91 
 
 l\t 
 
THE POLITICIAN 
 
"Isn't that sacrificing- too much?" 
 
 [Page 151] 
 
THE POLITICIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 Edith Huntington Mason 
 
 Author of "The Real Agatha" 
 
 ILLUSTRATED IN FULL COLOR 
 BY THE KINNEYS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO 
 
 1910 
 
Copyright 
 
 By A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 
 1910 
 
 
 Published April 9, 1910 
 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England 
 
 PRESS OF THE VAIL COMPANY 
 COSHOCTON, U. S. A. 
 
To E. P. P. 
 
 WHOSE FRIENDSHIP HAS MADE IT 
 POSSIBLE FOR ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK 
 
 ivi255525 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I After Four Years 9 
 
 II Patriotism and Peanuts .... 24 
 
 III " For the Hundredth Time " . . .56 
 
 IV Politics and Letters 69 
 
 V. "Here We are, Cora!" .... 93 
 
 VI The Episode of the Bracelet . . . 102 
 
 VII Fame, Love, and Fortune .... 119 
 
 VIII Mrs. Gibbs on " Responsibility " . . 131 
 
 IX Temptation . .155 
 
 X " Who Knows but the World may 
 
 End To-night?" 177 
 
 XI Verney Takes the Veil . . . .196 
 
 XII The Struggle at Saratoga . . . 214 
 
 XIII "Friends, How Goes the Fight?" . 232 
 
 XIV Rivals 248 
 
 XV The One Thing a Woman must not 
 
 Say 258 
 
 XVI Light 274 
 
 XVII The Fury of a Woman Scorned . . 283 
 
 XVIII What Money Cannot Buy .... 298 
 
 
The Politician 
 Contents — Continued 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIX " So They Drew on Towards the 
 
 House of the Interpreter " . . 318 
 XX Verne y Loses His Temper . . . .348 
 XXI " Not Launcelot or Another " . . 374 
 XXII "I Always Want Most What I 
 
 Cannot Have" 395 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " Is n't that sacrificing too much ? " . . . Frontispiece 
 
 " Did n't you even tell your best friend, when they 
 
 proposed ? " 64 
 
 " Any one rather than the present Governor " . 
 
 "Why did this happen to me?" 316 
 
THE POLITICIAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AFTER FOUR YEARS 
 
 THE first warm days of June held the city in 
 their grasp, and the far-famed lake breeze was 
 traitorously absent from the streets. Yet in 
 spite of the heat, the doors of the great structure 
 where the Republican National Convention was being 
 held continued to engulf their thousands. For blocks 
 on both sides of Sixteenth Street, cars and carriages and 
 automobiles were bringing more guests of the conven- 
 tion to add to the crowd that already seemed to fill 
 Wabash Avenue from side to side. A fluctuating mass, 
 the people ebbed and flowed against the front of the 
 Coliseum, animated by but one purpose, to get within 
 its four walls. 
 
 In such a concourse the arrival of this and that unit 
 by carriage or automobile was unremarked, and the 
 limousine which contained the party of Mrs. Horace 
 Cumloch paused in its turn before the high-arched 
 entrance, deposited its passengers, and then pursued its 
 difficult way onward through the crowd without at- 
 tracting particular attention. Of the few spectators 
 
 [9] 
 
The Politician 
 
 of this incident whose participation in the feverish 
 spirit of the hour did not keep them from curiously 
 scrutinizing their betters, none appreciated the fact 
 that the tall lady in black and white with the beau- 
 tiful gray hair, who stepped first from the machine, 
 was the widow of a prominent Chicago millionaire and 
 a well-known figure in the society of earlier days, or their 
 inspection of the new arrivals would have been more 
 curious still. Neither did any realize that the young 
 girl in the linen suit and wide black hat who accom- 
 panied her was Miss Harriet Rand, a debutante of sev- 
 eral seasons, much travelled, much praised and still un- 
 spoiled, and incidentally heiress of the late Willard T. 
 Rand, merchant prince. Yet that the party were 
 " somebodies " was immediately and unanimously con- 
 ceded, for distinction though unannounced is a quality 
 that in itself commands attention, and these people were 
 distinguished. Besides Mrs. Cumloch and her niece 
 there were Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Presbey, very well 
 known among the young married people of the city, and 
 George Calvert Benton, notable in that company not 
 so much for the rather large fortune which he possessed 
 as for his persistent and assiduous courtship of Miss 
 Harriet Rand. 
 
 " Don't you love the Coliseum? " remarked Mrs. Pres- 
 bey, whose smart attire and well-kept hair served her 
 in the place of beauty, when they had reached the interior 
 gloom of the big building. " It always reminds me of 
 the horse show or a circus; doesn't it you, Harriet? " 
 she added, as they mounted the flight of stairs that 
 
 [10] 
 
After Four Years 
 
 led to the section where Mr. Presbey and George Benton 
 were already endeavoring to find their seats. But Har- 
 riet had no smiling rejoinder to make to this frivolity. 
 
 " I should n't think the Republican National Con- 
 vention would make you think of a circus, Cornelia," she 
 said; and the emphasis on the last word as well as the 
 girl's compressed lips and earnest eyes convinced Mrs. 
 Presbey at once that she had said the wrong thing. 
 
 " Harriet is so intense ! " she whispered to Mrs. Cum- 
 loch, as Miss Rand pressed ahead of them in her eager- 
 ness to see the great spectacle she knew was awaiting her 
 at the top of the steps. 
 
 " She is also sincere," replied Mrs. Cumloch, " and 
 you have n't any idea how interested she is in politics, 
 or how much she knows on the subject. It is really 
 quite extraordinary to hear her — " 
 
 A burst of music from the band at the far end of the 
 building interrupted the sentence ; and as they reached 
 the top step of their climb, the full view of the con- 
 vention burst upon them. It had reached Harriet — 
 mounting just ahead of them — first, and held her now 
 speechless and enthralled in the middle of the aisle ; lips 
 parted, hands clasped, and dark eyes twice their natural 
 size in their effort to take the majestic measure of that 
 impressive scene. Far and wide, wave on wave, stretched 
 the rows of faces back to the four walls of the great 
 oblong building, where the crowded galleries met them 
 with more faces ; and high above them all, the arch of 
 the flag-bedecked dome roofed them in and echoed the 
 throbbing hum of their excitement. The details of the 
 
 [ii] 
 
The Politician 
 
 picture — the cage full of musicians where it hung in 
 mid-air at the end opposite her ; the white placards bear- 
 ing the section numbers, which dotted the vast area like 
 flecks of foam on an inky sea; and in particular the 
 group of black-coated, black-moustached delegates from 
 the South who stood in the aisle just below her, appealed 
 not at all to Harriet; only the magnitude of the scene, 
 only the wide desert of faces above, below, and around 
 her. Motionless she stood, drinking it all in; and be- 
 hind her Mrs. Cumloch and Mrs. Presbey, affected quite 
 as much by the girl's feeling as by the sight, stood also 
 motionless. 
 
 It was a sight worth looking at, a sight to stir the 
 hearts of true Americans, independent of party con- 
 siderations. For whatever his politics, that American 
 who looked upon it for the first time must have thrilled 
 at the spectacle of so much organized power, and ac- 
 corded it the respect which the outer and visible signs 
 of the inner workings of a great Government cannot but 
 inspire. 
 
 It was Mrs. Cumloch who at length took pity on the 
 men of the party, who were gesticulating weirdly from a 
 section farther down the aisle, very much as if they were 
 leading a college cheer. " Come, my dear," she said to 
 Harriet ; " they 're waiting for us," and the girl, her 
 usually clear, colorless skin pink with excitement, fol- 
 lowed with unseeing eyes past rows of people and took 
 her seat, still under the spell of her first sight of a 
 convention, and without even observing the programme 
 which the attentive Benton held out to her. 
 
 [121 
 
After Four Years 
 
 They had been some few moments settled in their 
 places, and the procession of marching clubs, each boom- 
 ing a different candidate, was weaving its serpentine way 
 among the delegates, accompanied by more or less cheer- 
 ing, according to the degree of popularity of the cham- 
 pion exploited. Miss Rand was enthusiastically clapping 
 the club which bore on its flag the name of the candidate 
 she favored, when she perceived for the first time the 
 person whom she had come to the convention to see, 
 and that was James Vernor Ellis, of New York, dele- 
 gate from that State and known to newspaperdom as a 
 rising young politician. Ellis was only thirty-one, 
 but he had appeared in the newspapers a number of 
 times during the ten years since his graduation from 
 college, " along with the murderers, divorcees, and other 
 famous people," as he himself was wont to put it. His 
 career in print had been started with a column in a 
 New York society paper chronicling the incidents of a 
 charity bazaar, and the reply which young Mr. Ellis, 
 then just out of college, had made to a fast and fash- 
 ionable young matron who had offered to dance with 
 him in the dancing pavilion, in exchange for fifty 
 dollars. " Excuse me, Mrs. So-and-So," the young man 
 was reported as saying, " but is n't that a little more 
 than you usually ask a man for putting his arm around 
 your waist ? " 
 
 The part he played in an incident in connection with 
 the assassination of President McKinley at Buffalo had 
 figured next in the papers. On the evening in question, 
 when the martyred president was lying near to death, 
 
 [13] 
 
The Politician 
 
 a group of anxious citizens of Buffalo had gathered 
 around a bulletin board where news of the sinking man's 
 condition was posted. When it was learned that 
 McKinley had only a few hours to live, some one in the 
 crowd, for the pleasure of hearing himself talk and 
 the more doubtful one of shocking the others, voiced the 
 sentiment that the country was " well rid of him." The 
 scoffer met swift punishment for his unfeeling and 
 unpatriotic remark at the hands of Mr. Ellis, who hap- 
 pened to be among the bystanders, and who promptly 
 knocked him down — a deed which won no little ap- 
 plause for Mr. Ellis and much exploitation by the 
 press. 
 
 Lately his name had a habit of cropping up in ac- 
 counts of things political: he had been mentioned as 
 refusing the honor of a judgeship for reasons not 
 stated, and again in connection with his reelection as 
 leader of his District. And if that was not distinction 
 enough, he had also the honor to be brother to Mrs. 
 Lawrence Presbey. As for Harriet Rand's knowledge 
 of him, she had met him the summer of the last con- 
 vention, which was the year of her coming out. 
 
 " There 's my brother ! " exclaimed Mrs. Presbey, 
 catching sight of the young man at almost the same 
 moment with Harriet. " See, Lawrence, there 's Ver- 
 ney ! " 
 
 "Where? " said Presbey, " I don't see." 
 
 " Over in section 16, the New York section, with a 
 brown suit and red and black hat-band," replied his 
 wife, levelling glasses in the direction specified; and 
 
 [14] 
 
After Four Years 
 
 then to Miss Rand, " You remember my brother, don't 
 you, Harriet? " 
 
 " Yes," said Harriet quietly, but her thoughts flew 
 with a rush back to that evening in Mrs. Presbey's 
 apartment on the Lake Shore Drive, where she had met 
 him. She had been dining with the young married 
 couple when Ellis burst in upon them to bid his sister 
 good-bye before leaving for New York with the other 
 delegates. She remembered perfectly the rare intelli- 
 gence and sparkle of his blue eyes, and his charmingly 
 enunciative voice, as he laughingly denied his sister's ac- 
 cusation that they had seen nothing of him, and she 
 remembered especially the few moments when the Pres- 
 beys, busy arguing with each other about the best way 
 to get to the La Salle Street Station, left them alone in 
 conversation. It had been for a few moments only, but 
 she remembered well one thing that he said. When she 
 asked him if he ever expected to run for office himself, 
 he replied, half laughing, half serious, " Oh, no ! I 'm 
 only a politician ; I help other people run for office." 
 And as " the politician " her thoughts had named him 
 ever since, making a place for him among themselves 
 through four years of life filled to an unusual extent 
 with travel, cultivation, and social success. 
 
 " If I could only make him see me ! " said Mrs. 
 Presbey; and in the hope of attracting her brother's 
 attention she stood up and waved frantically, in spite 
 of the protests of her more reserved husband, whose 
 natural enemy was notoriety. Her efforts were quite 
 unsuccessful, for the young man in the brown suit, who 
 
 [15] 
 
The Politician 
 
 was just entering section 16, was too absorbed in ex- 
 changing greetings with various men about him to 
 notice anything so unimportant as the flutter of a 
 woman's programme half way between the New York 
 section and the platform for the speakers. 
 
 "What's all the excitement about?" asked George 
 Benton, waking up to the fact that something unusual 
 was going on, and that it — whatever it was — had 
 brought an unwonted color to the cheek of the girl 
 beside him and a wonderful brilliance to her eyes ; at 
 the same time he was quite blissfully unaware that there 
 was such a person as James Vernor Ellis in existence, 
 much less that he was known to Miss Harriet Rand. 
 
 " It 's Mrs. Presbey's brother," replied Harriet, 
 gently and forbearingly, for she had an older sister's 
 affection for Benton, " Mr. Ellis, you know. He 's a 
 delegate from New York." 
 
 "Ellis?" repeated Benton, adjusting his glasses and 
 looking where Harriet was looking. " He 's going to 
 speak, some one told me, in support of the minority 
 report of the Committee on Rules, representing New 
 York State." 
 
 " Not really ! " cried Harriet, and in the interest of 
 the moment she gave his arm a little shake. George 
 Benton's dark, amiable face broke into a smile. 
 
 " Yes, really ! " he said ; " but what 's so extraordinary 
 about that ? " He looked admiringly down at her ; but 
 Harriet had turned her back and was excitedly telling 
 Ellis's sister, who was not half so excited as she, that 
 Ellis was going to make a speech. 
 
 [16] 
 
After Four Years 
 
 The momentary animation with which a word from 
 Miss Rand invariably lit up the rather expressionless 
 features of the young man's face vanished almost im- 
 mediately, and he leaned down and picked up Mrs. Pres- 
 bey's fan, which had fallen to the floor. 
 
 " Thank you, George," returned that lady, and then 
 addressed her husband across him. 
 
 " Lawrence," she said, in subdued but intense tones ; 
 " I do wish you could hear what this woman in front 
 of me has been saying ! " 
 
 " Which woman ? " asked her husband cheerily ; and 
 then as he caught the indignant glances his wife directed 
 at a placid-looking be-spectacled woman in the seat 
 ahead of her, his tone grew graver. 
 
 " What 's the trouble? " he asked. 
 
 " Why, if you '11 believe me," returned his wife, " she 
 keeps turning around and talking to me the whole time, 
 telling me just who every one is and what 's happening! 
 And I never saw her before in my life ! " 
 
 w Perhaps she thinks you want her to," soothed Pres- 
 bey ; " she probably means well ! " 
 
 " Indeed she does n't," retorted Cornelia Presbey ; 
 " she 's been to fourteen conventions, or so she says " — 
 this with a scathing glance at the lady in front — " and 
 she just wants to show off. I never — " 
 
 " My dear," interrupted the lady in front, turning 
 half around in her seat and smiling placidly at Mrs. 
 Presbey, " if you look now I think you can see Alice 
 Roosevelt. Close down by the chairman's table, with 
 a blue and white check — " 
 
 [17] 
 
The Politician 
 
 But Mrs. Presbey had turned resolutely toward Mrs. 
 Cumloch on her other side. 
 
 " Just as if I only came to the convention to see Alice 
 Roosevelt ! " she said indignantly to the older lady. 
 
 " Well, I daresay half the people came for that as 
 much as for any other reason," remarked Mrs. Cumloch, 
 tolerantly ; " curiosity 's the ruling passion with us 
 Americans ! " 
 
 " And the other half came to shout ' Hats off ! ' I 
 should say," remarked Mr. Presbey, looking from the 
 men in the seats behind them who were making vocifer- 
 ous requests that all head-gear be removed, to his wife's 
 very becoming but undeniably large hat. 
 
 " I 'd take it off, dear," he said. 
 
 " A shame, Cornelia," commiserated George Benton, 
 who knew the Presbeys very well, as his companion 
 obeyed ; then, looking up, " Hullo I " he said, " whom 
 have we here ? Who 's taking the platform now ? " 
 
 " It 's Verney ! " said Mrs. Presbey, restoring her 
 wonderful light hair to its original smooth outline with 
 one upward sweep of her hand, as a young man in a 
 brown suit appeared on the speaker's platform. " Oh, 
 dear ! I don't see what he wants to do this sort of thing 
 for. The family don't care about it at all, his being 
 in politics. It 's too conspicuous and degrading." 
 
 " And expensive, I should say," said Benton. 
 
 "Oh, very ! " she replied. 
 
 Harriet heard, and stared. " Degrading, Cornelia? " 
 she repeated. 
 
 " Yes," replied the young matron. " Fancy one of 
 [18] 
 
After Four Years 
 
 the Ellis family associating with all the horrid men that 
 are mixed up in politics — saloon-keepers and unedu- 
 cated foreigners and I don't know what all ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " returned the girl peremptorily and as if 
 she thought this remark undeserving of attention, 
 " your brother is going to speak." 
 
 The chairman, who had introduced Mr. Ellis, had 
 finished his few remarks and the young man stepped 
 forward, and in a clear, well-sustained voice began his 
 speech. 
 
 " We can't hear ! Oh, I 'm afraid we can't hear ! " 
 said Harriet disappointedly ; " we 're too far back ! " 
 
 Ellis's speech on representation in the convention was 
 brief and, to judge by the interested faces of the dele- 
 gates, very much to the point, although, as Harriet had 
 feared, Mrs. Cumloch's party were too far back to hear 
 it all. Sentences and phrases, however, floated back 
 to them at intervals. 
 
 " In the District in which I live," they heard him say, 
 " over twenty-two hundred Republican votes were cast 
 at the last election. . . . That District is entitled 
 to two delegates in this convention. . . . In a cer- 
 tain District in Mississippi one hundred and seventy- 
 eight Republican votes were cast in the last election. 
 . . . That District is entitled to two votes in this 
 convention. Can any one describe that as equal repre- 
 sentation ? " And again, " For weeks we have heard lit- 
 tle except the contests between the delegates from these 
 Southern Democratic Districts. They have made so 
 much noise that it almost seemed that the Republican 
 
 [19] 
 
The Politician 
 
 party and the whole Government of this country existed 
 for the sole purpose of settling their dispute. Now 
 the contests have been decided, and we shall hear no 
 more of the Republican party in those Districts until 
 the time comes for another national convention." And 
 his clear, well-balanced setting forth of the substance 
 of his subject, accurate in its details and convincingly 
 expressed, brought the young speaker generous applause. 
 Even George Benton, who was not interested in politics 
 and was there because Harriet was there, appreciated 
 that the speaker had distinctly " made good." 
 
 " That 's a wonder of a speech for so young a man," 
 he said to Presbey, as Ellis with a forcible parting state- 
 ment, that drew him many a hand, made his bow and, 
 accompanied by two gray-bearded statesmen, one on 
 each side, stepped down from the platform and worked 
 his way back to section 16. 
 
 Harriet, watching his progress through the crowd, 
 knew without seeing how his eyes sparkled and how 
 often he bit his lower lip with his teeth — a trick he had 
 in conversation when he had made his point and awaited 
 comment upon it. What followed, the remaining pro- 
 gramme of the convention, was to her an anti-climax, 
 even the Roosevelt demonstration; though the epidemic 
 of cheering was catching, and she found herself repeat- 
 ing " Four, four, four years more," with the best of 
 them. 
 
