_ CHAPTER XVIII. THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP
Like a beacon marking shoals, Thelismer Thornton stood at the head of the broad granite steps that led up to the convention hall. An unlighted cigar was set hard between his teeth. Men flocked past him with obsequious greetings, but he merely grunted replies. He was watching for some one. He swore under his breath when he saw his man. General Waymouth and Harlan came up the steps together. He swung between them, and went along into the hall.
From open doors and windows band-music blared, welded with the roar of two thousand voices, each man shouting his conversation to be heard above his neighbors. It still lacked ten minutes of the hour set for the opening of the convention.
Under the cover of the uproar, as they walked along, the Duke delivered some very vigorous opinions to his grandson, expressing himself as to the latter's state of intellect, judgment, and general fitness to be allowed loose among men.
Harlan did not retort. He took his cue from the General, who smiled and listened.
"I'll tell you what I ought to do with you, boy! I ought to skin you. I'd find a ready sale for the hide. They could use it to make bindings for New Testaments. Your're too d--n--d righteous, altogether! I've been easy and patient with you, but I don't propose to stand at one side now, and see you ruin yourself politically. Why are you letting the boy do it, Varden?" he demanded, turning on the General. "You're old enough to know better. He's no help to you now. I supposed I had a grandson until you got hold of him!"
"You've still got a grandson, but you haven't got a political tool to use in prying open a new governorship deal every fifteen minutes," declared the young man. "You took me to General Waymouth, you pledged me to him--I pledged myself to him. I don't propose to discuss this matter any further. I'm my own man when it comes to politics!"
"Thelismer, I wouldn't say any more just now," suggested the General. "You are angry, and I've told you many times in past years that your judgment is not good when you are angry. But this is no place for talking these matters!"
The curious had already begun to throng about them. General Waymouth was a marked figure in a gathering. It had not become a matter of general knowledge that he was attending the convention. He had not appeared frequently in public since his retirement, and men were glad to see him. The early buzz that greeted his first appearance in the hall grew louder and louder, and swelled into an uproar as delegates turned in larger numbers and recognized him.
The vast body of the auditorium was crowded with men. Posts supporting huge placards indicated the division of delegates into counties. The General's own county was nearest the door by which he had entered. At a call from some one these delegates climbed upon their settees. They gave three cheers for him. It was a spontaneous tribute to the one great man of the State--their county's favorite son.
The word passed rapidly. Other counties came to their feet. The band was playing, the early enthusiasm of the day was fresh, men had not had opportunity to exercise their voices till then, and as the General passed down the side aisle of the hall he was cheered by every delegation. Harlan followed him closely, and the Duke was at their heels. Every man in the hall saw the little group. It seemed eminently fit that Thelismer Thornton should escort General Waymouth. But the Duke did not realize that the General was shrewdly using that opportunity of displaying Thornton, the elder, in his retinue. The accident fitted with some plans of his own.
Spurred by the excitement of that tumultuous moment, Harlan could not restrain a bit of a boast.
"How do you like the sound of that, grandfather?" he flung over his shoulder.
"There's no politics in that, you young fool. A hoorah isn't a nomination."
But he could not hide from himself the plain fact that Varden Waymouth was a tremendously strong figure in State affairs.
There was sincerity behind that outburst. Eyes glistened. Faces glowed with admiration and respect. The Duke wondered bitterly how much of that extraordinary tribute was inspired by the publicity work for which the State Committee had spent its good money.
The General led the way in at the side door that admitted to the stage. He was on familiar ground. Behind the stage there were several anterooms. He appropriated an empty one, hanging his hat on a hook.
"Not an elaborate lay-out for a candidate, Thelismer," he remarked, pleasantly, "but headquarters to-day is where we hang up our hat."
"Vard, you don't mean to tell me--seriously, at this hour--that you mean to be a candidate?" Thornton had put aside his anger. That had been bitter and quick ire, because his grandson had seemed so blind to his own personal interests. There was solicitude now in the old man's air.
