The Candidate Part 13

They still tell in the West of Jimmy Grayson's speech at Weeping Water, as the veterans tell of Pickett's rush in the flame and the smoke up Cemetery Hill. He had gone on the stage a half-dead man. He had already been speaking nineteen hours that day. His eyes were red and swollen with train dust, prairie dust, and lack of sleep. Every bone in him ached. Every word stung his throat as it came, and his tongue was like a hot ember in his mouth. Deep lines ran away from his eyes.

But Jimmy Grayson was inspired that night on the black prairie. The words leaped in livid flame from his lips. Never was his speech more free and bold, and always his burning eyes looked into those of Plover and held him.

Closer and closer pressed the crowd. The darkness still rolled up, thicker and blacker than ever. Grayson's shoulders sank away, and only his face was visible now. The wind rose again, and whistled around the little town and shrieked far out on the lonely prairie. But above it rose the voice of Grayson, mellow, inspiring, and flowing full and free.

Harley looked and listened, and his admiration grew and grew. "I don't agree with all he says," he thought, "but, my G.o.d! how well he says it."

Then he cowered in the lee of a little building, that he might shelter himself from the bitter wind that was searching him to the marrow.

Time pa.s.sed. The speaker never faltered. A half-hour, an hour, and his voice was still full and mellow, nor had a soul left the crowd. Grayson himself seemed to feel a new access of strength from some hidden source, and his form expanded as he denounced the Trusts and the Robber Barons, and all the other iniquities that he felt it his duty to impale, but he never took his eyes from Plover; to him he was now talking with a force and directness that he had not equalled before. Time went on, and, as if half remembering some resolution, Plover's hand stole towards the little old silver watch that he carried in the left-hand pocket of his waistcoat. But just at that critical moment Grayson uttered the magical name, Wall Street, and Plover's hand fell back to his side with a jerk.

Then Grayson rose to his best, and tore Wall Street to tatters.

A whistle sounded, a bell rang, and a train began to rumble, but no one took note of it save Harley. The two-ten on the branch line to connect with the 'Frisco Express on the B. P. was moving out, and he breathed a great sigh of relief. "One gone," he said to himself; "now for the accommodation freight."

The speech continued, but presently Grayson stopped for a hasty drink of water. Harley trembled. He was afraid that Grayson was breaking down, and his fears increased when he saw Plover's eyes leave the speaker's face and wander towards the station. But just at that moment the candidate caught the little man.

"Listen to me!" thundered Grayson, "and let no true citizen here fail to heed what I am about to tell him."

Plover could not resist the voice and those words of command. His thoughts, wandering towards the railroad station, were seized and brought back by the speaker. His eyes were fixed and held by Grayson, and he stood there as if chained to the spot.

Time became strangely slow. The accommodation freight must be more than ten minutes late, Harley thought. He looked at his watch, and found that it was not due to leave for five minutes yet. So he settled himself to patient waiting, and listened to Grayson as he pa.s.sed from one national topic to another. He saw, too, that the lines in the speaker's face were growing deeper and deeper, and he knew that he must be using his last ounces of strength. His soul was stirred with pity. Yet Grayson never faltered.

The whistle blew, the bell rang, and again the train rumbled. The two-forty accommodation freight on the branch line to connect with the 'Frisco Express on the B. P. was moving out, and Plover had been held.

He could not go now, and once more Harley breathed that deep sigh of relief. Twenty minutes pa.s.sed, and he heard far off in the east a faint rumble. He knew it was the Denver Express, and, in spite of his resolution, he began to grow nervous. Suppose the woman should not come?

The rumble grew to a roar, and the train pulled into the station.

Grayson was faithful to the last, and still thundered forth the invective that delighted the soul of Plover. The train whistled and moved off again, and Harley waited in breathless anxiety.

A tall form rose out of the darkness, and a woman, middle-aged and honest of face, appeared. The correspondent knew that it must be Susan.

It could be n.o.body else. She was looking around as if she sought some one. Harley's eye caught Grayson's, and it gave the signal.

"And now, gentlemen," said the candidate, "I am done. I thank you for your attention, and I hope you will think well of what I have said."

So saying, he left the stage, and the crowd dispersed. But Harley waited, and he saw Plover and his wife meet. He saw, too, the look of surprise and then joy on the man's face, and he saw them throw their arms around each other's neck and kiss in the dark. They were only a poor, prosaic, and middle-aged couple, but he knew they were now happy and that all was right between them.

When Grayson went to his room, he fell from exhaustion in a half-faint across the bed; but when Harley told him the next afternoon the cause of it all, he laughed and said it was well worth the price.

