+
+"Certainly," Mr. Crewe interrupted. He loved the word.
+
+"And we've got to get workers, haven't we? And it costs money to move
+'em round, don't it? We haven't got a bushel basket of passes. Look
+here," and he pushed another paper at Mr. Crewe, "here's ten new ones
+who've made up their minds that you're the finest man in the State. That
+makes twenty."
+
+Mr. Crewe took that paper deprecatingly, but nevertheless began a fire
+of cross-questions on Mr. Tooting as to the personality, habits, and
+occupations of the discerning ten in question, making certain little
+marks of his own against each name. Thus it will be seen that Mr. Crewe
+knew perfectly what he was about--although no one else did except Mr.
+Tooting, who merely looked mysterious when questioned on the streets
+of Ripton or Newcastle or Kingston. It was generally supposed, however,
+that the gentleman from Leith was going to run for the State Senate, and
+was attempting to get a following in other counties, in order to push
+through his measures next time. Hence the tiny fluctuations of Hilary
+Vane's seismograph an instrument, as will be shown, utterly out-of-date.
+Not so the motto toujours l'audace. Geniuses continue (at long
+intervals) to be born, and to live up to that motto.
+
+That seismograph of the Honourable Hilary's persisted in tracing only
+a slightly ragged line throughout the beautiful month of May, in which
+favourable season the campaign of the Honourable Adam B. Hunt took root
+and flourished--apparently from the seed planted by the State Tribune.
+The ground, as usual, had been carefully prepared, and trained gardeners
+raked, and watered, and weeded the patch. It had been decreed and
+countersigned that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt was the flower that was
+to grow this year.
+
+There must be something vitally wrong with an instrument which failed to
+register the great earthquake shock of June the seventh!
+
+Now that we have come to the point where this shock is to be recorded
+on these pages, we begin to doubt whether our own pen will be able
+adequately to register it, and whether the sheet is long enough and
+broad enough upon which to portray the relative importance of the
+disturbance created. The trouble is, that there is nothing to measure it
+by. What other event in the history of the State produced the vexation
+of spirit, the anger, the tears, the profanity; the derision, the
+laughter of fools, the contempt; the hope, the glee, the prayers, the
+awe, the dumb amazement at the superb courage of this act? No, for a
+just comparison we shall have to reach back to history and fable: David
+and Goliath; Theseus and the Minotaur; or, better still, Cadmus and
+the Dragon! It was Cadmus (if we remember rightly) who wasted no time
+whatever, but actually jumped down the dragon's throat and cut him up
+from the inside! And it was Cadmus, likewise, who afterwards sowed the
+dragon's teeth.
+
+That wondrous clear and fresh summer morning of June the seventh will
+not be forgotten for many years. The trees were in their early leaf
+in Ripton Square, and the dark pine patches on Sawanec looked (from
+Austen's little office) like cloud shadows against the shimmer of the
+tender green. He sat at his table, which was covered with open law-books
+and papers, but his eyes were on the distant mountain, and every
+scent-laden breeze wafted in at his open window seemed the bearer of
+a tremulous, wistful, yet imperious message--"Come!" Throughout the
+changing seasons Sawanec called to him in words of love: sometimes her
+face was hidden by cloud and fog and yet he heard her voice! Sometimes
+her perfume as to-day--made him dream; sometimes, when the western
+heavens were flooded with the golden light of the infinite, she veiled
+herself in magic purple, when to gaze at her was an exquisite agony,
+and she became as one forbidden to man. Though his soul cried out to her
+across the spaces, she was not for him. She was not for him!
+
+With a sigh he turned to his law-books again, and sat for a while
+staring steadfastly at a section of the 'Act of Consolidation of the
+Northeastern Railroads' which he had stumbled on that morning. The
+section, if he read its meaning aright, was fraught with the gravest
+consequences for the Northeastern Railroads; if he read its meaning
+aright, the Northeastern Railroads had been violating it persistently
+for many years and were liable for unknown sums in damages. The
+discovery of it had dazed him, and the consequences resulting from a
+successful suit under the section would be so great that he had searched
+diligently, though in vain, for some modification of it since its
+enactment. Why had not some one discovered it before? This query
+appeared to be unanswerable, until the simple--though none the less
+remarkable--solution came to him, that perhaps no definite occasion had
+hitherto arisen for seeking it. Undoubtedly the Railroads' attorneys
+must know of its existence--his own father, Hilary Vane, having been
+instrumental in drawing up the Act. And a long period had elapsed under
+which the Northeastern Railroads had been a law unto themselves.
+
+The discovery was of grave import to Austen. A month before, chiefly
+through the efforts of his friend, Tom, who was gradually taking his
+father's place in the Gaylord Lumber Company, Austen had been appointed
+junior counsel for that corporation. The Honourable Galusha Hammer
+still remained the senior counsel, but was now confined in his house
+at Newcastle by an illness which made the probability of his return to
+active life extremely doubtful; and Tom had repeatedly declared that in
+the event of his non-recovery Austen should have Mr. Hammer's place. As
+counsel for the Gaylord Lumber Company, it was clearly his duty to
+call the attention of young Mr. Gaylord to the section; and in case
+Mr. Hammer did not resume his law practice, it would fall upon Austen
+himself to bring the suit. His opponent in this matter would be his own
+father.
+
+The consequences of this culminating conflict between them, the coming
+of which he had long dreaded--although he had not foreseen its specific
+cause--weighed heavily upon Austen. It was Tom Gaylord himself who
+abruptly aroused him from his revery by bursting in at the door.
+
+"Have you heard what's up?" he cried, flinging down a newspaper before
+Austen's eyes. "Have you seen the Guardian?"
+
+"What's the matter now, Tom?"
+
+"Matter!" exclaimed Tom; "read that. Your friend and client, the
+Honourable Humphrey Crewe, is out for governor."
+
+"Humphrey Crewe for governor!"
+
+"On an anti-railroad platform. I might have known something of the kind
+was up when he began to associate with Tooting, and from the way he
+spoke to me in March. But who'd have thought he'd have the cheek to come
+out for governor? Did you ever hear of such tommyrot?"
+
+Austen looked grave.
+
+"I'm not sure it's such tommyrot," he said.
+
+"Not tommyrot?" Tom ejaculated. "Everybody's laughing. When I passed
+the Honourable Hilary's door just now, Brush Bascom and some of the old
+liners were there, reciting parts of the proclamation, and the boys down
+in the Ripton House are having the time of their lives."
+
+Austen took the Guardian, and there, sure enough, filling a leading
+column, and in a little coarser type than the rest of the page, he read:
+
+          DOWN WITH RAILROAD RULE!
+
+     The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith, at the request
+     of twenty prominent citizens, consents to become a candidate
+     for the Republican Nomination for Governor.
+
+     Ringing letter of acceptance, in which he denounces the
+     political power of the Northeastern Railroads, and declares
+     that the State is governed from a gilded suite of offices in
+     New Pork.
+
+"The following letter, evincing as it does a public opinion thoroughly
+aroused in all parts of the State against the present disgraceful
+political conditions, speaks for itself. The standing and character of
+its signers give it a status which Republican voters cannot ignore."
+
+The letter followed. It prayed Mr. Crewe, in the name of decency and
+good government, to carry the standard of honest men to victory. Too
+long had a proud and sovereign State writhed under the heel of an
+all-devouring corporation! Too long had the Northeastern Railroads
+elected, for their own selfish ends, governors and legislatures and
+controlled railroad commissions The spirit of 1776 was abroad in the
+land. It was eminently fitting that the Honourable Humphrey Crewe
+of Leith, who had dared to fling down the gauntlet in the face of an
+arrogant power, should be the leader of the plain people, to recover the
+rights which had been wrested from them. Had he not given the highest
+proof that he had the people's interests at heart? He was clearly a man
+who "did things."
+
+At this point Austen looked up and smiled.
+
+"Tom," he asked, "has it struck you that this is written in the same
+inimitable style as a part of the message of the Honourable Asa Gray?"
+
+Tom slapped his knee.
+
+"That's exactly what I said I!" he cried. "Tooting wrote it. I'll swear
+to it."
+
+"And the twenty prominent citizens--do you know any of 'em, Tom?"
+
+"Well," said Tom, in delighted appreciation, "I've heard of three of
+'em, and that's more than any man I've met can boast of. Ed Dubois cuts
+my hair when I go to Kingston. He certainly is a prominent citizen in
+the fourth ward. Jim Kendall runs the weekly newspaper in Grantley--I
+understood it was for sale. Bill Clements is prominent enough up at
+Groveton. He wanted a trolley franchise some years ago, you remember."
+
+"And didn't get it."
+
+Mr. Crewe's answer was characteristically terse and businesslike. The
+overwhelming compliment of a request from such gentlemen must be treated
+in the nature of a command--and yet he had hesitated for several weeks,
+during which period he had cast about for another more worthy of the
+honour. Then followed a somewhat technical and (to the lay mind) obscure
+recapitulation of the iniquities the Northeastern was committing, which
+proved beyond peradventure that Mr. Crewe knew what he was talking
+about; such phrases as "rolling stock," "milking the road"--an imposing
+array of facts and figures. Mr. Crewe made it plain that he was a man
+who "did things." And if it were the will of Heaven that he became
+governor, certain material benefits would as inevitably ensue as the day
+follows the night. The list of the material benefits, for which there
+was a crying need, bore a strong resemblance to a summary of the worthy
+measures upon which Mr. Crewe had spent so much time and labour in the
+last Legislature.
+
+Austen laid down the paper, leaned back in his chair, and thrust his
+hands in his pockets, and with a little vertical pucker in his forehead,
+regarded his friend.
+
+"What do you think of that?" Tom demanded. "Now, what do you think of
+it?"
+
+"I think," said Austen, "that he'll scare the life out of the
+Northeastern before he gets through with them."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Tom, incredulously. He had always been willing to
+accept Austen's judgment on men and affairs, but this was pretty stiff.
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Well, people don't know Mr. Crewe, for one thing. And they are
+beginning to have a glimmer of light upon the Railroad."
+
+"Do you mean to say he has a chance for the nomination?"
+
+"I don't know. It depends upon how much the voters find out about him
+before the convention."
+
+Tom sat down rather heavily.
+
+"You could have been governor," he complained reproachfully, "by raising
+your hand. You've got more ability than any man in the State, and you
+sit here gazin' at that mountain and lettin' a darned fool millionaire
+walk in ahead of you."
+
+Austen rose and crossed over to Mr. Gaylord's chair, and, his hands
+still in his pockets, looked down thoughtfully into that gentleman's
+square and rugged face.
+
+"Tom," he said, "there's no use discussing this delusion of yours, which
+seems to be the only flaw in an otherwise sane character. We must try to
+keep it from the world."
+
+Tom laughed in spite of himself.
+
+"I'm hanged if I understand you," he declared, "but I never did. You
+think Crewe and Tooting may carry off the governorship, and you don't
+seem to care."
+
+"I do care," said Austen, briefly. He went to the window and stood for
+a moment with his back to his friend, staring across at Sawanec. Tom had
+learned by long experience to respect these moods, although they were to
+him inexplicable. At length Austen turned.
+
+"Tom," he said, "can you come in to-morrow about this time? If you
+can't, I'll go to your office if you will let me know when you'll be in.
+There's a matter of business I want to talk to you about."
+
+Tom pulled out his watch.
+
+"I've got to catch a train for Mercer," he replied, "but I will come in
+in the morning and see you."
+
+A quarter of an hour later Austen went down the narrow wooden flight of
+stairs into the street, and as he emerged from the entry almost bumped
+into the figure of a young man that was hurrying by. He reached out and
+grasped the young man by the collar, pulling him up so short as almost
+to choke him.
+
+"Hully gee!" cried the young man whose progress had been so rudely
+arrested. "Great snakes!" (A cough.) "What're you tryin' to do? Oh,"
+(apologetically) "it's you, Aust. Let me go. This day ain't long enough
+for me. Let me go."
+
+Austen kept his grip and regarded Mr. Tooting thoughtfully.
+
+"I want to speak to you, Ham," he said; "better come upstairs."
+
+"Say, Aust, on the dead, I haven't time. Pardriff's waitin' for some
+copy now."
+
+"Just for a minute, Ham," said Austen; "I won't keep you long."
+
+"Leggo my collar, then, if you don't want to choke me. Say, I don't
+believe you know how strong you are."
+
+"I didn't know you wore a collar any more, Ham," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Tooting grinned in appreciation of this joke.
+
+"You must think you've got one of your Wild West necktie parties on," he
+gasped. "I'll come. But if you love me, don't let the boys in Hilary's
+office see me."
+
+"They use the other entry," answered Austen, indicating that Mr. Tooting
+should go up first--which he did. When they reached the office Austen
+shut the door, and stood with his back against it, regarding Mr. Tooting
+thoughtfully.
+
+At first Mr. Tooting returned the look with interest swagger--aggression
+would be too emphatic, and defiance would not do. His was the air,
+perhaps, of Talleyrand when he said, "There seems to be an inexplicable
+something in me that brings bad luck to governments that neglect me:"
+the air of a man who has made a brilliant coup d'etat. All day he had
+worn that air--since five o'clock in the morning, when he had sprung
+from his pallet. The world might now behold the stuff that was
+in Hamilton Tooting. Power flowed out of his right hand from an
+inexhaustible reservoir which he had had the sagacity to tap, and
+men leaped into action at his touch. He, the once, neglected, had the
+destiny of a State in his keeping.
+
+Gradually, however, it became for some strange reason difficult to
+maintain that aggressive stare upon Austen Vane, who shook his head
+slowly.
+
+"Ham, why did you do it?" he asked.
+
+"Why?" cried Mr. Tooting, fiercely biting back a treasonable smile. "Why
+not? Ain't he the best man in the State to make a winner? Hasn't he
+got the money, and the brains, and the get-up-and-git? Why, it's a sure
+thing. I've been around the State, and I know the sentiment. We've got
+'em licked, right now. What have you got against it? You're on our side,
+Aust."
+
+"Ham," said Austen, "are you sure you have the names and addresses of
+those twenty prominent citizens right, so that any voter may go out and
+find 'em?"
+
+"What are you kidding about, Aust?" retorted Mr. Tooting, biting back
+the smile again. "Say, you never get down to business with me. You don't
+blame Crewe for comin' out, do you?"
+
+"I don't see how Mr. Crewe could have resisted such an overwhelming
+demand," said Austen. "He couldn't shirk such a duty. He says so
+himself, doesn't he?"
+
+"Oh, go on!" exclaimed Mr. Tooting, who was not able to repress a grin.
+
+"The letter of the twenty must have been a great surprise to Mr. Crewe.
+He says he was astonished. Did the whole delegation go up to Leith, or
+only a committee?"
+
+Mr. Tooting's grin had by this time spread all over his face--a flood
+beyond his control.
+
+"Well, there's no use puffin' it on with you, Aust. That was done pretty
+slick, that twenty-prominent-citizen business, if I do say it myself.
+But you don't know that feller Crewe--he's a full-size cyclone when he
+gets started, and nothin' but a range of mountains could stop him."
+
+"It must be fairly exciting to--ride him, Ham."
+
+"Say, but it just is. Kind of breathless, though. He ain't very well
+known around the State, and he was bound to run--and I just couldn't let
+him come out without any clothes on."
+
+"I quite appreciate your delicacy, Ham."
+
+Mr. Tooting's face took on once more a sheepish look, which changed
+almost immediately to one of disquietude.
+
+"Say, I'll come back again some day and kid with you. I've got to go,
+Aust--that's straight. This is my busy day."
+
+"Wouldn't you gain some time if you left by the window?" Austen asked.
+
+At this suggestion Mr. Tooting's expressive countenance showed genuine
+alarm.
+
+"Say, you ain't going to put up any Wild West tricks on me, are you? I
+heard you nearly flung Tom Gaylord out of the one in the other room."
+
+"If this were a less civilized place, Ham, I'd initiate you into what is
+known as the bullet dance. As it is, I have a great mind to speed you on
+your way by assisting you downstairs."
+
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting became ashy pale.
+
+"I haven't done anything to you, Aust. Say--you didn't--?" He did not
+finish.
+
+Terrified by something in Austen's eye, which may or may not have been
+there at the time of the Blodgett incident, Mr. Tooting fled without
+completing his inquiry. And, his imagination being great, he reproduced
+for himself such a vivid sensation of a bullet-hole in his spine that
+he missed his footing near the bottom, and measured his length in the
+entry. Such are the humiliating experiences which sometimes befall the
+Talleyrands--but rarely creep into their biographies.
+
+Austen, from the top of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not
+smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner
+of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the
+open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street
+windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom
+and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated from the Honourable Nat
+Billings.
+
+"Howdy, Austen?" said Brush, genially, "lookin' for the Honourable
+Hilary? Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a
+couple of hours ago. He'll be back at two."
+
+"Have you read the pronunciamento?" inquired Mr. Billings. "Say,
+Austen, knowin' your sentiments, I wonder you weren't one of the twenty
+prominent citizens."
+
+"All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together," Mr. Bascom
+suggested; "you've got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned
+the light of publicity on us this morning. I hear Ham Tooting's been in
+and made you an offer."
+
+News travels fast in Ripton.
+
+"Austen kicked him downstairs," said Jimmy Towle, the office boy, who
+had made a breathless entrance during the conversation, and felt it to
+be the psychological moment to give vent to the news with which he was
+bursting.
+
+"Is that straight?" Mr. Billings demanded. He wished he had done it
+himself. "Is that straight?" he repeated, but Austen had gone.
+
+"Of course it's straight," said Jimmy Towle, vigorously. A shrewd
+observer of human nature, he had little respect for Senator Billings.
+"Ned Johnson saw him pick himself up at the foot of Austen's stairway."
+
+The Honourable Brush's agate eyes caught the light, and he addressed Mr.
+Billings in a voice which, by dint of long training, only carried a few
+feet.
+
+"There's the man the Northeastern's got to look out for," he said.
+"The Humphrey Crewes don't count. But if Austen Vane ever gets started,
+there'll be trouble. Old man Flint's got some such idea as that, too. I
+overheard him givin' it to old Hilary once, up at Fairview, and Hilary
+said he couldn't control him. I guess nobody else can control him. I
+wish I'd seen him kick Ham downstairs."
+
+"I'd like to kick him downstairs," said Mr. Billings, savagely biting
+off another cigar.
+
+"I guess you hadn't better try it, Nat," said Mr. Bascom.
+
+Meanwhile Austen had returned to his own office, and shut the door. His
+luncheon hour came and went, and still he sat by the open window gazing
+out across the teeming plain, and up the green valley whence the Blue
+came singing from the highlands. In spirit he followed the water to
+Leith, and beyond, where it swung in a wide circle and hurried between
+wondrous hills like those in the backgrounds of the old Italians: hills
+of close-cropped pastures, dotted with shapely sentinel oaks and maples
+which cast sharp, rounded shadows on the slopes at noonday; with thin
+fantastic elms on the gentle sky-lines, and forests massed here and
+there--silent, impenetrable hills from a story-book of a land of
+mystery. The river coursed between them on its rocky bed, flinging
+its myriad gems to the sun. This was the Vale of the Blue, and she had
+touched it with meaning for him, and gone.
+
+He drew from his coat a worn pocket-book, and from the pocket-book a
+letter. It was dated in New York in February, and though he knew it by
+heart he found a strange solace in the pain which it gave him to reread
+it. He stared at the monogram on the paper, which seemed so emblematic
+of her; for he had often reflected that her things--even such minute
+insignia as this--belonged to her. She impressed them not only with
+her taste, but with her character. The entwined letters, Y. F., of the
+design were not, he thought, of a meaningless, frivolous daintiness, but
+stood for something. Then he read the note again. It was only a note.
+
+   "MY DEAR MR. VANE: I have come back to find my mother ill, and I am
+   taking her to France. We are sailing, unexpectedly, to-morrow,
+   there being a difficulty about a passage later. I cannot refrain
+   from sending you a line before I go to tell you that I did you an
+   injustice. You will no doubt think it strange that I should write
+   to you, but I shall be troubled until it is off my mind. I am
+   ashamed to have been so stupid. I think I know now why you would
+   not consent to be a candidate, and I respect you for it.
+
+                    "Sincerely your friend,
+
+                    "VICTORIA FLINT."
+
+What did she know? What had she found out? Had she seen her father and
+talked to him? That was scarcely possible, since her mother had been ill
+and she had left at once. Austen had asked himself these questions
+many times, and was no nearer the solution. He had heard nothing of her
+since, and he told himself that perhaps it was better, after all, that
+she was still away. To know that she was at Fairview, and not to be able
+to see her, were torture indeed.
+
+The note was formal enough, and at times he pretended to be glad that it
+was. How could it be otherwise? And why should he interpret her interest
+in him in other terms than those in which it was written? She had a warm
+heart--that he knew; and he felt for her sake that he had no right
+to wish for more than the note expressed. After several unsuccessful
+attempts; he had answered it in a line, "I thank you, and I understand."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE "BOOK OF ARGUMENTS" IS OPENED
+
+The Honourable Hilary Vane returned that day from Fairview in no very
+equable frame of mind. It is not for us to be present at the Councils on
+the Palatine when the "Book of Arguments" is opened, and those
+fitting the occasion are chosen and sent out to the faithful who own
+printing-presses and free passes. The Honourable Hilary Vane bore away
+from the residence of his emperor a great many memoranda in an envelope,
+and he must have sighed as he drove through the leafy roads for Mr.
+Hamilton Tooting, with his fertile mind and active body. A year ago, and
+Mr. Tooting would have seized these memoranda of majesty, and covered
+their margins with new suggestions: Mr. Tooting, on occasions, had even
+made additions to the "Book of Arguments" itself--additions which had
+been used in New York and other States with telling effect against Mr.