"I got you into this myself," he went on. "I coaxed you in, for the situation was right and ripe. You kicked it over yourself. I haven't any compunctions, Vard. I stayed with you just as long as I could stay. But I'll be dod-jimmed if I'll shove a Governor onto my party that's a hybrid of Socialist and angel. Now you can't swing this thing. Everett's got it buttoned. I tell you he has! You're too big a man, to-day, to get before that convention and be thrown down. I've got a better line on the situation than you have. Vard, let's not have this come up between us at our time of life. It's bad--it's bad!"
"It
is bad," returned the General, quietly; "but not for me! And it's too late to stop. I'm going through with it, Thelismer."
There was dignity--a finality of decision--that checked further argument. Thornton shifted gaze from Waymouth to his grandson, started to say more, snapped his jaws shut, and walked away.
The door of the anteroom afforded a view across the stage. The hour had arrived. The secretary of the State Committee appeared from the wings and waited until the delegates were in their seats and quiet. He read the call, and then the temporary organization was promptly effected, the tagged delegates popping up here and there and making the motions that had been entrusted to them.
A clergyman invoked Divine blessing, praying fulsomely and long, beseeching that the delegates would be guided by the higher will in their deliberations.
"It's the only prayer I ever find amusing--God pardon me!" whispered the General at Harlan's side, watching the preliminaries. "To call a State convention, as the machine runs it, a deliberative body is a sad jest of some magnitude. The managers intend to hold the real convention the night before in the State Committee's headquarters at the hotel. But to-day I hope that prayer proves prophetic."
He studied the faces on the platform. The United States Senator, smug and now satisfied that he had chosen aright for his personal interests, sat in the chairman's central seat, and studied his people from under eyelids half lowered while the parson prayed.
After the prayer, the routine proceeded hurriedly. For five minutes the convention seemed to be in a state of riot. Men were bellowing and yelping, and standing on settees. The counties were holding simultaneous caucuses for the purpose of selecting, each its vice-president of convention, its State committeeman, and member of the Committee on Resolutions--the resolutions then reposing in the breast-pocket of the Hon. Luke Presson.
The secretaries were announced, the temporary organization was made permanent, and, advancing against a blast of band-music and a salvo of applause, the Senator-chairman began his address.
"Now," remarked General Waymouth, grimly, "I am ready to open headquarters in earnest. My boy, in that anteroom across the stage you'll find your grandfather and Mr. Presson, and certain members of the State Committee. David Everett will be there, too. Inform them I send my urgent request that they meet, at
once, the Hon. Arba Spinney and a delegation in my room here. I think that combination will suggest to guilty consciences that they'd better hurry. If they show any signs of hesitating, you may intimate as much to them."
The plain and stolid men came in just then. They brought Mr. Spinney through the side door. The unhappy conspirator, jostled by his body-guard, was near collapse. He was now traitor to both sides. Circumstances hemmed him in. But more than he feared the recriminations of Luke Presson and his associates, he feared the papers in the breast-pocket of Varden Waymouth.
Harlan went on his errand, crossing the stage behind a backdrop. Senator Pownal had got well under way, and was setting forth the sturdy principles of the Republican party with all the power of his lungs.
Harlan did not knock at the anteroom door; he walked in, and for a moment he thought that the enraged chairman was about to leap at his throat.
"Spinney, eh?" he blazed at the young man's first word. "Explain to me, Mr. Thornton, what is meant by your assault on a decent and honest citizen? What do you mean by teaming him from the hotel to this convention hall with a body-guard to insult men who have business with him?"
The question was confession that the chairman had been unable to get at the political property he had paid dearly for. It indicated that he suspected but did not realize fully how deeply Spinney was in the toils.
"Explain!" shouted Presson, standing on tiptoe to thrust features convulsed with rage into the young man's face.