 " If only he could hear it, if only the President were 
 here ! " she said to George Benton, raising her voice 
 almost to a shout, the din about them was so great. 
 
 [20] 
 
After Four Years 
 
 " He can," replied Benton ; " he is." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " asked Miss Rand, puzzled. 
 
 " Long distance telephone," replied the man. " He 's 
 had his ear fast to it from the beginning ! " And he 
 pointed out to her the three black discs about five feet 
 in front of the platform, where the speakers stood, which 
 were the receivers of the instruments. 
 
 Harriet thrilled. " How proud — how proud he 
 must be ! " she said. And because of that listening ear 
 she looked upon the scene of uproar with new interest ; 
 at the shrieking people clinging to rafters and standing 
 on chairs, waving hats and programmes in the maddest 
 kind of excitement; at the delegates in the middle, most 
 of them instructed, and some with their votes deter- 
 mined long before their arrival in Chicago, sitting silent 
 and with folded arms ; and at one old man in particular, 
 who had taken off his coat and was waving it about his 
 head like a flag; while in her ears sounded the monoto- 
 nous chant of two men behind her who had not ceased 
 to cry " Down in front ! " since the beginning of the 
 demonstration. 
 
 " Let 's go home," said Mrs. Presbey, when the cheer- 
 ing had lasted nearly half an hour and showed no signs 
 of diminishing. " I 'm tired and sick of all this noise, 
 and the heat is dreadful ! " 
 
 " Where 's your enthusiasm, Cornelia, my dear? " 
 asked Mrs. Cumloch, who looked as cool and calm as if 
 it were not 90 degrees in the shade. " Have n't you 
 more patriotism than that ? " 
 
 " Not in hot weather, Mrs. Cumloch," returned Mrs. 
 [21] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Presbey ; and then to her husband, " Lawrence, you run 
 around to section 16 and tell the Politician — tell 
 Verney — that we 're going, and that he 's to come out 
 and meet us at the door ; I want to see him." Mr. Pres- 
 bey vanished obediently, and the others, acquiescing in 
 her desire to leave, arose. 
 
 " I think," said the woman in front of them, turning 
 around as they did so, " that if you look now you can 
 see Alice — " But she had not time to finish her sen- 
 tence, for her victim had hurried out into the aisle. 
 
 " Did you ever hear anything like that ? " enquired 
 Mrs. Presbey breathlessly, as the rest joined her. 
 " Why, she regularly persecuted me ! " 
 
 " Yes," agreed Harriet, inattentively ; " but what did 
 you call your brother then, when you sent Mr. Presbey 
 for him, Cornelia ? " 
 
 "'The Politician.' Why?" returned Mrs. Presbey. 
 
 " No reason," replied the girl, who could not have 
 confessed to his sister that she had thought of Ellis by 
 that name ever since she had first seen him. 
 
 " We 've always called him that, Lawrence and I," 
 went on the young married woman, " ever since he took 
 up politics. More for fun than anything else. It 
 seems so absurd, you know, that Verney should really 
 be a politician! He's so good-looking and altogether 
 aristocratic ! " 
 
 " It is n't generally considered a compliment to be 
 called one, I suppose," said Mrs. Cumloch. 
 
 " Is n't it? " said her niece. " Well, it ought to be." 
 
 " Far from being a compliment," remarked Benton, 
 [22] 
 
After Four Years 
 
 at Miss Rand's side as usual ; " it 's often the reverse. 
 From its association with the comic paper idea of a 
 politician, I imagine ; and that would be the most widely 
 accepted one, you see. To my mind the title only calls 
 up a picture of a fat man with a fat cigar in his mouth 
 and fat diamonds on his hands." 
 
 " There they are ! " exclaimed Mrs. Presbey, and the 
 next second her husband, short, round-faced and per- 
 spiring, and her brother, tall and distinguished, had 
 joined them. 
 
 " Here 's the Politician ! " cried Lawrence Presbey 
 jovially. And during the course of the next moment or 
 two, when Mrs. Presbey had ceased to overwhelm her 
 brother with questions and chatter, he and Harriet 
 clasped hands again — after four years. 
 
 [23] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND PEANUTS 
 
 IT had been arranged before they parted that Mr. 
 Ellis was to dine that evening at Mrs. Cumloch's 
 house in Lake Forest. The young man had ac- 
 cepted the older lady's invitation with every sign of 
 pleasure, although the smile which went with his few 
 words of thanks had been for her niece; and Mr. and 
 Mrs. Presbey, who were coming too, had agreed to bring 
 him out with them as soon as the convention was over. 
 George Benton, as a matter of course, for he was a 
 great favorite with Mrs. Cumloch, was to accompany 
 her and Harriet back to Lake Forest in their automo- 
 bile. 
 
 The convention was unexpectedly late in closing that 
 afternoon, and the Presbeys arriving a little after 
 seven, accompanied by Ellis, found the rest of the dinner 
 party assembled on the south terrace of the white 
 marble Venetian palace which Mrs. Horace Cum- 
 loch chose to call her " summer home," and were cor- 
 dially greeted by their hostess. The young man from 
 New York — the others happened to be all Chicagoans 
 — bowed to nearly a dozen people as he was introduced. 
 He wore the same brown suit that Harriet had seen him 
 in that afternoon, as the lateness of the convention had 
 
 [24] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 not given him time to change. Every other man in the 
 party was in evening dress, but he did not explain the 
 matter, feeling that apology for something he could not 
 help was unnecessary. Superfluous explanation was 
 never his habit in any event. 
 
 " You know we have a politician among us to-night," 
 remarked Mrs. Cumloch, as they sat down to the table, 
 " a real, live politician," and she smiled kindly at Ellis. 
 Whereupon the conversation centred at once, firmly and 
 politely, in spite of the young delegate's modest efforts 
 to stave it off, upon the convention, the scene of enthusi- 
 asm that afternoon, and the results of the day's session, 
 not to mention the small part which the stranger among 
 them, the guest from out of town, had played. Started 
 in a spirit of politeness merely, it seemed to grow and 
 flourish until it had shed its shell of perfunctory inter- 
 est and become an animated, living thing under the 
 magnetic touch, the flashing eye, and the earnest accents 
 of the " Politician." 
 
 " It 's like watching a finely bred race-horse quiver- 
 ing for the start to watch that fellow talk on his favorite 
 subject," remarked a middle-aged lawyer, Lee Stanton, 
 who was one of those present, to the man who sat nearest 
 him. " Never saw such whole-souled enthusiasm, in my 
 life!" 
 
 " And about politics, too," commented his wife from 
 across the way, with surprise that was almost scornful — 
 "such a dry, uninteresting subject!" 
 
 That was it exactly. Mrs. Stanton had uncon- 
 sciously voiced the opinion of every one there in her 
 
 [25] 
 
The Politician 
 
 remark. Either through natural indifference or indo- 
 lence or because of the general tendency of people not 
 directly connected with public affairs to condemn po- 
 litical conditions as too bad to improve, and on that 
 account not worth talking about, the subject had here- 
 tofore been dry and uninteresting to Mrs. Cumloch's 
 guests. And that was what made Verney's enthusiasm 
 so amazing to them. It was so inspiring, so sincere, so 
 convincing, that from a feeling almost of self-obligation 
 they responded in kind, felt their eyes kindle when his 
 did, were enthusiastic too. 
 
 Ellis was a new type to these wealthy, contented peo- 
 ple, whose lines lay in pleasant places far removed from 
 the responsibilities of public life and the harassing 
 questions pertaining to the government of the country. 
 He was not, however, in any sense an extraordinary 
 young man, only a thoroughly practical dyed-in-Jie- 
 wool Republican-organization politician, whose god was 
 the Republican party and whose religion was " regu- 
 larity." But he was at the same time a man of prin- 
 ciple and integrity, which qualities identified him with 
 the honest minority among politicians instead of the 
 corrupt majority. He even went so far as to cherish 
 ambitions and schemes for obtaining civil service reform, 
 although his field of activity was not extensive and he 
 had as yet only been connected with State and city 
 politics. These he expected to realize not as the New 
 School reformers wished to do, by means of abolishing 
 political organization, but by reforming it. 
 
 It was this fact, apart from his personal magnetism, 
 [26] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 which explained the flattering attention with which his 
 auditors regarded him and the impression which he 
 seemed to have made upon them. The anomaly of a 
 machine politician with ideals, who worked for reform 
 and patriotism, was too novel in their experience not to 
 be entertaining. Then, too, that very class-feeling 
 which made Mrs. Presbey term politics degrading and 
 which accounted for the tone of scorn with which Mrs. 
 Stanton had described the subject as " dry and unin- 
 teresting," compelled them to respect this man who was 
 one of them, and who yet was not too proud to take off 
 his gloves and do the work they all knew must be done, 
 no matter how they despised it. No wonder they drew 
 closer round the table and hung on his words, with much 
 the same wondering and curious interest as dancers in a 
 ballroom during some great war might display upon 
 the entrance of a soldier with news from the front. 
 
 Harriet looked about her with a peculiar sense of 
 pride that she somehow felt she had a right to, as she 
 noted their absorbed faces and realized that Verney was 
 the centre of attention. How interested they all seemed, 
 these ten or eleven people that she had known all her 
 life — the Stantons, friends of her aunt's ; young Fran- 
 cis Morton, who had been her devoted friend and com- 
 rade since the earliest of their common twenty-four years ; 
 Pauline Wright, the one girl whose friendship among 
 girls meant the most ; George Benton, the Presbeys, her 
 aunt's brother, Mr. Case, and the two other men who 
 made the party complete. 
 
 " What we need most," he was saying to Mr. Case, 
 [27] 
 
The Politician 
 
 in reply to some question of the older man's, quite 
 unconscious that his audience was not that gentleman 
 alone, but the whole table, " what we need most, what 
 the country needs, is more men of character and ability 
 in politics. I don't mean to fill the important admin- 
 istrative positions at Washington; I mean to go down 
 into the thick of things, the beginning of things, to give 
 their time and ability to political work in city and State. 
 It is n't enough, you know, to polish the outside of the 
 platter; to be clean, the inside must be polished too." 
 He paused and bit his lip in the manner Harriet remem- 
 bered so well, and then smiled boyishly, as his glance 
 compassed the circle of interested faces. " And I don't 
 see why they don't enter by the thousand," he went on. 
 " It does seem strange, does n't it, that the men who 
 would lay down everything to answer a call for volunteers 
 if there was a war, should refuse to serve their country in 
 this other equally important way — politically. That 's 
 the way to retrench the power of the bosses — supplant 
 them with good men. When there are more good men 
 than bad in a political machine, it won't be corrupt any 
 longer." 
 
 " It 's undoubtedly the right theory," replied Mr. 
 Case, thoughtfully, " that the country should have more 
 good men in politics, but the trouble is that it 's difficult 
 to put in practice. The good men, you know, as a 
 rule have n't time to give to public life. Their private 
 interests prevent. That 's natural enough ; a man must 
 live and earn his daily bread." 
 
 " Yes, but at least he does n't have to be indifferent," 
 [Mj 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 expostulated Verney. " Every one can't run for office, 
 of course, but those that can't can be interested in 
 what 's going on. I read somewhere in the preface to 
 some good stories about politics, that if all the good 
 men understand when wrong things are being done, 
 that 's all that 's necessary. The wrong things stop 
 being done. To be interested is the least that any man 
 who lays claim to any patriotism can do." 
 
 Mr. Case, elderly broker and man of the world, smiled 
 as one smiles at youthful enthusiasm, indulgently. 
 " You speak warmly," he said ; " yet to my mind there 's 
 every excuse for a man's minding his own affairs first, 
 even should the country go to ruin on that account. 
 Particularly a man with a family. He owes them his 
 first duty. Certainly he should try, if he is able, to 
 give political affairs attention at the same time; but if 
 he fails, I, for one, should hesitate to criticise. Indif- 
 ference I should call regrettable, but I can't say that 
 I 'd call it a crime." 
 
 " I do," asserted Verney, promptly ; " a crime against 
 the State, against the nation, Mr. Case. Interest in 
 public affairs need not interfere with a man's duty to 
 his family, you know, although participation in them 
 might. And where a man who has no duty of the kind 
 is concerned, and indifference to public affairs actually 
 prevents his participation in them, I don't see how it 
 can be called anything less than criminal. 
 
 " The indifference of men in those circumstances, if 
 it continue to exist, will eventually prove the destruction 
 of all hope of obtaining good government for this coun- 
 
 [29] 
 
The Politician 
 
 try. But I don't think it will continue. I think we 
 are growing out of it already." He lifted his head as 
 a swimmer who breasts great waves lifts his for a sight 
 of land and sees it just ahead. " Every year, every 
 day, men of education and character join the ranks of 
 men in public life. They are the army of the Republic 
 in times of peace! And these recruits, these soldiers, 
 are for the most part young men ! " He paused, and 
 his voice took a quiet, hushed tone. " Why, I know 
 men in New York," he said, " forty and fifty and sixty 
 of them, who have taken up active political work during 
 the last month or so, and I don't think one of them is 
 over thirty-five." 
 
 " That 's encouraging, is n't it ? " volunteered Mrs. 
 Stanton, made enthusiast for the moment, self-centred 
 and narrow-minded as she was, by virtue of the Politi- 
 cian's enthusiasm, " to have the young men come to the 
 rescue." 
 
 " The most encouraging thing in the world ! " re- 
 turned Ellis, earnestly ; " because if the young men are 
 forswearing the vice of indifference, if when they are 
 just starting out in life and have their way still to make, 
 they think politics important enough to give it their 
 attention, there is hope for the future of American 
 government." 
 
 A pause followed this remark, — no one among his 
 audience seeming able to contribute anything further 
 to the subject, in lieu of which they unanimously turned 
 their attention to the goods which the gods, in the guise 
 of Mrs. Cumloch, had provided, and which a butler and 
 
 [30] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 two footmen following one another in noiseless proces- 
 sion about the table, set before them in such variety. 
 
 " I 've often thought," presently remarked Francis 
 Morton, who had but lately graduated from an Eastern 
 college, " that I 'd like to go into politics myself ; only 
 the trouble is that a fellow can't get a start anywhere — 
 at all high up, you know, I mean. And, of course," 
 added the young fellow, speaking with the assurance 
 which his father's millions and the consciousness, that he 
 belonged to one of the oldest families in that part of the 
 country lent him, " ward politics is too dirty a business 
 for a gentleman to mix with." 
 
 Ellis regarded him earnestly for a moment, his eager 
 lips begging words of rebuke from his teeming brain, 
 but he would not indulge them. He knew the boy was 
 wrong, that he did n't look at the question of entering 
 public life in the right way, but he could n't very well 
 tell him so. He recognized in the self-satisfied youth a 
 type with which he was very familiar, the young man who 
 imagines he wants to go into politics in order to do 
 something for his country, but whose real object is 
 to have his country do something for him — to establish 
 him in a position of importance and consequence. 
 
 Verney hoped some one would explain to Morton be- 
 fore long this misapprehension of his, but he did not 
 feel quite warranted in doing so himself. So he only 
 sighed and said gently : " I think you would regret it 
 if you were able to start high up, as you propose. It 's 
 all very well to be an ambassador or a diplomat," he 
 sensed readily from his knowledge of the type, that that 
 
 [31] 
 
The Politician 
 
 was the kind of position the young man had in mind 
 when he spoke ; " but a man misses a lot in taking up 
 politics without starting at the beginning of the game." 
 
 After dinner was over, as Mrs. Cumloch and the others 
 sipped their coffee out on the wide stone terrace flower- 
 ing with strange plants and sweet with alien perfumes 
 that hemmed in the spreading low-roofed house, interest 
 in politics as a subject for conversation did not flag, 
 although this thoroughly representative group of peo- 
 ple, belonging to what is known as the " better class," 
 had not taken before the advent of the young New 
 Yorker more interest in that subject than was necessary 
 to appear intelligent. 
 
 " He 's quite hopelessly one-ideaed, you know," said 
 Mrs. Cumloch (Verney was at the other end of the 
 terrace with the younger people, out of ear-shot), " but 
 in this repressed, artificial day and generation such en- 
 thusiasm about anything is refreshing. A man who 
 is n't afraid to admit that he 's bound up in his work 
 to the exclusion of all else commands my admiration." 
 
 " And I like his sort of one-ideaness," added Mrs. 
 Stanton. " I can't endure hobbies as a rule, but one 
 that aims to do something for somebody else — make 
 something better — is too unusual not to be interesting. 
 He couldn't bore me, let him trot it never so far and 
 fast!" 
 
 " That is n't a bad theory of his," remarked Mr. 
 Case, stirring his coffee musingly, " that it 's the men 
 who belong to these all-powerful political machines 
 there 's such an outcry against these days who are best 
 
 [32 J 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 able to wage war against the unscrupulous bosses that 
 have corrupted them." 
 
 " Yes, and of course it 's true," said Lee Stanton, 
 " that the more men of his stamp there are in the politi- 
 cal field — men who are n't corrupt and who are willing 
 to wage war — the more chance there is that the fight 
 will be successful." 
 
 But their efforts to engage Mr. James Vernor Ellis, 
 or " Verney," as he was more familiarly called, in the 
 same sort of discussion they had had at dinner, proved 
 vain. Each one in turn made the attempt when the 
 party had drawn closer together again, but the young 
 man's ready flow of words in regard to things political 
 seemed to have deserted him quite. But not so his 
 spirits, for he conversed lightly and entertainingly on 
 various other subjects, amusing them all with anecdote 
 and story, and trying to bring every one into the con- 
 versation. 
 
 " He 's afraid he 's bored us, the foolish boy," thought 
 Harriet, divining the motive behind this course as read- 
 ily as if Ellis himself had told her, and went over to the 
 swinging bench where he sat. Yet the two had hardly 
 addressed each other directly the evening through. Not 
 that Miss Rand was gifted with any special powers of 
 divination ; but she had happened to know a great many 
 men very well, and her excellent mind and quick intelli- 
 gence enabled her to apply this general knowledge very 
 readily to specific cases. This she did the more accu- 
 rately because her judgment of mankind had never been 
 blinded, or its clarity impaired by the existence of any 
 3 [ 38 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 kind of love affair. Men in plenty had loved her — all 
 sorts and conditions, ranging in kind from the exquis- 
 itely garbed, innocent-faced college youths (for whose 
 acquaintance young Francis Morton had been largely 
 responsible in his eagerness not to have Harriet miss a 
 single game or social function at his college) to the 
 lusty corn-fed Westerners she had met the preceding 
 summer while visiting in Colorado — mining engineers 
 and ranch men for the most part — not to mention the 
 various specimens of the sex encountered abroad and 
 catalogued in her mind as " foreigners." But never a 
 one had she loved. If she had, she might have been, as 
 far as the latter class was concerned, at least, countess or 
 duchess many times over; for in their eyes, the millions 
 of the late Willard T. Rand would have been ample in- 
 ducement for the marriage, even if his daughter had 
 been less fair. As it was, however, she had sailed over 
 the troublous waters of the sea of love as serenely and 
 with as much dignity as a stately swan over its native 
 waters. 
 