+Crewes there. Mr. Tooting knew by heart the time of going to press of
+every country newspaper which had passes (in exchange for advertising!).
+It was two o'clock when the Honourable Hilary reached his office, and
+by three all the edicts would have gone forth, and the grape-shot and
+canister would have been on their way to demolish the arrogance of this
+petty Lord of Leith..
+
+"Tooting's a dangerous man, Vane. You oughtn't to have let him go," Mr.
+Flint had said. "I don't care a snap of my finger for the other fellow."
+
+How Mr. Tooting's ears would have burned, and how his blood would have
+sung with pride to have heard himself called dangerous by the president
+of the Northeastern!
+
+He who, during all the valuable years of his services, had never had a
+sign that that potentate was cognizant of his humble existence.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, as we know, was a clever man; and although
+it had never been given him to improve on the "Book of Arguments," he
+had ideas of his own. On reading Mr. Crewe's defiance that morning, he
+had, with characteristic promptitude and a desire to be useful, taken
+the first train out of Putnam for Ripton, to range himself by the
+side of the Honourable Hilary in the hour of need. The Feudal System
+anticipates, and Mr. Bascom did not wait for a telegram.
+
+On the arrival of the chief counsel from Fairview other captains had put
+in an appearance, but Mr. Bascom alone was summoned, by a nod, into
+the private office. What passed between them seems too sacred to write
+about. The Honourable Hilary would take one of the slips from the packet
+and give it to Mr. Bascom.
+
+"If that were recommended, editorially, to the Hull Mercury, it might
+serve to clear away certain misconceptions in that section.
+
+"Certain," Mr. Bascom would reply.
+
+"It has been thought wise," the Honourable Hilary continued, "to send an
+annual to the Groveton News. Roberts, his name is. Suppose you recommend
+to Mr. Roberts that an editorial on this subject would be timely."
+
+Slip number two. Mr. Bascom marks it 'Roberts.' Subject: "What would the
+State do without the Railroad?"
+
+"And Grenville, being a Prohibition centre, you might get this worked up
+for the Advertiser there."
+
+Mr. Bascom's agate eyes are full of light as he takes slip number three.
+Subject: "Mr. Humphrey Crewe has the best-stocked wine cellar in the
+State, and champagne every night for dinner." Slip number four, taken
+direct from the second chapter of the "Book of Arguments": "Mr. Crewe
+is a reformer because he has been disappointed in his inordinate
+ambitions," etc. Slip number five: "Mr. Crewe is a summer resident, with
+a house in New York," etc., etc.
+
+Slip number six, "Book of Arguments," paragraph, chapter: "Humphrey
+Crewe, Defamer of our State." Assigned, among others, to the Ripton
+Record.
+
+"Paul Pardriff went up to Leith to-day," said Mr. Bascom.
+
+"Go to see him," replied the Honourable Hilary. "I've been thinking
+for some time that the advertising in the Ripton Record deserves an
+additional annual."
+
+Mr. Bascom, having been despatched on this business, and having
+voluntarily assumed control of the Empire Bureau of Publication, the
+chief counsel transacted other necessary legal business with State
+Senator Billings and other gentlemen who were waiting. At three o'clock
+word was sent in that Mr. Austen Vane was outside, and wished to speak
+with his father as soon as the latter was at leisure. Whereupon the
+Honourable Hilary shooed out the minor clients, leaned back in his
+chair, and commanded that his son be admitted.
+
+"Judge," said Austen, as he closed the door behind him, "I don't want to
+bother you."
+
+The Honourable Hilary regarded his son for a moment fixedly out of his
+little eyes.
+
+"Humph" he said.
+
+Austen looked down at his father. The Honourable Hilary's expression was
+not one which would have aroused, in the ordinary man who beheld him,
+a feeling of sympathy or compassion: it was the impenetrable look
+with which he had faced his opponents for many years. But Austen felt
+compassion.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better come in another time--when you are less busy," he
+suggested.
+
+"Who said I was busy?" inquired the Honourable Hilary.
+
+Austen smiled a little sadly. One would have thought, by that smile,
+that the son was the older and wiser of the two.
+
+"I didn't mean to cast any reflection on your habitual industry, Judge,"
+he said.
+
+"Humph!" exclaimed Mr. Vane. "I've got more to do than sit in the window
+and read poetry, if that's what you mean."
+
+"You never learned how to enjoy life, did you, Judge?" he said. "I don't
+believe you ever really had a good time. Own up."
+
+"I've had sterner things to think about. I've had 'to earn my
+living--and give you a good time."
+
+"I appreciate it," said Austen.
+
+"Humph! Sometimes I think you don't show it a great deal," the
+Honourable Hilary answered.
+
+"I show it as far as I can, Judge," said his son. "I can't help the way
+I was made."
+
+"I try to take account of that," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+Austen laughed.
+
+"I'll drop in to-morrow morning," he said.
+
+But the Honourable Hilary pointed to a chair on the other side of the
+desk.
+
+"Sit down. To-day's as good as to-morrow," he remarked, with sententious
+significance, characteristically throwing the burden of explanation on
+the visitor.
+
+Austen found the opening unexpectedly difficult. He felt that this was a
+crisis in their relations, and that it had come at an unfortunate hour.
+
+"Judge," he said, trying to control the feeling that threatened to creep
+into his voice, "we have jogged along for some years pretty peaceably,
+and I hope you won't misunderstand what I'm going to say."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted.
+
+"It was at your request that I went into the law. I have learned to like
+that profession. I have stuck to it as well as my wandering, Bohemian
+nature will permit, and while I do not expect you necessarily to feel
+any pride in such progress as I have made, I have hoped--that you might
+feel an interest."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted again.
+
+"I suppose I am by nature a free-lance," Austen continued. "You were
+good enough to acknowledge the force of my argument when I told you
+it would be best for me to strike out for myself. And I suppose it
+was inevitable, such being the case, and you the chief counsel for the
+Northeastern Railroads, that I should at some time or another be called
+upon to bring suits against your client. It would have been better,
+perhaps, if I had not started to practise in this State. I did so from
+what I believe was a desire common to both of us to--to live together."
+
+The Honourable Hilary reached for his Honey Dew, but he did not speak.
+
+"To live together," Austen repeated. "I want to say that, if I had gone
+away, I believe I should always have regretted the fact." He paused, and
+took from his pocket a slip of paper. "I made up my mind from the start
+that I would always be frank with you. In spite of my desire to
+amass riches, there are some suits against the Northeastern which I
+have--somewhat quixotically--refused. Here is a section of the act which
+permitted the consolidation of the Northeastern Railroads. You are no
+doubt aware of its existence."
+
+The Honourable Hilary took the slip of paper in his hand and stared
+at it. "The rates for fares and freights existing at the time of the
+passage of this act shall mot be increased on the roads leased or united
+under it." What his sensations were when he read it no man might have
+read in his face, but his hand trembled a little, and along
+silence ensued before he gave it back to his son with the simple
+comment:--"Well?"
+
+"I do not wish to be understood to ask your legal opinion, although you
+probably know that lumber rates have been steadily raised, and if a
+suit under that section were successful the Gaylord Lumber Company could
+recover a very large sum of money from the Northeastern Railroads," said
+Austen. "Having discovered the section, I believe it to be my duty
+to call it to the attention of the Gaylords. What I wish to know is,
+whether my taking the case would cause you any personal inconvenience or
+distress? If so, I will refuse it."
+
+"No," answered the Honourable Hilary, "it won't. Bring suit. Much use
+it'll be. Do you expect they can recover under that section?"
+
+"I think it is worth trying," said Austen.
+
+"Why didn't somebody try it before?" asked the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"See here, Judge, I wish you'd let me out of an argument about it. Suit
+is going to be brought, whether I bring it or another man. If you would
+prefer for any reason that I shouldn't bring it--I won't. I'd much
+rather resign as counsel for the Gaylords--and I am prepared to do so."
+
+"Bring suit," answered the Honourable Hilary, quickly, "bring suit by
+all means. And now's your time. This seems to be a popular season
+for attacking the property which is the foundation of the State's
+prosperity." ("Book of Arguments," chapter 3.)
+
+In spite of himself, Austen smiled again. Long habit had accustomed
+Hilary Vane to put business considerations before family ties; and this
+habit had been the secret of his particular success. And now, rather
+than admit by the least sign the importance of his son's discovery of
+the statute (which he had had in mind for many years, and to which
+he had more than once, by the way, called Mr. Flint's attention), the
+Honourable Hilary deliberately belittled the matter as part and parcel
+of the political tactics against the Northeastern.
+
+Sears caused by differences of opinion are soon healed; words count for
+nothing, and it is the soul that attracts or repels. Mr. Vane was not
+analytical, he had been through a harassing day, and he was unaware that
+it was not Austen's opposition, but Austen's smile, which set the torch
+to his anger. Once, shortly after his marriage, when he had come home in
+wrath after a protracted quarrel with Mr. Tredway over the orthodoxy
+of the new minister, in the middle of his indignant recital of Mr.
+Tredway's unwarranted attitude, Sarah Austen had smiled. The smile had
+had in it, to be sure, nothing of conscious superiority, but it had been
+utterly inexplicable to Hilary Vane. He had known for the first time
+what it was to feel murder in the heart, and if he had not rushed out of
+the room, he was sure he would have strangled her. After all, the Hilary
+Vanes of this world cannot reasonably be expected to perceive the humour
+in their endeavours.
+
+Now the son's smile seemed the reincarnation of the mother's. That smile
+was in itself a refutation of motive on Austen's part which no words
+could have made more emphatic; it had in it (unconsciously, too)
+compassion for and understanding of the Honourable Hilary's mood and
+limitations. Out of the corner of his mental vision--without grasping
+it--the Honourable Hilary perceived this vaguely. It was the smile in
+which a parent privately indulges when a child kicks his toy locomotive
+because its mechanism is broken. It was the smile of one who,
+unforgetful of the scheme of the firmament and the spinning planets,
+will not be moved to anger by him who sees but the four sides of a pit.
+
+Hilary Vane grew red around the eyes--a danger signal of the old days.
+
+"Take the suit," he said. "If you don't, I'll make it known all over the
+State that you started it. I'll tell Mr. Flint to-morrow. Take it, do
+you hear me? You ask me if I have any pride in you. I answer, yes. I'd
+like to see what you can do. I've done what I could for you, and now I
+wash my hands of you. Go,--ruin yourself if you want to. You've always
+been headed that way, and there's no use trying to stop you. You
+don't seem to have any notion of decency or order, or any idea of the
+principle on which this government was based. Attack property destroy
+it. So much the better for you and your kind. Join the Humphrey
+Crewes--you belong with 'em. Give those of us who stand for order and
+decency as much trouble as you can. Brand us as rascals trying to enrich
+ourselves with politics, and proclaim yourselves saints nobly striving
+to get back the rights of the people. If you don't bring that suit, I
+tell you I'll give you the credit for it--and I mean what I say."
+
+Austen got to his feet. His own expression, curiously enough, had not
+changed to one of anger. His face had set, but his eyes held the look
+that seemed still to express compassion, and what he felt was a sorrow
+that went to the depths of his nature. What he had so long feared--what
+he knew they had both feared--had come at last.
+
+"Good-by, Judge," he said.
+
+Hilary Vane stared at him dumbly. His anger had not cooled, his eyes
+still flamed, but he suddenly found himself bereft of speech. Austen
+put his hand on his father's shoulder, and looked down silently into his
+face. But Hilary was stiff as in a rigour, expressionless save for the
+defiant red in his eye.
+
+"I don't think you meant all that, Judge, and I don't intend to hold it
+against you."
+
+Still Hilary stared, his lips in the tight line which was the emblem of
+his character, his body rigid. He saw his son turn and walk to the door,
+and turn again with his handle on the knob, and Hilary did not move. The
+door closed, and still he sat there, motionless, expressionless.
+
+Austen was hailed by those in the outer office, but he walked through
+them as though the place were empty. Rumours sprang up behind him of
+which he was unconscious; the long-expected quarrel had come; Austen had
+joined the motley ranks of the rebels under Mr. Crewe. Only the office
+boy, Jimmy Towle, interrupted the jokes that were flying by repeating,
+with dogged vehemence, "I tell you it ain't so. Austen kicked Ham
+downstairs. Ned Johnson saw him." Nor was it on account of this
+particular deed that Austen was a hero in Jimmy's eyes.
+
+Austen, finding himself in the square, looked at his watch. It was
+four o'clock. He made his way under the maples to the house in Hanover
+Street, halted for a moment contemplatively before the familiar classic
+pillars of its porch, took a key from his pocket, and (unprecedented
+action!) entered by the front door. Climbing to the attic, he found two
+valises--one of which he had brought back from Pepper County--and took
+them to his own room. They held, with a little crowding, most of his
+possessions, including a photograph of Sarah Austen, which he left on
+the bureau to the last. Once or twice he paused in his packing to gaze
+at the face, striving to fathom the fleeting quality of her glance
+which the photograph had so strangely caught. In that glance nature had
+stamped her enigma--for Sarah Austen was a child of nature. Hers was the
+gentle look of wild things--but it was more; it was the understanding
+of--the unwritten law of creation, the law by which the flowers grow,
+and wither; the law by which the animal springs upon its prey, and,
+unerring, seeks its mate; the law of the song of the waters, and the
+song of the morning stars; the law that permits evil and pain and dumb,
+incomprehensible suffering; the law that floods at sunset the mountain
+lands with colour and the soul with light; and the law that rends the
+branches in the blue storm. Of what avail was anger against it, or the
+puny rage of man? Hilary Vane, not recognizing it, had spent his force
+upon it, like a hawk against a mountain wall, but Austen looked at his
+mother's face and understood. In it was not the wisdom of creeds and
+cities, but the unworldly wisdom which comprehends and condones.
+
+His packing finished, with one last glance at the room Austen went
+downstairs with his valises and laid them on the doorstep. Then he went
+to the stable and harnessed Pepper, putting into the buggy his stable
+blanket and halter and currycomb, and, driving around to the front of
+the house, hitched the horse at the stone post, and packed the valises
+in the back of the buggy. After that he walked slowly to the back of the
+house and looked in at the kitchen window. Euphrasia, her thin arms bare
+to the elbow, was bending over a wash-tub. He spoke her name, and as
+she lifted her head a light came into her face which seemed to make
+her young again. She dried her hands hastily on her apron as she
+drew towards him. He sprang through the window, and patted her on the
+back--his usual salutation. And as she raised her eyes to his (those
+ordinarily sharp eyes of Euphrasia's), they shone with an admiration she
+had accorded to no other human being since he had come into the world.
+Terms of endearment she had, characteristically, never used, she threw
+her soul into the sounding of his name.
+
+"Off to the hills, Austen? I saw you a-harnessing of Pepper."
+
+"Phrasie," he said, still patting her, "I'm going to the country for a
+while."
+
+"To the country?" she repeated.
+
+"To stay on a farm for a sort of vacation."
+
+Her face brightened.
+
+"Goin' to take a real vacation, be you?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Oh, I don't have to work very hard, Phrasie. You know I get out a
+good deal. I just thought--I just thought I'd like to--sleep in the
+country--for a while."
+
+"Well," answered Euphrasia, "I guess if you've took the notion, you've
+got to go. It was that way with your mother before you. I've seen her
+leave the house on a bright Sabbath half an hour before meetin' to be
+gone the whole day, and Hilary and all the ministers in town couldn't
+stop her."
+
+"I'll drop in once in a while to see you, Phrasie. I'll be at Jabe
+Jenney's."
+
+"Jabe's is not more than three or four miles from Flint's place,"
+Euphrasia remarked.
+
+"I've thought of that," said Austen.
+
+"You'd thought of it!"
+
+Austen coloured.
+
+"The distance is nothing," he said quickly, "with Pepper."
+
+"And you'll come and see me?" asked Euphrasia.
+
+"If you'll do something for me," he said.
+
+"I always do what you want, Austen. You know I'm not able to refuse
+you."
+
+He laid his hands on her shoulders.
+
+"You'll promise?" he asked.
+
+"I'll promise," said Euphrasia, solemnly.
+
+He was silent for a moment, looking down at her.
+
+"I want you to promise to stay here and take care of the Judge."
+
+Fright crept into her eyes, but his own were smiling, reassuring.
+
+"Take care of him!" she cried, the very mention of Hilary raising the
+pitch of her voice. "I guess I'll have to. Haven't I took care of him
+nigh on forty years, and small thanks and recompense I get for it
+except when you're here. I've wore out my life takin' care of him" (more
+gently). "What do you mean by makin' me promise such a thing, Austen?"
+
+"Well," said Austen, slowly, "the Judge is worried now. Things are not
+going as smoothly with him as usual."
+
+"Money?" demanded Euphrasia. "He ain't lost money, has he?"
+
+A light began to dance in Austen's eyes in spite of the weight within
+him.
+
+"Now, Phrasie," he said, lifting her chin a little, "you know you don't
+care any more about money than I do."
+
+"Lord help me," she exclaimed, "Lord help me if I didn't! And as long as
+you don't care for it, and no sense can be knocked into your head about
+it, I hope you'll marry somebody that does know the value of it. If
+Hilary was to lose what he has now, before it comes rightly to you, he'd
+ought to be put in jail."
+
+Austen laughed, and shook his head.
+
+"Phrasie, the Lord did you a grave injustice when he didn't make you a
+man, but I suppose he'll give you a recompense hereafter. No, I believe
+I am safe in saying that the Judge's securities are still secure. Not
+that I really know--or care--" (shakes of the head from Euphrasia).
+"Poor old Judge! Worse things than finance are troubling him now."
+
+"Not a woman!" cried Euphrasia, horror-stricken at the very thought. "He
+hasn't took it into his head after all these years--"
+
+"No," said Austen, laughing, "no, no. It's not quite as bad as that, but
+it's pretty bad."
+
+"In Heaven's name, what is it?" she demanded. "Reformers," said Austen.
+
+"Reformers?" she repeated. "What might they be?"
+
+"Well," answered Austen, "you might call them a new kind of
+caterpillar--only they feed on corporations instead of trees."
+
+Euphrasia shook her head vigorously.
+
+"Go 'long," she exclaimed. "When you talk like that I never can follow
+you, Austen. If Hilary has any worries, I guess he brought 'em on
+himself. I never knew him to fail."
+
+"Ambitious and designing persons are making trouble for his railroad."
+
+"Well, I never took much stock in that railroad," said Euphrasia, with
+emphasis. "I never was on it but an engine gave out, and the cars was
+jammed, and it wasn't less than an hour late. And then they're eternally
+smashin' folks or runnin' 'em down. You served 'em right when you made
+'em pay that Meader man six thousand dollars, and I told Hilary so." She
+paused, and stared at Austen fixedly as a thought came into her head.
+"You ain't leavin' him because of this trouble, are you, Austen?"
+
+"Phrasie," he said, "I--I don't want to quarrel with him now. I think it
+would be easy to quarrel with him."
+
+"You mean him quarrel with you," returned Euphrasia. "I'd like to see
+him! If he did, it wouldn't take me long to pack up and leave."
+
+"That's just it. I don't want that to happen. And I've had a longing
+to go out and pay a little visit to Jabe up in the hills, and drive his
+colts for him. You see," he said, "I've got a kind of affection for the
+Judge."
+
+Euphrasia looked at him, and her lips trembled.
+
+"He don't deserve it," she declared, "but I suppose he's your father."
+
+"He can't get out of that," said Austen.
+
+"I'd like to see him try it," said Euphrasia. "Come in soon, Austen,"
+she whispered, "come in soon."
+
+She stood on the lawn and watched him as he drove away, and he waved
+good-by to her over the hood of the buggy. When he was out of sight she
+lifted her head, gave her eyes a vigorous brush with her checked apron,
+and went back to her washing.
+
+It was not until Euphrasia had supper on the table that Hilary Vane came
+home, and she glanced at him sharply as he took his usual seat. It is
+a curious fact that it is possible for two persons to live together for
+more than a third of a century, and at the end of that time understand
+each other little better than at the beginning. The sole bond between
+Euphrasia and Hilary was that of Sarah Austen and her son. Euphrasia
+never knew when Hilary was tired, or when he was cold, or hungry, or
+cross, although she provided for all these emergencies. Her service to
+him was unflagging, but he had never been under the slightest delusion
+that it was not an inheritance from his wife. There must have been
+some affection between Mr. Vane and his housekeeper, hidden away in the
+strong boxes of both but up to the present this was only a theory--not
+quite as probable as that about the inhabitants of Mars.
+
+He ate his supper to-night with his usual appetite, which had
+always been sparing; and he would have eaten the same amount if the
+Northeastern Railroads had been going into the hands of a receiver
+the next day. Often he did not exchange a word with Euphrasia between
+home-coming and bed-going, and this was apparently to be one of these
+occasions. After supper he went, as usual, to sit on the steps of
+his porch, and to cut his piece of Honey Dew, which never varied a
+milligram. Nine o'clock struck, and Euphrasia, who had shut up the back
+of the house, was on her way to bed with her lamp in her hand, when she
+came face to face with him in the narrow passageway.
+
+"Where's Austen?" he asked.
+
+Euphrasia halted. The lamp shook, but she raised it to the level of his
+eyes.
+
+"Don't you know?" she demanded.
+
+"No," he said, with unparalleled humility.
+
+She put down the lamp on the little table that stood beside her.
+
+"He didn't tell you he was a-goin'?"
+
+"No," said Hilary.
+
+"Then how did you know he wasn't just buggy-ridin'?" she said.
+
+Hilary Vane was mute.