"General Waymouth is waiting to explain, sir. He's across the stage, there! And Mr. Spinney is with him. I'd advise you to hurry."
"I don't need any of your advice! If you've got him on exhibition at last where the public can be admitted, I can't get there any too quick."
He rushed out, charging like a bull, and the others followed.
The State committeeman who closed file with Harlan did not appreciate the gravity of the situation.
"You seem to be introducing new features into a State Convention to-day, cap'n," he observed, sarcastically. "The way you're handling Brother Spinney is like the song about
"'Old Jud Cole, who went by freight To Newry Corner in this State; Packed him in a crate to get him there, With a two-cent stamp to pay his fare.'"
He added, "Spinney is light enough to travel on that tariff, but you're going to find he's got friends that are heavier."
Young Thornton waited till all had entered the anteroom, and again took his post as guard on the inside of the door.
General Waymouth checked Presson at the first yelp of the outburst with which he had stormed into the room. Probably there was not another man in the State who could have prevailed by sheer force of dignity and carriage in that moment when the passions of his opponents were so white-hot. But he was, in intellect, birth, breeding, and position, above them all, and they knew it. There, boxed in that little room, they faced him, and anger, rancor, spite, itch for revenge gave way before his stern, cold, inexorable determination to prevail in the name of the right.
"Gentlemen, I haven't called you here for the purpose of arguing or wrangling. You'll waste time by trying to do either. You are here to listen to what
must be done. You represent the warring factions. There are enough of us to straighten the matter out. There are not so many that the secret of this shameful mess cannot be kept, and our party saved at the polls."
He paused to draw the fateful documents from his pocket.
In the hush of the little room they heard Senator Pownal declaiming: "And it is upon these firm principles, bedrock of inalienable rights guaranteed to the people, upon the broad issues of reform, inculcation of temperance, and the virtues of civic life, that the Republican party is founded."
Harlan, at the door, younger than the rest, found a suggestion of humor in what the orator was saying compared with what the party managers had met to hear. But there were no smiles on the faces of the group. The demeanor of the stricken Spinney, anger fairly distilling in his sweat-drops, hinted the truth to Presson. Thelismer Thornton tried to get near Spinney, understanding it all even better than the State chairman, but the plain and stolid men flanked their captive with determination.
"I have here five affidavits from eye-witnesses, swearing that Arba Spinney was bribed to sell out his faction at the last moment to-day, leaving only David Everett in the field. I have no time to waste in giving the details of that transaction to men who know them just as well as I do. And I want no interruption, sir!" He brandished the papers under the nose of Presson, who attempted to speak. "I do not propose to have my intelligence insulted by denials from you or any one else. If you don't believe I have full proof of what I charge, you walk out of that door and put the matter to the test! And I hasten to assure you, sir, that you'll be eternally disgraced!"
He waited a moment, because a roar of applause that greeted one of Senator Pownal's utterances resounded even in the remote anteroom.
"It all means, gentlemen, that I'm to be the nominee of this convention to-day. It's time for a clean-up, and I'm going to start one. The men who are running our party are not fit to be in charge of it. The voters deserve a better show. I've called you here to give you an opportunity to save yourselves, personally. I'm willing to submit to a little by-play for that purpose. You are to allow Spinney's name to go before the convention, according to the regular programme. That's to divert the attention of the convention and the State-at-large from what otherwise would seem a split in the recognized management of the party. Spinney has been only a rank outsider, politically considered. We have to consider the campaign, gentlemen, and the material we may furnish our friends, the enemy. Then, you gentlemen of the State Committee, each in his county delegation, are to start a demonstration in my behalf. This is no time for me to be mock-modest. On the heels of that demonstration Everett's name is to be withdrawn with the explanation that such an apparently spontaneous demand from the voters should be recognized. Mr. Everett is to declare that under the circumstances he does not wish to stand in the way of popular choice, and he is to announce that much and present me to the convention. I assure you, Mr. Everett, that I ask this last with no intent of wounding your feelings or indulging in cheap triumph--it is necessary in order that the mouths of political gossips may be shut."