 And because she never had fallen in love, Harriet 
 decided that she never would do so. She had satisfied 
 herself that her friendships, her horses, her drawing, 
 and her travels with her aunt, could fill her life to com- 
 pleteness, fatherless and motherless though she was. 
 She was only twenty-four, and singularly childlike and 
 unsophisticated in a great many ways, at least in so far 
 as she herself was concerned. Her knowledge of life 
 as applied to others was normally sufficient ; but the very 
 nature of her own carefully nurtured and sheltered exist- 
 
 [34] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 ence prevented her from having any but the vaguest 
 ideas of possible storm and stress. She was like Kip- 
 ling's ship before she found herself, open to any 
 interpretation of her character but the right one; and 
 while she enjoyed a gallop upon her favorite horse 
 Phantom more than anything else in the world, she 
 was persuaded that in reality she preferred a lecture or 
 a musical recital. In a word, good red blood and warm 
 sympathies were at a discount in her estimation of the 
 needs of character, and brain and intellect at their high- 
 est valuation. As a result, the men she knew found her 
 rather hard to talk to; even those among them who 
 wished to marry her had not altogether understood her, 
 and had fallen in love, if not with her money, then with 
 her rare disposition or her beauty, overlooking almost 
 to a man her undoubted cleverness. It takes a clever 
 man to appreciate a clever woman, and most of the men 
 Harriet had known well were more notably rich or well 
 born than anything else. 
 
 And yet her dearest foe could hardly call the girl 
 complex. She was easily enough understood if any- 
 one were to disregard her own valuation of herself and, 
 with a broader, more impersonal judgment, take into ac- 
 count the merits incident to her warm, unselfish, and 
 sympathetic nature. But that was one of the many 
 things George Benton did not know about Harriet. 
 He was not very clever himself, only good and honest 
 and sufficiently successful in his business; and he 
 thought so much of her that he did not know enough 
 to doubt her judgment on any point. So he talked to 
 
 [35] 
 
The Politician 
 
 her always about books and pictures and the things 
 he thought she liked to talk about and, not being par- 
 ticularly interested himself, naturally failed to interest 
 her. That was at the beginning of their intimacy ; but 
 during the most recent of the many years he had known 
 and cared for her, he had come to take the most pleasure 
 in her society when there was no speech between them, 
 when perhaps she sewed or read and he was permitted to 
 sit beside her smoking, or reading too, as the case 
 might be. To this faithful and too docile lover the 
 joy that is in silence was as familiar as to any cloistered 
 monk, and it was therefore with a look of envy not 
 unmixed with astonishment that he observed the ani- 
 mated conversation in which Ellis and Miss Rand had 
 engaged, sitting together on the swinging bench. 
 
 " It 's the most amazing thing in the world," he re- 
 marked to Mrs. Presbey, " but Harriet actually seems 
 enthusiastic when your brother talks to her ! " 
 
 Mrs. Presbey laughed as she and Benton left the ter- 
 race together ; for Mrs. Cumloch had suggested bridge, 
 and her guests were following her in to the card tables. 
 " Almost human ! " she returned, " but I 'm not at all 
 surprised. That's Verney. He has a humanizing ef- 
 fect on every one ; he 'd have it on a stone image, I verily 
 believe, if he were left alone with one ! " 
 
 " Would he? " asked Benton, quite seriously, and 
 casting a parting rueful glance back at Ellis and Har- 
 riet, who had excused themselves from cards and were 
 remaining behind. 
 
 " Mr. Ellis has n't finished his cigarette, Aunt Lydia," 
 [36] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 Harriet had said, settling herself more comfortably on 
 the capacious swinging seat. " Besides," she finished, 
 with the self-possession of a girl who has been out 
 four years and around the world more than once, " I 
 want to talk to him." 
 
 " You don't want to talk to me half as much as I 
 want to talk to you," Ellis remarked, as he reseated him- 
 self at the other end of the porch swing and noted again 
 the fineness of the girl's profile as she bent to adjust 
 a tall lamp near her, and the beauty of line which her 
 bending figure displayed in spite of the soft folds of 
 her rose-colored gown. He liked pretty women, did 
 Verney Ellis, and he was used to them, too; so that 
 Harriet's good looks, while he was quite aware of them, 
 did not in any sense take his breath away. And as far 
 as that goes, there was really nothing unusual about her 
 sort of beauty. She owned in common with thousands 
 of other young American girls a slim, straight figure 
 and regular features, and shared with them their herit- 
 age of perfect health and that indefinable air of " class " 
 which belongs to a magnificent majority of girls all 
 over the land. Contour and line constituted her claims 
 to beauty rather than color and animation, and her 
 special title to distinction lay in her wide dark eyes, 
 which seemed to hold within their range of vision vistas 
 of another land. " Madonna eyes," George Benton 
 called them, but then George Benton was very much in 
 love. 
 
 " It was a great sight this afternoon," said Harriet, 
 rightly taking for granted that he would talk politics 
 
 [37] 
 
The Politician 
 
 to her without doubting her interest where he had 
 doubted that of his auditors at dinner. To that ex- 
 tent was the subtle sympathy at work between them felt 
 by both. 
 
 " You mean the demonstration for Roosevelt ? " ques- 
 tioned Ellis. 
 
 "Particularly, yes. Wasn't it really wonderful? 
 And do you know, what impressed me most about it was 
 the thought that he was listening all the time ! " said 
 Harriet. 
 
 " Who? the Man of Impulses? " 
 
 " Is that what you call the President ? " 
 
 " It 's what the men in Wall Street call him." 
 
 "Why?" Harriet asked. 
 
 " Oh, because he does things in a hurry, I suppose." 
 
 " His impulsiveness does n't seem to have made him 
 any less popular," said Harriet, " if the demonstration 
 in his favor to-day was any proof. Did you ever see 
 such enthusiasm ? " 
 
 " No," returned Ellis, " they made a noise all right. 
 But did you notice who was making the noise? " 
 
 "Why, the people!" 
 
 " Just so ; it was the people, the excitement-loving, 
 unthinking rank and file of outsiders who had ' come 
 for the ride ' like the young person named Hyde, of 
 Limerick fame, and were taking their money's worth 
 out in cheering. But the delegates, the instruments 
 of government chosen not by the ' people ' as repre- 
 sented by those few odd thousands of hysterical per- 
 sons in the Coliseum this afternoon, but by the think- 
 
 [38] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 ing majority in every State in the Union, were si- 
 lent." He paused, and his meaning sank into Harriet's 
 mind. 
 
 " You mean that the demonstration did n't count for 
 anything, then? " she asked. 
 
 " For nothing but good will. The men who were 
 empowered to act, you see, who were otherwise in- 
 structed with the approbation of the President himself, 
 did n't j oin in the demonstration ; and without their 
 cooperation the cheering had absolutely no significance 
 — not if it had lasted forty days instead of forty 
 minutes." 
 
 " How strange ! " said Harriet, taking his every word 
 for gospel, accompanied as it was by kindling glances 
 from his bright eye while he spoke and that impulsive 
 catch at his lip when he ceased. " I should have thought 
 that enthusiasm so spontaneous as that must have had 
 significance." 
 
 " It 's a question even whether it was altogether spon- 
 taneous, that is, wholly abandoned and unpremeditated," 
 returned the young man thoughtfully. " I myself 
 think it was, in great' part; but a rather amusing inci- 
 dent that happened near where I was sitting convinced 
 me that it was not entirely so. There was an old man 
 down in front of us, about the middle of his section, who 
 had taken off his coat in his enthusiasm and was wav- 
 ing it about his head as if it were a flag." 
 
 " I know," interrupted Miss Rand ; " I saw him." 
 
 "Did you? Well, you remember how he went on, 
 shouting and waving his coat like mad? " 
 
 [39] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Yes, he was so excited he did n't know or care what 
 he was doing ! " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, he did," corrected Ellis, 
 smiling; "that's just my point. It looked like spon- 
 taneous feeling pure and simple, but as a matter of 
 fact he knew quite well what he was doing, so much 
 so that when he took off his coat and before he began 
 waving it, he first took all the change out of his pock- 
 ets! Deliberately put his hands into his pockets and 
 extracted his money so that he should n't lose it. Spon- 
 taneous, was n't it ? " 
 
 " You don't mean it ? " she said, half smiling and 
 half shocked. 
 
 " Yes," affirmed the young man ; " he was quite near 
 us, and I saw him." They laughed, and a pause ensued, 
 with an unembarrassed quality about it as in the pauses 
 between persons who have known each other long; and 
 presently Ellis rose and walked a few steps over to the 
 broad stone balustrade of the unroofed porch. 
 
 " Lord, but it 's great to get out under a big sky 
 on a June night again after the heat and noise of the 
 convention ! " he said. " And I 'm glad to get West 
 too ; it 's something I don't often do, but I like it a 
 lot when I get here ! " 
 
 " And that from a New Yorker ! " returned Harriet. 
 " But I 'm glad you like us." 
 
 " I do," said Ellis, " both the place and the people. 
 It 's bully to get a change of scene, and you know this 
 little visit to Chicago is fun for me, and restful. Even 
 
 [40] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 the convention is restful when I think how I shall have 
 to work when I get back to New York." 
 
 " Will you ? What will you have to do ? " she asked. 
 " What is the next move on the political programme? " 
 
 " The next move," replied the Politician, ceasing 
 suddenly to look out upon the dim starlit stretch of 
 honest Illinois prairie which Mrs. Cumloch had chosen 
 to leave unadorned on that side of the house, and com- 
 ing back to the swing, where he seated himself rather 
 closer to Harriet than he had been before, " the bull's 
 eye upon which political interest will centre next will 
 be the question who shall be the next Governor of New 
 York State." A new look came into his face as he 
 spoke, a certain decision and determination that closed 
 his lips firmly over his even teeth, and brought fire 
 into his eyes. Harriet felt vaguely that she was glad 
 he was so near as he was. 
 
 " Won't they renominate Downes, the present Gov- 
 ernor? " she asked. Since her meeting with Ellis four 
 years ago she had kept in touch with politics, and was, 
 as Mrs. Cumloch had remarked to Mrs. Presbey that 
 afternoon, " unusually well informed on the subject." 
 
 " Won't he get the nomination again ? " 
 
 " Not if I can help it," returned Ellis, tersely. 
 
 " Why not ? " she enquired, surprised. " I thought 
 he was doing so much reform work ? " 
 
 " It depends upon what you call reform. If you 
 mean the introduction of the ideas of one man who ex- 
 pects unquestioning obedience to them; who, though 
 
 [41] 
 
The Politician 
 
 undeniably able and honest, is narrow and has, as 
 Kipling says, ' too much ego in his cosmos,' I think 
 the term is misapplied. And I don't think it is ac- 
 complishing any reform either, to discriminate in mak- 
 ing appointments against men who have done party 
 work, to suspect the integrity of men who have been 
 politically active, or to assume that any man who 
 has been an energetic organization-man is probably 
 unfit to be trusted with public affairs." 
 
 "Oh," said Harriet, "I didn't know. I didn't 
 understand. Then you don't approve of the Gov- 
 ernor? " 
 
 " I distinctly do not. Neither do a great many 
 men in politics much higher up than I am. These 
 reasons among others I might give for disapproving 
 of him, are theirs as well as mine. And I have my 
 private ones, too. The Governor is not a good judge 
 of men, and he has appointed sometimes men of mediocre 
 ability and sometimes men who were unfit. Through 
 this same lack of discernment he has from time to time 
 been misled into trusting the opinions or taking the 
 advice of men whose judgment was valueless or wrong, 
 and who were imposing on the Governor for their own 
 ends. Then, too, he is swayed by the newspapers, not 
 controlled, of course, but influenced, and by what they 
 say of him. Of course I believe a man in public life 
 should watch the papers with care to learn, so far as 
 they are an indication, the trend of public opinion. 
 But they are a most unsafe guide to follow blindly. 
 Often they represent clamor only, and the courses they 
 
 [42] " 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 urge would be disastrous if pursued. A man should 
 not be susceptible to their flattery, and the Governor 
 I think is too much so. I believe that of him, I swear 
 to the Lord I do." 
 
 Any one of Verney's intimates — his mother's brother, 
 Richmond Vernor, for instance, or his friends among 
 politicians — would have known at once when he said 
 " I swear to the Lord " that Verney was speaking 
 with the strength of absolute conviction; for it was 
 an expression he always used, rather reverently than 
 as one breaking the third commandment, when he was 
 most in earnest. Patent then as his sincerity was to 
 the most casual observer, how was it other than inev- 
 itable that his words should carry conclusive weight 
 with a girl like Harriet, whose mind was like fallow 
 ground ready for the harrow, and who admired this 
 man with whom she was talking more than any man 
 she had yet met? Downes as a hero, as an influence 
 for good, was blasted forever in her estimation by the 
 lightning of the young politician's frown. 
 
 " And have you a better man in mind to nominate 
 instead? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes," he replied ; " and the chief reason why I 
 think he 's better is because he bases his theories of 
 reform upon the possibility of reforming party or- 
 ganization, while Downes bases his upon destroying it. 
 That 's what is going to keep me working so hard 
 when I get back to New York. There are a lot of 
 influential men who think the way I do about this man 
 I want to have elected the next Governor of the State, 
 
The Politician 
 
 It 's so early in the game I hardly like to mention his 
 name ; but I will tell you," he said, and Harriet flushed 
 at the implied confidence. " It 's a great friend of 
 mine, a man named Oliver Ordway. I don't know if 
 you have heard of him, but he 's Speaker of the House 
 in Albany." 
 
 " How exciting ! " said Harriet, her eyes alight ; " is 
 he a young man? " 
 
 " Yes, hardly any older than I am. Just imagine, 
 Governor at thirty-four ! Would n't that be an honor ? " 
 He drew in his breath quickly and put out an impulsive 
 hand toward Harriet. 
 
 She knew that without thinking, as naturally and 
 confidingly as a little boy in need of sympathy for some 
 mighty project, he wished her to clasp it. And she 
 wished that she could. But one of them had to remain 
 level-headed and unaffected by emotion, or what was to 
 become of the conventions? Sympathy, warm, human, 
 genuine evidence of a reciprocal sentiment, had no place 
 in their harsh philosophy, and it was a philosophy she 
 had been brought up upon. 
 
 "And you?" she said, leaning toward him; and 
 though she did not take his hand, George Benton would 
 not have recognized the " Madonna eyes " he talked 
 so much about, so of the world worldly was their 
 expression, " would n't it mean something to you ? 
 Would n't you be honored too? " 
 
 " You mean get an office if my friend were elected ? 
 Perhaps I would," said Ellis thoughtfully. 
 
 " But that 's not why you are going to try to get 
 [44] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 him the nomination, is it ? " she said quickly, but it 
 was more a statement than a question. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " he replied, " material reward may come a 
 man's way, of course, but he does n't go into politics 
 for the sole purpose of seeking it, you know. Not if 
 he 's worth anything." 
 
 " Then what does he go into politics for," she 
 asked, " patriotism? " 
 
 In spite of herself, her tone was sceptical, for her 
 previously conceived notion of the character of a politi- 
 cian which she did not at the moment associate with the 
 man to whom she was talking, identified it with that of a 
 person whose only ambition is self-aggrandizement. 
 
 Verney noticed the scepticism. He would have ex- 
 pected it from most people ; if he had been in the habit 
 of discussing such things with every one, that is; but 
 from Harriet he had not. That was why he permitted 
 himself to talk about the subject with her at all, or to 
 admit that he had ideals. It was a little disappointing, 
 but then, he reflected, people were very much alike, 
 and the idea that a politician could not by any pos- 
 sibility be an honest man was almost universal, and with 
 some justification, as no one knew better than himself. 
 He found that he could not conscientiously blame her for 
 her attitude. 
 
 " Why not," he said gravely, patiently, " why 
 should n't patriotism be his motive as well as more un- 
 worthy ones ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. No reason perhaps ; only — " 
 she hesitated. 
 
 [45] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Only that 's not a sentiment usually attributed to 
 politicians ? " he said. " Is that what you were going 
 to say ? " 
 
 " Yes," she admitted. 
 
 " I was afraid so, and I 'm afraid you 're right. It 
 isn't generally attributed to them, and justly, perhaps, 
 because it is perfectly true that the majority of men 
 in politics are quite devoid of the sentiment, and are 
 actuated only by motives of self-interest and gain ! " 
 
 " And the reputation of politicians as a class has 
 suffered in consequence ? " 
 
 " Yes. And that is going to be — is, one of my 
 ambitions, Harriet — to clear their reputation, raise 
 it from the mud. To say that a man 's a politician — 
 in the sense that he 's willing to work for his country, 
 should mean the same as to say he 's a patriot. And 
 if I live, if one man can do it by being straight and 
 honest himself, I swear to the Lord I '11 make it true ! " 
 He got up and took a turn up and down the terrace in 
 front of her, his graceful, well-built form showing 
 first in the circle of light cast by the tall porch lamp 
 and then against the faint background of the starry 
 sky. Up and down, up and down, he strode, his arms 
 folded, his eyes alight, his brain very busy with big 
 thoughts, that most stimulating of all stimulants — 
 ambition — rendering him for the moment quite un- 
 conscious of his surroundings and even of the presence 
 of Miss Rand. 
 
 As for the girl, she sat and watched him without a 
 murmur of protest against this neglect, and warming her 
 
 [461 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 heart with the thought that he had called her " Har- 
 riet," even though she knew as she cherished it, that 
 he had done so quite inadvertently and without intent. 
 In the same way she glowed at the recollection of that 
 impulsive hand stretched out to her while every sense, 
 every one of her well-trained faculties, told her that 
 the young man, this fascinating, this altogether charm- 
 ing Verney Ellis, had gone to school of women to learn 
 that charm. His undisguised and quite delightful as- 
 sumption that she would be interested in what interested 
 him, the tones of his voice when he spoke to her, his 
 readiness to adjust wrap or mantle or to render any 
 small service, in short, his " little way," were, to this girl 
 who understood men, all straws pointing which way the 
 wind blew, and left her acquainted beyond all manner 
 of doubt with the knowledge that he had known many 
 women well and made love to not a few. As he was to 
 her, so he was to them. That women, on the other hand, 
 had run ceaselessly and untiringly after him, she took 
 no less for granted. How could she do otherwise when 
 she had her own suddenly acquired admiration of him 
 as testimony to the speed with which he acquired ad- 
 mirers ? 
 
 That night, when he had gone with the other guests, 
 she went to her aunt's room, long hair hanging in a 
 dark braid down over her silken neglige. 
 
 " I came to say good-night," she said, settling herself 
 in a large chintz armchair before her aunt's open fire- 
 place, where a small blaze burned. Though it was 
 June, the evening had turned rather cold. 
 
 [47] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Always welcome, dear," said Mrs. Cumloch, pleasant 
 and smiling as she moved about the room in leisurely 
 process of retiring, receiving at intervals the atten- 
 tions of her maid ; and then at random, " How did you 
 like Mr. Ellis?" 
 
 " I think he 's wonderful ; I think I 'd rather have 
 him for a friend than any man I know." 
 
 " For a friend ? " queried the older woman, coming 
 over and joining Harriet at the hearth, having at last 
 dismissed her maid. 
 