+
+"You've be'n to his room!" she exclaimed. "You've seen his things are
+gone!"
+
+He confessed it by his silence. Then, with amazing swiftness and vigour
+for one of her age, Euphrasia seized him by the arms and shook him.
+
+"What have you done to him?" she cried; "what have you done to him? You
+sent him off. You've never understood him--you've never behaved like a
+father to him. You ain't worthy to have him." She flung herself away
+and stood facing Hilary at a little distance. "What a fool I was! What a
+fool! I might have known it, and I promised him."
+
+"Promised him?" Hilary repeated. The shaking, the vehemence and anger,
+of Euphrasia seemed to have had no effect whatever on the main trend of
+his thoughts.
+
+"Where has he gone?"
+
+"You can find out for yourself," she retorted bitterly. "I wish on your
+account it was to China. He came here this afternoon, as gentle as ever,
+and packed up his things, and said he was goin' away because you was
+worried. Worried!" she exclaimed scornfully. "His worry and his trouble
+don't count--but yours. And he made me promise to stay with you. If it
+wasn't for him," she cried, picking up the lamp, "I'd leave you this
+very night."
+
+She swept past him, and up the narrow stairway to her bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. BUSY DAYS AT WEDDERBURN
+
+There is no blast so powerful, so withering, as the blast of ridicule.
+Only the strongest men can withstand it, only reformers who are such in
+deed, and not alone in name, can snap their fingers at it, and liken it
+to the crackling of thorns under a pot. Confucius and Martin Luther must
+have been ridiculed, Mr. Crewe reflected, and although he did not have
+time to assure himself on these historical points, the thought stayed
+him. Sixty odd weekly newspapers, filled with arguments from the Book,
+attacked him all at once; and if by chance he should have missed the
+best part of this flattering personal attention, the editorials which
+contained the most spice were copied at the end of the week into the
+columns of his erstwhile friend, the State Tribune, now the organ
+of that mysterious personality, the Honourable Adam B. Hunt. 'Et tu,
+Brute!'
+
+Moreover, Mr. Peter Pardriff had something of his own to say. Some
+gentlemen of prominence (not among the twenty signers of the new
+Declaration of Independence) had been interviewed by the Tribune
+reporter on the subject of Mr. Crewe's candidacy. Here are some of the
+answers, duly tabulated.
+
+"Negligible."--Congressman Fairplay.
+
+"One less vote for the Honourable Adam B. Hunt."--The Honourable Jacob
+Botcher.
+
+"A monumental farce."--Ex-Governor Broadbent.
+
+"Who is Mr. Crewe?"--Senator Whitredge. (Ah ha! Senator, this want shall
+be supplied, at least.)
+
+"I have been very busy. I do not know what candidates are in the
+field."--Mr. Augustus P. Flint, president of the Northeastern Railroads.
+(The unkindest cut of all!)
+
+"I have heard that a Mr. Crewe is a candidate, but I do not know
+much about him. They tell me he is a summer resident at Leith."--The
+Honourable Hilary Vane.
+
+"A millionaire's freak--not to be taken seriously.--State Senator
+Nathaniel Billings."
+
+The State Tribune itself seemed to be especially interested in the past
+careers of the twenty signers. Who composed this dauntless band, whose
+members had arisen with remarkable unanimity and martyr's zeal in
+such widely scattered parts of the State? Had each been simultaneously
+inspired with the same high thought, and--more amazing still--with the
+idea of the same peerless leader? The Tribune modestly ventured the
+theory that Mr. Crewe had appeared to each of the twenty in a dream,
+with a flaming sword pointing to the steam of the dragon's breath. Or,
+perhaps, a star had led each of the twenty to Leith. (This likening of
+Mr. H--n T--g to a star caused much merriment among that gentleman's
+former friends and acquaintances.) The Tribune could not account for
+this phenomenon by any natural laws, and was forced to believe that
+the thing was a miracle--in which case it behooved the Northeastern
+Railroads to read the handwriting on the wall. Unless--unless the
+twenty did not exist! Unless the whole thing were a joke! The Tribune
+remembered a time when a signed statement, purporting to come from
+a certain Mrs. Amanda P. Pillow, of 22 Blair Street, Newcastle, had
+appeared, to the effect that three bottles of Rand's Peach Nectar had
+cured her of dropsy. On investigation there was no Blair Street, and
+Mrs. Amanda P. Pillow was as yet unborn. The one sure thing about the
+statement was that Rand's Peach Nectar could be had, in large or small
+quantities, as desired. And the Tribune was prepared to state; on
+its own authority, that a Mr. Humphrey Crewe did exist, and might
+reluctantly consent to take the nomination for the governorship. In
+industry and zeal he was said to resemble the celebrated and lamented
+Mr. Rand, of the Peach Nectar.
+
+Ingratitude merely injures those who are capable of it, although
+it sometimes produces sadness in great souls. What were Mr. Crewe's
+feelings when he read this drivel? When he perused the extracts from the
+"Book of Arguments" which appeared (with astonishing unanimity, too!) in
+sixty odd weekly newspapers of the State--an assortment of arguments for
+each county.
+
+"Brush Bascom's doin' that work now," said Mr. Tooting, contemptuously,
+"and he's doin' it with a shovel. Look here! He's got the same squib
+in three towns within a dozen miles of each other, the one beginning
+'Political conditions in this State are as clean as those of any State
+in the Union, and the United Northeastern Railroads is a corporation
+which is, fortunately, above calumny. A summer resident who, to satisfy
+his lust for office, is rolling to defame--'"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Mr. Crewe, "never mind reading any more of that rot."
+
+"It's botched," said Mr. Tooting, whose artistic soul was jarred. "I'd
+have put that in Avalon County, and Weave, and Marshall. I know men that
+take all three of those papers in Putnam."
+
+No need of balloonists to see what the enemy is about, when we have a
+Mr. Tooting.
+
+"They're stung!" he cried, as he ran rapidly through the bundle of
+papers--Mr. Crewe having subscribed, with characteristic generosity, to
+the entire press of the State. "Flint gave 'em out all this stuff about
+the railroad bein' a sacred institution. You've got 'em on the run right
+now, Mr. Crewe. You'll notice that, Democrats and Republicans, they've
+dropped everybody else, that they've all been sicked on to you. They're
+scared."
+
+"I came to that conclusion some time ago," replied Mr. Crewe, who was
+sorting over his letters.
+
+"And look there!" exclaimed Mr. Tooting, tearing out a paragraph,
+"there's the best campaign material we've had yet. Say, I'll bet Flint
+taken that doddering idiot's pass away for writing that."
+
+Mr. Crewe took the extract, and read:--
+
+     "A summer resident of Leith, who is said to be a millionaire
+     many times over, and who had a somewhat farcical career as a
+     legislator last winter, has announced himself as a candidate
+     for the Republican nomination on a platform attacking the
+     Northeastern Railroads. Mr. Humphrey Crewe declares that the
+     Northeastern Railroads govern us. What if they do? Every
+     sober-minded citizen, will agree that they give us a pretty
+     good government. More power to them."
+
+Mr. Crewe permitted himself to smile.
+
+"They are playing into our hands, sure enough. What?"
+
+This is an example of the spirit in which the ridicule and abuse was
+met.
+
+It was Senator Whitredge--only, last autumn so pleased to meet Mr. Crewe
+at Mr. Flint's--who asked the hypocritical question, "Who is Humphrey
+Crewe?" A biography (in pamphlet form, illustrated,--send your name
+and address) is being prepared by the invaluable Mr. Tooting, who only
+sleeps six hours these days. We shall see it presently, when it emerges
+from that busy hive at Wedderburn.
+
+Wedderburn was a hive, sure enough. Not having a balloon ourselves,
+it is difficult to see all that is going on there; but there can be
+no mistake (except by the Honourable Hilary's seismograph) that it
+has become the centre of extraordinary activity. The outside world has
+paused to draw breath at the spectacle, and members of the metropolitan
+press are filling the rooms of the Ripton House and adding to the
+prosperity of its livery-stable. Mr. Crewe is a difficult man to
+see these days--there are so many visitors at Wedderburn, and the
+representatives of the metropolitan press hitch their horses and stroll
+around the grounds, or sit on the porch and converse with gentlemen from
+various counties of the State who (as the Tribune would put it) have
+been led by a star to Leith.
+
+On the occasion of one of these gatherings, when Mr. Crewe had been
+inaccessible for four hours, Mrs. Pomfret drove up in a victoria with
+her daughter Alice.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know when we're going to see poor dear Humphrey
+again," said Mrs. Pomfret, examining the group on the porch through her
+gold-mounted lenses; "these awful people are always here when I come. I
+wonder if they sleep here, in the hammocks and lounging chairs! Alice,
+we must be very polite to them--so much depends on it."
+
+"I'm always polite, mother," answered Alice, "except when you tell me
+not to be. The trouble is I never know myself."
+
+The victoria stopped in front of the door, and the irreproachable Waters
+advanced across the porch.
+
+"Waters," said Mrs. Pomfret, "I suppose Mr. Crewe is too busy to come
+out."
+
+"I'm afraid so, madam," replied Waters; "there's a line of gentlemen
+waitin' here" (he eyed them with no uncertain disapproval) "and I've
+positive orders not to disturb him, madam."
+
+"I quite understand, at a time like this," said Mrs. Pomfret, and
+added, for the benefit of her audience, "when Mr. Crewe has been
+public-spirited and unselfish enough to undertake such a gigantic task.
+Tell him Miss Pomfret and I call from time to time because we are so
+interested, and that the whole of Leith wishes him success."
+
+"I'll tell him, madam," said Waters.
+
+But Mrs. Pomfret did not give the signal for her coachman to drive on.
+She looked, instead, at the patient gathering.
+
+"Good morning, gentlemen," she said.
+
+"Mother!" whispered Alice, "what are you going to do?"
+
+The gentlemen rose.
+
+"I'm Mrs. Pomfret," she said, as though that simple announcement were
+quite sufficient,--as it was, for the metropolitan press. Not a man of
+them who had not seen Mrs. Pomfret's important movements on both sides
+of the water chronicled. "I take the liberty of speaking to you, as we
+all seem to be united in a common cause. How is the campaign looking?"
+
+Some of the gentlemen shifted their cigars from one hand to the other,
+and grinned sheepishly.
+
+"I am so interested," continued Mrs. Pomfret; "it is so unusual in
+America for a gentleman to be willing to undertake such a thing,
+to subject himself to low criticism, and to have his pure motives
+questioned. Mr. Crewe has rare courage--I have always said so. And we
+are all going to put our shoulder to the wheel, and help him all we
+can."
+
+There was one clever man there who was quick to see his opportunity, and
+seize it for his newspaper.
+
+"And are you going to help Mr. Crewe in his campaign, Mrs. Pomfret?"
+
+"Most assuredly," answered Mrs. Pomfret. "Women in this country could
+do so much if they only would. You know," she added, in her most winning
+manner, "you know that a woman can often get a vote when a man can't."
+
+"And you, and--other ladies will go around to the public meetings?"
+
+"Why not, my friend; if Mr. Crewe has no objection? and I can conceive
+of none."
+
+"You would have an organization of society ladies to help Mr. Crewe?"
+
+"That's rather a crude way of putting it," answered Mrs. Pomfret, with
+her glasses raised judicially. "Women in what you call I society are,
+I am glad to say, taking an increasing interest in politics. They are
+beginning to realize that it is a duty."
+
+"Thank you," said the reporter; "and now would you mind if I took a
+photograph of you in your carriage."
+
+"Oh, mother," protested Alice, "you won't let him do that!"
+
+"Be quiet, Alice. Lady Aylestone and the duchess are photographed in
+every conceivable pose for political purposes. Wymans, just drive around
+to the other side of the circle."
+
+The article appeared next day, and gave, as may be imagined, a
+tremendous impetus to Mr. Crewe's cause. "A new era in American
+politics!" "Society to take a hand in the gubernatorial campaign of
+Millionaire Humphrey Crewe!" "Noted social leader, Mrs. Patterson
+Pomfret, declares it a duty, and saga that English women have the
+right idea." And a photograph of Mrs. Patterson Pomfret herself, in her
+victoria, occupied a generous portion of the front page.
+
+"What's all this rubbish about Mrs. Pomfret?" was Mr. Crewe's grateful
+comment when he saw it. "I spent two valuable hours with that reporter
+givin' him material and statistics, and I can't find that he's used a
+word of it."
+
+"Never you mind about that," Mr. Tooting replied. "The more advertising
+you get, the better, and this shows that the right people are behind
+you. Mrs. Pomfret's a smart woman, all right. She knows her job. And
+here's more advertising," he continued, shoving another sheet across the
+desk, "a fine likeness of you in caricature labelled, 'Ajax defying the
+Lightning.' Who's Ajax? There was an Italian, a street contractor, with
+that name--or something like it--in Newcastle a couple of years ago--in
+the eighth ward."
+
+In these days, when false rumours fly apace to the injury of innocent
+men, it is well to get at the truth, if possible. It is not true that
+Mr. Paul Pardriff, of the 'Ripton Record,' has been to Wedderburn. Mr.
+Pardriff was getting into a buggy to go--somewhere--when he chanced to
+meet the Honourable Brush Bascom, and the buggy was sent back to the
+livery-stable. Mr. Tooting had been to see Mr. Pardriff before the
+world-quaking announcement of June 7th, and had found Mr. Pardriff a
+reformer who did not believe that the railroad should run the State. But
+the editor of the Ripton Record was a man after Emerson's own heart: "a
+foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"--and Mr. Pardriff
+did not go to Wedderburn. He went off on an excursion up the State
+instead, for he had been working too hard; and he returned, as many
+men do from their travels, a conservative. He listened coldly to Mr.
+Tooting's impassioned pleas for cleaner politics, until Mr. Tooting
+revealed the fact that his pockets were full of copy. It seems that a
+biography was to be printed--a biography which would, undoubtedly, be
+in great demand; the biography of a public benefactor, illustrated
+with original photographs and views in the country. Mr. Tooting and Mr.
+Pardriff both being men of the world, some exceeding plain talk ensued
+between them, and when two such minds unite, a way out is sure to be
+found. One can be both a conservative and a radical--if one is clever.
+There were other columns in Mr. Pardriff's paper besides editorial
+columns; editorial columns, Mr. Pardriff said, were sacred to his
+convictions. Certain thumb-worn schedules were referred to. Paul
+Pardriff, Ripton, agreed to be the publisher of the biography.
+
+The next edition of the Record was an example of what Mr. Emerson
+meant. Three columns contained extracts of absorbing interest from the
+forthcoming biography and, on another page, an editorial. "The Honourable
+Humphrey Crewe, of Leith, is an estimable gentleman and a good citizen,
+whose public endeavours have been of great benefit to the community. A
+citizen of Avalon County, the Record regrets that it cannot support his
+candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. We are not among
+those who seek to impugn motives, and while giving Mr. Crewe every
+credit that his charges against the Northeastern Railroads are made
+in good faith, we beg to differ from him. That corporation is an
+institution which has stood the test of time, and enriches every year
+the State treasury by a large sum in taxes. Its management is in safe,
+conservative hands. No one will deny Mr. Crewe's zeal for the State's
+welfare, but it must be borne in mind that he is a newcomer in politics,
+and that conditions, seen from the surface, are sometimes deceptive. We
+predict for Mr. Crewe a long and useful career, but we do not think that
+at this time, and on this platform, he will obtain the governorship."
+
+"Moral courage is what the age needs," had been Mr. Crewe's true and
+sententious remark when he read this editorial. But, bearing in mind a
+biblical adage, he did not blame Mr. Tooting for his diplomacy. "Send in
+the next man."
+
+Mr. Tooting opened the study door and glanced over the public-spirited
+citizens awaiting, on the porch, the pleasure of their leader.
+
+"Come along, Caldwell," said Mr. Tooting. "He wants your report from
+Kingston. Get a hustle on!"
+
+Mr. Caldwell made his report, received many brief and business-like
+suggestions, and retired, impressed. Whereupon Mr. Crewe commanded Mr.
+Tooting to order his automobile--an occasional and rapid spin over the
+country roads being the only diversion the candidate permitted himself.
+Wishing to be alone with his thoughts, he did not take Mr. Tooting with
+him on these excursions.
+
+"And by the way," said Mr. Crewe, as he seized the steering wheel a few
+moments later, "just drop a line to Austen Vane, will you, and tell him
+I want to see him up here within a day or two. Make an appointment. It
+has occurred to me that he might be very useful."
+
+Mr. Tooting stood on the driveway watching the cloud of dust settle on
+the road below. Then he indulged in a long and peculiarly significant
+whistle through his teeth, rolled his eyes heavenward, and went into the
+house. He remembered Austen's remark about riding a cyclone.
+
+Mr. Crewe took the Tunbridge road. On his excursion of the day before he
+had met Mrs. Pomfret, who had held up her hand, and he had protestingly
+brought the car to a stop.
+
+"Your horses don't frighten," he had said.
+
+"No, but I wanted to speak to you, Humphrey," Mrs. Pomfret had replied;
+"you are becoming so important that nobody ever has a glimpse of you. I
+wanted to tell you what an interest we take in this splendid thing you
+are doing."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "it was a plain duty, and nobody else seemed
+willing to undertake it."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret's eyes had flashed.
+
+"Men of that type are scarce," she answered. "But you'll win. You're the
+kind of man that wins."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll win," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"You're so magnificently sure of yourself," cried Mrs. Pomfret. "Alice
+is taking such an interest. Every day she asks, 'When is Humphrey going
+to make his first speech?' You'll let us know in time, won't you?"
+
+"Did you put all that nonsense in the New York Flare?" asked Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh, Humphrey, I hope you liked it," cried Mrs. Pomfret. "Don't make
+the mistake of despising what women can do. They elected the Honourable
+Billy Aylestone--he said so himself. I'm getting all the women
+interested."
+
+"Who've you been calling on now?" he inquired.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret hesitated.
+
+"I've been up at Fairview to see about Mrs. Flint. She isn't much
+better."
+
+"Is Victoria home?" Mr. Crewe demanded, with undisguised interest.
+
+"Poor dear girl!" said Mrs. Pomfret, "of course I wouldn't have
+mentioned the subject to her, but she wanted to know all about it. It
+naturally makes an awkward situation between you and her, doesn't it?"
+
+"Oh, Victoria's level-headed enough," Mr. Crewe had answered; "I guess
+she knows something about old Flint and his methods by this time. At any
+rate, it won't make any difference with me," he added magnanimously, and
+threw in his clutch. He had encircled Fairview in his drive that day,
+and was, curiously enough, headed in that direction now. Slow to make
+up his mind in some things, as every eligible man must be, he was
+now coming rapidly to the notion that he might eventually decide upon
+Victoria as the most fitting mate for one in his position. Still, there
+was no hurry. As for going to Fairview House, that might be awkward,
+besides being open to misconstruction by his constituents. Mr. Crewe
+reflected, as he rushed up the hills, that he had missed Victoria since
+she had been abroad--and a man so continually occupied as he did not
+have time to miss many people. Mr. Crewe made up his mind he would
+encircle Fairview every day until he ran across her.
+
+The goddess of fortune sometimes blesses the persistent even before they
+begin to persist--perhaps from sheer weariness at the remembrance of
+previous importuning. Victoria, on a brand-new and somewhat sensitive
+five-year-old, was coming out of the stone archway when Mr. Crewe
+(without any signal this time!) threw on his brakes. An exhibition of
+horsemanship followed, on Victoria's part, which Mr. Crewe beheld with
+admiration. The five-year-old swung about like a weathercock in a gust
+of wind, assuming an upright position, like the unicorn in the British
+coat of arms. Victoria cut him, and he came down on all fours and danced
+into the wire fence that encircled the Fairview domain, whereupon he got
+another stinging reminder that there was some one on his back.
+
+"Bravo!" cried Mr. Crewe, leaning on the steering wheel and watching
+the performance with delight. Never, he thought, had Victoria been more
+appealing; strangely enough, he had not remembered that she was quite
+so handsome, or that her colour was so vivid; or that her body was so
+straight and long and supple. He liked the way in which she gave it to
+that horse, and he made up his mind that she would grace any position,
+however high. Presently the horse made a leap into the road in front of
+the motor and stood trembling, ready to bolt.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Humphrey," she cried, "shut off your power? Don't
+sit there like an idiot--do you think I'm doing this for pleasure?"
+
+Mr. Crewe good-naturedly turned off his switch, and the motor, with a
+dying sigh, was silent. He even liked the notion of being commanded to
+do a thing; there was a relish about it that was new. The other women of
+his acquaintance addressed him more deferentially.
+
+"Get hold of the bridle," he said to the chauffeur. "You've got no
+business to have an animal like that," was his remark to Victoria.
+
+"Don't touch him!" she said to the man, who was approaching with a true
+machinist's fear of a high-spirited horse. "You've got no business to
+have a motor like that, if you can't handle it any better than you do."
+
+"You managed him all right. I'll say that for you," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"No thanks to you," she replied. Now that the horse was comparatively
+quiet, she sat and regarded Mr. Crewe with an amusement which was
+gradually getting the better of her anger. A few moments since, and
+she wished with great intensity that she had been using the whip on his
+shoulders instead. Now that she had time to gather up the threads of the
+situation, the irresistibly comic aspect of it grew upon her, and little
+creases came into the corners of her eyes--which Mr. Crewe admired.
+She recalled--with indignation, to be sure--the conversation she had
+overheard in the dining room of the Duncan house, but her indignation
+was particularly directed, on that occasion, towards Mr. Tooting. Here
+was Humphrey Crewe, sitting talking to her in the road--Humphrey Crewe,
+whose candidacy for the governorship impugned her father's management
+of the Northeastern Railroads--and she was unable to take the matter
+seriously! There must be something wrong with her, she thought.