A rather stupid silence followed that declaration of programme. The voice of the Senator rose and fell without.
The General met their staring eyes calmly. "It may be a rather surprising development of the convention," he said. "But as soon as the surprise is over it will commend itself as a perfectly natural and graceful concession to public opinion--as public opinion can be set in motion by the members of the State Committee on the floor of the convention. In fact, the plan commended itself to my friend Thelismer, here, and Chairman Presson some weeks ago."
The State chairman was stirred as though galvanically by that statement. The bitter memory of how he had groomed the dark horse that was now kicking his master's political brains out rose in him.
"By the everlasting gods," he shouted, "I'll go down fighting! If the house has got to come down, I'll go down with it."
"Samson had two arms. I have only one," returned General Waymouth. "But I've got that arm around the central pillar of your political roof, gentlemen--and I've got the strength to handle it! You've stated your position as a politician, Presson. Now I'll state mine. Rather than see the Republican temple made any longer a house of political ill-fame I'll pull it down on you prostitutes."
It was bitter taunt--an insult delivered with calm determination to sting. Presson stamped about the room in his wrath.
"I'm making no pact or promise," went on the General. "I declare that you are the men who are wrecking our party. Now if you propose to wreck it completely, we'll go smashing all together in the ruins. It may as well be wrecked now as later!"
There was another hush in the room.
"So I call upon you, men of office, shop, and farm, bone and sinew of our grand old party," exhorted Senator Pownal from the forum outside, "to forget the petty bickerings of faction and stand shoulder to shoulder in your march to the polls. Nail the principles of justice, truth, and honesty to the flagstaff, and follow behind that banner, winning the suffrages of those who believe in the right."
"It sounds as though the Senator might be arriving close to his amen," suggested General Waymouth, ironically. "You have only a few minutes in which to decide. I hold the proxy of one of these delegates to the convention." He pointed to one of the stolid and plain men. "You know that I can get the ear of that convention--you can't work any gag-rule on me--I have been listened to too often by the men of this State when I've had something to say. And you know what effect these affidavits will have!"
There was further silence, broken only by the voice of the Senator without and Presson within, who was scuffling about, babbling disjointed oaths.
Suddenly a great outburst of applause signified that the Senator had concluded.
"Go ahead out and kill your party!" barked Presson. "Give it your strychnine! It may as well die right now, in a spasm, as to have a lingering death later with you at the head of it, Waymouth. You can't team
me!"
"You let me say a word right here!" blustered Everett. "I wash my hands of any deal with Spinney. I've got the bulk of that convention behind me. I don't propose to be shunted."
"I supposed you all remembered the details of what you did last evening," returned the General, coldly. "Is it necessary for me to remind you, Mr. Everett, that Chairman Presson turned over to Spinney a paper in which you agreed to appoint him to a State office? That transaction was noted along with the rest, sir."
"I'll have as many witnesses as you," declared Presson, "I'll--"
"Stop!" It was a tone that cowed the chairman, struggling with his guilty conscience. "I have warned you that I'm not here to argue this matter with you. I'll not be drawn into any discussion. What I have, I have!" He waved his papers above his head. "What I can do that I'll do! I would remind you, gentlemen, that the convention is waiting."
Thelismer Thornton caught the secretary of the State Committee by the arm and propelled him toward the door, ordering Harlan to open it. "Signal that band! Start it to going!" he directed. "Keep those delegates easy." He turned on the chairman. "Now, Luke, you're licked. And it's your own deadfall that's caught you. I know just how you feel, but here's a laundry-bag that you've got to draw the puckering-strings on. Shut up! I'm going to save you from yourself. You're running amuck, now. You're a lunatic, and not responsible." He dragged the defiant chairman back into the room. He held him in firm grip. "There's a new bribery law in this State. You haven't forgotten it, have you! It's State prison!"