 " Yes," replied the girl, " I care about men as friends 
 only, you know, and Mr. Ellis is so interesting — his 
 work I mean — and he 's so alive ! " 
 
 " Oh," said Mrs. Cumloch. 
 
 " I think I never in my life saw any one with such a 
 fresh, strong grip on the fresh, strong things of life ! 
 And it 's such a pleasant change to be able to talk to a 
 man about things that are worth while ! The ordinary 
 male animal has n't any more sense than to reserve noth- 
 ing but small talk and personalities for his girl ac- 
 quaintances. Now, Mr. Ellis — " 
 
 " Yes ? " said her aunt with the interest that Harriet's 
 interests always inspired in her. 
 
 " Well, what he says counts. I could never get tired 
 of listening to him ! " 
 
 Mrs. Cumloch sighed. " I wish you felt that way 
 about George Benton." 
 
 " Oh, George Benton" said the girl, and a moment 
 or two later she rose. "Good-night, Aunt Lydia," 
 
 [48] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 she said, kissing her aunt tenderly, if preoccupiedly, 
 on the forehead. 
 
 " Good-night, dearest," said that lady, who had been a 
 widow a long time and had no children of her own, so 
 that this one niece was very dear ; " sleep well ! " And 
 her eyes followed the young girl's figure. 
 
 At the door Harriet turned. " I think it might be nice 
 to go to New York for our shopping trip, earlier than 
 you had planned," she said with an abruptness some- 
 times characteristic of her. " New York is very at- 
 tractive in summer, I think." 
 
 Miss Rand saw Ellis once more before he left the 
 city. It was at a Saturday afternoon gathering at a 
 certain popular club by the lake, not much outside the 
 city limits, to which belonged a number of people who 
 knew each other well. Harriet was pouring tea — a 
 task that bored her — with an admirable counterfeit 
 graciousness, and a number of men were keeping the 
 young heiress very busy. Ellis, on the other hand, was 
 playing tag out on the lawn with a small girl very 
 much spoiled and very pretty — they had to be pretty, 
 even in the infant stage, to please Verney — who be- 
 longed to the Lee Stantons. And this in spite of the 
 fact that there were eighteen or twenty more or less 
 just blossomed debutantes, with droopy hats and every 
 variety of fetching costume, observing him out of 
 the corners of their eyes from the porch, while they 
 waited for him to speak to them. They did not look 
 at all pleased with his method of entertaining himself. 
 4 [49] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Harriet was probably the only girl there who was 
 pleased, and she thought Ellis's absorption in the little 
 girl to the exclusion of the big girls, delightfully boy- 
 ish and, she imagined, characteristic. And she was 
 right. Verney, whose restless spirit was veritable quick- 
 silver, fagged and worn a little as he was with the strain 
 of the convention and his duties there, found more re- 
 laxation in his game on the lawn with the child than in 
 forcing himself through the first steps in the process 
 of becoming acquainted with a number of people he 
 probably would never see again. And Harriet, he saw, 
 was very much engaged. So tea went merrily on with- 
 out him, amid talk and laughter and gentle tinkling of 
 spoon against cup, with the June sun shining gayly 
 down on the picturesque little club-house, the crowd of 
 people on the porch, and the big lake shimmering and 
 sparkling not a stone's throw away. 
 
 " Who is that very good-looking 3 oung man playing 
 with the Stanton child on the lawn? ; r :ed a woman near 
 Harriet. 
 
 " I really don't know," another woman replied, at 
 first indifferently, and then with interest as she turned 
 her eyes toward the lawn at the farthest confines of 
 which Verney, hatless and with tie flying, was playing 
 horse and driver with a small girl in a white dress, 
 using her bright blue sash for reins. " I wonder who 
 he is," she said ; and the other replied, " He came with 
 the Presbeys, I think, and some one said he was a New 
 Yorker. But that 's all I know about him." And 
 
 [50] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 that was all the stir the Politician made at the Racquet 
 and Rudder Club. 
 
 But in spite of young Miss Stanton's attempts to 
 keep him to herself all the afternoon, he found time 
 eventually to speak to Miss Rand. George Benton had 
 just departed in search of tealess ones with the cup of 
 Oolong Harriet had last poured, when Verney, oppor- 
 tune and fortunate as he usually was, appeared at the 
 porch railing near which she sat. 
 
 " Won't you come down and play horse ? " he said ; 
 " it 's great, is n't it, Elizabeth? " looking down, as he 
 spoke, at the little girl whose hand he clasped, both 
 of them warm and panting from their exercise. 
 
 " Great ! " she mimicked merrily ; " let 's play some 
 more ! " 
 
 "See," he said; "she likes it!" 
 
 " Oh, yes," smiled Harriet, " but she 's a little girl ! " 
 
 " And you 're a big one ; what 's the difference ? " 
 
 " Every difference in the world," she declared. 
 
 " Well, maybe ; but never mind, come on and play ! " 
 
 " It 's a little undignified," she said, getting up, 
 " but perhaps I will." 
 
 " You 'd better," he advised ; " we have some pea- 
 nuts, and we '11 give you some if you 're good." 
 
 " Peanuts," she laughed. " Oh, that settles it then. 
 Why didn't you tell me before? " and she joined them 
 on the lawn, casting a hasty deprecating glance at the 
 tea table she was deserting. 
 
 " Fine business," said Verney ; " and now let 's play 
 [51] 
 
The Politician 
 
 horse. Elizabeth would rather be the driver, so you 
 and I will have to be her fiery steeds." 
 
 " I want to be a fiery steed ! " said Elizabeth, the 
 spoiled one, promptly, shaking her curls at her friend. 
 
 " Of course," said he ; " naturally you would, being 
 a woman." 
 
 " But where are the peanuts ? " interrupted Harriet. 
 " You have n't given me any yet." 
 
 " Peanuts ? " he repeated ; " who said anything about 
 peanuts ? " 
 
 " Why, you did ! You said you 'd give me some 
 if I came down," cried the girl. 
 
 " Oh, those peanuts ! " he replied. " My dear friend, 
 did n't you know I only said that to get you down ? " 
 
 " The idea ! " she said. " And you really have n't 
 any?" 
 
 " Not one," he returned cheerfully ; " you see, I 
 was afraid you would n't come for me, and I knew 
 peanuts would get you." 
 
 " I am fond of them ; how did you know ? " she 
 laughed. 
 
 " Oh, I know everything — real curly hair when I 
 see it, and when people don't like me, and how to put 
 two and three together." 
 
 " Silly," she said ; " but I do think you were mean 
 about the peanuts ! " 
 
 " There you see, Elizabeth," he said to the little girl 
 trotting happily by his side — the three had strolled 
 some distance away from the club-house — " she thinks 
 you 're mean. You should n't have deceived her ! " 
 
 [52] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 And the child, appreciating to the utmost the fun of 
 this sudden transfer of responsibility to her shoulders, 
 laughed delightedly. 
 
 They had begun with peanuts, Verney and Harriet, 
 but they ended with Francis Bacon. 
 
 " You 'd like to read them. The whole of the philos- 
 ophy of life, to my thinking, is contained in his essays," 
 he told her as they stood on the steps of the club with 
 Mrs. Presbey, waiting for Lawrence Presbey to bring 
 his motor-car around. The convention was over, and it 
 was his last day in Chicago, the last time Harriet would 
 see him for Fate alone knew how long, since he left 
 for New York that evening with the other delegates 
 from that State. 
 
 " I 'd like to send you a copy of it — if I may. 
 Good-bye," he said; and with a last firm clasp of the 
 hand he was gone, swallowed up by the Presbey's auto- 
 mobile and whirled away before the girl's very eyes. 
 
 " Verney is certainly a great fellow," Lawrence Pres- 
 bey remarked to his wife that evening, reaching his 
 apartment on the Drive just in time for dinner, after 
 seeing his brother-in-law off on the delegates' special 
 train. " And ' pig-headed ' is n't the word for his kind 
 of obstinacy." 
 
 " Particulars, please," responded his wife ; " you 
 always assume that I know what you 're talking about, 
 Lawrie, and half the time I don't." 
 
 " Well, you know that little Stanton girl he was 
 playing with at the ' Racquet and Rudder ' this after- 
 noon? " explained her husband obligingly. 
 
 [53] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 " Well, it seems Vernej told the kid all about the 
 convention and promised to get her one of the flags 
 they 'd used in decorating, as a memento." 
 
 " Just like him ! " said Verney's sister with a sort of 
 irritation ; " he 'd rather be doing something for other 
 people than not, no matter how absurd or impossible 
 it is." 
 
 "That's just it — it was absurd. It was all very 
 well to promise, but as it turned out, we stayed so late 
 at the club we did n't have time to go 'way up to the 
 Coliseum before the train left." 
 
 " And he did n't get it? " asked Mrs. Presbey. " Too 
 bad to disappoint the child ! " 
 
 " Not at all," said her husband ; " how quick you 
 are to jump at conclusions, Cornelia. If you think a 
 little thing like losing his train would keep him from 
 getting that flag, you 're mistaken. What do you sup- 
 pose he did? " 
 
 " Oh, almost . anything, from chartering an airship 
 to get him there in time to conjuring a flag out of the 
 sidewalk ! " 
 
 " No, he insisted upon driving over to State Street 
 and buying a flag at one of the big dry-goods stores. 
 He said all American flags looked alike, and little Eliza- 
 beth would n't know whether it came from the Coliseum 
 or not — all she cared about was having the flag." 
 
 "And did you go?" asked Mrs. Presbey. 
 
 " You bet we did ! I argued with him in vain, told 
 him he 'd miss his train sure, but he swore he 'd rather 
 
 [54] 
 
Patriotism and Peanuts 
 
 do it than disappoint the child, embellishing the asser- 
 tion with some of his choicest profanity — you know 
 Verney 's rather good at that — and we started off." 
 
 " He has a fine vocabulary," interrupted Mrs. Pres- 
 bey. " I think he got the habit at college, and really, 
 though I deprecate it, he 's such a past master, I rather 
 like to hear him. You can't help admiring perfection, 
 you know, when you meet it." 
 
 " You ought to have been with me, then. My coun- 
 try ! but we had a time. The machine was as slow as 
 molasses getting through the crowd, and I held a stop 
 watch on the obstinate beggar while he was in the store, 
 with my heart in my mouth, I assure you ! By George, 
 I don't see how he possibly made it ! " 
 
 " I could have told you he would," replied Mrs. Pres- 
 bey. " Verney 's come pretty close to it millions of 
 times, but I don't think he ever actually missed a train 
 in his life." 
 
 And with this unconscious commentary on a trait 
 of her brother's character which perhaps formed its 
 keynote, — his faculty for taking every kind of chance 
 without any serious consequences, — the Presbeys went 
 in to dinner. 
 
 [55] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 "foe the hundredth time" 
 
 F 
 
 ^ ^ I ^OR the hundredth time, Harriet, won't you 
 marry me? " 
 The speaker was George Benton, walking 
 beside Miss Rand on the smooth lawn of the country 
 club at Lake Forest — very correct in his becoming 
 riding attire and very earnest in tone. 
 
 The two had been riding an hour or more, and had 
 stopped at the club for tea. It was Saturday after- 
 noon, and the place was at its gayest. The polo down 
 in the lower meadows was over, and players and specta- 
 tors alike, the former conspicuous in their light-blue 
 coats and white breeches, were engaged in the grateful 
 occupation of assuaging a just thirst. The piazzas 
 were thronged, and straggling lines of men and women 
 were still trailing across the golf course toward the 
 club-house. Out on the open stone terrace in front of 
 the veranda at numerous small tables sat young girls in 
 tennis costume, hair bound with ribbons pink, blue, 
 and white, ostensibly to keep troublesome locks out of 
 the way, but in reality for effect, talking and laugh- 
 ing with gilded college youths. Back under the shelter 
 of the veranda roof, whose shade was kinder to their 
 
 [56] 
 
"For the Hundredth Time" 
 
 years than the August sun, older women, mothers and 
 aunts of these girls, were established in comfortable 
 wicker chairs with teacups at their elbows, making the 
 most of their own society, their contemporaries of the 
 other sex having sought the seclusion of the club buf- 
 fet, while here, there, and everywhere, sitting on 
 veranda railings, hanging on the backs of chairs, in 
 quiet corners in the club sitting-rooms, the young mar- 
 ried women prevailed, flirting indefatigably with each 
 other's husbands or with the coterie of young bach- 
 elors without which no married set considers itself com- 
 plete. And every one, maids and matrons, with the 
 auxiliary force of men in attendance, was sipping some- 
 thing. 
 
 Harriet and Benton having had their tea, iced and 
 served in a remote corner of the piazza, and with an 
 unfinished argument on their hands which had been 
 raging intermittently from the moment they had started 
 on their ride until the moment when the groom at the 
 club had taken their horses, were walking over the 
 lawn talking earnestly, in the direction of the tennis 
 courts, where a fast set of men's singles was being played. 
 Not that they had any special interest in either of the 
 champions of the racquet whom they could see beyond 
 the wire backstop rushing frantically about the grass 
 court in their white clothes, like fish in a tank, shouting 
 " deuce " and " love-forty " at each other. The fact 
 was they were so interested in what they had to say, 
 that they did n't care at all where they went. 
 
 Harriet was trying her best to explain to George 
 [57] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Benton once for all, so that the matter should be settled 
 beyond the shadow of a doubt, how utterly impossible 
 it was for her to consider marrying him. Riding cos- 
 tume is usually becoming both to man and to woman, 
 and it was especially so to Harriet. The simple, well- 
 cut coat of white pique followed the long rounded lines 
 of her slight figure with admirable fidelity, and her long 
 graceful step revealed at intervals a fascinating shiny 
 black riding-boot, on the side where the skirt was draped 
 at the hip. 
 
 " Dear George," she said, looking at the young man 
 at her side with a beautiful compassion in her Madonna 
 eyes ; " if only you would n't say that ! If only I could 
 make you see how impossible it is for me to think of 
 such a thing ! I don't know why I can't ; you 're so 
 nice, so kind, so good " — they were over beyond some 
 trees now and in no danger of being seen either from 
 piazza or court — " but," she ended, clasping her hands 
 almost in apology, " I can't ! " 
 
 " I know ! I know ! " broke in Benton hurriedly ; 
 " you 've told me that before, that you don't care — 
 as I do ; but what I say, what I 'm asking you now is, 
 could n't you care enough? " 
 
 Harriet's expression became troubled. 
 
 " I don't see how I can answer you that," she said ; 
 " it 's so hard to know what ? enough ' would be. 
 You 'd have to be married to know that, and I 'm not." 
 
 They both laughed a little at that ; the statement was 
 so naive. 
 
 " I wish I could care," she went on, " just because 
 [58] 
 
"Fot the Hundredth Time" 
 
 I think so much of you ! Because we 've always known 
 each other and been friends. And I 've tried to, too ! 
 I have truly, Georgie," — she laid her hand on Benton's 
 arm in piteous appeal, — " but it does n't seem to do 
 any good." He shook her hand off rather roughly. It 
 was surprising how hard a woman could make things for 
 a man at such times. 
 
 " I don't see why, when I feel that way about you." 
 His expression softened as he spoke, and his far from 
 handsome face became almost beautiful in its tenderness. 
 Harriet was ashamed before it; it seemed such a pity 
 that such love should be wasted on some one who did n't 
 want it. 
 
 " Oh, I wish you did n't," she exclaimed desperately. 
 " I wish I could persuade you you did n't mean it ! 
 There are so many girls in the world that are much 
 nicer than I ! I 'm sure you could care about them in- 
 stead, if you really tried." 
 
 " But I won't try," said Benton, with such impatience 
 at the suggestion that he did n't attempt to tell her how 
 certain he was that there were no girls in the world nicer 
 than she. This silenced Harriet for a moment, and in 
 silence they went on over the close-clipped grass of the 
 golf course where they had been walking for some time. 
 
 At one of the greens labelled number seven by a red 
 flag, they found a wooden bench and seated themselves. 
 
 " If you cared for any one else," said Benton, " it 
 would be different; but as long as you don't, I don't 
 see—" 
 
 "Why I shouldn't marry you?" supplied Harriet. 
 [59] 
 
The Politician 
 
 as he hesitated, smiling not ironically — for she could n't 
 be unkind to any one who had been her friend so long 
 and was even now offering her what is considered the 
 greatest honor that it is in the power of man to bestow 
 upon woman — but rather indulgently, as if excusing 
 in George Benton this proof that he was not free from 
 the egotism common to his sex, which will never permit 
 a man to believe that a woman really means to refuse 
 him. 
 
 " Could n't we try it on a friendly basis," he asked. 
 " I 'm not good enough for you, I know," he added 
 with a real humility that was more characteristic of 
 him than the egotism of the previous speech ; " you 
 ought to have a man with brains, a brilliant man with 
 a career, and goodness knows I 'm dull enough, slow 
 and plodding and all that sort of thing, but I 'd try 
 awfully hard to please you, Harry ! " 
 
 " I know you would, George ! " murmured the girl 
 soothingly. 
 
 " I wish I were clever and snappy and could ever be 
 anything," he went on vehemently ; " perhaps you 'd 
 take me then ! But I 'm not ; I 'm not cut out to be an 
 orator or a playwright or a hero. I could n't play the 
 leading role in anything. I 'm just a plain, everyday 
 business man who spends his days working. And the 
 worst of it is that I don't even have to do that." 
 
 This was true. The usual incentive which inspires 
 most men to work, the necessity for it, was lacking in 
 George Benton's case. Upon the death of his parents 
 he had inherited a substantial fortune in property, and 
 
 [60] 
 
"For the Hundredth Time 
 
 5? 
 
 could have lived all his life in comfort without lifting 
 a hand for himself, had he chosen so to do. In this 
 property, by the way, was included the fifty-acre farm 
 in Lake Forest some few miles west of the track, where 
 he was spending the summer in order to be near Har- 
 riet Rand. 
 
 Yet in spite of his dissatisfaction with himself, George 
 Benton was in every way a fine man. He had a homely 
 face, to be sure, but it was a pleasant, healthy kind of 
 homeliness, with his near-sighted eyes and their glasses, 
 and his fine big nose and good color; moreover with- 
 out being either brilliant or intellectual, as he had him- 
 self just admitted, he was an excellent business man. 
 His patience and good nature made him universally 
 liked; and though no man could praise him especially 
 for any virtue in excess of another, no man on the other 
 hand could criticise him for any fault pronounced 
 enough to be called one. He was, in short, one of those 
 conscientious, hard-working men of simple tastes upon 
 whom a fortune is wasted, lacking as they do, the 
 imagination required to spend one. 
 
 " I know you don't have to work," said Harriet, 
 " but that 's the very reason why it 's so much to your 
 credit that you do." 
 
 But although this remark was eminently sensible and 
 its truth indisputable, she was not thinking at all what 
 she was saying when she made it. Her thoughts were 
 far afield with a man she knew who had a career, who 
 was brilliant and " snappy " — the kind of man George 
 Benton had said she ought to have. 
 
 [61] 
 
The Politician 
 
 "How about it, Harriet?" said Benton, bringing 
 her suddenly back to earth to. consider the immediate 
 problem before her. " Are n't you going to answer 
 my question ? " 
 
 " If you mean about marrying you, I have answered 
 it," said Harriet gently. " I told you I could n't, 
 George, that I 'm sorry, but I can't, j ust as I 'ye told 
 you so many times before." She rose and the man did 
 also. " I wish you 'd promise not to ask me again ! " 
 she added. 
 