+
+"So you're home again," Mr. Crewe observed, his eyes still bearing
+witness to the indubitable fact. "I shouldn't have known it--I've been
+so busy."
+
+"Is the Legislature still in session?" Victoria soberly inquired.
+
+"You are a little behind the times--ain't you?" said Mr. Crewe, in
+surprise. "How long have you been home? Hasn't anybody told you what's
+going on?"
+
+"I only came up ten days ago," she answered, "and I'm afraid I've been
+something of a recluse. What is going on?"
+
+"Well," he declared, "I should have thought you'd heard it, anyway. I'll
+send you up a few newspapers when I get back. I'm a candidate for the
+governorship."
+
+Victoria bit her lip, and leaned over to brush a fly from the neck of
+her horse.
+
+"You are getting on rapidly, Humphrey," she said. "Do you think you've
+got--any chance?"
+
+"Any chance!" he repeated, with some pardonable force. "I'm sure to be
+nominated. There's an overwhelming sentiment among the voters of this
+State for decent politics. It didn't take me long to find that out. The
+only wonder is that somebody hasn't seen it before."
+
+"Perhaps," she answered, giving him a steady look, "perhaps somebody
+has."
+
+One of Mr. Crewe's greatest elements of strength was his imperviousness
+to this kind of a remark.
+
+"If anybody's seen it," he replied, "they haven't the courage of their
+convictions." Such were the workings of Mr. Crewe's mind that he had
+already forgotten that first talk with Mr. Hamilton Tooting. "Not that
+I want to take too much credit on myself," he added, with becoming
+modesty, "I have had some experience in the world, and it was natural
+that I should get a fresh view. Are you coming down to Leith in a few
+days?"
+
+"I may," said Victoria.
+
+"Telephone me," said Mr. Crewe, "and if I can get off, I will. I'd like
+to talk to you. You have more sense than most women I know."
+
+"You overwhelm me, Humphrey. Compliments sound strangely on your lips."
+
+"When I say a thing, I mean it," Mr. Crewe declared. "I don't pay
+compliments. I'd make it a point to take a little time off to talk to
+you. You see, so many men are interested in this thing from various
+parts of the State, and we are so busy organizing, that it absorbs most
+of my day."
+
+"I couldn't think of encroaching," Victoria protested.
+
+"That's all right--you can be a great help. I've got confidence in your
+judgment. By the way," he asked suddenly, "you haven't seen your friend
+Austen Vane since you got back, have you?"
+
+"Why do you call him my friend?" said Victoria. Mr. Crew perceived that
+the exercise had heightened her colour, and the transition appealed to
+his sense of beauty.
+
+"Perhaps I put it a little strongly," he replied. "You seemed to take
+an interest in him, for some reason. I suppose it's because you like new
+types."
+
+"I like Mr. Vane very much,--and for himself," she said quietly. "But
+I haven't seen him since I came back. Nor do I think I am likely to see
+him. What made you ask about him?"
+
+"Well, he seems to be a man of some local standing, and he ought to
+be in this campaign. If you happen to see him, you might mention the
+subject to him. I've sent for him to come up and see me."
+
+"Mr. Vane doesn't seem to me to be a person one can send for like that,"
+Victoria remarked judicially. "As to advising him as to what course he
+should take politically--that would even be straining my friendship for
+you, Humphrey. On reflection," she added, smiling, "there may appear to
+you reasons why I should not care to meddle with--politics, just now."
+
+"I can't see it," said Mr. Crewe; "you've got a mind of your own, and
+you've never been afraid to use it, so far as I know. If you should see
+that Vane man, just give him a notion of what I'm trying to do."
+
+"What are you trying to do?" inquired Victoria, sweetly.
+
+"I'm trying to clean up this State politically," said Mr. Crewe, "and
+I'm going to do it. When you come down to Leith, I'll tell you about it,
+and I'll send you the newspapers to-day. Don't be in a hurry," he cried,
+addressing over his shoulder two farmers in a wagon who had driven up a
+few moments before, and who were apparently anxious to pass. "Wind her
+up, Adolphe."
+
+The chauffeur, standing by the crank, started the engine instantly,
+and the gears screamed as Mr. Crewe threw in his low speed. The
+five-year-old whirled, and bolted down the road at a pace which would
+have seemed to challenge a racing car; and the girl in the saddle,
+bending to the motion of the horse, was seen to raise her hand in
+warning.
+
+"Better stay whar you be," shouted one of the farmers; "don't go to
+follerin' her. The hoes is runnin' away."
+
+Mr. Crewe steered his car into the Fairview entrance, and backed into
+the road again, facing the other way. He had decided to go home.
+
+"That lady can take care of herself," he said, and started off towards
+Leith, wondering how it was that Mr. Flint had not confided his recent
+political troubles to his daughter.
+
+"That hoss is ugly, sure enough," said the farmer who had spoken before.
+
+Victoria flew on, down the narrow road. After twenty strides she did not
+attempt to disguise from herself the fact that the five-year-old was
+in a frenzy of fear, and running away. Victoria had been run away with
+before, and having some knowledge of the animal she rode, she did not
+waste her strength by pulling on the curb, but sought rather to quiet
+him with her voice, which had no effect whatever. He was beyond appeal,
+his head was down, and his ears trembling backwards and straining for a
+sound of the terror that pursued him. The road ran through the forest,
+and Victoria reflected that the grade, on the whole, was downward to the
+East Tunbridge station, where the road crossed the track and took to the
+hills beyond. Once among them, she would be safe--he might run as far,
+as he pleased. But could she pass the station? She held a firm rein, and
+tried to keep her mind clear.
+
+Suddenly, at a slight bend of the road, the corner of the little red
+building came in sight, some hundreds of yards ahead; and, on the
+side where it stood, in the clearing, was a white mass which Victoria
+recognized as a pile of lumber. She saw several men on the top of
+the pile, standing motionless; she heard one of them shout; the horse
+swerved, and she felt herself flung violently to the left.
+
+Her first thought, after striking, was one of self-congratulation that
+her safety stirrup and habit had behaved properly. Before she could
+rise, a man was leaning over her--and in the instant she had the
+impression that he was a friend. Other people had had this impression of
+him on first acquaintance--his size, his genial, brick-red face, and his
+honest blue eyes all doubtless contributing.
+
+"Are you hurt, Miss Flint?" he asked.
+
+"Not in the least," she replied, springing to her feet to prove the
+contrary. "What's become of my horse?"
+
+"Two of the men have gone after him," he said, staring at her with
+undisguised but honest admiration. Whereupon he became suddenly
+embarrassed, and pulled out a handkerchief the size of a table napkin.
+"Let me dust you off."
+
+"Thank you," said Victoria, laughing, and beginning the process herself.
+Her new acquaintance plied the handkerchief, his face a brighter
+brick-red than ever.
+
+"Thank God, there wasn't a freight on the siding," he remarked, so
+fervently that Victoria stole a glance at him. The dusting process
+continued.
+
+"There," she exclaimed, at last, adjusting her stock and shaking her
+skirt, "I'm ever so much obliged. It was very foolish in me to tumble
+off, wasn't it?"
+
+"It was the only thing you could have done," he declared. "I had a good
+view of it, and he flung you like a bean out of a shooter. That's a
+powerful horse. I guess you're the kind that likes to take risks."
+
+Victoria laughed at his expressive phrase, and crossed the road, and sat
+down on the edge of the lumber pile, in the shade.
+
+"There seems to be nothing to do but wait," she said, "and to thank you
+again. Will you tell me your name?"
+
+"I'm Tom Gaylord," he replied.
+
+Her colour, always so near the surface, rose a little as she regarded
+him. So this was Austen Vane's particular friend, whom he had tried to
+put out of his window. A Herculean task, Victoria thought, from Tom's
+appearance. Tom sat down within a few feet of her.
+
+"I've seen you a good many times, Miss Flint," he remarked, applying the
+handkerchief to his face.
+
+"And I've seen you--once, Mr. Gaylord," some mischievous impulse
+prompted her to answer. Perhaps the impulse was more deep-seated, after
+all.
+
+"Where?" demanded Tom, promptly.
+
+"You were engaged," said Victoria, "in a struggle in a window on Ripton
+Square. It looked, for a time," she continued, "as if you were going to
+be dropped on the roof of the porch."
+
+Tom gazed at her in confusion and surprise.
+
+"You seem to be fond, too, of dangerous exercise," she observed.
+
+"Do you mean to say you remembered me from that?" he exclaimed. "Oh, you
+know Austen Vane, don't you?"
+
+"Does Mr. Vane acknowledge the acquaintance?" Victoria inquired.
+
+"It's funny, but you remind me of Austen," said Tom, grinning; "you seem
+to have the same queer way of saying things that he has." Here he was
+conscious of another fit of embarrassment. "I hope you don't mind what I
+say, Miss Flint."
+
+"Not at all," said Victoria. She turned, and looked across the track.
+
+"I suppose they are having a lot of trouble in catching my horse," she
+remarked.
+
+"They'll get him," Tom assured her, "one of those men is my manager.
+He always gets what he starts out for. What were we talking about? Oh,
+Austen Vane. You see, I've known him ever since I was a shaver, and I
+think the world of him. If he asked me to go to South America and get
+him a zebra to-morrow, I believe I'd do it."
+
+"That is real devotion," said Victoria. The more she saw of young
+Tom, the better she liked him, although his conversation was apt to be
+slightly embarrassing.
+
+"We've been through a lot of rows together," Tom continued, warming to
+his subject, "in school and college. You see, Austen's the kind of man
+who doesn't care what anybody thinks, if he takes it into his head to
+do a thing. It was a great piece of luck for me that he shot that fellow
+out West, or he wouldn't be here now. You heard about that, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Victoria, "I believe I did."
+
+"And yet," said Tom, "although I'm as good a friend as he has, I never
+quite got under his skin. There's some things I wouldn't talk to him
+about. I've learned that. I never told him, for instance, that I saw him
+out in a sleigh with you at the capital."
+
+"Oh," said Victoria; and she added, "Is he ashamed of it?"
+
+"It's not that," replied Tom, hastily, "but I guess if he'd wanted me to
+know about it, he'd have told me."
+
+Victoria had begun to realize that, in the few minutes which had elapsed
+since she had found herself on the roadside, gazing up into young Tom's
+eyes, she had somehow become quite intimate with him.
+
+"I fancy he would have told you all there was to tell about it--if the
+matter had occurred to him again," she said, with the air of finally
+dismissing a subject already too prolonged. But Tom knew nothing of the
+shades and conventions of the art of conversation.
+
+"He's never told me he knew you at all!" he exclaimed, staring at
+Victoria. Apparently some of the aspects of this now significant
+omission on Austen's part were beginning to dawn on Tom.
+
+"It wasn't worth mentioning," said Victoria, briefly, seeking for a
+pretext to change the subject.
+
+"I don't believe that," said Tom, "you can't expect me to sit here and
+look at you and believe that. How long has he known you?"
+
+"I saw him once or twice last summer, at Leith," said Victoria, now
+wavering between laughter and exasperation. She had got herself into a
+quandary indeed when she had to parry the appalling frankness of such
+inquiries.
+
+"The more you see of him, the more you'll admire him, I'll prophesy,"
+said Tom. "If he'd been content to travel along the easy road, as most
+fellows are, he would have been counsel for the Northeastern. Instead
+of that--" here Tom halted abruptly, and turned scarlet: "I forgot," he
+said, "I'm always putting my foot in it, with ladies."
+
+He was so painfully confused that Victoria felt herself suffering with
+him, and longed to comfort him.
+
+"Please go on, Mr. Gaylord," she said; "I am very much interested in
+my neighbours here, and I know that a great many of them think that the
+railroad meddles in politics. I've tried to find out what they think,
+but it is so difficult for a woman to understand. If matters are wrong,
+I'm sure my father will right them when he knows the situation. He has
+so much to attend to." She paused. Tom was still mopping his forehead.
+"You may say anything you like to me, and I shall not take offence."
+
+Tom's admiration of her was heightened by this attitude.
+
+"Austen wouldn't join Mr. Crewe in his little game, anyway," he
+said. "When Ham Tooting, Crewe's manager, came to him he kicked him
+downstairs."
+
+Victoria burst out laughing.
+
+"I constantly hear of these ferocious deeds which Mr. Vane commits," she
+said, "and yet he seems exceptionally good-natured and mild-mannered."
+
+"That's straight--he kicked him downstairs. Served Tooting right, too."
+
+"There does seem to have been an element of justice in it," Victoria
+remarked.
+
+"You haven't seen Austen since he left his father?" Mr. Gaylord
+inquired.
+
+"Left him! Where--has he gone?"
+
+"Gone up to live with Jabe Jenney. If Austen cared anything about money,
+he never would have broken with the old man, who has some little put
+away."
+
+"Why did he leave his father?" asked Victoria, not taking the trouble
+now to conceal her interest.
+
+"Well," said Tom, "you know they never did get along. It hasn't been
+Austen's fault--he's tried. After he came back from the West he stayed
+here to please old Hilary, when he might have gone to New York and made
+a fortune at the law, with his brains. But after Austen saw the kind of
+law the old man practised he wouldn't stand for it, and got an office of
+his own."
+
+Victoria's eyes grew serious.
+
+"What kind of law does Hilary Vane practise?" she asked.
+
+Tom hesitated and began to mop his forehead again.
+
+"Please don't mind me," Victoria pleaded.
+
+"Well, all right," said Tom, "I'll tell you the truth, or die for it.
+But I don't want to make you-unhappy."
+
+"You will do me a kindness, Mr. Gaylord," she said, "by telling me what
+you believe to be true."
+
+There was a note in her voice which young Tom did not understand.
+Afterwards, when he reflected about the matter, he wondered if she were
+unhappy.
+
+"I don't want to blame Hilary too much," he answered. "I know Austen
+don't. Hilary's grown up with that way of doing things, and in the
+old days there was no other way. Hilary is the chief counsel for the
+Northeastern, and he runs the Republican organization in this State for
+their benefit. But Austen made up his mind that there was no reason why
+he should grow up that way. He says that a lawyer should keep to his
+profession, and not become a lobbyist in the interest of his clients. He
+lived with the old man until the other day, because he has a real soft
+spot for him. Austen put up with a good deal. And then Hilary turned
+loose on him and said a lot of things he couldn't stand. Austen didn't
+answer, but went up and packed his bags and made Hilary's housekeeper
+promise to stay with him, or she'd have left, too. They say Hilary's
+sorry, now. He's fond of Austen, but he can't get along with him."
+
+"Do--Do you know what they quarreled about?" asked Victoria, in a low
+voice.
+
+"This spring," said Tom, "the Gaylord Lumber Company made Austen junior
+counsel. He ran across a law the other day that nobody else seems to
+have had sense enough to discover, by which we can sue the railroad for
+excessive freight rates. It means a lot of money. He went right in to
+Hilary and showed him the section, told him that suit was going to be
+brought, and offered to resign. Hilary flew off the track--and said
+if he didn't bring suit he'd publish it all over the State that Austen
+started it. Galusha Hammer, our senior counsel, is sick, and I don't
+think he'll ever get well. That makes Austen senior counsel. But he
+persuaded old Tom, my father, not to bring this suit until after the
+political campaign, until Mr. Crewe gets through with his fireworks.
+Hilary doesn't know that."
+
+"I see," said Victoria.
+
+Down the hill, on the far side of the track, she perceived the two men
+approaching with a horse; then she remembered the fact that she had been
+thrown, and that it was her horse. She rose to her feet.
+
+"I'm ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Gaylord," she said; "you have done
+me a great favour by--telling me these things. And thanks for letting
+them catch the horse. I'm afraid I've put you to a lot of bother."
+
+"Not at all," said Tom, "not at all." He was studying her face.
+Its expression troubled and moved him strangely, for he was not an
+analytical person. "I didn't mean to tell you those things when I
+began," he apologized, "but you wanted to hear them."
+
+"I wanted to hear them," repeated Victoria. She held out her hand to
+him.
+
+"You're not going to ride home!" he exclaimed. "I'll take you up in my
+buggy--it's in the station shed."
+
+She smiled, turned and questioned and thanked the men, examined the
+girths and bridle, and stroked the five-year-old on the neck. He was wet
+from mane to fetlocks.
+
+"I don't think he'll care to run much farther," she said. "If you'll
+pull him over to the lumber pile, Mr. Gaylord, I'll mount him."
+
+They performed her bidding in silence, each paying her a tribute in his
+thoughts. As for the five-year-old, he was quiet enough by this time.
+When she was in the saddle she held out her hand once more to Tom.
+
+"I hope we shall meet soon again," she said, and smiling back at him,
+started on her way towards Fairview.
+
+Tom stood for a moment looking after her, while the two men indulged in
+surprised comments.
+
+"Andrews," said young Mr. Gaylord, "just fetch my buggy and follow her
+until she gets into the gate."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS
+
+Empires crack before they crumble, and the first cracks seem easily
+mended--even as they have been mended before. A revolt in Gaul or
+Britain or Thrace is little to be minded, and a prophet in Judea
+less. And yet into him who sits in the seat of power a premonition of
+something impending gradually creeps--a premonition which he will not
+acknowledge, will not define. Yesterday, by the pointing of a finger, he
+created a province; to-day he dares not, but consoles himself by saying
+he does not wish to point. No antagonist worthy of his steel has openly
+defied him, worthy of recognition by the opposition of a legion. But the
+sense of security has been subtly and indefinably shaken.
+
+By the strange telepathy which defies language, to the Honourable Hilary
+Vane, Governor of the Province, some such unacknowledged forebodings
+have likewise been communicated. A week after his conversation with
+Austen, on the return of his emperor from a trip to New York, the
+Honourable Hilary was summoned again to the foot of the throne, and his
+thoughts as he climbed the ridges towards Fairview were not in harmony
+with the carols of the birds in the depths of the forest and the joy of
+the bright June weather. Loneliness he had felt before, and to its ills
+he had applied the antidote of labour. The burden that sat upon his
+spirit to-day was not mere loneliness; to the truth of this his soul
+attested, but Hilary Vane had never listened to the promptings of his
+soul. He would have been shocked if you had told him this. Did he not
+confess, with his eyes shut, his sins every Sunday? Did he not publicly
+acknowledge his soul?
+
+Austen Vane had once remarked that, if some keen American lawyer would
+really put his mind to the evasion of the Ten Commandments, the High
+Heavens themselves might be cheated. This saying would have shocked
+the Honourable Hilary inexpressibly. He had never been employed by a
+syndicate to draw up papers to avoid these mandates; he revered them, as
+he revered the Law, which he spelled with a capital. He spelled the word
+Soul with a capital likewise, and certainly no higher recognition could
+be desired than this! Never in the Honourable Hilary's long, laborious,
+and preeminently model existence had he realized that happiness is
+harmony. It would not be true to assert that, on this wonderful June
+day, a glimmering of this truth dawned upon him. Such a statement
+would be open to the charge of exaggeration, and his frame of mind was
+pessimistic. But he had got so far as to ask himself the question,--Cui
+bono? and repeated it several times on his drive, until a verse of
+Scripture came, unbidden, to his lips. "For what hate man of all his
+labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under
+the sun?" and "there is one event unto all." Austen's saying, that he
+had never learned how to enjoy life, he remembered, too. What had Austen
+meant by that?
+
+Hitherto Hilary Vane had never failed of self-justification in any event
+which had befallen him; and while this consciousness of the rectitude of
+his own attitude had not made him happier, there had been a certain
+grim pleasure in it. To the fact that he had ruined, by sheer
+over-righteousness, the last years of the sunny life of Sarah Austen he
+had been oblivious--until to-day. The strange, retrospective mood which
+had come over him this afternoon led his thoughts into strange paths,
+and he found himself wondering if, after all, it had not been in his
+power to make her happier. Her dryad-like face, with its sweet, elusive
+smile, seemed to peer at him now wistfully out of the forest, and
+suddenly a new and startling thought rose up within him--after six and
+thirty years. Perhaps she had belonged in the forest! Perhaps, because
+he had sought to cage her, she had pined and died! The thought gave
+Hilary unwonted pain, and he strove to put it away from him; but
+memories such as these, once aroused, are not easily set at rest, and he
+bent his head as he recalled (with a new and significant pathos) those
+hopeless and pitiful flights into the wilds she loved.
+
+Now Austen had gone. Was there a Law behind these actions of mother and
+son which he had persisted in denouncing as vagaries? Austen was a man:
+a man, Hilary could not but see, who had the respect of his fellows,
+whose judgment and talents were becoming recognized. Was it possible
+that he, Hilary Vane, could have been one of those referred to by the
+Preacher? During the week which had passed since Austen's departure the
+house in Hanover Street had been haunted for Hilary. The going of his
+son had not left a mere void,--that would have been pain enough. Ghosts
+were there, ghosts which he could but dimly feel and see, and more than
+once, in the long evenings, he had taken to the streets to avoid them.
+
+In that week Hilary's fear of meeting his son in the street or in the
+passages of the building had been equalled by a yearning to see him.
+Every morning, at the hour Austen was wont to drive Pepper to the Ripton
+House stables across the square, Hilary had contrived to be standing
+near his windows--a little back, and out of sight. And--stranger
+still!--he had turned from these glimpses to the reports of the
+Honourable Brush Bascom and his associates with a distaste he had never
+felt before.
+
+With some such thoughts as these Hilary Vane turned into the last
+straight stretch of the avenue that led to Fairview House, with its red
+and white awnings gleaming in the morning sun. On the lawn, against a
+white and purple mass of lilacs and the darker background of pines, a
+straight and infinitely graceful figure in white caught his eye and
+held it. He recognized Victoria. She wore a simple summer gown, the soft
+outline of its flounces mingling subtly with the white clusters behind
+her. She turned her head at the sound of the wheels and looked at
+him; the distance was not too great for a bow, but Hilary did not bow.