"Look here, gentlemen," he went on, addressing the members of the State Committee, "you've got just five minutes leeway between a devilish good political walloping and striped suits. Get out on the floor. Get busy with those delegations. And the man of all of you who dares to say one word too much about what's been done here to-day will peek through bars and wish his tongue had been torn out by the roots before he talked! Presson, this thing is out of your hands. You shan't cut your own throat, I say! Get onto that floor, men!"
They went. It was the rush of men to save themselves. Each man as he passed out cast a glance upon the papers that General Waymouth clutched, and a second glance at Harlan, brawny guard, at his side.
"Take Everett across to the committee-room and call in the men who were to present him," directed the Duke, releasing the chairman. "And it's up to you two to give 'em a story that will hold 'em. It's short notice, but you've got General Waymouth for a text! Look here, Dave," he whirled on Everett, who was frantically protesting, "your strength was the strength the boys of the machine put behind you. It hasn't been personal strength. You can't afford to be a blasted fool now, even if you are crazy mad. You've been lecturing considerably the past few weeks on 'party exigencies.' This is one. It's an exigency that will put you before a grand jury if you don't tread careful. Get across there, you and Presson! I'm eating dirt myself. Get down on your hands and knees with me, and make believe you like it!"
He hustled them out.
The band was rioting through a jolly melange of popular melodies.
The old man hesitated a moment, and then walked across to the General.
"Vard, politics is most always a case of dog eat dog, but I want to assure you that I'm not hungry just now if you are not! And my grandson seems to have more political foresight than I gave him credit for. I'm getting old, I see!"
He did not give them opportunity to answer. He swung about and went to Spinney.
"I reckon they'll raise your guard, now, Arba," he said, nodding at the stolid and plain men. "There isn't much more that you can do, either to harm or help. You'd better pull a chair out to the edge of the stage there, and listen to what a h--l of a fellow you are when your orators nominate you. Then before the applause dies away, you'd better start for home. It'll be a good time to get away while Presson is busy!" It was plain that, lacking any other object, the Duke was venting the last of his spleen on this wretched victim of the game. "Before you go, give me one of those 'Honest Arba' ribbons. I keep a scrap-book of jokes!"
The abject candidate had no word to offer in reply. He was white and trembling, for after Presson's early declaration it had seemed that the whole shameful story was to be thundered in the ears of those two thousand men sitting yonder.
"You can suit yourself as to your further movements, Spinney," said the General, noting the man's distress.
"There's a rear exit from this hall," remarked the Duke, significantly.
Spinney went out, hanging his head.
"Well, there's at least one cur eliminated from the politics of this State," blurted Harlan, gratefully.
"Eliminated!" sneered his grandfather. "The first man you'll meet in the legislative lobby next winter, sugar on his speech and alum on his finger, so that he can get a good firm grip of your buttonhole, will be Arba Spinney, drawing his salary as the paid agent of half-a-dozen schemers. He may seem a little wilted just now, but he's a hardy perennial--you needn't worry about
him."
"I think you're the man to take these documents to the Committee on Resolutions, Thelismer," stated the General, drawing out the planks he had submitted the evening before. "You can explain why they should be inserted--and I have modified them somewhat. I have no desire to frighten the party at the outset."
The Duke took the papers, and departed without a word. The men of the affidavits returned to their delegations on the floor of the convention, gratification in their faces, as well as a sense of the importance of the secret they were guarding.
The band gave a final bellow, and the business of the convention proceeded.
General Waymouth and Harlan took chairs into their little room and sat down to wait. The sounds came to them mellowed by distance, but distinct. They followed the procession of events.