 " I could n't do that," he said earnestly ; " you see 
 it *s the only thing in the world I want, and I must keep 
 on asking for it. But you must n't mind ; it must n't 
 make you unhappy. I don't want you to think of me 
 as suffering all the time. I don't — while I know that 
 I still have a chance, you know. That 's why I can't 
 bear to have you forbid me to ask." 
 
 " I won't, then," Harriet said, tears in her voice, as 
 they walked back to the club. That was the way it al- 
 ways ended; she had never been able to bring herself 
 to deprive him of that precious hope of his. Of all the 
 conversations they had had on this subject, this one 
 somehow made her feel the worst. Perhaps because 
 she had never before been so sure that she could n't 
 marry him. But he was so loyal, so good, so devoted a 
 friend, she did wish she did n't have to keep on hurting 
 him. 
 
 " You see," said Benton, almost cheerfully, " I 'd 
 rather be refused by you than be accepted by any other 
 girl ! That 's about the size of it. So I 'm really as 
 
 [62] 
 
"For the Hundredth Time" 
 
 happy as I can be under the circumstances, and you 
 must n't worry." 
 
 He glanced solicitously at her over his glasses and 
 Harriet was so touched by his anxiety to spare her any 
 troubled feeling on his account that she could find no 
 words to answer him. It was a very silent ride home. 
 
 " You 've refused him again ! " said Mrs. Cumloch, 
 as Harriet came up the steps of the west veranda where 
 her aunt was sitting. " I can see it in your face." 
 
 " I can't help it," returned the girl, leaning on the 
 back of a tall chair, her eyes on the gauntlets she was 
 drawing from her hands ; " he will persist in asking me." 
 
 " What would you expect the poor man to do, if he 's 
 unfortunate enough to be in love with you ? " 
 
 " But I 'm not certain that he is," replied Miss Rand, 
 puckering her dark brows thoughtfully. " Sometimes 
 I think it 's only just a craze with him, a sort of mon- 
 omania ! " 
 
 " Exactly," said Mrs. Cumloch, provokingly ; " that 's 
 all love ever is, a monomania. At least until it becomes 
 a duomania ! You 've described it with great accuracy 
 for a girl who has never felt the fatal passion her- 
 self." 
 
 " You know what I mean," said Harriet ; " I mean 
 with George, his feeling for me is more a matter of 
 habit than anything else. He always has had this notion 
 he cares about me, so he always will continue to have 
 it! Following out Spencer's law of persistence, you 
 know, that what has endured long enough to have a 
 history will always endure." 
 
 [63] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Well," said her aunt, " I don't know whether it 's 
 your fault or Spencer's, but I don't seem to get any new 
 idea on the subject yet." 
 
 Harriet seated herself slowly and gracefully in 
 the chair she had been leaning upon and pointed her 
 riding crop at Mrs. Cumloch pedagogically. 
 
 " It 's this way," she said. " What I think is that 
 if George had only given it up long ago when I first 
 told him I would n't, and if he had gone with other 
 girls, it 's more than likely that he would have forgotten 
 all about this obsession of his in regard to me and fallen 
 in love with some one else." 
 
 Nothing irritated Mrs. Cumloch more than Harriet's 
 casting aspersions on the genuineness of the young 
 man's attachment to her. She thought it positively 
 stupid in the face of his ten years' devotion. 
 
 " A very original and ingenious theory, I 'm sure," 
 she said drily, " and one that does credit to your in- 
 telligence. One would never suppose that you were 
 twenty-four years old and had been proposed to dozens 
 of times before." 
 
 " But Aunt Lydia," protested Harriet, shaking her 
 head earnestly, " I really do feel that way about it. 
 You remember how it all started? He had the measles, 
 and while he was convalescing his mother used to ask 
 me to come over and read to him and amuse him, and 
 I did; and once I believe I was rash enough to bring 
 him some violets." 
 
 " Yes, I know, but what does that prove? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Harriet ; " only that we came to 
 [64] 
 
Didn't you even tell your best friend, when they proposed ? " 
 
"For the Hundredth Time" 
 
 know each other better than ever, though we 'd always 
 known each other, and he became sort of used to seeing 
 so much of me, and that 's where he acquired his idea 
 that he cares for me. He caught it along with the 
 measles." 
 
 " Very clever, I 'm sure," said Mrs. Cumloch, sa- 
 tirically. Benton was a great favorite of hers, and 
 Harriet's refusal to marry him was a sore trial. She 
 was an ardent believer in the dogma that money should 
 marry money. " Very clever," she repeated ; " and yet 
 I should never think, myself, of ascribing a man's love 
 to such a cause as that. Measles, indeed ! " — indig- 
 nantly — " really, Harriet, if you 're going to be so 
 absurd, you must excuse me if I continue to read my 
 book." And she resumed the volume she had put down 
 upon the appearance of her niece. 
 
 Harriet laughed half-heartedly, as her aunt's par- 
 tiality for Benton was well known to her. 
 
 " Well, I don't care," she said ; " it was the measles 
 that did it, I 'm sure." Then, as she went into the 
 house, " I 'm going to telephone Pauline Wright to 
 come over for dinner and spend the night, if you don't 
 mind?" 
 
 " You always telephone for Pauline Wright whenever 
 you 've refused poor George ! " replied Mrs. Cumloch. 
 " I 'm sure I don't see why. It 's bad enough to refuse 
 him without talking about it. We had finer notions 
 of honor when I was a girl." 
 
 " Did n't you even tell your best friend, when they 
 proposed? " said Harriet, coming back to lean over her 
 5 [65] 
 
The Politician 
 
 aunt's chair and put her arms about Mrs. Cumloch's 
 shoulders; " just one other girl? " 
 
 " Well, perhaps, just one," said the older woman, 
 smiling against her will at her niece's " they." 
 
 ,fe I knew you did ! " said Harriet, running back into 
 the house, and presently Mrs. Cumloch heard her at 
 the telephone. 
 
 That evening, just as Mrs. Cumloch had predicted, 
 Harriet told Pauline Wright, who had accepted the in- 
 vitation to spend the night, all about it. 
 
 " Is n't it a shame ! " she ended ; "I do wish he 
 wouldn't! I feel it's just a good man gone to waste, 
 you know, Polly, and I do like him so well, so much, 
 that I should like him to be happy." 
 
 Pauline Wright, a slim little girl with ash-brown hair, 
 Berious blue eyes and such a sweet expression that «no 
 one realized that she was n't especially pretty, nodded 
 her head assentingly. 
 
 " It is too bad," she said ; " George is such a nice 
 fellow." She, too, had known Benton all her life. She 
 was the daughter of a physician in Lake Forest, a girl 
 of great character and luxurious tastes, who had never 
 in her life known what it was to have enough pocket 
 money, and to whom economy was as daily bread. 
 
 She and Benton and Harriet with young Francis 
 Morton had made up a " foursome " of young people 
 who had gone everywhere and done everything together, 
 from their childhood up. 
 
 " Now you and he, for instance," Harriet went on, 
 beginning to brush out her hair — she had come into 
 
 [66] 
 
"For the Hundredth Time" 
 
 her guest's room for a talk before they went to bed — 
 " you 'd make an awfully good pair. I 'm disappointed 
 with George that he does n't see it that way." 
 
 Pauline smiled, without resenting Harriet's failure to 
 consider her wishes in the matter, nor did the remark 
 seem egotistical or patronizing to her. She knew Har- 
 riet Rand well enough to know that though she might 
 discuss with an old friend an affair of the kind some- 
 times when she needed advice, it was utterly foreign to 
 her noble nature, which knew no petty vanity, to boast 
 of her conquests, and she easily believed that Harriet was 
 sincere in thinking it as likely for Benton to have be- 
 come interested in her, Polly Wright, as in a beauty and 
 an heiress. 
 
 " But he does n't," she replied, equably, and so evenly 
 that if for her part she too had wished that it were she, 
 not Harriet Rand, that the young man was interested 
 in, no one would have been able to tell it from her tone. 
 
 " I wish you had had a chance to talk to Mr. Ellis the 
 other night," said Harriet presently, coming round last 
 to the subject that was first in her thoughts. " He is 
 the most interesting man I 've ever met ! He does 
 things, you know, goes in for politics and things like 
 that." 
 
 " I wish I had. Francis Morton said he thought you 
 were crazy about him," returned Polly. She fixed a 
 grave, considering look upon her friend, a little quiver 
 of eagerness about her mouth as if she were anxious 
 for Harriet's reply. 
 
 " Francis is never accurate in his judgments," Har- 
 [67] 
 
The Politician 
 
 riet answered deliberately. " I 'm not ' crazy about 
 him ' — to use the vernacular — at all. I only like him. 
 You know I am never ' crazy • about any one." 
 
 " Well, you know you did sit out on the porch with 
 him all the evening when the rest of us were playing 
 bridge." 
 
 " So I did, but that does n't prove anything. We 
 talked about his work, about politics, every single min- 
 ute." Harriet finished arranging the big bow of pink 
 ribbon with which she had been busy tying up her hair, 
 as she spoke. " Let 's go to bed," she added. 
 
 " Oh, did you ? " commented Miss Wright, in reference 
 to Harriet's information that she had only talked poli- 
 tics with the fascinating Mr. Ellis; and though her 
 voice was cheerful enough, a slight trace of disappoint- 
 ment might have been observed in her face as she bade 
 her friend good-night. 
 
 [68] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 POLITICS AND LETTERS 
 
 THAT Verney Ellis should have become inter- 
 ested in politics was not at all as unnatural a 
 thing or as inexplicable a taste as his sister, 
 Mrs. Lawrence Presbey, would have had people think. 
 A slave herself, more or less, to custom and habit, and 
 much influenced by the authority of precedent, it was 
 difficult for her to conceive why her brother should be 
 drawn to that kind of life when there had never been 
 a politician in the family before. The Ellises had, al- 
 most all of them, been professional men; and inasmuch 
 as Verney had his law business, his own shingle inde- 
 pendent of his father's firm, to occupy him, it seemed 
 strange to her that he should wish to " mix up " with 
 politics when there were plenty of people, she was sure, 
 who were ready and willing to do the country's " dirty 
 work " ; and that, by the way, was all that politics meant 
 to her. But in summing up the case in this fashion 
 she failed to reckon with the surplus store of energy 
 with which her brother was endowed, which did not find 
 sufficient outlet in his law business, and which was al- 
 ways inciting him to seek some new direction of effort. 
 Her own existence as Cornelia Ellis of 7 West Twelfth 
 [69] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Street, New York City, had been so stereotyped, so much 
 a duplicate of Winifred's (her older married sister), 
 in its prescribed routine, from the days when she 
 attended a private school on Fifth Avenue in short 
 skirts to the moment when she married Lawrence Pres- 
 bey, a young man of means from Chicago, that it was 
 quite beyond her powers of comprehension to grasp 
 why her brother's existence should not be equally conven- 
 tional and circumscribed. Why he should not be content 
 with debutante teas and the conservative, aristocratic 
 practice of law, exclusive of any greater ambition, she 
 could not understand. Verney's father and mother also 
 held views in regard to his going into politics, very 
 similar to those of Mrs. Presbey. But although this 
 lack of sympathy hurt the young man, to whose warm 
 and expansive nature sympathy was very dear, it in no 
 wise militated against the strength of his set purpose 
 or altered his determination to enter a field which he be- 
 lieved offered him a wider sphere of usefulness. It only 
 resulted in his keeping his ambitions to himself and in 
 its becoming an understood thing that politics was a 
 forbidden subject in his home. 
 
 Not that his father — senior member of a law firm 
 of excellent and long-established reputation — had any 
 violent feeling of antagonism toward a political career 
 as such; but he was an old man and had of late years 
 lost a great deal of property in one way and another, 
 so that his resources were greatly reduced, which made it 
 a matter of necessity almost that his youngest son should 
 support himself, where his two older sons, Clinton and 
 
 [70] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 Benjamin, at Verney 's age had had only a moral obliga- 
 tion to work. And, of course, as every one knows and 
 Verney knew too, there 's no money to be made in politics 
 where patriotism is the only motive for entering that 
 field ; though equally, of course, as much money may be 
 spent as a man pleases to spend. On the other hand, 
 Verney had a well-started law practice that his brilliance 
 and talent were expanding every day, which would un- 
 doubtedly suffer if he divided his interests and gave half 
 his time to politics. As for his mother's prejudice in the 
 matter, it amounted to nothing more than a conservative 
 feeling that a family as ancient and well known as the 
 Ellises should never on any account make itself con- 
 spicuous ; and to her, politics and publicity meant one 
 and the same thing. 
 
 After a few years' practice in his profession, to which 
 he had devoted himself, as he did to everything, with 
 his whole heart and soul, Verney had suddenly conceived 
 the idea that he was not doing his full duty by either 
 city or State or country in not interesting himself in 
 the machinery of government. This awakening to a 
 sense of responsibility in the matter was brought about 
 partly through his friendship with a man a few years 
 older than himself, who was a graduate of the same col- 
 lege and a member, as he was, of Squadron A, namely 
 Oliver Ordway, for whom Verney had a great admira- 
 tion and who had long been interested in politics. Ord- 
 way, as leader of the Twelfth Election District, to which 
 both men belonged, had often asked Verney to assist 
 him in his work at election time, and was very glad to 
 
 [71] 
 
The Politician 
 
 accept the young man's permanent assistance when 
 Verney made offer of it. Young Ellis had therefore 
 plunged into politics with a glutton's appetite for work, 
 like an engine which has been running at half speed, 
 upon suddenly discovering all its latent power. To be 
 sure, the scope afforded by the affairs of the Twelfth 
 Election District, which was only a subdivision of the 
 Twenty-sixth Assembly District, was small, but it was 
 not long before his influence was felt, which made it the 
 most natural thing in the world that he should be chosen 
 leader in his friend's stead when Ordway himself had been 
 moved up a place. 
 
 After that it would have been easier to extract a 
 burr from a sheep's back or remove a barnacle from 
 a rock than to coax Ellis to give up politics. If his 
 attempts to " clean out " a " rotten gang," which a 
 little later had secured control of his Assembly District 
 had not been sufficiently interesting to keep him to his 
 purpose, and if the tremendous fascination of the game 
 (for game it is in many senses) — the exhilaration of 
 contest with men, the matching of brains, and the con- 
 stant revelation of human nature which it invoked — had 
 had no charm for him, Ellis's original reason for going 
 in would have been sufficient to insure his constancy. 
 For his highly proper belief that men of character 
 should enter politics even at a personal sacrifice, rather 
 than leave the reins of government to men of no ideals 
 and corrupt and unscrupulous methods, was, after all, 
 the mainspring of his enthusiasm. 
 
 But of course a man of his spirit, with his keen zest 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 for novelty and change, could not but appreciate and 
 enjoy the excitement which the life offered and the 
 chance for obtaining power and place as well as the 
 increased opportunities for wielding a salutary influence. 
 He was only human, after all, and though he had entered 
 the lists, as it were, with motives of the most exalted 
 character and with no thought of personal aggrandize- 
 ment, as the possibilities of the conflict opened out 
 before him and the smoke of battle compassed him about, 
 he could not but realize that with the fighting came spoil 
 for the victor and that prizes and guerdon were to be 
 had for the winning, and that they might as well be 
 won by himself as by another less honest. His taking 
 this into account, however, did not affect his principles 
 or his ambition to do right. Nothing could affect these ; 
 for even had the integrity of the young man in itself 
 been at fault, two guiding spirits invoked by him 
 watched over his career. For Verney, though thirty- 
 one that June, at the time of the convention, was still 
 young enough to be something of a hero-worshipper; 
 and in his room at 7 West Twelfth Street — a remark- 
 able apartment, by the way, if taken as an index of 
 character — two portraits hung as inspiration and ex- 
 ample, under which the Politician burned incense. 
 
 One was a painting of Napoleon Bonaparte, arms 
 folded, chin on breast, brooding, unsatisfied eyes, and 
 brow dark with ambition and hate of the world he could 
 not quite conquer, yet, above all else, great; the other 
 was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, rugged-faced, sor- 
 rowful-eyed, and homely, but great also, though with 
 
 [73] 
 
The Politician 
 
 a greatness to which selfish ambition was a stranger, and 
 who loved the world and his fellow-men better than he 
 loved himself. There was nothing that Ellis did not 
 know about the life of each, fascinated as he was by the 
 tremendous achievements of the one — that unsurpassed 
 egotist whose despotic will, coupled with a consuming 
 love of power, had raised him to an eminence rarely 
 equalled in history — and by the exalted character of 
 the other — that selfless soul who had no ambition save 
 to serve his country, who sought no reward for serving 
 it but his country's good, whose patriotism was a beacon- 
 light to the patriots of history. And only Verney — 
 confessed patriot, unconfessed disciple of ambition 
 — knew under which portrait he stood the of tenest, 
 burned the most incense. 
 
 Yet although he went into politics hoping that with 
 the entry of every man of his class and stamp the gen- 
 eral average of politicians might be raised to a higher 
 standard, and although it was his intention to see that 
 some methods and practices of which he disapproved 
 were done away with ; in short, though he was in every 
 instance governed by principle, he was not a " political 
 reformer " in the generally accepted sense of the phrase. 
 He was not, in a word, what is styled a " new school " 
 reformer. He did not believe in direct primaries; that 
 is, in choosing candidates for office by direct vote of the 
 people instead of through conventions; he did not be- 
 lieve in the abolition of political organizations. Firm 
 in his conviction that the government of his country was 
 a party government, he, like many able men in public 
 
 [74] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 life, believed that the true secret of reform lay not in 
 abolishing political organizations, but in improving or 
 reforming them. The method of achieving these ends 
 he thought lay in giving the organizations as leaders 
 men of ideals and morals as well as ability, so that the 
 organizations might be strong and efficient and yet 
 the machinery of government not be perverted to the 
 selfish uses of unpatriotic and corrupt men. 
 
 He was convinced that universal suffrage, and the 
 indifference of people, and their lack of knowledge of 
 political affairs, provided the reason and necessity for 
 party government. He was all the more impressed with 
 this because in the city in which he lived many thousands 
 of voters were foreigners with modes of thought and life 
 absolutely different from American manners and cus- 
 toms, with no ideas of the principles or methods of 
 American government — ignorant, suspicious, and 
 easily led. While he realized that when the attention 
 of the public was centred upon some one issue of vital 
 importance, particularly if it involved a moral question, 
 the people at large could be relied upon to reach right 
 conclusions, he believed that in general, ordinary people 
 had neither time nor inclination to attend to their own 
 political affairs, and that they must be guided and their 
 opinions created, by political parties which were per- 
 manent and responsible, whose leaders made politics, so 
 to speak, their business. 
 
 While, during a presidential election, the average man 
 might not be able to avoid absorbing some knowledge 
 and perhaps even an intelligent opinion of the candi- 
 
 [75] 
 
The Politician 
 
 dates of the great parties, the number of men who gave 
 more attention to the batting average of their favorite 
 baseball hero than to the character of the candidates 
 for whom they voted constituted in Verney's mind a 
 large majority. To place in the hands of such persons 
 the selection of a large number of candidates, a task 
 which could be intelligently performed only by a care- 
 ful consideration of the fitness of each of the candidates 
 for the different offices, involving both personal knowl- 
 edge of the candidates and acquaintance with the duties 
 of the offices, was in his opinion impracticable. 
 
