_ PART THREE CHAPTER VI
The others were stricken into shocked silence which they were too stunned for the moment to break. It was Fletcher who recovered first, but then Fletcher was the only one present who did not know that the words had struck home.
"We mustn't wait another moment, David," he said emphatically, "to get out sweeping denials and--"
"We can't," said David wearily. "It is true."
"Oh," responded Fletcher lamely.
There was another silence. Something in David's voice and manner had made the silence still more constrained.
"I'll go down and smash their banners!" muttered Joe, who had not dared to look in David's direction.
Mr. Winthrop restrained him.
"The matter will take care of itself," he counseled.
It is mercifully granted that the intensity of present suffering is not realized. Only in looking back comes the pang, and the wonder at the seemingly passive endurance.
Again David's memory was bridging the past to unveil that vivid picture of the patient-eyed woman bending over the tub, and the pity for her was hurting him more than the cruel banner which was flaunting the fact before a jeering, applauding crowd.
Mrs. Winthrop gave him a covert glance. She had great pride in her lineage, and her well-laid plans for her daughter's future did not include David Dunne in their scope, but she was ever responsive to distress.
Before the look in his eyes every sensation save that of sympathy left her, and she went to him as she would have gone to a child of her own that had been hurt.
"David," she said tenderly, laying her hand on his arm, "any woman in the world might be glad to take in washing to bring up a boy to be such a man as you are!"
Deeply moved and surprised, he looked into her brimming eyes and met there the look he had sometimes seen in the eyes of his mother, of M'ri, and once in the eyes of Janey. Moved by an irresistible impulse, he stooped and kissed her.
The situation was relieved of its tenseness.
"I think, Joe," said David, speaking collectedly, "we had better go to headquarters. Knowles will be looking for me."
"Sure," assented Joe, eager to get into action.
"Carey," said David in a low voice, as he was leaving.
As she turned to him, an impetuous rush of new life leaped torrent-like in his heart. Her eyes met his slowly, and for a moment he felt a pleasure acute with the exquisiteness of pain. Such sensations are usually transient, and in another moment he had himself well in hand.
"I want to say good night," he said quietly, "and--"
"Will you come here to-morrow at eleven?" she asked hurriedly. "There is something I want to say to you."
"I know that you are sorry for me."
"That isn't what I mean to say."
A wistful but imperious message was flashed to him from her eyes.
"I will come," he replied gravely.
When he reached headquarters he found the committee dismayed and distracted. Like Wilder, they counseled a sweeping denial, but David was firm.
"It is true," he reiterated.
"It will cost us the vote of a certain element," predicted the chairman, "and we haven't one to spare."
David listened to a series of similar sentiments until Knowles--a new Knowles--came in. The usual blank placidity of his face was rippled by radiant exultation.
"David," he announced, "before that parade started to-night I had made out another conservative estimate, and thought I could pull you through by a slight majority. Now, it's different. While you may lose some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the fans in their flying pennants."
David found no balm in this argument. All the wounds in his heart were aching, and he could not bring his thoughts to majorities. He passed a night of nerve-racking strain. The jeopardy of election did not concern him. That night at the dinner party he had realized that he had a formidable rival in Fletcher, who had a place firmly fixed in the Winthrop household. Still, against odds, he had determined to woo and win Carey.
He had thought to tell her of his father's imprisonment under softening influences. To have it flashed ruthlessly upon her in such a way, and at such a time, made him shrink from asking her to link her fate with his, and he decided to put her resolutely out of his life.
Unwillingly, he went to keep his appointment with her the next morning. He also dreaded an encounter with Mrs. Winthrop. He felt that the reaction from her moment of womanly pity would strand her still farther on the rocks of her worldliness. He was detained on his way to the hotel so that it was nearly twelve when he arrived. It was a relief to find Carey alone. There was an appealing look in her eyes; but David felt that he could bear no expression of sympathy, and he trusted she would obey the subtle message flashed from his own.
With keen insight she read his unspoken appeal, but a high courage dwelt in the spirit of the little Puritan of colonial ancestry, and she summoned its full strength.
"David," she asked, "did you think I was ignorant of your early life until I read those banners last night?"
"I thought," he said, flushing and taken by surprise, "that you might have long ago heard something, but to have it recalled in so sensational a way when you were entertaining me at dinner--"
"David, the first day I met you, when I was six years old, Mrs. Randall told us of your father. I didn't know just what a prison was, but I supposed it something very grand, and it widened the halo of romance that my childish eyes had cast about you. The morning after you had nominated Mr. Hume I saw your aunt at the hotel, and she told me, for she said some day I might hear it from strangers and not understand. When I saw those banners it was not so much sympathy for you that distressed me; I was thinking of your mother, and regretting that she could not be alive to hear you speak, and see what her bravery had done for you."
David had to summon all his control and his recollection of her Virginia ancestors to refrain from telling her what was in his heart. Mrs. Winthrop helped him by her entrance at this crucial point.
"Good morning, David," she said suavely. "Carey, Fletcher is waiting for you at the elevator. Your father stopped him. I told him you would be out directly."
"I had an engagement to drive with him," explained Carey. "I thought you would come earlier."
"I am due at a committee meeting," he said, in a courteous but aloof manner.
"We start in the morning, you know," she reminded him. "Won't you dine here with us to-night?"
"I am sorry," he refused. "It will be impossible."
"Arthur is going to a club for luncheon," said Mrs. Winthrop, when Carey had gone into the adjoining room, "and I shall be alone unless you will take pity on my loneliness. I won't detain you a moment after luncheon."
"Thank you," he replied abstractedly.
She smiled at the reluctance in his eyes.
"David is going to stay to luncheon with me," she announced to Carey as she came into the sitting room.
David winced at the huge bunch of violets fastened to her muff. He remembered with a pang that Fletcher had left him that morning to go to a florist's. After she had gone Mrs. Winthrop turned suddenly toward him, as he was gazing wistfully at the closed door.
"David," she asked directly, "why did you refuse our invitation to dine to-night?"
"Why--you see--Mrs. Winthrop--with so many engagements--there is a factory meeting at five--"
"David, you are floundering! That is not like the frankly spoken boy we used to know at Maplewood. I kept you to luncheon to tell you some news that even Carey doesn't know yet. Mrs. Randall has written insisting that we spend a week at Maplewood before we go West. As we are in no special haste, I shall accept her hospitality."
David made no reply, and she continued:
"You are going home the day before election?"
"Yes, Mrs. Winthrop," he replied.
"We will go down with you, and I hope you will be neighborly while we are in the country."
The bewildered look in his eyes deepened, and then a heartrending solution of her graciousness came to him. Fletcher and Carey were doubtless engaged, and this fact made Mrs. Winthrop feel secure in extending hospitality to him.
"Thank you, Mrs. Winthrop," he said, a little bitterly. "You are very kind."
"David," she asked, giving him a searching look. "What is the matter? I thought you would be pleased at the thought of our spending a week among you all."
He made a quick, desperate decision.
"Mrs. Winthrop," he asked earnestly, "may I speak to you quite openly and honestly?"
"David Dunne, you couldn't speak any other way," she asserted, with a gay little laugh.
"I love Carey!" _