Spinney's name was presented by an up-country spellbinder who had copied logic, diction, and demagogic arguments from his chief. But all the thrill, swing, and excitement of the Spinney movement were gone. Red fire, hilarity, and stimulants could not be used to spice this daylight gathering of men ranged in orderly rows on their settees--and subtle suggestion had already gone abroad. Yet the undercurrent of opposition to the further dictation by the party ring was shown by the applause that greeted every reference by the speaker to the conditions that existed in the party. On the text of Spinney, personating Protest, the orator preached to willing converts who clamored for change, even though no better leader than Spinney offered. Spinney got perfunctory applause; suggested change was cheered tumultuously.
The convention was ripe for revolution against dominant conditions, without exactly understanding how to rebel wisely and well.
Suddenly a clarion voice raised itself from the convention floor. They in the little room could hear every word.
"That's Linton," said the General, calmly. "He balked under my pat, but he's plunging into the traces handsomely under the whip!"
"Linton! After refusing? Is he presenting your name?"
"Oh, he's a politician, and one must allow a politician to weigh out his stock of goods on his own scales, and hope that he will give good measure. I'll be grateful in this instance, Mr. Thornton. They've picked out an able young speaker!"
In spite of his resentful opinion of Linton, an opinion into which he would not admit to himself that jealousy entered, Harlan, as he listened, had to acknowledge the ability of the young lawyer.
First he caught the attention of his auditors, then he skilfully suggested that he was preparing a surprise. With appealing frankness that won the interest and sympathy of the Spinney adherents, he agreed with them that the times demanded changes and reforms. He urged that these should be undertaken within the party, and then, earnestly but delicately, he hinted that the reformers had not picked the right leader. As delicately he suggested, next, that an extreme partisan, bound far in advance of nomination by factional pledges and trades that he must carry out, was not the right man to extricate the party, either. Lastly, he came to the crux of his speech, plunging into the theme with passionate eloquence that brought moisture to the eyes of Harlan. That young man was not thinking of the orator, then. His thoughts were on the old man at whose side he sat--the old man who listened in dignified patience.
Now the delegates sniffed the truth. A word had put them on the trail. They were not sure. But they suspected. And mere suspicion sent them upon their settees, cheering wildly. Distrust of Spinney, sullen disloyalty to the machine-created Everett, furnished a soil in which hope for another solution of the tangle sprang with miraculous growth.
Linton waited until the roar of voices died away. They again listened breathlessly, wondering whether their own hopes had beguiled them.
"From the storied past, gentlemen of the convention, we draw precept and example, lesson and moral, hope and inspiration. As nature has stored in the bowels of the earth the oil that serves the lighthouse beacons of to-day, so life has stored in various reservoirs human experience that can light the path through troublous times in these latter days. Written on the scroll of history, limned on the page of law, we find the words of the fathers, sane and helpful thought and good counsel. In days of doubt and worry and despair we may meet the fathers on the written page. But, oh, how grand a blessing for the human race could we sit at their feet beholding them in the flesh and receive their teachings! If only they, the fathers, might take us by the hand and lead us through the devious tangles of public policy! To-day we meet here in perplexed division as to the standard-bearer for our next campaign. If up from that past of sage counsel and unfaltering faith there might come one who could stand forth and expound the lessons that we need, we might take heart and travel boldly on. But, gentlemen, I bring you a message of greater hope--more profound a blessing. Up from that past comes the standard-bearer
himself! His wise kindliness meets every test of honest gentleman; scholarship crowns his brow, Law holds her torch aloft that his feet may tread the safe way; war from him has taken tribute, but to him has given a hero's deathless laurels. Once in her history this State welcomed him to her councils as her gracious overlord, and now--"
There was no doubt in their minds now. A window-shaking demonstration bore down his voice.
Linton seized upon the beginning of silence.