 However liable to abuse conventions were, through 
 manipulation and control by party bosses, he believed 
 that the selection of candidates by conventions resulted 
 in a more intelligent choice. He was a sufficiently ex- 
 perienced and clear-seeing politician to detect many 
 practical difficulties in all the proposed and existing 
 schemes for direct primaries, and to foresee the many 
 evils to which they were likely to lead, some of which 
 were in his opinion greater than the evils of the existing 
 system. He believed in the selection of candidates by 
 conventions composed of delegates directly representing 
 the people, and felt that to secure the selection in the 
 party organization and in the convention, of men of 
 clean purpose and good judgment, was the point to be 
 aimed at in improving present conditions. In this sense 
 he was as much and as ardent a reformer as any of the 
 young dreamers coming to the fore all the time, who ex- 
 pected to make over politics at a bound, who were for 
 " stern duty " only, and who talked very loudly about 
 
 [76] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 " corruption " and the " evils of politics." " Organ- 
 ization," like the " Onward and Upward " of the Salva- 
 tion Army, was the watchword of his political faith, 
 and without organization he believed that nothing could 
 be done. 
 
 Yet, though he had ideals as well as these avowed 
 reformers, or " extremists " as he called them, he did not 
 any the less hesitate to " play the game as it was played," 
 though perhaps the extremists would in many instances 
 have considered his methods unworthy. But that was 
 just the difference between their kind of reform and 
 Ellis's. They were idealists, and he was a man with 
 ideals, which admitted of his being other things besides 
 — a believer in common sense, for one thing. He was 
 keen enough and man enough to realize in playing his 
 cards that the elements he had most to deal with were 
 self-interest and human weakness, and that in order to 
 get men to do what he wanted them to do, he must play 
 upon their selfish motives and interests. And he very 
 often did. 
 
 An incident illustrating this practical side of Verney's 
 politics happened one evening in connection with one 
 of the thirty captains of the Election Districts within 
 his Assembly District. When Verney, as leader of the 
 District, first asked those thirty men to take up the work 
 as captains, he did not ask them to do it on moral or 
 altruistic grounds. He did tell them, to be sure, that he 
 believed they would be performing a duty and that they 
 would find the work interesting ; but he urged them par- 
 ticularly to do it because, he said, if they worked well 
 
 [77] 
 
The Politician 
 
 enough and long enough, they might expect to have 
 come to them increase of salary, promotion, appoint- 
 ments, additional business, or some material gain directly 
 or indirectly. On the night in question, a captain walked 
 in where Verney was sitting at his headquarters, and 
 presented to him his resignation. The Politician im- 
 mediately asked the captain whether he was in any way 
 dissatisfied with his, Verney's management, or what other 
 reason he had for resigning. While the young fellow 
 was answering, Verney recollected that the captain's 
 brother, who held a government position, had failed to 
 secure a promotion which he had desired and that the 
 captain himself some time before had been disappointed 
 in not receiving some business from a semi-political 
 source, which he had expected. Recognizing at once 
 by this token the kind of material he was dealing with, 
 and determined not to lose the man's services, which had 
 been valuable to the young leader, Ellis did not waste 
 any time in urging the captain to remain in his position 
 for the reason that it was his duty, or on philanthropic 
 grounds. He continued sharpening his pencil, a process 
 interrupted for a moment by the captain's entrance, and 
 fixing the malcontent with a steady blue gaze, remarked 
 with careful casualness : 
 
 " I wonder if you 've considered the fact that if some 
 plans which are being formed are successful, there will 
 be next year in the Executive Chamber a Governor whose 
 attitude toward the active members of the organization 
 will be different from that of the present Governor? 
 You have worked long and hard as captain ; I would n't 
 
 [781 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 give up now if I were you, but hang on a while longer; 
 go through this next campaign and see what happens." 
 
 He ended his remarks with one of the true Verney 
 smiles, which at the instant of their inception made all 
 men his. Whereupon the captain, smiling too, thought- 
 fully tore up his resignation ; and Verney said, " Come 
 on out and have a drink." 
 
 And that was all there was to that. 
 
 But the characteristic that most fitted Ellis to be what 
 he was, a politician of rapidly growing importance, was 
 simply his stupendous capacity for hard work. When, 
 after two years of ceaseless activity as captain of his 
 little District, he was made successively a member of 
 the New York County Committee, a member of the 
 Legislature, and finally leader of his Assembly District, 
 he became known throughout New York City and influ- 
 ential in his party throughout the State. That same 
 remarkable energy and thoroughness, and that infinite 
 capacity for taking pains which had characterized his 
 conduct as captain of his little District, characterized his 
 administration of the succeeding offices he filled. As 
 this spirit inspired him then to become personally 
 acquainted with each one of the five or six hundred voters 
 the little District contained, so that he might feel assured 
 he knew exactly what each one of them would do and 
 how he was going to vote (which invariably resulted in 
 his turning out the largest registration and the largest 
 vote in proportion to the size of his District at election 
 times), it inspired him later at Albany, when he was 
 made assemblyman, in his work of getting bills he ap- 
 
 c'w] 
 
The Politician 
 
 proved of passed. He worked on them to the limit of 
 his strength, considering nothing too much trouble to 
 do that would help in any way, and forced himself to 
 talk on the floor, although by a contradiction in his 
 character and in spite of his undoubted ability in speak- 
 ing, he was shy about being the centre of attention. He 
 had won recognition from the chair and from other 
 assemblymen, time and again, where few men much older 
 than he had been able to do so. 
 
 It was this aptitude for hard work too, combined with 
 his great personal charm, tact, and brains, which with 
 each year of office increased the scope of his activities ; 
 and having signalized his first year in the House by the 
 introduction of an unusual number of important bills, 
 he grew with the succeeding years to be regarded as 
 one of its strong men, and was always appointed to the 
 important committees; and in his fourth and last year, 
 although the youngest member, he became not only one 
 of the big men of the Assembly, but one of the first four 
 or five in it. He had been, in short, as a result of the 
 hardest and most conscientious kind of work, successful 
 so far as he had gone. 
 
 Now, even the strongest man, and Ellis was strong, 
 cannot use his strength to capacity limits day in and 
 day out without feeling it a little ; and the hardest thing 
 the young man had to bear in this busy, complicated, 
 successful life of his was the reckoning day that faced 
 him at intervals, when a mild form of nervous break- 
 down compelled him to doff his armor for a while and 
 give himself up to the heart-wearying inaction which 
 
 [80] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 the doctor decreed as the only way to get well again. 
 Loss of sleep, necessitated by his efforts to pay attention 
 to his law business and his political interests too, was 
 the chief cause of his disorder, augmented not a little 
 by the number of cigars he smoked and the amount of 
 alcoholic stimulant he found it necessary to take as a 
 substitute for sleep. 
 
 In commenting upon this state of affairs, his uncle 
 Richmond, who was a bachelor of forty-eight, and who 
 thought the sun, moon, and stars revolved about his 
 nephew Verney, had often asked him why he worked so 
 hard and followed everything out to such minute detail, 
 vouchsafing it as his opinion that every one else loafed 
 more or less, and that it was foolish for Verney not to 
 do the same, and Ellis had replied : " Because if I have 
 anything to accomplish I will not take any chances 
 with it. To gain my end I must try every possible 
 expedient, and I must attend to every detail I can think 
 of, however unimportant it may seem, and experience 
 has proved to me that the policy never fails to pay." 
 
 Verney had been in New York just a week when he 
 received a letter from Chicago addressed in a feminine 
 hand which he had never seen before but knew at once. 
 Of course it was Miss Rand writing to thank him for 
 the promised copy of " Bacon's Essays," which he had 
 sent her immediately upon his return to his own city. 
 It was only proper that she should do so ; yet he opened 
 the envelope which a club servant handed him — he was 
 lunching that day at the Princeton Club — with a feel- 
 ing almost impatient that his little courtesy should have 
 6 [81] 
 
The Politician 
 
 put her to the trouble of a formal acknowledgment. 
 He would almost have expected Harriet Rand to regard 
 her thanks as a thing understood and to accept the in- 
 considerable gift in silence. But when he had read the 
 letter he was glad that she had allowed the conventions 
 to rule her after all. It was an interesting letter, 
 chiefly on the subject of the reading she had done 
 recently; and her opinion of the essays was a thing of 
 joy to Verney. Almost every other girl he knew would 
 have raved about each separate one as a matter of duty, 
 with little discrimination; but Miss Rand had dared to 
 be critical, even though she knew the high regard in 
 which he held them himself, and had frankly admitted 
 that she found them difficult to understand. She wrote : 
 
 " I must confess that although I very much like your friend 
 Francis Bacon and am deeply in your debt for introducing him 
 to me, I found him at times a little difficult to grasp; that is, 
 at once. This one emanation of his intellect, written, as he says in 
 the preface, 'in his leisure moments,' has commanded the whole 
 of mine in appreciating it. But I do not lay this up against 
 him, for I always enj oy most the nut that 's hardest to crack. 
 Does that sound like the epigrammatical gentleman himself? Or 
 do I natter myself? But my mind is a veritable sponge for ab- 
 sorbing the style of the different authors I read. If it happens 
 to be Ibsen, my conversation is terse and bloodless for days; if 
 the dear Jane Austen, I find myself garrulous beyond belief! 
 Wouldn't you hate to meet me just after a dose of Henry 
 James? But to return to His Lordship. I like the essay en- 
 titled * Of Truth ' and the one on * Great Place ' and the ones on 
 1 Ambition ' and * Honor and Reputation ' ; but the one I par- 
 ticularly dote upon is 'Friendship.' That I abhor and detest 
 and indignantly refute the ones on 'Love' and on 'Marriage' 
 goes without saying. You could hardly expect me to attach the 
 seal of my approval to such abominable cynicisms — now, could 
 
 [88] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 you? What a cross wife he must have had, to inspire such 
 misogynic utterances! And how terribly selfish of her to in- 
 dulge her bad temper! If she had had a true sense of her 
 responsibilities he would never have been able to visit his dis- 
 pleasure over her shortcomings upon the innocent heads of all 
 womankind ! " 
 
 Verney smiled as he read that, and turning over the 
 page, saw with pleasure that the letter was a long one. 
 After further comment on the book and on other reading 
 she had done, she took up another matter, her receipt 
 of a picture from him — his photograph. This gift 
 had followed " Bacon's Essays " very shortly as a result 
 of a little passage at arms which occurred the evening 
 he had dined at Mrs. Cumloch's, when that lady had 
 shown her friends, in a spirit of amusement, a picture of 
 Harriet which had appeared in the " society column " of 
 a newspaper. Verney had appropriated it at once, as 
 much perhaps to tease the girl as for anything else, and 
 though much importuned by Harriet, had refused to 
 restore it. To justify which rather doubtful conduct 
 he had sent her his in fair exchange. Verney grinned 
 appreciatively though a trifle sheepishly at Miss Rand's 
 comment upon his arbitrary and novel method of mak- 
 ing restitution. She went on to say : 
 
 " Thanks vastly for the picture ; it 's a counterfeit presentment 
 of you, of course; but counterfeit or not, I shall cherish it, 
 though it is not at all a proper equivalent for the picture you 
 purloined. You know very well that a handsome photograph is 
 not a fair exchange for a newspaper picture. But how exactly 
 like you just to send it without a word! So very modest and 
 casual-like! As if you were an agent trying to introduce a new 
 brand of pickles! No advertising matter or testimonials with 
 
 [83] 
 
The Politician 
 
 our satnples! They speak for themselves! You wouldn't have 
 told me it was coming for worlds, would you?" 
 
 Verney had to laugh at this. What acumen, what 
 penetration the girl showed, anyway ! How accurately 
 she had divined his reason for making as little as possi- 
 ble of the matter, his fear that he might be accused of 
 vanity! But how else should he have done it, for 
 Heaven's sake? he wondered. Did she think he'd send 
 it to her in a gilt frame with " yours ever " on it, like 
 any schoolboy? He rather thought not; a grown man 
 did things like that without shouting about it. And 
 yet for all that, the Verney who had stolen the picture 
 of Harriet in the first place was not so much like a 
 grown man as he fancied he was, but much more like 
 the schoolboy he had repudiated! There was a boyish- 
 ness about Vernor Ellis that many years and much sor- 
 row would have a hard time to conquer. 
 
 In summing up her thanks for both gifts, Harriet 
 said: 
 
 "I think, on the whole, that of the two books you sent me — 
 the one bound in Russia calf and the one without any binding, 
 Bacon's Essays and the picture of yourself, — I prefer the book 
 that is not yet finished, the leaves of which are still uncut, its 
 story still to write, and the title of which is * James Vernor Ellis, 
 Politician.' Am I not right? Isn't politics the noblest career 
 open to man, and isn't the man who is succeeding in that career 
 most to be envied? But I see that I am thrusting you upon a 
 pedestal without even so much as a by-your-leave ! Do you like 
 it? Or do pedestals bore you?" 
 
 Having reached which satisfactory confession — the 
 very frankness of which prevented Verney from misin- 
 
 [84] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 terpreting it in any way, frankness being* the essence of 
 friendship, — she closed with a remark to the effect that 
 she and her aunt thought of going on to New York for 
 a while before the summer was over to do some shopping 
 and see some people they knew; and in ending she was 
 his " very sincere friend." 
 
 Verney liked the letter, he liked it a great deal, in 
 fact he hardly remembered ever having received a letter 
 from a girl that pleased him more ; and inspired by this 
 conviction he betook himself at once to a writing-room 
 and dashed off a note in reply. He said: 
 
 " My very kind friend, you would spoil me by what you say to 
 me if I did not know you laughed a little in that kind way of 
 yours as you said it, and I should ask you not to put me on a 
 pedestal if I did not know that you had no intention of putting me 
 there. There are heroes in politics, for in that arena those who 
 love the bright face of danger have as big a chance and take as 
 many risks as sailor or soldier. But I 'm not one of them ; I 'm 
 only a worker. Yet I say * only ' with pride, for 4 1 love the dust 
 the heroes raise in striving,' and of course there's always the 
 possibility that I may strive hard enough to raise some myself some 
 day. But I don't think I 'd like to be on a pedestal even if I 
 could. It might be awfully lonely, I think, up so high — unless 
 of course I could persuade somebody awfully nice to come up 
 there with me! It's bully that you're coming to New York for 
 a while! Hurry up and come! Bacon is a good fellow, isn't he? 
 I was as sure when I sent him to you that you and he would 
 compare notes favorably on this and that, as that you would 
 disagree vitally on the subjects you mention. Naturally you 
 couldn't swallow his 'love and marriage'; you wouldn't be as 
 human and likeable as you are if you could. Do you mind my 
 saying that your letter as a commentary on what you have read 
 is a wonder?" 
 
 " Faithfully, 
 
 "James Vernor Ellis." 
 
 [85] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Which, as a letter to a young and attractive member 
 of the other sex, was about as discreet as Verney ever 
 was. He never chose his words or stayed the warmth 
 of impulse for any fear that more significance would 
 be attached to them than he intended. He complimented 
 womankind, whether unduly or not they alone could tell 
 — for Verney was never enlightened on the subject if 
 they could help it, — by assuming that they were able 
 to keep as heart-whole as he, and by feeling free to 
 express his admiration or interest or friendship, just as 
 you like to call it, without danger of misinterpretation. 
 In a singularly ingenuous and joyous way he took it for 
 granted that their intelligence was equal to the task of 
 discerning at once that his interest in each particular 
 case was the interest of a man who believed that the more 
 charming women a man knew the better off he was, and 
 who made no secret of the fact that he was fortunate 
 enough to know a .great many. But in the question 
 whether he over-complimented them or not lay the possi- 
 ble weak spot in this otherwise admirable attitude, an 
 attitude in which he should really have been quite justi- 
 fied, if its success had not been dependent upon that most 
 variable and uncertain of qualities, a woman's ability to 
 remain impersonal at will. 
 
 But while it was to some extent due to his under- 
 rating the susceptibility of woman and his own powers 
 of pleasing, one other factor that figured largely in 
 Verney's sense of freedom from responsibility in this 
 regard and had kept him up to the present time un- 
 scathed by the fires of love, was his resolve taken some 
 
 [86] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 seven years previously to abandon all thoughts of mar- 
 riage. This he had done in order that he might pursue 
 his work in politics with singleness of purpose, and he 
 believed that course necessary for many reasons. Con- 
 sidering the question of marriage for a man engaged in 
 politics from the practical point of view of whether or 
 not it was to the man's advantage to marry, Verney was 
 of the opinion that it was not. 
 
 Setting aside the risk a man ran in getting a wife 
 who would not or could not help, who was perhaps too 
 selfish to interest herself in her husband's work or too 
 much of an invalid to be able to do so, he thought the 
 assistance a woman might give in the way of social 
 entertaining, or financially, if she were rich, was more 
 than counterbalanced by the obligation any right-minded 
 man would be under to spend as much of his time as he 
 could at home ; for in Verney's estimation a man engaged 
 in politics has no time to spend at home ! Then, again, 
 he thought that the social side of a political career did 
 not count for as much as it was supposed to count, that 
 it was not, in short, a necessity. While it might figure 
 largely in the case of a man who had reached the top 
 of the political ladder, the young politician thought it 
 figured only microscopically in the case of a man like 
 himself, who was just beginning his career. The po- 
 litical game he felt, anyway, was difficult and uncertain 
 enough without mixing up with the social game, and he 
 believed that oftentimes politics was as much the means 
 of advancing a woman in society as society was the 
 means of advancing a man in politics. 
 
 [87] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Then, too, in his own case, if his wife were not rich 
 and the whole burden of supplying her wants would rest 
 upon his shoulders, he did not feel equal to the task; 
 not, that is, if he were to spend part of his time in poli- 
 tics, where he knew he would have to spend money rather 
 than make it. Girls wanted so much nowadays, it took 
 all a man's time in his opinion to support them in luxury, 
 except of course the happy mortal who was born rich — 
 and Verney was not the kind of man to want to support 
 his wife in any other way ! It was to him as if he said : 
 " To marry, caring as I do for politics, would be like 
 committing bigamy. It would be as wrong, for if I 
 did not abandon either interest I could give only half a 
 heart to each." 
 
 It was that very ambition to be just and fair that 
 convinced the young man that marriage was not for him, 
 since he could accomplish that end only by giving up 
 his beloved work; for the idea of asking a woman to 
 sacrifice her rights to her husband's duty and society 
 that he might gratify his ambitions appeared to him as 
 beyond the realm of things possible. So that his reso- 
 lution to remain single was to his mind more a matter 
 of necessity than choice. His friend Ordway's experi- 
 ence had made it clear to him, too, that the fact that a 
 man had money did not alter the case, did not, in other 
 words, affect the problem of his neglecting his wife if he 
 remained in politics. The young man was married, he 
 was in politics, and he was wealthy ; yet though his means 
 prevented his wife, a very beautiful and intelligent girl, 
 from actually coming to want, she was nevertheless 
 
 [88] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 neglected, for she was left almost constantly to herself 
 owing to the demands made upon her husband's time by 
 his public life. 
 