+Something in her face deterred him from this act,--something which
+he himself did not understand or define. He sought to pronounce the
+incident negligible. What was the girl, or her look, to him? And yet (he
+found himself strangely thinking) he had read in her eyes a trace of
+the riddle which had been relentlessly pursuing him; there was an odd
+relation in her look to that of Sarah Austen. During the long years he
+had been coming to Fairview, even before the new house was built, when
+Victoria was in pinafores, he had never understood her. When she was
+a child, he had vaguely recognized in her a spirit antagonistic to his
+own, and her sayings had had a disconcerting ring. And now this simple
+glance of hers had troubled him--only more definitely.
+
+It was a new experience for the Honourable Hilary to go into a business
+meeting with his faculties astray. Absently he rang the stable bell,
+surrendered his horse, and followed a footman to the retired part of
+the house occupied by the railroad president. Entering the oak-bound
+sanctum, he crossed it and took a seat by the window, merely nodding to
+Mr. Flint, who was dictating a letter. Mr. Flint took his time about the
+letter, but when it was finished he dismissed the stenographer with
+an impatient and powerful wave of the hand--as though brushing the man
+bodily out of the room. Remaining motionless until the door had closed,
+Mr. Flint turned abruptly and fixed his eyes on the contemplative figure
+of his chief counsel.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+"Well, Flint," answered the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Flint, "that bridge over Maple River has got loosened
+up so by the freshet that we have to keep freight cars on it to hold it
+down, and somebody is trying to make trouble by writing a public
+letter to the Railroad Commission, and calling attention to the head-on
+collision at Barker's Station."
+
+"Well," replied the Honourable Hilary, again, "that won't have any
+influence on the Railroad Commission."
+
+"No," said Mr. Flint, "but it all goes to increase this confounded
+public sentiment that's in the air, like smallpox. Another jackass
+pretends to have kept a table of the through trains on the Sumsic
+division, and says they've averaged forty-five minutes late at
+Edmundton. He says the through express made the run faster thirty years
+ago."
+
+"I guess that's so," said the Honourable Hilary, "I was counsel for
+that road then. I read that letter. He says there isn't an engine on the
+division that could pull his hat off, up grade."
+
+Neither of the two gentlemen appeared to deem this statement humorous.
+
+"What these incendiaries don't understand," said Mr. Flint, "is that we
+have to pay dividends."
+
+"It's because they don't get 'em," replied Mr. Vane, sententiously.
+
+"The track slid into the water at Glendale," continued Mr. Flint. "I
+suppose they'll tell us we ought to rock ballast that line. You'll see
+the Railroad Commission, and give 'em a sketch of a report."
+
+"I had a talk with Young yesterday," said Mr. Vane, his eyes on the
+stretch of lawn and forest framed by the window. For the sake of the
+ignorant, it may be well to add that the Honourable Orrin Young was the
+chairman of the Commission.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Flint, "not that this Crewe business amounts
+to that" (here the railroad president snapped his fingers with the
+intensity of a small pistol shot), "but what's he been doing?"
+
+"Political advertising," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Plenty of it, I guess," Mr. Flint remarked acidly. "That's one thing
+Tooting can't teach him. He's a natural-born genius at it."
+
+"Tooting can help--even at that," answered Mr. Vane, ironically.
+"They've got a sketch of so-called Northeastern methods in forty weekly
+newspapers this week, with a picture of that public benefactor and
+martyr, Humphrey Crewe. Here's a sample of it."
+
+Mr. Flint waved the sample away.
+
+"You've made a list of the newspapers that printed it?" Mr. Flint
+demanded. Had he lived in another age he might have added, "Have the
+malefactors burned alive in my garden."
+
+"Brush has seen some of 'em," said Mr. Vane, no doubt referring to the
+editors, "and I had some of 'em come to Ripton. They've got a lot to
+say about the freedom of the press, and their right to take political
+advertising. Crewe's matter is in the form of a despatch, and most of
+'em pointed out at the top of the editorial columns that their papers
+are not responsible for despatches in the news columns. Six of 'em are
+out and out for Crewe, and those fellows are honest enough."
+
+"Take away their passes and advertising," said Mr. Flint. ("Off with
+their heads!" said the Queen of Hearts.)
+
+"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Flint; they might make capital out
+of it. I think you'll find that five of 'em have sent their passes back,
+anyway."
+
+"Freeman will give you some new ideas" (from the "Book of Arguments,"
+although Mr. Flint did not say so) "which have occurred to me might be
+distributed for editorial purposes next week. And, by the way, what have
+you done about that brilliant Mr. Coombes of the 'Johnstown Ray,' who
+says 'the Northeastern Railroads give us a pretty good government'?"
+
+The Honourable Hilary shook his head.
+
+"Too much zeal," he observed. "I guess he won't do it again."
+
+For a while after that they talked of strictly legal matters, which
+the chief counsel produced in order out of his bag. But when these
+were finally disposed of, Mr. Flint led the conversation back to the
+Honourable Humphrey Crewe, who stood harmless--to be sure--like a bull
+on the track which it might be unwise to run over.
+
+"He doesn't amount to a soap bubble in a gale," Mr. Flint declared
+contemptuously. "Sometimes I think we made a great mistake to notice
+him.
+
+"We haven't noticed him," said Mr. Vane; "the newspapers have."
+
+Mr. Flint brushed this distinction aside.
+
+"That," he said irritably, "and letting Tooting go--"
+
+The Honourable Hilary's eyes began to grow red. In former days Mr. Flint
+had not often questioned his judgment.
+
+"There's one thing more I wanted to mention to you," said the chief
+counsel. "In past years I have frequently drawn your attention to that
+section of the act of consolidation which declares that rates and fares
+existing at the time of its passage shall not be increased."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Flint, impatiently, "well, what of it?"
+
+"Only this," replied the Honourable Hilary, "you disregarded my advice,
+and the rates on many things are higher than they were."
+
+"Upon my word, Vane," said Mr. Flint, "I wish you'd chosen some other
+day to croak. What do you want me to do? Put all the rates back because
+this upstart politician Crewe is making a noise? Who's going to dig up
+that section?"
+
+"Somebody has dug it up," said Mr. Vane:
+
+This was the last straw.
+
+"Speak out, man!" he cried. "What are you leading up to?"
+
+"Just this," answered the Honourable Hilary; "that the Gaylord Lumber
+Company are going to bring suit under that section."
+
+Mr. Flint rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, and paced the room
+twice.
+
+"Have they got a case?" he demanded.
+
+"It looks a little that way tome," said Mr. Vane. "I'm not prepared to
+give a definite opinion as yet."
+
+Mr. Flint measured the room twice again.
+
+"Did that old fool Hammer stumble on to this?"
+
+"Hammer's sick," said Mr. Vane; "they say he's got Bright's disease. My
+son discovered that section."
+
+There was a certain ring of pride in the Honourable Hilary's voice, and
+a lifting of the head as he pronounced the words "my son," which did not
+escape Mr. Flint. The railroad president walked slowly to the arm of the
+chair in which his chief counsel was seated, and stood looking down
+at him. But the Honourable Hilary appeared unconscious of what was
+impending.
+
+"Your son!" exclaimed Mr. Flint. "So your son, the son of the man who
+has been my legal adviser and confidant and friend for thirty years, is
+going to join the Crewel and Tootings in their assaults on established
+decency and order! He's out for cheap political preferment, too, is he?
+By thunder! I thought that he had some such thing in his mind when he
+came in here and threw his pass in my face and took that Meader suit. I
+don't mind telling you that he's the man I've been afraid of all along.
+He's got a head on him--I saw that at the start. I trusted to you to
+control him, and this is how you do it."
+
+It was characteristic of the Honourable Hilary, when confronting an
+angry man, to grow cooler as the other's temper increased.
+
+"I don't want to control him," he said.
+
+"I guess you couldn't," retorted Mr. Flint.
+
+"That's a better way of putting it," replied the Honourable Hilary, "I
+couldn't."
+
+The chief counsel for the Northeastern Railroads got up and went to
+the window, where he stood for some time with his back turned to the
+president. Then Hilary Vane faced about.
+
+"Mr. Flint," he began, in his peculiar deep and resonant voice, "you've
+said some things to-day that I won't forget. I want to tell you, first
+of all, that I admire my son."
+
+"I thought so," Mr. Flint interrupted.
+
+"And more than that," the Honourable Hilary continued, "I prophesy that
+the time will come when you'll admire him. Austen Vane never did an
+underhanded thing in his life--or committed a mean action. He's be'n
+wild, but he's always told me the truth. I've done him injustice a
+good many times, but I won't stand up and listen to another man do him
+injustice." Here he paused, and picked up his bag. "I'm going down to
+Ripton to write out my resignation as counsel for your roads, and as
+soon as you can find another man to act, I shall consider it accepted."
+
+It is difficult to put down on paper the sensations of the president of
+the Northeastern Railroads as he listened to these words from a man with
+whom he had been in business relations for over a quarter of a century,
+a man upon whose judgment he had always relied implicitly, who had been
+a strong fortress in time of trouble. Such sentences had an incendiary,
+blasphemous ring on Hilary Vane's lips--at first. It was as if the sky
+had fallen, and the Northeastern had been wiped out of existence.
+
+Mr. Flint's feelings were, in a sense, akin to those of a traveller
+by sea who wakens out of a sound sleep in his cabin, with peculiar and
+unpleasant sensations, which he gradually discovers are due to cold
+water, and he realizes that the boat on which he is travelling is
+sinking.
+
+The Honourable Hilary, with his bag, was halfway to the door, when Mr.
+Flint crossed the room in three strides and seized him by the arm.
+
+"Hold on, Vane," he said, speaking with some difficulty; "I'm--I'm a
+little upset this morning, and my temper got the best of me. You and I
+have been good friends for too many years for us to part this way. Sit
+down a minute, for God's sake, and let's cool off. I didn't intend to
+say what I did. I apologize."
+
+Mr. Flint dropped his counsel's arm, and pulled out a handkerchief, and
+mopped his face. "Sit down, Hilary," he said.
+
+The Honourable Hilary's tight lips trembled. Only three or four times in
+their long friendship had the president made use of his first name.
+
+"You wouldn't leave me in the lurch now, Hilary," Mr. Flint continued,
+"when all this nonsense is in the air? Think of the effect such an
+announcement would have! Everybody knows and respects you, and we can't
+do without your advice and counsel. But I won't put it on that ground.
+I'd never forgive myself, as long as I lived, if I lost one of my oldest
+and most valued personal friends in this way."
+
+The Honourable Hilary looked at Mr. Flint, and sat down. He began to cut
+a piece of Honey Dew, but his hand shook. It was difficult, as we know,
+for him to give expression to his feelings.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+Half an hour later Victoria, from under the awning of the little
+balcony in front of her mother's sitting room, saw her father come out
+bareheaded into the sun and escort the Honourable Hilary Vane to his
+buggy. This was an unwonted proceeding.
+
+Victoria loved to sit in that balcony, a book lying neglected in her
+lap, listening to the summer sounds: the tinkle of distant cattle bells,
+the bass note of a hurrying bee, the strangely compelling song of the
+hermit-thrush, which made her breathe quickly; the summer wind, stirring
+wantonly, was prodigal with perfumes gathered from the pines and
+the sweet June clover in the fields and the banks of flowers; in
+the distance, across the gentle foreground of the hills, Sawanec
+beckoned--did Victoria but raise her eyes!--to a land of enchantment.
+
+The appearance of her father and Hilary had broken her reverie, and a
+new thought, like a pain, had clutched her. The buggy rolled slowly down
+the drive, and Mr. Flint, staring after it a moment, went in the house.
+After a few minutes he emerged again, an old felt hat on his head which
+he was wont to wear in the country and a stick in his hand. Without
+raising his eyes, he started slowly across the lawn; and to Victoria,
+leaning forward intently over the balcony rail, there seemed an unwonted
+lack of purpose in his movements. Usually he struck out briskly in
+the direction of the pastures where his prize Guernseys were feeding,
+stopping on the way to pick up the manager of his farm. There are signs,
+unknown to men, which women read, and Victoria felt her heart beating,
+as she turned and entered the sitting room through the French window. A
+trained nurse was softly closing the door of the bedroom on the right.
+
+"Mrs. Flint is asleep," she said.
+
+"I am going out for a little while, Miss Oliver," Victoria answered, and
+the nurse returned a gentle smile of understanding.
+
+Victoria, descending the stairs, hastily pinned on a hat which she kept
+in the coat closet, and hurried across the lawn in the direction Mr.
+Flint had taken. Reaching the pine grove, thinned by a famous landscape
+architect, she paused involuntarily to wonder again at the ultramarine
+of Sawanec through the upright columns of the trunks under the high
+canopy of boughs. The grove was on a plateau, which was cut on the side
+nearest the mountain by the line of a gray stone wall, under which
+the land fell away sharply. Mr. Flint was seated on a bench, his hands
+clasped across his stick, and as she came softly over the carpet of the
+needles he did not hear her until she stood beside him.
+
+"You didn't tell me that you were going for a walk," she said
+reproachfully.
+
+He started, and dropped his stick. She stooped quickly, picked it up for
+him, and settled herself at his side.
+
+"I--I didn't expect to go, Victoria," he answered.
+
+"You see," she said, "it's useless to try to slip away. I saw you from
+the balcony."
+
+"How's your mother feeling?" he asked.
+
+"She's asleep. She seems better to me since she's come back to
+Fairview."
+
+Mr. Flint stared at the mountain with unseeing eyes.
+
+"Father," said Victoria, "don't you think you ought to stay up here at
+least a week, and rest? I think so."
+
+"No," he said, "no. There's a directors' meeting of a trust company
+to-morrow which I have to attend. I'm not tired."
+
+Victoria shook her head, smiling at him with serious eyes.
+
+"I don't believe you know when you are tired," she declared. "I can't
+see the good of all these directors' meetings. Why don't you retire, and
+live the rest of your life in peace? You've got--money enough, and even
+if you haven't," she added, with the little quiver of earnestness that
+sometimes came into her voice, "we could sell this big house and go back
+to the farmhouse to live. We used to be so happy there."
+
+He turned abruptly, and fixed upon her a steadfast, searching stare that
+held, nevertheless, a strange tenderness in it.
+
+"You don't care for all this, do you, Victoria?" he demanded, waving his
+stick to indicate the domain of Fairview.
+
+She laughed gently, and raised her eyes to the green roof of the
+needles.
+
+"If we could only keep the pine grove!" she sighed. "Do you remember
+what good times we had in the farmhouse, when you and I used to go off
+for whole days together?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Flint, "yes."
+
+"We don't do that any more," said Victoria. "It's only a little drive
+and a walk, now and then. And they seem to be growing--scarcer."
+
+Mr. Flint moved uneasily, and made an attempt to clear his voice.
+
+"I know it," he said, and further speech seemingly failed him. Victoria
+had the greater courage of the two.
+
+"Why don't we?" she asked.
+
+"I've often thought of it," he replied, still seeking his words with
+difficulty. "I find myself with more to do every year, Victoria, instead
+of less."
+
+"Then why don't you give it up?"
+
+"Why?" he asked, "why? Sometimes I wish with my whole soul I could give
+it up. I've always said that you had more sense than most women, but
+even you could not understand."
+
+"I could understand," said Victoria.
+
+He threw at her another glance,--a ring in her words proclaimed their
+truth in spite of his determined doubt. In her eyes--had he but known
+it!--was a wisdom that exceeded his.
+
+"You don't realize what you're saying," he exclaimed; "I can't leave the
+helm."
+
+"Isn't it," she said, "rather the power that is so hard to relinquish?"
+
+The feelings of Augustus Flint when he heard this question were of
+a complex nature. It was the second time that day he had been
+shocked,--the first being when Hilary Vane had unexpectedly defended his
+son. The word Victoria had used, power, had touched him on the quick.
+What had she meant by it? Had she been his wife and not his daughter, he
+would have flown into a rage. Augustus Flint was not a man given to the
+psychological amusement of self-examination; he had never analyzed his
+motives. He had had little to do with women, except Victoria. The Rose
+of Sharon knew him as the fountainhead from which authority and money
+flowed, but Victoria, since her childhood, had been his refuge from
+care, and in the haven of her companionship he had lost himself for
+brief moments of his life. She was the one being he really loved, with
+whom he consulted on such affairs of importance as he felt to be within
+her scope and province,--the cattle, the men on the place outside of the
+household, the wisdom of buying the Baker farm; bequests to charities,
+paintings, the library; and recently he had left to her judgment the
+European baths and the kind of treatment which her mother had required.
+Victoria had consulted with the physicians in Paris, and had made these
+decisions herself. From a child she had never shown a disposition to
+evade responsibility.
+
+To his intimate business friends, Mr. Flint was in the habit of speaking
+of her as his right-hand man, but she was circumscribed by her sex,--or
+rather by Mr. Flint's idea of her sex,--and it never occurred to him
+that she could enter into the larger problems of his life. For this
+reason he had never asked himself whether such a state of affairs would
+be desirable. In reality it was her sympathy he craved, and such an
+interpretation of himself as he chose to present to her.
+
+So her question was a shock. He suddenly beheld his daughter
+transformed, a new personality who had been thinking, and thinking along
+paths which he had never cared to travel.
+
+"The power!" he repeated. "What do you mean by that, Victoria?"
+
+She sat for a moment on the end of the bench, gazing at him with a
+questioning, searching look which he found disconcerting. What had
+happened to his daughter? He little guessed the tumult in her breast.
+She herself could not fully understand the strange turn the conversation
+had taken towards the gateway of the vital things.
+
+"It is natural for men to love power, isn't it?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Mr. Flint, uneasily. "I don't know what you're
+driving at, Victoria."
+
+"You control the lives and fortunes of a great many people."
+
+"That's just it," answered Mr. Flint, with a dash at this opening; "my
+responsibilities are tremendous. I can't relinquish them."
+
+"There is no--younger man to take your place? Not that I mean you are
+old, father," she continued, "but you have worked very hard all your
+life, and deserve a holiday the rest of it."
+
+"I don't know of any younger man," said Mr. Flint. "I don't mean to say
+I'm the only person in the world who can safeguard the stockholders'
+interests in the Northeastern. But I know the road and its problems. I
+don't understand this from you, Victoria. It doesn't sound like you.
+And as for letting go the helm now," he added, with a short laugh tinged
+with bitterness, "I'd be posted all over the country as a coward."
+
+"Why?" asked Victoria, in the same quiet way.
+
+"Why? Because a lot of discontented and disappointed people who have
+made failures of their lives are trying to give me as much trouble as
+they can."
+
+"Are you sure they are all disappointed and discontented, father?" she
+said.
+
+"What," exclaimed Mr. Flint, "you ask me that question? You, my own
+daughter, about people who are trying to make me out a rascal!"
+
+"I don't think they are trying to make you out a rascal--at least most
+of them are not," said Victoria. "I don't think the--what you might call
+the personal aspect enters in with the honest ones."
+
+Mr. Flint was inexpressibly amazed. He drew a long breath.
+
+"Who are the honest ones?" he cried. "Do you mean to say that you, my
+own daughter, are defending these charlatans?"
+
+"Listen, father," said Victoria. "I didn't mean to worry you, I didn't
+mean to bring up that subject to-day. Come--let's go for a walk and see
+the new barn."
+
+But Mr. Flint remained firmly planted on the bench.
+
+"Then you did intend to bring up the subject--some day?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Victoria. She sat down again. "I have often wanted to
+hear--your side of it."
+
+"Whose side have you heard?" demanded Mr. Flint.
+
+A crimson flush crept into her cheek, but her father was too disturbed
+to notice it.
+
+"You know," she said gently, "I go about the country a good deal, and I
+hear people talking,--farmers, and labourers, and people in the country
+stores who don't know that I'm your daughter."
+
+"What do they say?" asked Mr. Flint, leaning forward eagerly and
+aggressively.
+
+Victoria hesitated, turning over the matter in her mind.
+
+"You understand, I am merely repeating what they say--"
+
+"Yes, yes," he interrupted, "I want to know how far this thing has gone
+among them."
+
+"Well," continued Victoria, looking at him bravely, "as nearly as I
+can remember their argument it is this: that the Northeastern Railroads
+control the politics of the State for their own benefit. That you
+appoint the governors and those that go to the Legislature, and
+that--Hilary Vane gets them elected. They say that he manages a
+political machine--that's the right word, isn't it?--for you. And that
+no laws can be passed of which you do not approve. And they say that the
+politicians whom Hilary Vane commands, and the men whom they put into
+office are all beholden to the railroad, and are of a sort which good
+citizens cannot support. They say that the railroad has destroyed the
+people's government."
+
+Mr. Flint, for the moment forgetting or ignoring the charges, glanced
+at her in astonishment. The arraignment betrayed an amount of thought on
+the subject which he had not suspected.
+
+"Upon my word, Victoria," he said, "you ought to take the stump for
+Humphrey Crewe."
+
+She reached out with a womanly gesture, and laid her hand upon his.
+
+"I am only telling you--what I hear," she said.
+
+"Won't you explain to me the way you look at it? These people don't
+all seem to be dishonest men or charlatans. Some of them, I know, are
+honest." And her colour rose again.
+
+"Then they are dupes and fools," Mr. Flint declared vehemently. "I don't
+know how to explain it to you the subject is too vast, too far-reaching.
+One must have had some business experience to grasp it. I don't mean to
+say you're not intelligent, but I'm at a loss where to begin with you.