"Now once again his State, groping for a hand to lead her forth to stability and progress, sees his hand and seeks to grasp it, supplicating him: 'O father, guide me! O wise man, teach me! O hero, save me!' And I name to you, gentlemen, for the candidate of the Republican party--"
He leaped upon a settee and voiced the name of General Varden Waymouth with all the strength of his trumpet voice. But no one heard what he said. They all knew what he was to say. They did not need the spoken name.
That convention had been ripening for a stampede. Its component delegates had contained the stampede fever for weeks before they assembled. Men leaped and screamed. It was a storm of enthusiasm; two thousand feet furnished the thunder-roar; hats went up and came down like pelting rain; and voices bellowed like the bursting wind volleys of the gale.
Here and there, gesticulating men were trying to make seconding speeches, but the words were lost. The chairman of the convention, grim and pale and wondering just how much damage this overturn signified to his personal interests, nodded recognition to these speakers, and allowed them to waste their words upon the welter of mere sound.
He also recognized other men who arose. He knew them for Spinney's adherents and divined what they were trying to say. And having divined it, he was promptly inspired to get in with the rush of those who were climbing aboard the band-wagon.
He advanced to the edge of the platform, and by tossing his arms secured a moment of silence. He had his own salvation to look after.
"I am glad, inexpressibly pleased, that as chairman of your convention I can now declare myself for General Waymouth; for the convention has but one name before it--the name of Arba Spinney has been withdrawn!"
When the tumult began again--almost delirium this time--David Everett appeared from the wings, white, stricken, overwhelmed by the suddenness with which the prize had been snatched beyond his reach, driven out upon the stage by the State Committee like a whipped cur forced to perform his little trick in public. He began to speak, but the delegates did not listen--they knew what he was saying, and were cheering him. Not all of it was enthusiasm for General Waymouth; men instantly realized that a nasty split in the party had been bridged; men felt that in this new candidate both factions had the ownership that puts one "in right." A united party could now march to the polls.
The nomination was by acclamation!
They came to General Waymouth, where he stood patiently at the door of his room--the committee appointed to escort him before the convention. He signalled for them to precede him--his hand was inside the arm of Harlan Thornton, and he did not withdraw it even to shake the eager hands that were outstretched. He walked upon the stage with the young man, and, still holding his arm, faced the hurricane of enthusiasm until it had blown itself out.
It was a breathless hush in which he spoke.
"Our party, in State Convention assembled, has to-day declared for honesty." They did not exactly understand, but they gave voice like hounds unleashed. That sentiment complimented them. "I pledge the last strength of my old age to the task you have imposed upon me. Give me your pledge, man to man, in return. Shall it be for all of us: honesty in principle and unswerving obedience to every party profession we make? I await your 'Yes'!"
It came like a thunderclap--two thousand voices shouting it.
He stood there, his hand upraised, waiting again until the hush was upon them once more. They were ready for the usual speech of acceptance. But he said simply this:
"I accept the trust!"
He put his hand behind Harlan's guarding elbow and retired.
"A carriage at once, Mr. Thornton," he directed. "I must save myself for performance, not parade."
They were away before even the eager platform notables could intercept them. The cheering was still going on when the carriage started. From the open windows of the hall the riot of the convention--voices and music--pursued them until the racket of the busy street drowned it out.
"At the present moment, Mr. Thornton, it is not likely that the Republican State Committee is in a mood for poetry," remarked General Waymouth. Gayety that was a bit wistful had succeeded his sombre earnestness.
"But something in the sentiment of this old song might appeal to them while they are thinking of me just now:
"'The mother may forget the child
That smiles so sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done to me.'"
Harlan did not reply. At that moment, strangely enough, something besides the fury and the results of that tremendous convention occupied his thoughts. While he had stood beside General Waymouth he had not looked down into the pit of roaring humanity. He had looked straight up into the eyes of Madeleine Presson, whose gaze, by some chance, caught his the moment he stepped upon the platform. She had leaned on the gallery-rail and studied him intently. In spite of all else that had happened and was happening, he could not help wondering why. _