 This was true to such an extent, indeed, that it had 
 resulted in driving her to the practice of going about 
 to the theatre and to dinners and dances with other men. 
 They were, to be sure, usually young men whom she had 
 known before her marriage, and she was able to explain 
 the thing sufficiently to her friends by laughing remarks 
 to the effect that her husband " was so busy, so devoted 
 to politics," that she hardly " saw anything of him " ; 
 but it was for all that a dangerous practice and a state 
 of affairs that was not at all fair or just to her. The 
 fact that she did not realize the pathos of her position, 
 her loss of what was hers by right, her husband's time 
 and society, but comforted herself by rejoicing in his 
 prominence and success and in priding herself upon 
 knowing as much about politics as he, holding up Eng- 
 lish wives as a model in this respect for their American 
 sisters to copy, did not make it any the less true that 
 she was a neglected wife. And Verney realized this, 
 had plenty of opportunity to realize it, knowing the 
 Ordways as well as he did. It was, indeed, before him 
 as an example almost every day of his life, for he saw 
 a great deal of his friend, and engaged as they often 
 were in the same work, was in a position to know just 
 how little time he was able to spend at home. And then 
 — and this was the best proof of all — he had himself 
 helped Agnes Ordway to pass some of those dull even- 
 ings when Oliver was away. 
 
 [89] 
 
The Politician 
 
 If this state of things could exist, if his absorption 
 in politics made it impossible for a man to give a proper 
 amount of his time to his wife when the man in question 
 was relieved of the necessity of providing for her, 
 how much more likely was it to exist in the case of a 
 man who was not relieved of that necessity, who had to 
 stock a larder and pay the month's rent? It was not 
 only likely that it should exist, but it was inevitable, 
 and Verney's second older brother, Benjamin, illustrated 
 the fact admirably. He was headmaster of a leading 
 boys' school in Connecticut, with a small salary and five 
 children; and when Verney visited him, the engrossing 
 nature of domestic responsibility never failed to come 
 home to Verney with its full force. There were so 
 many, many things that Benjamin had to do! He 
 had so little time to himself ! Why, as long as Verney 
 could remember, his brother had been trying to finish 
 a text-book he had begun to compile the year of his 
 marriage — ten years ago, — and had not finished yet ! 
 For such a man to have thought of entering politics, 
 unless he deserted wife and children, was absurd. And 
 this proof of the incompatibility of domestic life with a 
 career of the kind, even more than that which the ex- 
 perience of his friend Ordway supplied, was an object 
 lesson to Verney ; for Verney, like his brother, was not 
 a rich man. 
 
 With such strong evidence before him that human 
 responsibility is a curb to ambition, was it strange that 
 Ellis at so early an age had waved a gay farewell to 
 Matrimony beckoning down the road? And was it 
 
 [90] 
 
Politics and Letters 
 
 strange that a feeling of freedom from the obligation 
 to hold himself to account for word and deed which 
 is usually felt toward women by a man of principle 
 should have resulted from that act? Not that he 
 thought any the less of the blessings of matrimony or 
 decried it in its proper place, but he could not help see- 
 ing its impracticability in politics, where a man must 
 give all his time, every breathing moment that he is 
 awake, to his work; and though he did not quite agree 
 with the maxim that " a young man married is a young 
 man marred," he had come to regard the blissful state 
 with such disfavor where a politician is concerned, that 
 whenever any of the young captains in his district took 
 unto himself a wife, their leader was wont to shake his 
 head gloomily and regard that man as lost, so far as 
 getting more work out of him went. 
 
 If Harriet Rand was to be one of those instances, 
 which doubtless had occurred in Verney's experience, 
 when his confidence in the perspicacity of women had 
 been at fault, what a pity it was that some clear-sighted 
 arbiter who knew the rules of the game could not have 
 explained to her that afternoon two days later in Lake 
 Forest, as she broke the seal of the letter with " Princeton 
 Club " on it in orange lettering, just how things stood 
 with the young man and of his happy ignorance of his 
 responsibility in such matters, while it was yet time ! 
 Or what a pity it was that she had missed the significance 
 of Verney's gift to her of " Bacon's Essays," that she 
 should have failed to recognize the unconscious warn- 
 ing contained in the young politician's admiration of 
 
 [91] 
 
The Politician 
 
 the great philosopher whose writings all teach his belief 
 in the age-old argument that matrimony is an enemy 
 to art, as applied to every kind of public life ! 
 
 But nobody did explain, and the warning embodied 
 in Verney's gift had passed by her unread, so that there 
 was no disturbing element to interfere with her enjoy- 
 ment of his letter. She read it through once slowly, and 
 then again, standing where the maid who had brought 
 it to her found her in the middle of her aunt's Italian 
 garden, where she had been amusing herself trimming 
 a boxwood hedge under the direction of the gardener. 
 Shears in hand, garden hat fallen to her shoulders and 
 held only by its strings, she walked toward the house — 
 boxwood hedge and waiting gardener forgotten — to 
 seek in her room a pigeon-hole in a rosewood desk which 
 might be immediately consecrated to the guardianship 
 of the missive in her hand and of any others like it that 
 might come her way. . . . What a wonderful thing 
 it was to know a man in public life, to be friends with a 
 politician ! 
 
 [9*] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 "here we are, cora!" 
 
 THAT part of June which was left after the con- 
 vention and the month following were hard 
 weeks for Verney. His primary fights at 
 former elections had been noted for their bitterness, but 
 nothing he had done in the past could equal the energy 
 and singleness of purpose with which he worked now 
 to convert the feeling of dissatisfaction with Downes's 
 administration, already beginning to gain ground in 
 New York city, into a feeling in favor of his friend 
 Ordway, for Republican nominee for Governor. His 
 law business suffered sadly these days, but little by little, 
 inch by inch, by means known only to the expert poli- 
 tician, he had succeeded in establishing to a certain de- 
 gree the young speaker's name in men's mouths, had at 
 last been able to start the current of party sentiment 
 toward him. It was slow work, though, and he had 
 achieved little more than that by the end of July, when 
 an interesting political situation was precipitated by 
 Governor Downes's announcement that he would accept 
 a renomination at the hands of the Republican party if 
 it were offered to him. 
 
 Whereupon the sluggishness, the indecision, the un- 
 certainty which had been characterizing the Republican 
 
 [93] 
 
The Politician 
 
 party vanished like smoke, before the thrown gauntlet 
 of this news, and divided itself upon the instant into 
 two factions, — the men who were for Downes and the 
 men who were against him. Of these factions one was 
 composed chiefly of the main body of voters, the men 
 who take no part in political affairs except to vote ; and 
 the other chiefly of the politicians or members of the 
 organization, the men who are active in politics, who 
 are responsible for the conduct of elections and the po- 
 litical machinery. 
 
 It was with the latter, of course, that Verney, as an 
 organization man and because of his personal prejudice 
 against the Governor, identified himself. The reasons 
 that caused him and his fellow-politicians to disagree 
 with the Downes supporters were based on many grounds. 
 It seemed to them that those who belonged to that fac- 
 tion " leaned so far over backward," as the expression 
 went, in their desire to keep public office free from evil 
 political influences that they had come to think that 
 discrimination in making appointments should be made 
 against every political recommendation and every man 
 who had been active in party affairs, irrespective of his 
 ability. They believed also that those men followed 
 blindly the sensational newspaper clamor and the popular 
 wave of anti-corporation feeling in which every corpora- 
 tion was a trust and every trust was bad, and applauded 
 every detail of Governor Downes's limitations upon in- 
 surance companies and his regulation of the railroads, 
 however drastic they might be. 
 
 The politicians believed, on the other hand, that party 
 [94] 
 
"Here We Are, Cora!" 
 
 service and political recommendation were entitled to con- 
 sideration. They realized the necessity under changed 
 economic conditions of governmental regulation where 
 competition no longer existed, and of governmental regu- 
 lation of public utility corporations, but they believed 
 that supervision might be overdone if, for instance, as 
 had recently happened, through its means a great rail- 
 road could be sent to the wall and millions of people 
 inconvenienced by the curtailment of its services. They 
 believed, in short, that the State was riding too fast 
 over untried roads; that it had gone far enough in 
 radical experiment ; that slower and more cautious ways 
 should be taken; and that it was wiser to wait before 
 giving further power to commissions which had not yet 
 accomplished in a year, or made any progress toward 
 accomplishing, the reforms they had set out to effect. 
 They feared also the results of the unrestricted power 
 which this placed in the hands of one man, whose right 
 it was to make the appointments to these commissions. 
 
 Of all these reasons for opposing Downes's renomina- 
 tion, however, the one that appeared most important in 
 their eyes was the Governor's hostile attitude toward the 
 organization itself. To judge by that system of his, so 
 approved by his partisans, of making appointments 
 which discriminated against party workers and men ac- 
 tive in politics, and his violent advocacy of the direct 
 system of selecting candidates for nomination which 
 every politician considered inimical to the Republican 
 organization, he seemed to believe that in the destruction 
 of organization lay the only hope of obtaining civil 
 
 [95] 
 
The Politician 
 
 service reform. To Verney, who believed — whether 
 the majority of the politicians cherished similar ideals or 
 not — that the way to effect reform was by means of 
 reforming the party, not by destroying its organization, 
 since in his estimation a party government was essential 
 to the welfare of the country, this attitude of Downes 
 was alone reason enough for fighting against his renom- 
 ination. 
 
 From the moment Downes's willingness to run again 
 for Governor became known, Verney's desire that Oliver 
 Ordway, who was a member of the organization and an 
 enthusiastic party worker, should have the nomination, 
 increased tenfold. The news had also the effect of ren- 
 dering his self-appointed task of spreading his friend's 
 cause much easier, and he found less difficulty in winning 
 men over to his way of thinking with every twenty-four 
 hours that passed after it had come out in the papers. 
 
 About the middle of August, however, the " Autocrat 
 of Oyster Bay," as the President had been termed at 
 that time by one of his critics, put a heavy spoke in 
 Ellis's wheel by sending forth the dictum after consulta- 
 tion with Republican party leaders at Sagamore Hill, 
 that Downes must be the party's nominee for Governor. 
 No matter how much the organization men might resent 
 this arbitrary interference on the part of the President, 
 they could not help realizing that it would have its in- 
 fluence on the voters of the State at large, who, they 
 said, believed blindly in the theory that the King could 
 do no wrong, and blew hot or cold as the case might be, 
 at the mere lifting of the royal eyebrow. 
 
 [96] " 
 
"Here We Are, Cora!" 
 
 These were busy times for them, the organization 
 leaders; for while they had only to unite their forces 
 behind one man in order to defeat Mr. Downes, the 
 character of that man was of the utmost importance if 
 they were to satisfy not only their own ideas of the re- 
 quirements of a candidate for such high office, but to 
 placate as well public opinion and the President's. 
 They were as sincere in their wish to secure a man of 
 principle and ability — insisting upon only one stipula- 
 tion in their choice, that he should not be prejudiced 
 against the organization — as they were in their wish 
 not to antagonize the voters at large, which the nomina- 
 tion of an incompetent or unknown man must surely do. 
 In this dilemma not a few of them caught gladly at 
 Ellis's suggestion that Speaker Ordway should be the 
 candidate for the nomination decided upon to oppose 
 Downes, since his integrity and ability was a matter of 
 general knowledge, while he was at the same time a loyal 
 organization man ; but the maj ority were still in doubt. 
 
 " And yet," as Verney told the young Speaker con- 
 fidently toward the end of the month, " I think we '11 
 convince them all by the time the convention is actually 
 on." 
 
 Ordway smiled a little at his friend's positive tone. 
 
 " You 're an optimist, Verney," he said, " but I 'm 
 sure I hope you 're right. I think New York 's had a 
 little too much of Mr. Downes, and if the State needs 
 me, if our friends think I 'm the right man to meet the 
 needs of the situation, I shall be proud to make the best 
 fight I can against him to get the nomination. But 
 7 [97] 
 
The Politician 
 
 I don't believe, I can't think it 's going that way. I 've 
 a kind of notion the Egotist [he meant the Governor] 
 will get it again." He turned his dark intellectual 
 face and his dreamer's eyes toward his friend. M It 's 
 not probable, at least it does n't sound likely to me that 
 a man as young as I am, only thirty-four years old, 
 should be Governor." He made the statement seriously, 
 for in the eyes of as stanch a Republican as he was, re- 
 ceiving the nomination was synonymous with being 
 elected. But you could n't discourage Verney that way. 
 
 " Why not ? " he said hotly. " Age has n't anything 
 to do with it. Why, Patrick Henry was a senator at 
 twenty -nine, — a few months younger than the age re- 
 quired by the Constitution. William Pitt was only 
 twenty-five when he was prime minister of England; 
 and think of Alexander Hamilton and LaFayette! 
 They were statesmen and young men too ! There 's no 
 reason why you should n't be anything you like, as far 
 as age goes ! " 
 
 And he was right in a way ; there was no real reason 
 why Oliver Ordway should not have made an excellent 
 governor. He was young, of course, but in every other 
 way eminently qualified. He had force of character, 
 brains, and intellect, or he would not have risen to be 
 what he was, Speaker of the House at Albany. He had 
 graduated with high honors at one of the leading 
 universities of the country, and had been admitted to 
 the bar a few years afterwards. He was also a young 
 man of large private fortune, doubled by his marriage 
 to one of the rich Misses Brock of his own city, whose 
 
 [98] 
 
"Here We Are, Cora!" 
 
 inheritance was almost equal to his own. Thus en- 
 dowed, he had been able to give up his law practice and 
 devote himself exclusively to a political career, which 
 was one reason perhaps why he held office so much above 
 his friend Ellis. 
 
 In other respects the two young men were much alike ; 
 typical New Yorkers, both of them, about the same age, 
 well-born, fine-looking, and ambitious. The chief point 
 of dissimilarity lay in their circumstances ; for while one 
 was rich, the other only belonged to a family which had 
 once been rich. In character, too, the young men 
 differed a little; for while both were actuated by the 
 same lofty ideals and principles in going into politics, 
 the older of the two was perhaps more idealistic and 
 less practical than the younger. Ordway was neverthe- 
 less fully qualified to maintain an important administra- 
 tive position ; for if he was not always practical himself, 
 he possessed the faculty of choosing competent sub- 
 ordinates who were, and to a great degree the rare power 
 of making them work in harmony. 
 
 With this light on his character and ability, it is not 
 difficult to believe with Verney in Ordway's fitness to be 
 Governor of New York State, and to understand the 
 earnestness and complete absorption with which Ellis 
 threw himself into the business of getting him the 
 Republican nomination for that office. Obviously 
 Verney was a very busy young man ; and it was unfortu- 
 nate, perhaps, that Harriet Rand, accompanied by her 
 aunt, should choose to arrive in New York just at this 
 time, because he would really have liked to see more of 
 
 [99] 
 
The Politician 
 
 her. Harriet, however, was quite unaware of this 
 state of affairs, and she and Mrs. Cumloch had hardly 
 been in the Holland House long enough for their 
 trunks to be unpacked, before she sent the young man 
 a note telling him of her arrival, as he had asked 
 her to do whenever she came to New York, in su- 
 preme confidence that immediate sight of him would 
 follow. But sad, very sad to relate, nothing at all came 
 of it. Verney Ellis, working almost continually night 
 and day, could not find time even to telephone, and the 
 result was that the impossible happened and three whole 
 days passed without sight or sound of him. This 
 was a contretemps most inexplicable to Miss Rand, who 
 had been used to having men fly at the beckon of her 
 hand; and she could not in the least understand an ab- 
 sorption in other affairs that would not permit of a ten- 
 minute call. 
 
 Then at last she saw him, but saw him merely, with 
 no opportunity to speak. In despair of his coming, and 
 to show herself that she was not disappointed, she ar- 
 ranged a theatre party for the fourth evening of her 
 stay in New York, composed of herself and her aunt, a 
 Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden, friends of Mrs. Cumloch, and 
 a young man who had been Francis Morton's room-mate 
 at college and who lived in New York. His name was 
 Gerald Merrick, and needless to say, he was a great 
 admirer of the Chicago heiress, whom he had met while 
 visiting Francis several years before. 
 
 The play was very good, and Mr. Merrick as enter- 
 taining as he knew how to be, and Harriet had almost 
 
 [100] 
 
"Here We Are, Cora!"- 
 
 forgotten the extraordinary behavior of Mr. Ellis, when 
 something occurred which brought back to her mind 
 most keenly her sense of his delinquency. She and the 
 other two women in the party were standing on the steps 
 of the theatre after the play, waiting for the men to find 
 their carriage, when Harriet observed not far away from 
 her an extremely handsome and beautifully dressed 
 woman, evidently waiting as they were for a carriage. 
 Doubtless her escort, whoever he was, had gone down 
 into the crowd in front of the Bijou to hasten the ar- 
 rival of the equipage in question, even as Mr. Chit- 
 tenden and young Gerald Merrick had done. There was 
 nothing at all remarkable about this circumstance, and 
 Harriet was just wondering why she speculated on the 
 matter at all, when a good-looking young man with an 
 eagerness of manner that was familiar to her, detached 
 himself from the crowd on the sidewalk below and, run- 
 ning up to the girl on the steps, said gayly and so dis- 
 tinctly that Harriet could not help hearing, " Here 
 we are, Cora ! " 
 It was Verney. 
 
 [101] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE EPISODE OF THE BRACELET 
 
 IT was this incident that made it difficult for 
 Harriet to execute a commission with which Mrs. 
 Presbey had charged her; namely, to call at Cor- 
 nelia's mother 's and leave there a certain diamond 
 bracelet belonging to Mrs. Ellis. Mrs. Presbey had 
 borrowed it on a recent visit to New York and had not 
 yet sent it back. It was a family heirloom, and Mrs. 
 Ellis had requisitioned it from her elder daughter in 
 favor of her youngest, Carol, who was to be " in- 
 troduced " that winter. Carol had more right to it, she 
 had decided, than Cornelia, who, as she justly said, had 
 managed to lose almost every other heirloom of the kind 
 the family had ever possessed. Mrs. Presbey, after 
 borrowing the piece of jewelry, was characteristically 
 negligent about returning it ; and now that her atten- 
 tion had been called to the fact that her mother really 
 wished it returned, she hastened to send it back by the 
 first means which presented itself, which happened to 
 be by making use of her friend Harriet Rand's trip to 
 New York at that time. This was, furthermore, in her 
 opinion, the safest method that she could use, for like 
 
 [102] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 most women she was unwilling to trust the mails with 
 anything of value. 
 
 Miss Rand accepted the responsibility without any 
 demur, since it was Cornelia who asked the favor of her, 
 and promised to give the bracelet into no hands but 
 Mrs. Ellis's own. She in fact rather enjoyed the idea 
 of going to the house where the Politician lived, until 
 the incident of the evening before gave her such signal 
 proof of the lightness with which her friend regarded 
 their friendship. With hot cheeks she remembered the 
 curious glance with which Verney's handsome companion 
 favored her when he caught sight of Harriet and 
 raised his hat; nor could the information revealed later 
 by Gerald Merrick, that she was Mrs. Willie Gibbs, a 
 certain very fashionable and well-known young married 
 woman, at all lessen her sense that her friend had failed 
 her. 
 