+Looked at from their limited point of view, it would seem as if they had
+a case. I don't mean your friend, Humphrey Crewe--it's anything to get
+office with him. Why, he came up here and begged me--"
+
+"I wasn't thinking of Humphrey Crewe," said Victoria. Mr. Flint gave an
+ejaculation of distaste.
+
+"He's no more of a reformer than I am. And now we've got that wild
+son of Hilary Vane's--the son of one of my oldest friends and
+associates--making trouble. He's bitten with this thing, too, and
+he's got some brains in his head. Why," exclaimed Mr. Flint, stopping
+abruptly and facing his daughter, "you know him! He's the one who drove
+you home that evening from Crewe's party."
+
+"I remember," Victoria faltered, drawing her hand away.
+
+"I wasn't very civil to him that night, but I've always been on the
+lookout for him. I sent him a pass once, and he came up here and gave me
+as insolent a talking to as I ever had in my life."
+
+How well Victoria recalled that first visit, and how she had wondered
+about the cause of it! So her father and Austen Vane had quarrelled from
+the first.
+
+"I'm sure he didn't mean to be insolent," she said, in a low voice. "He
+isn't at all that sort."
+
+"I don't know what sort he is, except that he isn't my sort," Mr. Flint
+retorted, intent upon the subject which had kindled his anger earlier in
+the day. "I don't pretend to understand him. He could probably have been
+counsel for the road if he had behaved decently. Instead, he starts in
+with suits against us. He's hit upon something now."
+
+The president of the Northeastern dug savagely into the ground with his
+stick, and suddenly perceived that his daughter had her face turned away
+from his, towards the mountain.
+
+"Well, I won't bore you with that."
+
+She turned with a look in her eyes that bewildered him.
+
+"You're not--boring me," she said.
+
+"I didn't intend to go into all that," he explained more calmly, "but
+the last few days have been trying, we've got to expect the wind to blow
+from all directions."
+
+Victoria smiled at him faintly.
+
+"I have told you," she said, "that what you need is a trip abroad.
+Perhaps some day you will remember it."
+
+"Maybe I'll go in the autumn," he answered, smiling back at her. "These
+little flurries don't amount to anything more than mosquito-bites--only
+mosquitoes are irritating. You and I understand each other, Victoria,
+and now listen. I'll give you the broad view of this subject, the view
+I've got to take, and I've lived in the world and seen more of it than
+some folks who think they know it all. I am virtually the trustee for
+thousands of stockholders, many of whom are widows and orphans. These
+people are innocent; they rely on my ability, and my honesty, for their
+incomes. Few men who have not had experience in railroad management know
+one-tenth of the difficulties and obstructions encountered by a railroad
+president who strives to do his duty by the road. My business is to run
+the Northeastern as economically as is consistent with good service and
+safety, and to give the stockholders the best return for their money.
+I am the steward--and so long as I am the steward," he exclaimed, "I'm
+going to do what I think is right, taking into consideration all the
+difficulties that confront me."
+
+He got up and took a turn or two on the pine-needles. Victoria regarded
+him in silence. He appeared to her at that moment the embodiment of
+the power he represented. Force seemed to emanate from him, and she
+understood more clearly than ever how, from a poor boy on an obscure
+farm in Truro, he had risen to his present height.
+
+"I don't say the service is what it should be," he went on, "but give
+me time--give me time. With all this prosperity in the country we can't
+handle the freight. We haven't got cars enough, tracks enough, engines
+enough. I won't go into that with you. But I do expect you to understand
+this: that politicians are politicians; they have always been corrupt
+as long as I have known them, and in my opinion they always will be.
+The Northeastern is the largest property holder in the State, pays the
+biggest tax, and has the most at stake. The politicians could ruin us in
+a single session of the Legislature--and what's more, they would do it.
+We'd have to be paying blackmail all the time to prevent measures that
+would compel us to go out of business. This is a fact, and not a theory.
+What little influence I exert politically I have to maintain in order to
+protect the property of my stockholders from annihilation. It isn't to
+be supposed," he concluded, "that I'm going to see the State turned over
+to a man like Humphrey Crewe. I wish to Heaven that this and every other
+State had a George Washington for governor and a majority of Robert
+Morrises in the Legislature. If they exist, in these days, the people
+won't elect 'em--that's all. The kind of man the people will elect,
+if you let 'em alone, is--a man who brings in a bill and comes to you
+privately and wants you to buy him off."
+
+"Oh, father," Victoria cried, "I can't believe that of the people I see
+about here! They seem so kind and honest and high-principled."
+
+Mr. Flint gave a short laugh.
+
+"They're dupes, I tell you. They're at the mercy of any political
+schemer who thinks it worth his while to fool 'em. Take Leith, for
+instance. There's a man over there who has controlled every office in
+that town for twenty-five years or more. He buys and sells votes and
+credentials like cattle. His name is Job Braden."
+
+"Why," said Victoria, "I saw him at Humphrey Crewe's garden-party."
+
+"I guess you did," said Mr. Flint, "and I guess Humphrey Crewe saw him
+before he went."
+
+Victoria was silent, the recollection of the talk between Mr. Tooting
+and Mr. Crewe running through her mind, and Mr. Tooting's saying that
+he had done "dirty things" for the Northeastern. She felt that this
+was something she could not tell her father, nor could she answer his
+argument with what Tom Gaylord had said. She could not, indeed, answer
+Mr. Flint's argument at all; the subject, as he had declared, being too
+vast for her. And moreover, as she well knew, Mr. Flint was a man whom
+other men could not easily answer; he bore them down, even as he
+had borne her down. Involuntarily her mind turned to Austen, and she
+wondered what he had said; she wondered how he would have answered her
+father--whether he could have answered him. And she knew not what to
+think. Could it be right, in a position of power and responsibility, to
+acknowledge evil and deal with it as evil? That was, in effect, the gist
+of Mr. Flint's contention. She did not know. She had never (strangely
+enough, she thought) sought before to analyze the ethical side of her
+father's character. One aspect of him she had shared with her mother,
+that he was a tower of defence and strength, and that his name alone had
+often been sufficient to get difficult things done.
+
+Was he right in this? And were his opponents charlatans, or dupes, or
+idealists who could never be effective? Mr. Crewe wanted an office; Tom
+Gaylord had a suit against the road, and Austen Vane was going to bring
+that suit! What did she really know of Austen Vane? But her soul cried
+out treason at this, and she found herself repeating, with intensity, "I
+believe in him! I believe in him!" She would have given worlds to have
+been able to stand up before her father and tell him that Austen would
+not bring the suit at this time that Austen had not allowed his name to
+be mentioned for office in this connection, and had spurned Mr. Crewe's
+advances. But she had not seen Austen since February.
+
+What was his side of it? He had never told her, and she respected
+his motives--yet, what was his side? Fresh from the inevitably deep
+impressions which her father's personality had stamped upon her, she
+wondered if Austen could cope with the argument before which she had
+been so helpless.
+
+The fact that she made of each of these two men the embodiment of
+a different and opposed idea did not occur to Victoria until that
+afternoon. Unconsciously, each had impersonated the combatants in a
+struggle which was going on in her own breast. Her father himself,
+instinctively, had chosen Austen Vane for his antagonist without knowing
+that she had an interest in him. Would Mr. Flint ever know? Or would the
+time come when she would be forced to take a side? The blood mounted to
+her temples as she put the question from her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. MR. JABE JENNEY ENTERTAINS
+
+Mr. Flint had dropped the subject with his last remark, nor had Victoria
+attempted to pursue it. Bewildered and not a little depressed (a new
+experience for her), she had tried to hide her feelings. He, too,
+was harassed and tired, and she had drawn him away from the bench and
+through the pine woods to the pastures to look at his cattle and
+the model barn he was building for them. At half-past three, in her
+runabout, she had driven him to the East Tunbridge station, where he
+had taken the train for New York. He had waved her a good-by from the
+platform, and smiled: and for a long time, as she drove through the
+silent roads, his words and his manner remained as vivid as though he
+were still by her side. He was a man who had fought and conquered, and
+who fought on for the sheer love of it.
+
+It was a blue day in the hill country. At noon the clouds had crowned
+Sawanec--a sure sign of rain; the rain had come and gone, a June
+downpour, and the overcast sky lent (Victoria fancied) to the
+country-side a new atmosphere. The hills did not look the same. It was
+the kind of a day when certain finished country places are at their
+best--or rather seem best to express their meaning; a day for an event;
+a day set strangely apart with an indefinable distinction. Victoria
+recalled such days in her youth when weddings or garden-parties had
+brought canopies into service, or news had arrived to upset the routine
+of the household. Raindrops silvered the pines, and the light winds
+shook them down on the road in a musical shower.
+
+Victoria was troubled, as she drove, over a question which had recurred
+to her many times since her talk that morning: had she been hypocritical
+in not telling her father that she had seen more of Austen Vane than she
+had implied by her silence? For many years Victoria had chosen her own
+companions; when the custom had begun, her mother had made a protest
+which Mr. Flint had answered with a laugh; he thought Victoria's
+judgment better than his wife's. Ever since that time the Rose of Sharon
+had taken the attitude of having washed her hands of responsibility
+for a course which must inevitably lead to ruin. She discussed some of
+Victoria's acquaintances with Mrs. Pomfret and other intimates; and
+Mrs. Pomfret had lost no time in telling Mrs. Flint about her daughter's
+sleigh-ride at the State capital with a young man from Ripton who seemed
+to be seeing entirely too much of Victoria. Mrs. Pomfret had marked
+certain danger signs, and as a conscientious woman was obliged to speak
+of them. Mrs. Pomfret did not wish to see Victoria make a mesalliance.
+
+"My dear Fanny," Mrs. Flint had cried, lifting herself from the lace
+pillows, "what do you expect me to do especially when I have nervous
+prostration? I've tried to do my duty by Victoria--goodness knows--to
+bring her up--among the sons and daughters of the people who are my
+friends. They tell me that she has temperament--whatever that may be.
+I'm sure I never found out, except that the best thing to do with people
+who have it is to let them alone and pray for them. When we go abroad
+I like the Ritz and Claridge's and that new hotel in Rome. I see my
+friends there. Victoria, if you please, likes the little hotels in
+the narrow streets where you see nobody, and where you are most
+uncomfortable." (Miss Oliver, it's time for those seven drops.) "As I
+was saying, Victoria's enigmatical hopeless, although a French comtesse
+who wouldn't look at anybody at the baths this spring became wild about
+her, and a certain type of elderly English peer always wants to marry
+her. (I suppose I do look pale to-day.) Victoria loves art, and really
+knows something about it. She adores to potter around those queer places
+abroad where you see strange English and Germans and Americans with red
+books in their hands. What am I to do about this young man of whom you
+speak--whatever his name is? I suppose Victoria will marry him--it would
+be just like her. But what can I do, Fanny? I can't manage her, and it's
+no use going to her father. He would only laugh. Augustus actually told
+me once there was no such thing as social position in this country!"
+
+"American men of affairs," Mrs. Pomfret judicially replied, "are too
+busy to consider position. They make it, my dear, as a by-product." Mrs.
+Pomfret smiled, and mentally noted this aptly technical witticism for
+use again.
+
+"I suppose they do," assented the Rose of Sharon, "and their daughters
+sometimes squander it, just as their sons squander their money."
+
+"I'm not at all sure that Victoria is going to squander it," was Mrs.
+Pomfret's comforting remark. "She is too much of a personage, and she
+has great wealth behind her. I wish Alice were more like her, in
+some ways. Alice is so helpless, she has to be prodded and prompted
+continually. I can't leave her for a moment. And when she is married,
+I'm going into a sanatorium for six months."
+
+"I hear," said Mrs. Flint, "that Humphrey Crewe is quite epris."
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey!" exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret, "he can think of nothing
+else but politics."
+
+But we are not to take up again, as yet, the deeds of the crafty
+Ulysses. In order to relate an important conversation between Mrs.
+Pomfret and the Rose of Sharon, we have gone back a week in this
+history, and have left Victoria--absorbed in her thoughts--driving over
+a wood road of many puddles that led to the Four Corners, near Avalon.
+The road climbed the song-laden valley of a brook, redolent now with
+scents of which the rain had robbed the fern, but at length Victoria
+reached an upland where the young corn was springing from the black
+furrows that followed the contours of the hillsides, where the big-eyed
+cattle lay under the heavy maples and oaks or gazed at her across the
+fences.
+
+Victoria drew up in front of an unpainted farm-house straggling beside
+the road, a farm-house which began with the dignity of fluted pilasters
+and ended in a tumble-down open shed filled with a rusty sleigh and
+a hundred nondescript articles--some of which seemed to be moving.
+Intently studying this phenomenon from her runabout, she finally
+discovered that the moving objects were children; one of whom, a little
+girl, came out and stared at her.
+
+"How do you do, Mary?" said Victoria. "Isn't your name Mary?"
+
+The child nodded.
+
+"I remember you," she said; "you're the rich lady, mother met at the
+party, that got father a job."
+
+Victoria smiled. And such was the potency of the smile that the child
+joined in it.
+
+"Where's brother?" asked Victoria. "He must be quite grown up since we
+gave him lemonade."
+
+Mary pointed to the woodshed.
+
+"O dear!" exclaimed Victoria, leaping out of the runabout and hitching
+her horse, "aren't you afraid some of those sharp iron things will
+fall on him?" She herself rescued brother from what seemed untimely and
+certain death, and set him down in safety in the middle of the grass
+plot. He looked up at her with the air of one whose dignity has been
+irretrievably injured, and she laughed as she reached down and pulled
+his nose. Then his face, too, became wreathed in smiles.
+
+"Mary, how old are you?"
+
+"Seven, ma'am."
+
+"And I'm five," Mary's sister chimed in.
+
+"I want you to promise me," said Victoria, "that you won't let brother
+play in that shed. And the very next time I come I'll bring you both the
+nicest thing I can think of."
+
+Mary began to dance.
+
+"We'll promise, we'll promise!" she cried for both, and at this juncture
+Mrs. Fitch, who had run from the washtub to get into her Sunday waist,
+came out of the door.
+
+"So you hain't forgot me!" she exclaimed. "I was almost afeard you'd
+forgot me."
+
+"I've been away," said Victoria, gently taking the woman's hand and
+sitting down on the doorstep.
+
+"Don't set there," said Mrs. Fitch; "come into the parlour. You'll dirty
+your dress--Mary!" This last in admonition.
+
+"Let her stay where she is," said Victoria, putting her arm around the
+child. "The dress washes, and it's so nice outside."
+
+"You rich folks certainly do have strange notions," declared Mrs. Fitch,
+fingering the flounce on Victoria's skirt, which formed the subject of
+conversation for the next few minutes.
+
+"How are you getting on?" Victoria asked at length.
+
+A look of pain came into the woman's eyes.
+
+"You've be'n so good to us, and done so much gettin' Eben a job on your
+father's place, that I don't feel as if I ought to lie to you. He done
+it again--on Saturday night. First time in three months. The manager up
+at Fairview don't know it. Eben was all right Monday."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Victoria, simply. "Was it bad?"
+
+"It might have be'n. Young Mr. Vane is stayin' up at Jabe Jenney's--you
+know, the first house as you turn off the hill road. Mr. Vane heard some
+way what you'd done for us, and he saw Eben in Ripton Saturday night,
+and made him get into his buggy and come home. I guess he had a time
+with Eben. Mr. Vane, he came around here on Sunday, and gave him as
+stiff a talkin' to as he ever got, I guess. He told Eben he'd ought to
+be ashamed of himself goin' back on folks who was tryin' to help him pay
+his mortgage. And I'll say this for Eben, he was downright ashamed. He
+told Mr. Vane he could lick him if he caught him drunk again, and Mr.
+Vane said he would. My, what a pretty colour you've got to-day."
+
+Victoria rose. "I'm going to send you down some washing," she said.
+
+Mrs. Fitch insisted upon untying the horse, while Victoria renewed her
+promises to the children.
+
+There were two ways of going back to Fairview,--a long and a short
+way,--and the long way led by Jabe Jenney's farm. Victoria came to the
+fork in the road, paused,--and took the long way. Several times after
+this, she pulled her horse down to a walk, and was apparently on the
+point of turning around again: a disinterested observer in a farm wagon,
+whom she passed, thought that she had missed her road. "The first house
+after you turn off the hill road," Mrs. Fitch had said. She could still,
+of course, keep on the hill road, but that would take her to Weymouth,
+and she would never get home.
+
+It is useless to go into the reasons for this act of Victoria's. She did
+not know them herself. The nearer Victoria got to Mr. Jenney's, the more
+she wished herself back at the forks. Suppose Mrs. Fitch told him of
+her visit! Perhaps she could pass the Jenneys' unnoticed. The chances of
+this, indeed, seemed highly favourable, and it was characteristic of her
+sex that she began to pray fervently to this end. Then she turned off
+the hill road, feeling as though she had but to look back to see the
+smoke of the burning bridges.
+
+Victoria remembered the farm now; for Mr. Jabe Jenney, being a person
+of importance in the town of Leith, had a house commensurate with
+his estate. The house was not large, but its dignity was akin to Mr.
+Jenney's position: it was painted a spotless white, and not a shingle or
+a nail was out of place. Before it stood the great trees planted by Mr.
+Jenney's ancestors, which Victoria and other people had often paused on
+their drives to admire, and on the hillside was a little, old-fashioned
+flower garden; lilacs clustered about the small-paned windows, and a
+bitter-sweet clung to the roof and pillars of the porch. These details
+of the place (which she had never before known as Mr. Jenney's)
+flashed into Victoria's mind before she caught sight of the great trees
+themselves looming against the sombre blue-black of the sky: the wind,
+rising fitfully, stirred the leaves with a sound like falling waters,
+and a great drop fell upon her cheek. Victoria raised her eyes in alarm,
+and across the open spaces, toward the hills which piled higher and
+higher yet against the sky, was a white veil of rain. She touched with
+her whip the shoulder of her horse, recalling a farm a quarter of a mile
+beyond--she must not be caught here!
+
+More drops followed, and the great trees seemed to reach out to her a
+protecting shelter. She spoke to the horse. Beyond the farm-house, on
+the other side of the road, was a group of gray, slate-shingled barns,
+and here two figures confronted her. One was that of the comfortable,
+middle-aged Mr. Jenney himself, standing on the threshold of the barn,
+and laughing heartily, and crying: "Hang on to him That's right--get him
+by the nose!"
+
+The person thus addressed had led a young horse to water at the spring
+which bubbled out of a sugar-kettle hard by; and the horse, quivering,
+had barely touched his nostrils to the water when he reared backward,
+jerking the halter-rope taut. Then followed, with bewildering rapidity,
+a series of manoeuvres on the part of the horse to get away, and on the
+part of the person to prevent this, and inasmuch as the struggle took
+place in the middle of the road, Victoria had to stop. By the time the
+person had got the horse by the nose,--shutting off his wind,--the rain
+was coming down in earnest.
+
+"Drive right in," cried Mr. Jenney, hospitably; "you'll get wet. Look
+out, Austen, there's a lady comin'. Why, it's Miss Flint!"
+
+Victoria knew that her face must be on fire. She felt Austen Vane's
+quick glance upon her, but she did not dare look to the right or left as
+she drove into the barn. There seemed no excuse for any other course.
+
+"How be you?" said Mr. Jenney; "kind of lucky you happened along here,
+wahn't it? You'd have been soaked before you got to Harris's. How be
+you? I ain't seen you since that highfalutin party up to Crewe's."
+
+"It's very kind of you to let me come in, Mr. Jenney."
+
+"But I have a rain-coat and a boot, and--I really ought to be going on."
+
+Here Victoria produced the rain-coat from under the seat. The garment
+was a dark blue, and Mr. Jenney felt of its gossamer weight with a
+good-natured contempt.
+
+"That wouldn't be any more good than so much cheesecloth," he declared,
+nodding in the direction of the white sheet of the storm. "Would it,
+Austen."
+
+She turned her head slowly and met Austen's eyes. Fortunate that the
+barn was darkened, that he might not see how deep the colour mantling in
+her temples! His head was bare, and she had never really marked before
+the superb setting of it on his shoulders, for he wore a gray flannel
+shirt open at the neck, revealing a bronzed throat. His sinewy
+arms--weather-burned, too--were bare above the elbows.
+
+Explanations of her presence sprang to her lips, but she put them from
+her as subterfuges unworthy of him. She would not attempt to deceive him
+in the least. She had wished to see him again--nor did she analyze her
+motives. Once more beside him, the feeling of confidence, of belief
+in him, rose within her and swept all else away--burned in a swift
+consuming flame the doubts of absence. He took her hand, but she
+withdrew it quickly.
+
+"This is a fortunate accident," he said, "fortunate, at least, for me."
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Jenney will not agree with you," she retorted.
+
+But Mr. Jenney was hitching the horse and throwing a blanket over him.
+Suddenly, before they realized it, the farmer had vanished into the
+storm, and this unexplained desertion of their host gave rise to an
+awkward silence between them, which each for a while strove vainly to
+break. In the great moments of life, trivialities become dwarfed and
+ludicrous, and the burden of such occasions is on the woman.
+
+"So you've taken to farming," she said, "isn't it about haying time?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"We begin next week. And you--you've come back in season for it. I hope
+that your mother is better."
+
+"Yes," replied Victoria, simply, "the baths helped her. But I'm glad to
+get back,--I like my own country so much better,--and especially this
+part of it," she added. "I can bear to be away from New York in the
+winter, but not from Fairview in the summer."
+
+At this instant Mr. Jenney appeared at the barn door bearing a huge
+green umbrella.
+
+"Come over to the house--Mis' Jenney is expectin' you," he said.