They obtained, about a week later, the New York papers containing an account of the record-breaking day. When Harley opened the _Monitor_, Churchill's paper, he read these head-lines:

GRAYSON'S GAB

HE IS TALKING THE FARMERS OF THE WEST TO DEATH

TWENTY-FOUR SPEECHES IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

HE TALKS FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS IN ONE DAY, AND SAYS NOTHING

But when he looked at the _Gazette_, he saw the following head-lines over his own account:

HIS GREATEST SPEECH

GRAYSON'S WONDERFUL EXHIBITION OF PLUCK AND ENDURANCE

AFTER RIDING FOUR HUNDRED MILES AND MAKING TWENTY-THREE SPEECHES HE HOLDS AN AUDIENCE SPELLBOUND FOR THREE HOURS AT HIS TWENTY-FOURTH

SPEAKS FROM MIDNIGHT UNTIL THREE IN THE MORNING IN THE OPEN AIR AND NOT A SOUL LEAVES, THOUGH A BLIZZARD WAS RAGING

Harley sighed with satisfaction.

"That managing editor of mine knows his business," he said to himself.

VIII

SYLVIA'S RETURN

Harley slept late the next day, and it was the heavy, somewhat nervous slumber of utter exhaustion, like that which he had more than once experienced in the war on the other side of the world, after days of incessant marching. When he awoke, it was afternoon on the special train, and as he joined the group he was greeted with a suppressed cheer.

"I understand that you stayed the whole thing through last night, or rather this morning," said Churchill, in a sneering tone. "There's devotion for you, boys!"

"I was amply repaid," replied Harley, calmly. "His last speech was the most interesting; in fact, I think it was the greatest speech that I ever heard him make."

"I fear that Jimmy Grayson is overdoing it," said the elderly Tremaine, soberly. "A Presidential nominee is not exactly master of himself, and I doubt whether he should have risked his voice, and perhaps the success of his party, speaking in that cold wind until three or four o'clock this morning."

"He just loves to hear the sound of his own voice," said Churchill, his ugly sneer becoming uglier. "I think it undignified and absurd on the part of a man who is in the position that he is in."

Harley was silent, and he was glad now that he had said nothing in his despatch about the real reason for Grayson's long speaking. He had had at first a little struggle over it with his professional conscience, feeling that his duty required him to tell, but a little reflection decided him to the contrary. He had managed the affair, it was not a spontaneous occurrence, and, therefore, it was the private business of himself and Mr. James Grayson. It gave him great relief to be convinced thus, as he knew that otherwise the candidate would be severely criticised for it both by the opposition press and by a considerable number of his own party journals.

But there was one person to whom Harley related the whole story. It was told in a letter to Sylvia Morgan, who was then at the home of the candidate with Mrs. Grayson. After describing all the details minutely, he gave his opinion: he held that it was right for a man, even in critical moments weighted with the fate of the many, to halt to do a good action which could affect only one or two. A great general at the height of a battle, seeing a wounded soldier helpless on the ground, might take the time to order relief for him without at all impairing the fate of the combat; to do otherwise would be a complete sacrifice of the individual for the sake of a mighty machine which would banish all humanity from life. He noticed that even Napoleon, in the midst of what might be called the most strenuous career the world has known, turned aside to do little acts of kindness.

He was glad to find, when her reply came a few days later, that she agreed with him at least in the main part of his argument; but she called his attention to the fact that it was not Mr. Grayson, but Harley himself, who had injected this strange element into the combat when it was at its zenith; her uncle James had merely responded to a strong and moving appeal, which he would always do, because she knew the softness of his heart; yet she was not willing for him to go too far. A general might be able to turn aside for a moment at the height of the battle, and then he might not. She wished her uncle James to be judicious in his generosity, and not make any sacrifice which might prove too costly alike to himself and to others.

"She is a compound of romance and strong common-sense," thought Harley, musing over the letter. "She wants the romance without paying the price.

Now I wonder if that is not rather more the characteristic of women than of men."

On the day following the receipt of this letter, a look of joy came over the face of the candidate and there was a visible exhilaration throughout his party. Men, worn, exhausted, and covered with the dust of the great plains, began to freshen up themselves as much as they could; there was a great brus.h.i.+ng of soiled clothing, a hauling out of clean collars, a sharpening of razors, and a general inquiry, "How do I look?"

The whole atmosphere of the train was changed, and it became much brighter and livelier. It was the candidate himself who wrought the transformation, after reading a letter, with the brief statement, "Mrs.

Grayson and Sylvia will join us to-morrow."

All had begun to pine for feminine society, as soldiers, long on the march, desire the sight of women and the sound of their voices. It is true that they saw women often, and many of them--some who were beautiful and some who were not--as they sped through the West, but it was always a flitting and blurred glimpse. "I haven't got an impression of the features of a single one of them," complained the elderly beau, Tremaine. Now two women whom they knew well and liked would be with them for days, and they rejoiced accordingly.