+
+Victoria hesitated. To refuse would be ungracious; moreover, she could
+risk no misinterpretation of her acts, and she accepted. Mrs. Jenney met
+her on the doorstep, and conducted her into that sanctum reserved for
+occasions, the parlour, with its Bible, its flat, old-fashioned piano,
+its samplers, its crayon portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Jenney after their
+honeymoon; with its aroma that suggested Sundays and best manners. Mrs.
+Jenney, with incredible rapidity (for her figure was not what it had
+been at the time of the crayon portrait), had got into a black dress,
+over which she wore a spotless apron. She sat in the parlour with her
+guest until Mr. Jenney reappeared with shining face and damp hair.
+
+"You'll excuse me, my dear," said Mrs. Jenney, "but the supper's on the
+stove, and I have to run out now and then."
+
+Mr. Jenney was entertaining. He had the shrewd, humorous outlook upon
+life characteristic of the best type of New England farmer, and Victoria
+got along with him famously. His comments upon his neighbours were
+kindly but incisive, except when the question of spirituous liquors
+occurred to him. Austen Vane he thought the world of, and dwelt upon
+this subject a little longer than Victoria, under the circumstances,
+would have wished.
+
+"He comes out here just like it was home," said Mr. Jenney, "and helps
+with the horses and cows the same as if he wasn't gettin' to be one of
+the greatest lawyers in the State."
+
+"O dear, Mr. Jenney," said Victoria, glancing out of the window, "I'll
+really have to go home. I'm sure it won't stop raining for hours. But
+I shall be perfectly dry in my rain-coat,--no matter how much you may
+despise it."
+
+"You're not a-going to do anything of the kind," cried Mrs. Jenney from
+the doorway. "Supper's all ready, and you're going to walk right in."
+
+"Oh, I really have to go," Victoria exclaimed.
+
+"Now I know it ain't as grand as you'd get at home," said Mr. Jenney.
+"It ain't what we'd give you, Miss Victoria,--that's only simple home
+fare,--it's what you'd give us. It's the honour of having you," he
+added,--and Victoria thought that no courtier could have worded an
+invitation better. She would not be missed at Fairview. Her mother was
+inaccessible at this hour, and the servants would think of her as dining
+at Leith. The picture of the great, lonely house, of the ceremonious
+dinner which awaited her single presence, gave her an irresistible
+longing to sit down with these simple, kindly souls. Austen was the only
+obstacle. He, too, had changed his clothes, and now appeared, smiling
+at her behind Mrs. Jenney. The look of prospective disappointment in the
+good woman's face decided Victoria.
+
+"I'll stay, with pleasure," she said.
+
+Mr. Jenney pronounced grace. Victoria sat across the table from Austen,
+and several times the consciousness of his grave look upon her as she
+talked heightened the colour in her cheek. He said but little during
+the meal. Victoria heard how well Mrs. Jenney's oldest son was doing in
+Springfield, and how the unmarried daughter was teaching, now, in the
+West. Asked about Europe, that land of perpetual mystery to the native
+American, the girl spoke so simply and vividly of some of the wonders
+she had seen that she held the older people entranced long after
+the meal was finished. But at length she observed, with a start, the
+gathering darkness. In the momentary happiness of this experience, she
+had been forgetful.
+
+"I will drive home with you, if you'll allow me," said Austen.
+
+"Oh, no, I really don't need an escort, Mr. Vane. I'm so used to driving
+about at night, I never think of it," she answered.
+
+"Of course he'll drive home with you, dear," said Mrs. Jenney. "And,
+Jabe, you'll hitch up and go and fetch Austen back."
+
+"Certain," Mr. Jenney agreed.
+
+The rain had ceased, and the indistinct outline of the trees and fences
+betrayed the fact that the clouds were already thinning under the moon.
+Austen had lighted the side lamps of the runabout, revealing the shining
+pools on the road as they drove along--for the first few minutes in
+silence.
+
+"It was very good of you to stay," he said; "you do not know how much
+pleasure you have given them."
+
+Her feminine appreciation responded to the tact of this remark: it was
+so distinctly what he should have said.
+
+How delicate, she thought, must be his understanding of her, that he
+should have spoken so!
+
+"I was glad to stay," she answered, in a low voice. "I--enjoyed it,
+too."
+
+"They have very little in their lives," he said, and added, with a
+characteristic touch, "I do not mean to say that your coming would not
+be an event in any household."
+
+She laughed with him, softly, at this sally.
+
+"Not to speak of the visit you are making them," she replied.
+
+"Oh, I'm one of the family," he said; "I come and go. Jabe's is my
+country house, when I can't stand the city any longer."
+
+She saw that he did not intend to tell her why he had left Ripton on
+this occasion. There fell another silence. They were like prisoners,
+and each strove to explore the bounds of their captivity: each sought
+a lawful ground of communication. Victoria suddenly remembered--with an
+access of indignation--her father's words, "I do not know what sort
+he is, but he is not my sort." A while ago, and she had blamed herself
+vehemently for coming to Jabe Jenney's, and now the act had suddenly
+become sanctified in her sight. She did not analyze her feeling for
+Austen, but she was consumed with a fierce desire that justice should be
+done him. "He was honourable--honourable!" she found herself repeating
+under her breath. No man or woman could look into his face, take his
+hand, sit by his side, without feeling that he was as dependable as the
+stars in their courses. And her father should know this, must be made
+to know it. This man was to be distinguished from opportunists and
+self-seekers, from fanatics who strike at random. His chief possession
+was a priceless one--a conscience.
+
+As for Austen, it sufficed him for the moment that he had been lifted,
+by another seeming caprice of fortune, to a seat of torture the agony
+whereof was exquisite. An hour, and only the ceaseless pricking memory
+of it would abide. The barriers had risen higher since he had seen her
+last, but still he might look into her face and know the radiance of her
+presence. Could he only trust himself to guard his tongue! But the heart
+on such occasions will cheat language of its meaning.
+
+"What have you been doing since I saw you last?" she asked. "It seems
+that you still continue to lead a life of violence."
+
+"Sometimes I wish I did," he answered, with a laugh; "the humdrum
+existence of getting practice enough to keep a horse is not the most
+exciting in the world. To what particular deed of violence do you
+refer?"
+
+"The last achievement, which is in every one's mouth, that of assisting
+Mr. Tooting down-stairs."
+
+"I have been defamed," Austen laughed; "he fell down, I believe. But
+as I have a somewhat evil reputation, and as he came out of my entry,
+people draw their own conclusions. I can't imagine who told you that
+story."
+
+"Never mind," she answered. "You see, I have certain sources of
+information about you."
+
+He tingled over this, and puzzled over it so long that she laughed.
+
+"Does that surprise you?" she asked. "I fail to see why I should be
+expected to lose all interest in my friends--even if they appear to have
+lost interest in me."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" he cried so sharply that she wished her words
+unsaid. "You can't mean it! You don't know!"
+
+She trembled at the vigorous passion he put into the words.
+
+"No, I don't mean it," she said gently.
+
+The wind had made a rent in the sheet of the clouds, and through it
+burst the moon in her full glory, flooding field and pasture, and the
+black stretches of pine forest at their feet. Below them the land fell
+away, and fell again to the distant broadening valley, to where a mist
+of white vapour hid the course of the Blue. And beyond, the hills rose
+again, tier upon tier, to the shadowy outline of Sawanec herself against
+the hurrying clouds and the light-washed sky. Victoria, gazing at the
+scene, drew a deep breath, and turned and looked at him in the quick way
+which he remembered so well.
+
+"Sometimes," she said, "it is so beautiful that it hurts to look at it.
+You love it--do you ever feel that way?"
+
+"Yes," he said, but his answer was more than the monosyllable. "I can
+see that mountain from my window, and it seriously interferes with my
+work. I really ought to move into another building."
+
+There was a little catch in her laugh.
+
+"And I watch it," she continued, "I watch it from the pine grove by the
+hour. Sometimes it smiles, and sometimes it is sad, and sometimes it is
+far, far away, so remote and mysterious that I wonder if it is ever to
+come back and smile again."
+
+"Have you ever seen the sunrise from its peak?" said Austen.
+
+"No. Oh, how I should love to see it!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, you would like to see it," he answered simply. He would like to
+take her there, to climb, with her hand in his, the well-known paths in
+the darkness, to reach the summit in the rosy-fingered dawn: to see her
+stand on the granite at his side in the full glory of the red light, and
+to show her a world which she was henceforth to share with him.
+
+Some such image, some such vision of his figure on the rock, may have
+been in her mind as she turned her face again toward the mountain.
+
+"You are cold," he said, reaching for the mackintosh in the back of the
+trap.
+
+"No," she said. But she stopped the horse and acquiesced by slipping her
+arms into the coat, and he felt upon his hand the caress of a stray wisp
+of hair at her neck. Under a spell of thought and feeling, seemingly
+laid by the magic of the night, neither spoke for a space. And then
+Victoria summoned her forces, and turned to him again. Her tone bespoke
+the subtle intimacy that always sprang up between them, despite bars and
+conventions.
+
+"I was sure you would understand why I wrote you from New York," she
+said, "although I hesitated a long time before doing so. It was very
+stupid of me not to realize the scruples which made you refuse to be a
+candidate for the governorship, and I wanted to--to apologize."
+
+"It wasn't necessary," said Austen, "but--I valued the note." The
+words seemed so absurdly inadequate to express his appreciation of the
+treasure which he carried with him, at that moment, in his pocket. "But,
+really," he added, smiling at her in the moonlight, "I must protest
+against your belief that I could have been an effective candidate! I
+have roamed about the State, and I have made some very good friends here
+and there among the hill farmers, like Mr. Jenney. Mr. Redbrook is
+one of these. But it would have been absurd of me even to think of a
+candidacy founded on personal friendships. I assure you," he added,
+smiling, "there was no self denial in my refusal."
+
+She gave him an appraising glance which he found at once enchanting and
+disconcerting.
+
+"You are one of those people, I think, who do not know their own value.
+If I were a man, and such men as Mr. Redbrook and Mr. Jenney knew me and
+believed sufficiently in me and in my integrity of purpose to ask me
+to be their candidate" (here she hesitated an instant), "and I believed
+that the cause were a good one, I should not have felt justified in
+refusing. That is what I meant. I have always thought of you as a man of
+force and a man of action. But I did not see--the obstacle in your way."
+
+She hesitated once more, and added, with a courage which did not fail
+of its direct appeal, "I did not realize that you would be publicly
+opposing your father. And I did not realize that you would not care to
+criticise--mine."
+
+On the last word she faltered and glanced at his profile.
+
+Had she gone too far?
+
+"I felt that you would understand," he answered. He could not trust
+himself to speak further. How much did she know? And how much was she
+capable of grasping?
+
+His reticence served only to fortify her trust--to elevate it. It was
+impossible for her not to feel something of that which was in him and
+crying for utterance. She was a woman. And if this one action had been
+but the holding of her coat, she would have known. A man who could keep
+silent under these conditions must indeed be a rock of might and honour;
+and she felt sure now, with a surging of joy, that the light she had
+seen shining from it was the beacon of truth. A question trembled on
+her lips--the question for which she had long been gathering strength.
+Whatever the outcome of this communion, she felt that there must be
+absolute truth between them.
+
+"I want to ask you something, Mr. Vane--I have been wanting to for a
+long time."
+
+She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten,--a manner he had when earnest or
+determined,--and she wondered in agitation whether he divined what she
+was going to say. He turned his face slowly to hers, and his eyes were
+troubled.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"You have always spared my feelings," she went on. "Now--now I am asking
+for the truth--as you see it. Do the Northeastern Railroads wrongfully
+govern this State for their own ends?"
+
+Austen, too, as he thought over it afterwards, in the night, was
+surprised at her concise phrasing, suggestive; as it was, of much
+reflection. But at the moment, although he had been prepared for and
+had braced himself against something of this nature, he was nevertheless
+overcome by the absolute and fearless directness of her speech.
+
+"That is a question," he answered, "which you will have to ask your
+father."
+
+"I have asked him," she said, in a low voice; "I want to know what--you
+believe."
+
+"You have asked him!" he repeated, in astonishment.
+
+"Yes. You mustn't think that, in asking you, I am unfair to him in any
+way--or that I doubt his sincerity. We have been" (her voice caught a
+little) "the closest friends ever since I was a child." She paused. "But
+I want to know what you believe."
+
+The fact that she emphasized the last pronoun sent another thrill
+through him. Did it, then, make any difference to her what he believed?
+Did she mean to differentiate him from out of the multitude? He had to
+steady himself before he answered:--"I have sometimes thought that my
+own view might not be broad enough."
+
+She turned to him again.
+
+"Why are you evading?" she asked. "I am sure it is not because you have
+not settled convictions. And I have asked you--a favour."
+
+"You have done me an honour," he answered, and faced her suddenly. "You
+must see," he cried, with a power and passion in his voice that startled
+and thrilled her in turn, "you must see that it's because I wish to be
+fair that I hesitate. I would tell you--anything. I do not agree with
+my own father,--we have been--apart--for years because of this. And I
+do--not agree with Mr. Flint. I am sure that they both are wrong. But I
+cannot help seeing their point of view. These practices are the result
+of an evolution, of an evolution of their time. They were forced to cope
+with conditions in the way they did, or go to the wall. They make the
+mistake of believing that the practices are still necessary to-day."
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, a great hope rising within her at these words.
+"Oh, and you believe they are not!" His explanation seemed so simple,
+so inspiring. And above and beyond that, he was sure. Conviction rang in
+every word. Had he not, she remembered, staked his career by disagreeing
+with his father? Yes, and he had been slow to condemn; he had seen their
+side. It was they who condemned him. He must have justice--he should
+have it!
+
+"I believe such practices are not necessary now," he said firmly. "A new
+generation has come--a generation more jealous of its political rights,
+and not so willing to be rid of them by farming them out. A change has
+taken place even in the older men, like Mr. Jenney and Mr. Redbrook, who
+simply did not think about these questions ten years ago. Men of this
+type, who could be leaders, are ready to assume their responsibilities,
+are ready to deal fairly with railroads and citizens alike. This is a
+matter of belief. I believe it--Mr. Flint and my father do not. They see
+the politicians, and I see the people. I belong to one generation, and
+they to another. With the convictions they have, added to the fact that
+they are in a position of heavy responsibility toward the owners
+of their property, they cannot be blamed for hesitating to try any
+experiments."
+
+"And the practices are--bad?" Victoria asked.
+
+"They are entirely subversive of the principles of American government,
+to say the least," replied Austen, grimly. He was thinking of the pass
+which Mr. Flint had sent him, and of the kind of men Mr. Flint employed
+to make the practices effective.
+
+They descended into the darkness of a deep valley, scored out between
+the hills by one of the rushing tributaries of the Blue. The moon fell
+down behind the opposite ridge, and the road ran through a deep forest.
+He no longer saw the shades of meaning in her face, but in the blackness
+of Erebus he could have sensed her presence at his side. Speech, though
+of this strange kind of which neither felt the strangeness, had come and
+gone between them, and now silence spoke as eloquently. Twice or thrice
+their eyes met through the gloom,--and there was light. At length she
+spoke with the impulsiveness in her voice that he found so appealing.
+
+"You must see my father--you must talk to him. He doesn't know how fair
+you are!"
+
+To Austen the inference was obvious that Mr. Flint had conceived for him
+a special animosity, which he must have mentioned to Victoria, and this
+inference opened the way to a wide speculation in which he was at once
+elated and depressed. Why had he been so singled out? And had Victoria
+defended him? Once before he remembered that she had told him he must
+see Mr. Flint. They had gained the ridge now, and the moon had
+risen again for them, striking black shadows from the maples on the
+granite-cropped pastures. A little farther on was a road which might
+have been called the rear entrance to Fairview.
+
+What was he to say?
+
+"I am afraid Mr. Flint has other things to do than to see me," he
+answered. "If he wished to see me, he would say so."
+
+"Would you go to see him, if he were to ask you?" said Victoria.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "but that is not likely to happen. Indeed, you are
+giving my opinion entirely too much importance in your father's eyes,"
+he added, with an attempt to carry it off lightly; "there is no more
+reason why he should care to discuss the subject with me than with any
+other citizen of the State of my age who thinks as I do."
+
+"Oh, yes, there is," said Victoria; "he regards you as a person whose
+opinion has some weight. I am sure of that. He thinks of you as a person
+of convictions--and he has heard things about you. You talked to him
+once," she went on, astonished at her own boldness, "and made him angry.
+Why don't you talk to him again?" she cried, seeing that Austen was
+silent. "I am sure that what you said about the change of public opinion
+in the State would appeal to him. And oh, don't quarrel with him! You
+have a faculty of differing with people without quarrelling with them.
+My father has so many cares, and he tries so hard to do right as he sees
+it. You must remember that he was a poor farmer's son, and that he began
+to work at fourteen in Brampton, running errands for a country printer.
+He never had any advantages except those he made for himself, and he
+had to fight his way in a hard school against men who were not always
+honourable. It is no wonder that he sometimes takes--a material view
+of things. But he is reasonable and willing to listen to what other men
+have to say, if he is not antagonized."
+
+"I understand," said Austen, who thought Mr. Flint blest in his
+advocate. Indeed, Victoria's simple reference to her father's origin
+had touched him deeply. "I understand, but I cannot go to him. There is
+every reason why I cannot," he added, and she knew that he was speaking
+with difficulty, as under great emotion.
+
+"But if he should send for you?" she asked. She felt his look fixed upon
+her with a strange intensity, and her heart leaped as she dropped her
+eyes.
+
+"If Mr. Flint should send for me," he answered slowly, "I would
+come--and gladly. But it must be of his own free will."
+
+Victoria repeated the words over to herself, "It must be of his own
+free will," waiting until she should be alone to seek their full
+interpretation. She turned, and looked across the lawn at Fairview House
+shining in the light. In another minute they had drawn up before the
+open door.
+
+"Won't you come in--and wait for Mr. Jenney?" she asked.
+
+He gazed down into her face, searchingly, and took her hand.
+
+"Good night," he said; "Mr. Jenney is not far behind. I think--I think I
+should like the walk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. MR. CREWE: AN APPRECIATION (1)
+
+It is given to some rare mortals--with whom fame precedes grey hairs or
+baldness to read, while still on the rising tide of their efforts, that
+portion of their lives which has already been inscribed on the scroll
+of history--or something like it. Mr. Crewe in kilts at five; and
+(prophetic picture!) with a train of cars which--so the family tradition
+runs--was afterwards demolished; Mr. Crewe at fourteen, in delicate
+health; this picture was taken abroad, with a long-suffering tutor who
+could speak feelingly, if he would, of embryo geniuses. Even at this
+early period Humphrey Crewe's thirst for knowledge was insatiable: he
+cared little, the biography tells us, for galleries and churches and
+ruins, but his comments upon foreign methods of doing business were
+astonishingly precocious. He recommended to amazed clerks in provincial
+banks the use of cheques, ridiculed to speechless station-masters the
+side-entrance railway carriage with its want of room, and the size of
+the goods trucks. He is said to have been the first to suggest that
+soda-water fountains might be run at a large profit in London.
+
+In college, in addition to keeping up his classical courses, he found
+time to make an exhaustive study of the railroads of the United States,
+embodying these ideas in a pamphlet published shortly after graduation.
+This pamphlet is now, unfortunately, very rare, but the anonymous
+biographer managed to get one and quote from it. If Mr. Crewe's
+suggestions had been carried out, seventy-five per cent of the railroad
+accidents might have been eliminated. Thorough was his watchword even
+then. And even at that period he foresaw, with the prophecy of genius,
+the days of single-track congestion.
+
+His efforts to improve Leith and the State in general, to ameliorate the
+condition of his neighbours, were fittingly and delicately dwelt upon.
+A desire to take upon himself the burden of citizenship led--as
+we know--to further self-denial. He felt called upon to go to the
+Legislature--and this is what he saw:--(Mr. Crewe is quoted here at
+length in an admirable, concise, and hair-raising statement given in an
+interview to his biographer. But we have been with him, and know what he
+saw. It is, for lack of space, reluctantly omitted.)
+
+And now we are to take up where the biography left off; to relate, in a
+chapter if possible, one of the most remarkable campaigns in the history
+of this country. A certain reformer of whose acquaintance the honest
+chronicler boasts (a reformer who got elected!) found, on his first
+visit to the headquarters he had hired--two citizens under the influence
+of liquor and a little girl with a skip rope. Such are the beginnings
+that try men's souls.
+
+The window of every independent shopkeeper in Ripton contained a
+large-sized picture of the Leith statesman, his determined chin slightly
+thrust down into the Gladstone collar. Underneath were the words, "I
+will put an end to graft and railroad rule. I am a Candidate of the
+People. Opening rally of the People's Campaign at the Opera House, at
+8 P.M., July 10th. The Hon. Humphrey Crewe, of Leith, will tell the
+citizens of Ripton how their State is governed."
+
+"Father," said Victoria, as she read this announcement (three columns
+wide, in the Ripton Record) as they sat at breakfast together, "do you
+mind my going? I can get Hastings Weare to take me."
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Flint, who had returned from New York in a better
+frame of mind. "I should like a trustworthy account of that meeting.
+Only," he added, "I should advise you to go early, Victoria, in order to
+get a seat."
+
+"You don't object to my listening to criticism of you?"
+
+"Not by Humphrey Crewe," laughed Mr. Flint.
+
+Early suppers instead of dinners were the rule at Leith on the evening
+of the historic day, and the candidate himself, in his red Leviathan,
+was not inconsiderably annoyed, on the way to Ripton, by innumerable
+carryalls and traps filled with brightly gowned recruits of that
+organization of Mrs. Pomfret's which Beatrice Chillingham had nicknamed
+"The Ladies' Auxiliary.". In vain Mr. Crewe tooted his horn: the sound
+of it was drowned by the gay talk and laughter in the carryalls, and
+shrieks ensued when the Leviathan cut by with only six inches to spare,
+and the candidate turned and addressed the drivers in language more
+forceful than polite, and told the ladies they acted as if they were
+going to a Punch-and-Judy show.
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey!" said, Mrs. Pomfret, "is so much in earnest. I
+wouldn't give a snap for a man without a temper."
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey" said Beatrice Chillingham, in an undertone to her
+neighbour, "is exceedingly rude and ungrateful. That's what I think."
+
+The occupants of one vehicle heard the horn, and sought the top of
+a grassy mound to let the Leviathan go by. And the Leviathan, with
+characteristic contrariness, stopped.
+
+"Hello," said Mr. Crewe, with a pull at his cap. "I intended to be on
+the lookout for you."
+
+"That is very thoughtful, Humphrey, considering how many things you have
+to be on the lookout for this evening," Victoria replied.
+
+"That's all right," was Mr. Crewe's gracious reply. "I knew you'd be
+sufficiently broad-minded to come, and I hope you won't take offence at
+certain remarks I think it my duty to make."
+
+"Don't let my presence affect you," she answered, smiling; "I have come
+prepared for anything."
+
+"I'll tell Tooting to give you a good seat," he called back, as he
+started onward.
+
+Hastings Weare looked up at her, with laughter-brimming eyes.
+
+"Victoria, you're a wonder!" he remarked. "Say, do you remember that
+tall fellow we met at Humphrey's party, Austen Vane?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I saw him on the street in Ripton the other day, and he came right up
+and spoke to me. He hadn't forgotten my name. Now, he'd be my notion of
+a candidate. He makes you feel as if your presence in the world meant
+something to him."
+
+"I think he does feel that way," replied Victoria.
+
+"I don't blame him if he feels that way about you," said Hastings, who
+made love openly.
+
+"Hastings," she answered, "when you get a little older, you will learn
+to confine yourself to your own opinions."
+
+"When I do," he retorted audaciously, "they never make you blush like
+that."
+
+"It's probably because you have never learned to be original," she
+replied. But Hastings had been set to thinking.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, with her foresight and her talent for management, had
+given the Ladies' Auxiliary notice that they were not to go farther
+forward than the twelfth row. She herself, with some especially favoured
+ones, occupied a box, which was the nearest thing to being on the stage.
+One unforeseen result of Mrs. Pomfret's arrangement was that the first
+eleven rows were vacant, with the exception of one old man and five
+or six schoolboys. Such is the courage of humanity in general! On
+the arrival of the candidate, instead of a surging crowd lining the
+sidewalk, he found only a fringe of the curious, whose usual post of
+observation was the railroad station, standing silently on the curb.
+Within, Mr. Tooting's duties as an usher had not been onerous. He met
+Mr. Crewe in the vestibule, and drew him into the private office.
+
+"The railroad's fixed 'em," said the manager, indignantly, but sotto
+voce; "I've found that out. Hilary Vane had the word passed around town
+that if they came, somethin' would fall on 'em. The Tredways and all the
+people who own factories served notice on their men that if they paid
+any attention to this meeting they'd lose their job. But say, the people
+are watchin' you, just the same."
+
+"How many people are in there?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+"Twenty-seven, when I came out," said Mr. Tooting, with commendable
+accuracy. "But it wants fifteen minutes to eight."
+
+"And who," asked Mr. Crewe, "is to introduce me?"
+
+An expression of indignation spread over Mr. Tooting's face.
+
+"There ain't a man in Ripton's got sand enough!" he exclaimed. "Sol
+Gridley was a-goin' to, but he went to New York on the noon train. I
+guess it's a pleasure trip," Mr. Tooting hinted darkly.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Crewe, "he's the fellow--"
+
+"Exactly," Mr. Tooting replied, "and he did get a lot of 'em, travelling
+about. But Sol has got to work on the quiet, you understand. He feels he
+can't come out right away."
+
+"And how about Amos Ricketts? Where's he?"
+
+"Amos," said Mr. Tooting, regretfully, "was taken very sudden about five
+o'clock. One of his spells come on, and he sent me word to the Ripton
+House. He had his speech all made up, and it was a good one, too. He
+was going to tell folks pretty straight how the railroad beat him for
+mayor."
+
+Mr. Crewe made a gesture of disgust.
+
+"I'll introduce myself," he said. "They all know me, anyhow."
+
+"Say," said Mr. Tooting, laying a hand on his candidate's arm. "You
+couldn't do any better. I've bin for that all along."
+
+"Hold on," said Mr. Crewe, listening, "a lot of people are coming in
+now."
+
+What Mr. Crewe had heard, however, was the arrival of the Ladies'
+Auxiliary,--five and thirty strong, from Leith. But stay! Who are these
+coming? More ladies--ladies in groups of two and three and five! ladies
+of Ripton whose husbands, for some unexplained reason, have stayed at
+home; and Mr. Tooting, as he watched them with mingled feelings, became
+a woman's suffragist on the spot. He dived into the private office once
+more, where he found Mr. Crewe seated with his legs crossed, calmly
+reading a last winter's playbill. (Note for a more complete biography.)
+
+"Well, Tooting," he said, "I thought they'd begin to come."
+
+"They're mostly women," Mr. Tooting informed him.
+
+"Women!"
+
+"Hold on!" said Mr. Tooting, who had the true showman's instinct. "Can't
+you see that folks are curious? They're afraid to come 'emselves, and
+they're sendin' their wives and daughters. If you get the women tonight,
+they'll go home and club the men into line."
+
+Eight strokes boomed out from the tower of the neighbouring town hall,
+and an expectant flutter spread over the audience,--a flatter which
+disseminated faint odours of sachet and other mysterious substances in
+which feminine apparel is said to the laid away. The stage was empty,
+save for a table which held a pitcher of water and a glass.
+
+"It's a pretty good imitation of a matinee," Hastings Weare remarked.
+"I wonder whom the front seats are reserved for. Say, Victoria, there's
+your friend Mr. Vane in the corner. He's looking over here."
+
+"He has a perfect right to look where he chooses," said Victoria. She
+wondered whether he would come over and sit next to her if she turned
+around, and decided instantly that he wouldn't. Presently, when she
+thought Hastings was off his guard, she did turn, to meet, as she
+expected, Austen's glance fixed upon her. Their greeting was the signal
+of two people with a mutual understanding. He did not rise, and although
+she acknowledged to herself a feeling of disappointment, she gave him
+credit for a nice comprehension of the situation. Beside him was his
+friend Tom Gaylord, who presented to her a very puzzled face. And then,
+if there had been a band, it would have been time to play "See, the
+Conquering Hero Comes!"
+
+Why wasn't there a band? No such mistake, Mr. Tooting vowed, should be
+made at the next rally.
+
+It was Mrs. Pomfret who led the applause from her box as the candidate
+walked modestly up the side aisle and presently appeared, alone, on the
+stage. The flutter of excitement was renewed, and this time it might
+almost be called a flutter of apprehension. But we who have heard Mr.
+Crewe speak are in no alarm for our candidate. He takes a glass of iced
+water; he arranges, with the utmost sangfroid, his notes on the desk
+and adjusts the reading light. Then he steps forward and surveys the
+scattered groups.
+
+"Ladies--" a titter ran through the audience,--a titter which started
+somewhere in the near neighbourhood of Mr. Hastings Weare--and rose
+instantly to several hysterical peals of feminine laughter. Mrs.
+Pomfret, outraged, sweeps the frivolous offenders with her lorgnette;
+Mr. Crewe, with his arm resting, on the reading-desk, merely raises the
+palm of his hand to a perpendicular reproof,--"and gentlemen." At this
+point the audience is thoroughly cowed. "Ladies and gentlemen and fellow
+citizens. I thank you for the honour you have done me in coming here to
+listen to the opening speech of my campaign to-night. It is a campaign
+for decency and good government, and I know that the common people of
+the State--of whom I have the honour to be one--demand these things.
+I cannot say as much for the so-called prominent citizens," said Mr.
+Crewe, glancing about him; "not one of your prominent citizens in Ripton
+would venture to offend the powers that be by consenting to introduce me
+to-night, or dared come into this theatre and take seats within thirty
+feet of this platform." Here Mr. Crewe let his eyes rest significantly
+on the eleven empty rows, while his hearers squirmed in terrified
+silence at this audacity. Even the Ripton women knew that this was
+high treason beneath the walls of the citadel, and many of them glanced
+furtively at the strangely composed daughter of Augustus P. Flint.
+
+"I will show you that I can stand on my own feet," Mr. Crewe continued.
+"I will introduce myself. I am Humphrey Crewe of Leith, and I claim to
+have added something to the welfare and prosperity of this State, and I
+intend to add more before I have finished."
+
+At this point, as might have been expected, spontaneous applause broke
+forth, originating in the right-hand stage box. Here was a daring
+defiance indeed, a courage of such a high order that it completely
+carried away the ladies and drew reluctant plaudits from the male
+element. "Give it to 'em, Humphrey!" said one of those who happened to
+be sitting next to Miss Flint, and who received a very severe pinch in
+the arm in consequence.
+
+"I thank the gentleman," answered Mr. Crewe, "and I propose
+to--(Handclapping and sachet.) I propose to show that you spend
+something like two hundred thousand dollars a year to elect legislators
+and send 'em to the capital, when the real government of your State is
+in a room in the Pelican Hotel known as the Railroad Room, and the real
+governor is a citizen of your town, the Honourable Hilary Vane, who sits
+there and acts for his master, Mr. Augustus P. Flint of New York. And
+I propose to prove to you that, before the Honourable Adam B. Hunt
+appeared as that which has come to be known as the 'regular' candidate,
+Mr. Flint sent for him to go to New York and exacted certain promises
+from him. Not that it was necessary, but the Northeastern Railroads
+never take any chances. (Laughter.) The Honourable Adam B. Hunt is what
+they call a 'safe' man, meaning by that a man who will do what Mr. Flint
+wants him to do. While I am not 'safe' because I have dared to defy them
+in your name, and will do what the people want me to do. (Clapping and
+cheers from a gentleman in the darkness, afterwards identified as Mr.
+Tooting.) Now, my friends, are you going to continue to allow a citizen
+of New York to nominate your governors, and do you intend, tamely, to
+give the Honourable Adam B. Hunt your votes?"
+
+"They ain't got any votes," said a voice--not that of Mr. Hastings
+Weare, for it came from the depths of the gallery.
+
+"'The hand that rocks the cradle sways the world,'" answered Mr. Crewe,
+and there was no doubt about the sincerity of the applause this time.
+
+"The campaign of the Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith," said the State
+Tribune next day, "was inaugurated at the Opera House in Ripton last
+night before an enthusiastic audience consisting of Mr. Austen Vane,
+Mr. Thomas Gaylord, Jr., Mr. Hamilton Tooting, two reporters, and
+seventy-four ladies, who cheered the speaker to the echo. About half of
+these ladies were summer residents of Leith in charge of the well-known
+social leader, Mrs. Patterson Pomfret,--an organized league which, it
+is understood, will follow the candidate about the State in the English
+fashion, kissing the babies and teaching the mothers hygienic cooking
+and how to ondule the hair."
+
+After speaking for an hour and a half, the Honourable Humphrey Crewe
+declared that he would be glad to meet any of the audience who wished to
+shake his hand, and it was Mrs. Pomfret who reached him first.
+
+"Don't be discouraged, Humphrey,--you are magnificent," she whispered.
+
+"Discouraged!" echoed Mr. Crewe. "You can't kill an idea, and we'll see
+who's right and who's wrong before I get through with 'em."
+
+"What a noble spirit!" Mrs. Pomfret exclaimed aside to Mrs. Chillingham.
+Then she added, in a louder tone, "Ladies, if you will kindly tell me
+your names, I shall be happy to introduce you to the candidate. Well,
+Victoria, I didn't expect to see you here."
+
+"Why not?" said Victoria. "Humphrey, accept my congratulations."
+
+"Did you like it?" asked Mr. Crewe. "I thought it was a pretty good
+speech myself. There's nothing like telling the truth, you know. And, by
+the way, I hope to see you in a day or two, before I start for Kingston.
+Telephone me when you come down to Leith."
+
+The congratulations bestowed on the candidate by the daughter of the
+president of the Northeastern Railroads quite took the breath out of
+the spectators who witnessed the incident, and gave rise to the wildest
+conjectures. And the admiration of Mr. Hastings Weare was unbounded.
+
+"You've got the most magnificent nerve I ever saw, Victoria," he
+exclaimed, as they made their way towards the door.
+
+"You forget Humphrey," she replied.
+
+Hastings looked at her and chuckled. In fact, he chuckled all the way
+home. In the vestibule they met Mr. Austen Vane and Mr. Thomas Gaylord,
+the latter coming forward with a certain palpable embarrassment. All
+through the evening Tom had been trying to account for her presence at
+the meeting, until Austen had begged him to keep his speculations to
+himself. "She can't be engaged to him!" Mr. Gaylord had exclaimed more
+than once, under his breath. "Why not?" Austen had answered; "there's a
+good deal about him to admire." "Because she's got more sense," said Tom
+doggedly. Hence he was at a loss for words when she greeted him.
+
+"Well, Mr. Gaylord," she said, "you see no bones were broken, after
+all. But I appreciated your precaution in sending the buggy behind me,
+although it wasn't necessary.
+
+"I felt somewhat responsible," replied Tom, and words failed him.
+"Here's Austen Vane," he added, indicating by a nod of the head the
+obvious presence of that gentleman. "You'll excuse me. There's a man
+here I want to see."
+
+"What's the matter with Mr. Gaylord?" Victoria asked. "He seems
+so--queer."
+
+They were standing apart, alone, Hastings Weare having gone to the
+stables for the runabout.
+
+"Mr. Gaylord imagines he doesn't get along with the opposite sex,"
+Austen replied, with just a shade of constraint.
+
+"Nonsense!" exclaimed Victoria; "we got along perfectly the other day
+when he rescued me from the bushes. What's the matter with him?"
+
+Austen laughed, and their eyes met.
+
+"I think he is rather surprised to see you here," he said.
+
+"And you?" returned Victoria. "Aren't you equally out of place?"
+
+He did not care to go into an explanation of Tom's suspicion in regard
+to Mr. Crewe.
+
+"My curiosity was too much for me," he replied, smiling.
+
+"So was mine," she replied, and suddenly demanded: "What did you think
+of Humphrey's speech?"
+
+Their eyes met. And despite the attempted seriousness of her tone they
+joined in an irresistible and spontaneous laughter. They were again on
+that plane of mutual understanding and intimacy for which neither could
+account.
+
+"I have no criticism to make of Mr. Crewe as an orator, at least," he
+said.
+
+Then she grew serious again, and regarded him steadfastly.
+
+"And--what he said?" she asked.
+
+Austen wondered again at the courage she had displayed. All he had been
+able to think of in the theatre, while listening to Mr. Crewe's words of
+denunciation of the Northeastern Railroads, had been of the effect they
+might have on Victoria's feelings, and from time to time he had glanced
+anxiously at her profile. And now, looking into her face, questioning,
+trustful--he could not even attempt to evade. He was silent.
+
+"I shouldn't have asked you that," she said. "One reason I came was
+because--because I wanted to hear the worst. You were too considerate to
+tell me--all."
+
+He looked mutely into her eyes, and a great desire arose in him to be
+able to carry her away from it all. Many times within the past year,
+when the troubles and complications of his life had weighed upon him,
+his thoughts had turned to, that Western country, limited only by the
+bright horizons where the sun rose and set. If he could only take her
+there, or into his own hills, where no man might follow them! It was a
+primeval longing, and, being a woman and the object of it, she saw
+its essential meaning in his face. For a brief moment they stood as
+completely alone as on the crest of Sawanec.
+
+"Good night," she said, in a low voice.
+
+He did not trust himself to speak at once, but went down the steps with
+her to the curb, where Hastings Weare was waiting in the runabout.
+
+"I was just telling Miss Flint," said that young gentleman, "that you
+would have been my candidate."
+
+Austen's face relaxed.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply; and to Victoria, "Good night."
+
+At the corner, when she turned, she saw him still standing on the edge
+of the sidewalk, his tall figure thrown into bold relief by the light
+which flooded from the entrance. The account of the Ripton meeting,
+substantially as it appeared in the State Tribune, was by a singular
+coincidence copied at once into sixty-odd weekly newspapers, and
+must have caused endless merriment throughout the State. Congressman
+Fairplay's prophecy of "negligible" was an exaggeration, and one
+gentleman who had rashly predicted that Mr. Crewe would get twenty
+delegates out of a thousand hid himself for shame. On the whole,
+the "monumental farce" forecast seemed best to fit the situation. A
+conference was held at Leith between the candidate, Mr. Tooting, and
+the Honourable Timothy Watling of Newcastle, who was preparing the
+nominating speech, although the convention was more than two months
+distant. Mr. Watling was skilled in rounded periods of oratory and in
+other things political; and both he and Mr. Tooting reiterated
+their opinion that there was no particle of doubt about Mr. Crewe's
+nomination.
+
+"But we'll have to fight fire with fire," Mr. Tooting declared. It was
+probably an accident that he happened to kick, at this instant, Mr.
+Watling under cover of the table. Mr. Watling was an old and valued
+friend.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't the slightest doubt of my
+nomination, either. I do not hesitate to say, however, that the expenses
+of this campaign, at this early stage, seem to me out of all proportion.
+Let me see what you have there."
+
+The Honourable Timothy Wading had produced a typewritten list containing
+some eighty towns and wards, each followed by a name and the number of
+the delegates therefrom--and figures.
+
+"They'd all be enthusiastic Crewe men--if they could be seen by the
+right party," declared Mr. Tooting.
+
+Mr. Crewe ran his eye over the list.
+
+"Whom would you suggest to see 'em?" he asked coldly.
+
+"There's only one party I know of that has much influence over 'em," Mr.
+Tooting replied, with a genial but deferential indication of his friend.
+
+At this point Mr. Crewe's secretary left the room on an errand, and the
+three statesmen went into executive session. In politics, as in charity,
+it is a good rule not to let one's right hand know what the left hand
+doeth. Half an hour later the three emerged into the sunlight, Mr.
+Tooting and Mr. Watling smoking large cigars.
+
+"You've got a great lay-out here, Mr. Crewe," Mr. Watling remarked. "It
+must have stood you in a little money, eh? Yes, I'll get mileage books,
+and you'll hear from me every day or two."
+
+And now we are come to the infinitely difficult task of relating in a
+whirlwind manner the story of a whirlwind campaign--a campaign that was
+to make the oldest resident sit up and take notice. In the space of four
+short weeks a miracle had begun to show itself. First, there was the
+Kingston meeting, with the candidate, his thumb in his watch-pocket,
+seated in an open carriage beside Mr. Hamilton Tooting,--a carriage
+draped with a sheet on which was painted "Down with Railroad Ring Rule."
+
+The carriage was preceded by the Kingston Brass Band, producing
+throbbing martial melodies, and followed (we are not going to believe
+the State Tribune any longer) by a jostling' and cheering crowd. The
+band halts before the G.A.R. Hall; the candidate alights, with a bow of
+acknowledgment, and goes to the private office until the musicians are
+seated in front of the platform, when he enters to renewed cheering and
+the tune of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"
+
+An honest historian must admit that there were two accounts of this
+meeting. Both agree that Mr. Crewe introduced himself, and poured a
+withering sarcasm on the heads of Kingston's prominent citizens. One
+account, which the ill-natured declared to be in Mr. Tooting's style,
+and which appeared (in slightly larger type than that of the other
+columns) in the Kingston and local papers, stated that the hall was
+crowded to suffocation, and that the candidate was "accorded an ovation
+which lasted for fully five minutes."
+
+Mr. Crewe's speech was printed--in this slightly larger type. Woe to
+the Honourable Adam B. Hunt, who had gone to New York to see whether he
+could be governor! Why didn't he come out on the platform? Because he
+couldn't. "Safe" candidates couldn't talk. His subservient and fawning
+reports on accidents while chairman of the Railroad Commission were
+ruthlessly quoted (amid cheers and laughter). What kind of railroad
+service was Kingston getting compared to what it should have? Compared,
+indeed, to what it had twenty years ago? An informal reception was held
+afterwards.
+
+More meetings followed, at the rate of four a week, in county after
+county. At the end of fifteen days a selectman (whose name will go
+down in history) voluntarily mounted the platform and introduced the
+Honourable Humphrey Crewe to the audience; not, to be sure, as the
+saviour of the State; and from that day onward Mr. Crewe did not lack
+for a sponsor. On the other hand, the sponsors became more pronounced,
+and at Harwich (a free-thinking district) a whole board of selectmen
+and five prominent citizens sat gravely beside the candidate in the town
+hall.
+
+(1) Paul Pardriff, Ripton. Sent post free, on application, to voters and
+others.
+
+
+
+
+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 had 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.
+
+
+   PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+   Fame sometimes comes in the line of duty
+   Genius is almost one hundred percent directness
+   In a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the room
+   It's noble, but it don't pay
+   Treason to party he regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence
+   Battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed
+   A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
+   His strength was his imperviousness to this kind of a remark
+   Many a silent tear of which they knew nothing
+   Politicians are politicians; they have always been corrupt
+   Gratitude, however, is one of the noblest qualities of man
+   One of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy
+   The burden of the valley of vision
+   Thrice-blessed State, in which there were now three reform candidates
+   Years of regrets for that which might have been
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Mr. Crewe's Career, Complete, by Winston Churchill
+
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