 She felt now that the commission she had accepted 
 so light-heartedly was one of great difficulty; for in 
 her disappointment that the young man should choose 
 so to ignore her presence in New York in the face of the 
 fact that he had time to go to the theatre with someone 
 else, she had resolved that nothing should induce her 
 to make any further effort to see him, though the 
 shopping and visiting among their friends which her 
 aunt had planned should keep them never so long in the 
 city. And now, here was Cornelia's old bracelet to 
 interfere, necessitating a journey into the very camp 
 of the enemy and compelling her to run the chance of 
 meeting Verney face to face in his own home ! Never- 
 
 [103] 
 
The Politician 
 
 theless and in spite of this feeling of reluctance, before 
 very long she did manage to carry out the mission with 
 which she had been entrusted, though she took care to 
 go early in the afternoon, so that she might not en- 
 counter Verney, and she told herself as she went up the 
 steps of that one of the row of brown stone fronts on 
 West Twelfth Street which was Mrs. Ellis's, that she 
 was very glad there was no possible chance of such a 
 contingency. The maid at the door did not know 
 whether Mrs. Ellis was at home or not. She would go 
 upstairs and see, if Miss Rand — Harriet had given her 
 her card — would come in and be seated. Harriet 
 came in and was shown through a large front drawing- 
 room with cheese-cloth draped chandeliers, closed blinds, 
 and furniture still in its summer garb of brown holland, 
 into a smaller one similarly conditioned. 
 
 " Mrs. Ellis has only just returned from Tuxedo," 
 explained the maid, " to open the house," and after 
 raising one of the shades, she departed to find out if her 
 mistress were in. 
 
 Harriet seated herself in one of the big shapeless 
 chairs in the middle of the room where a shaft of the 
 August sunlight streamed through the uncurtained 
 window, and looked about her. Here, then, was where 
 her friend, the Politician lived, — or was he so much 
 her friend? The question in her mind showed how far 
 the apparition of Mrs. Gibbs and Verney on the steps 
 of the theatre the other evening had gone toward shak- 
 ing her faith in that regard. It was not a particularly 
 
 [104] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 handsome or elegant house, to judge by what she had 
 seen so far. Certainly it would not bear comparison 
 with the fresh magnificence of her aunt's home on the 
 Drive in Chicago. It was high-ceilinged and gloomy, 
 like most of the houses she had seen in New York, with 
 the dark tapestry-hung walls, velvet hangings that were 
 too well worn to trouble about putting them away, and 
 heavy furniture belonging to a family mansion that had 
 been furnished two or three decades ago. Like the re- 
 productions of oil paintings on the walls, Aurora over 
 the marble mantelpiece and the Sistine Madonna across 
 the way, its worth was unquestioned though its style 
 was not at all in accord with modern tastes and fashions. 
 Yet here and there a little carved stand or gilt table or 
 lamp of hammered brass gave evidence that later addi- 
 tions had been made to the furniture. Probably by the 
 fastidious and extravagant Mrs. Presbey, whose ambi- 
 tion in life was to be up-to-date, Harriet thought ; or 
 maybe by Miss Ellis, who was coming out that winter, 
 whom she did not know, and in whose behalf she was 
 acting the part of special messenger in returning the 
 diamond bracelet. 
 
 " Hello," said a voice unexpectedly ; and Harriet, her 
 thoughts thus surprisingly interrupted, looked up and 
 beheld Verney regarding her in pleased surprise from 
 the doorway. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Ellis? " she said as composedly 
 as she could and as coldly, rising to her feet. 
 
 But Mr. Ellis apparently did not notice the coldness. 
 [ 105 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " How awfully good of you to come and see me," he 
 said, coming smilingly toward her, " when you knew I 
 was too busy to come and see you ! " 
 
 " I did n't ! " said Harriet indignantly, and doing her 
 best to withdraw the hand she had foolishly and quite 
 mechanically offered him. " I came only to leave a 
 bracelet for Cornelia — I mean for your mother " — 
 she stammered rather confusedly; she was so afraid he 
 would n't understand that her coming had been obliga- 
 tory. " She wanted me to leave it with Mrs. Ellis ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know," said Verney ; " I 've heard nothing 
 but that bracelet from mother and Carol ever since the 
 Baby [that was his sister's nickname] thought of 
 coming out. It was most awfully kind of you to 
 bring it ! " 
 
 But Harriet was not to be conciliated by fair words. 
 " I would n't have thought of coming now, though," 
 she said gravely, " if I had had any idea that I should 
 meet you ! " 
 
 The young man looked shocked. " Don't," he said, 
 " don't say such things ! It 's cruel, when I 'm so glad 
 to see you — and when I am so ill, too," he added. 
 
 " 111 ? " said Harriet, her resentment against him 
 arrested by this idea. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " that 's why you find me here in- 
 stead of at my office, and it 's all because I have n't had 
 any sleep to speak of for the last six weeks or so." 
 
 " Really? " said Harriet, unable to keep the sympathy 
 out of her voice. " That 's bad, is n't it? " 
 
 " As bad as bad can be ! " replied Ellis, encouraged, 
 [106] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 " and you never knew such a clock as there is in this 
 house ! Why, if you '11 believe me — last night it 
 struck every hour ! " 
 
 Harriet could n't help laughing, and after that, of 
 course, it was useless to keep up the pretence that she 
 was displeased with him; moreover, as he stepped into 
 the sunlight and took a chair near her, she saw with 
 concern that he did look ill, or exceedingly tired, at 
 least, and remembered compassionately his healthy, 
 animated look when she saw him last June, with his out- 
 of-doors tan and his alert, vigorous air. 
 
 " I 'm sorry you 're not well," she began sympathet- 
 ically — but " Never mind me," he cut in ; " tell me 
 about yourself. Tell me, in the first place, why you 
 were so cross with me just now? " 
 
 Harriet hesitated. Should she tell him or would he 
 be unduly flattered? However, she was a truthful, 
 candid soul ; so she took that risk and confessed bravely. 
 
 " Because I think it was so unkind of you not to come 
 and see me when I sent you a note. You know you 
 asked me to let you know when I came to New York. 
 I thought we were friends, but — " She stopped and 
 cast a very reproachful and attractive look at him from 
 her Madonna eyes. 
 
 It was Verney's turn to be sorry ; in spite of appear- 
 ances, he did have a conscience. " I know," he said. 
 " And you can't think how badly I felt not to be able 
 to go right off. I intended to — of course — before 
 you left, but I 've been too busy to manage it these last 
 few days," 
 
 [107] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Harriet's eyes sparkled warmly. All her indignation 
 returned in a flood. " Not too busy to go to the 
 theatre," she could n't help saying, though it was the 
 last thing she had meant to say. 
 
 Verney flushed unhappily. He had been guilty he 
 knew of discourtesy if not of unfriendliness in disre- 
 garding that note, and her knowledge of how he had 
 spent one of the evenings in question, made it impossible 
 to continue to plead lack of time as an excuse. That 
 he had asked her to let him know when she came to New 
 York, in a moment of enthusiasm and without any idea 
 that she would ever act upon the suggestion, he was 
 also aware did not make him any less guilty, since it ap- 
 peared she had chosen to do so. He was thoroughly 
 ashamed, for he never intentionally hurt people's feel- 
 ings; and although he rarely reaped the consequences 
 of his habit of saying pleasant things that he meant 
 only while he said them, he was always repentant when 
 he did. In this case he was more than usually re- 
 pentant, for he found that he cared more for Miss 
 Rand's opinion of him than he had supposed, and he 
 even discovered an unsuspected stir at his heart when 
 he met her reproachful brown eyes. 
 
 " I am more sorry than I can say," he said humbly, 
 and without attempting to explain the circumstance 
 Harriet had mentioned, knowing, as he did, that it was 
 without explanation. " I have behaved very badly, I 
 know, and I don't suppose you will ever forgive me? " 
 
 Harriet's anger could hardly withstand such abject 
 humility. Still it did not vanish immediately, 
 
 [108] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 " You don't deserve forgiveness," she said slowly ; " I 
 hate people who say what they don't mean ! " 
 
 This charge surprised Verney, for while he acknowl- 
 edged that he often forgot things after saying them, 
 he did think he meant them at the time they were said. 
 
 " But you 're mistaken," he said eagerly, " I did mean 
 it, when I said it, I swear to the Lord I did ! " 
 
 The naivete of the speech saved the day for him by 
 again amusing Harriet. 
 
 " You 're quite hopeless," she said laughing. " I can't 
 seem to make you understand the enormity of your 
 offence at all. But I '11 forgive you just the same, be- 
 cause you 're so delightfully dense ! " 
 
 Verney, who did n't care why he was forgiven, as long 
 as that beatific state was an actual fact, smiled de- 
 lightedly. " That is most kind," he said ; " and I wish 
 you would go on calling me names, it makes me feel 
 better somehow ! " 
 
 "Then I shan't do it," she said. "I don't want 
 you to feel better ; you have n't felt worse long enough." 
 But her expression was by no means severe, and she 
 added kindly, " And now tell me what it is you 've been 
 so busy about; I want to know how the Cause is 
 progressing." The spoiled child that is in almost every 
 heiress, that cannot help being a part of the nature of 
 every young girl who has had all the money she wants 
 to spend all her life and been surfeited with attention, 
 and that had prompted her feeling that she had been 
 slighted, was now quite appeased. 
 
 Verney beamed. " I hoped you would," he said, and 
 [109] 
 
The Politician 
 
 felt suddenly that this very good-looking girl with her 
 frank, straightforward ways was the one person he knew 
 to whom he could talk openly about the things that lay 
 nearest his heart. 
 
 " I 've been working like a nailer," he said, " since I 
 saw you out in Chicago. I took only a week off in 
 July, when I went up to the woods with my Uncle Rich- 
 mond — you must meet him, by the way, he is the best 
 there is, and — as I told you at first — I 've hardly as 
 much as slept since I returned." 
 
 Harriet looked her concern. " But you must," she 
 said, " you must sleep. If you lose your health, what 
 will become of your career? " 
 
 Verney had never particularly, or in so many words, 
 thought of himself as having a " career." The word 
 had been so much used in connection with fictitious 
 heroes in novels and on the stage that it had only a hack- 
 neyed significance to him; but he understood that Har- 
 riet used it because she really believed he had a career 
 and that in the fullest sense of the word, and he felt 
 grateful to her for the belief. More than anything 
 was he grateful for the anxiety that her eyes showed so 
 plainly as she made her plea. How very sweet it was 
 of her to be so interested as that in what he did ! 
 
 " Thanks," he said ; " it 's good of you to worry 
 about it, although I would not have distressed you for 
 anything. And I would n't tell you all this about my- 
 self, only I am awfully blue to-day, and there are n't a 
 whole lot of people that I feel are interested in hearing, 
 and I feel somehow, you are ? " 
 
 [110] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 " I am," said Harriet quietly, " and I want to be 
 your friend, to have you tell me things if it helps. I 
 should be proud to be the confidante of — " she paused 
 and smiled brightly at him — " of a politician ! " sh« 
 finished. 
 
 Verney had never before in his experience encountered 
 anything like the utter charm of this candid hero- 
 worship of which he was made the object, and although 
 he recognized that her words were half playful, a thrill 
 of pleasure went through him. The admiration of a 
 young and ingenuous member of the other sex will often 
 succeed in flattering a man not usually susceptible to 
 flattery. He did care about his work more than any- 
 thing else in life, and it was pleasant to have this very 
 attractive girl care too ; and Harriet in her supreme con- 
 fidence that she was interested in the man on account of 
 the career and not in the career on account of the man, 
 showed more plainly than her natural reserve would have 
 permitted if the reverse had been true, that she did care. 
 No wonder that Verney's pulses quickened a little. 
 
 " Friendship is the finest thing in the world," he said, 
 with the earnestness and enthusiasm of the man who 
 knows nothing at all about that sentiment where women 
 are concerned. 
 
 And " Yes," she agreed, with the conviction and 
 finality of the girl who has had no experience as yet of 
 any other sentiment. 
 
 " I have something rather interesting to tell you," he 
 said next. " It 's only in the air at present, nothing to 
 count on at all — but they 're talking about nominating 
 
 cm] 
 
The Politician 
 
 me for Attorney-general if my friend Ordway gets 
 the nomination for Governor." He flushed at Harriet's 
 expression of pleased surprise. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " why did n't you tell me before? Do 
 you think there 's any chance he will get it ? " 
 
 " It looks as though he might ; we 've got things 
 started now in nice shape, and I should n't wonder at all 
 if he carried the convention. We 've had a test vote 
 applied in thirteen of the Assembly Districts of New 
 York and Kings Counties, and six of the New York 
 Districts cast majorities against the renomination of 
 the Governor, and the Kings County totals showed a 
 net vote of more than two to one against him. Of 
 course it 's only a test, but does n't it look as if we had 
 a good show to win ? " 
 
 Harriet thought it did, but all unconsciously showed 
 that her interest in that fact was on account of Ellis's 
 prospects, not Ordway's. 
 
 " Then I should think you 'd be almost sure of the 
 Attorney-generalship ! " she said. 
 
 But Verney laughed. " Not in the least," he said ; 
 " nothing 's sure in this life, and in political life that 's 
 more than ever true." 
 
 " But you said you 'd be offered it if Ordway were 
 nominated? " 
 
 " No, I only said they were talking about offering it 
 to me. What is more likely to happen is that they will 
 change their minds and offer it to some one else." 
 
 "Oh, why?" she asked, disappointed. 
 
 He laughed. " No reason, except that it seems to be 
 [112] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 an established fact that the men who do the hard prac- 
 tical work of politics, are n't the ones to draw prizes." 
 
 " Must they work '. all for love and nothing for re- 
 ward,' as the * Faery Queen' has it?" 
 
 " Apparently, unless of course they 're out for 
 graft." 
 
 She shook her head. " I don't grasp the psychology 
 of that." 
 
 He looked very thoughtful. " It 's their own fault," 
 he said seriously, " the politicians' own fault. Because 
 many of them are n't honest and disinterested, because 
 many of them work for their party for what there is in 
 it, for what money they can make, because most of them 
 are selfish. And that discredits them with the public. 
 The people know, or most of them do, that to get any- 
 where or do anything there must be men in control who 
 will point out the way to them, help them to form their 
 opinions, get the average good but lazy citizen to vote ; 
 but they resent — and quite properly — the abuse of 
 this service, and decline to consider for high office ttie 
 men who take advantage of the power vested, in them 
 and make of it an article of commerce, to be bought 
 and sold." 
 
 " What a pity ! " said Harriet. " And so the poor 
 things who work just as hard as the others and harder, 
 but are not corrupt, have to suffer for the wrong-doing 
 of the others ! " 
 
 " Exactly. The innocent as usual suffer with the 
 guilty. And that is why I am so pleased that they 
 spoke of offering me the nomination for Attorney-gen- 
 8 [ 113 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 eral. Precedent to the contrary notwithstanding, you 
 know, it would seem to indicate that honesty as an asset 
 in the election to office is coming up in the world. And 
 that 's why I so much want Ordway, who is himself a 
 hard-working, practical politician of principle, to win. 
 It 's my ambition, as I think I 've told you, to remove the 
 odium from the reputation of politicians, to make the 
 title no longer a term of reproach; and with every 
 appointment of the right kind of politician to office, it 
 comes nearer gratification." 
 
 " I hope you will succeed," said Harriet. So absorbed 
 were they in the conversation that neither of them saw 
 the maid, who had returned from her trip upstairs to 
 tell Miss Rand that Mrs. Ellis was not at home, come to 
 the door that opened into the hall and after a moment of 
 hesitation, retreat. Convinced that it was all right and 
 that they did not need to hear from her, by the fact 
 that " Mr. Verney " was talking to the young lady, she 
 had tactfully withdrawn to another part of the house 
 without interrupting them. 
 
 " I wish I could help you in some way, but I 'm afraid 
 there 's nothing much a girl can do," added Miss Rand. 
 
 " Yes, there is," Verney assured her earnestly. "A 
 girl can do a great deal. Just to know someone who 
 has confidence in you, to have a friend who believes in 
 you, is the greatest help in the world toward giving a 
 man confidence in himself. And you can't do anything 
 without confidence." 
 
 " And opportunity ? " said Harriet. 
 
 " Yes, opportunity, of course. There are all sorts 
 [114] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 of those in politics, wrong opportunities to rise that 
 mean the abandonment of jour principles, and right 
 ones. But it 's only the right ones, of course, that a 
 man regrets, the chances you lose through your own 
 negligence. That 's a hard thought, you know, to 
 think you might have done something if only you had n't 
 been asleep at the switch when Opportunity came along. 
 A favorite poem of mine is on the subject. Would you 
 like to see it? I think I have it with me? " 
 
 Harriet said she would very much indeed, and he 
 opened his pocketbook and took out a newspaper 
 clipping. 
 
 " It 's by a man named Ingalls, and it 's one of the 
 best poems I know, classics not excepted," he said, hand- 
 ing it to her. 
 
 " You read it aloud," she suggested. 
 
 " If you wish," he said, and read these verses on 
 " Opportunity " : 
 
 "Master of human destinies am I; 
 Fame, Love, and Fortune on my footsteps wait; 
 Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate 
 Deserts and seas remote; and passing by 
 Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late 
 I knock unbidden once at every gate. 
 If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise, before 
 I turn away. It is the hour of fate; 
 And they who follow me reach every state 
 Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 
 Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, 
 Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, 
 Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; 
 I answer not, and I return no more." 
 
 £115] 
 
The Politician 
 
 The voice of the reader shook into silence as the last 
 sounding phrase rolled from his lips, momentous with 
 warning, and sank into his heart and that of his listener. 
 
 " Fame, Love, and Fortune on my footsteps wait ! " 
 breathed Harriet, thrilling at the impressive words. 
 
 " I answer not, and I return no more ! " repeated 
 Ellis ; " tremendous, is n't it? " 
 
 " Yes, but it 's wrong. Because it does return, op- 
 portunity! I know a better philosophy than that, one 
 of hope — and I have its teachings embodied here in 
 another set of verses ! See ! Look ! " And she rose 
 in her eagerness and drew from her purse another clip- 
 ping and thrust it into Verney's hand as he also rose. 
 
 " It 's an answer to your poem, called by the same 
 name, * Opportunity.' It was written by Judge Walter 
 Malone, and came out in the papers just after yours 
 was published." 
 
 " I never saw it," said Verney. " Then you had read 
 mine before ? " 
 
 " No, I missed it when it came out, but I 've always 
 heard of it and wanted to read it." 
 
 Ellis drew a long breath. " It 's rather an odd 
 thing, quite an interesting coincidence," he said, 
 " is n't it, that we should each unknown to the other 
 have cut out and cherished question and answer like 
 that?" 
 
 " Very interesting, very strange." Brown eye looked 
 into blue eye in mutual wonder, and upon discovering the 
 joy of the thing continued to gaze long after the 
 wonder had left them — flushing cheek for the girl and 
 
 [116] 
 
The Episode of the Bracelet 
 
 accelerated breathing for the man testifying to the ex- 
 istence of a dangerous side to that fascinating employ- 
 ment. 
 
 " Read it," said Harriet presently — she was the first 
 to drop her eyes — and held out the poem again. 
 
 " No," he said, " we '11 read it together." And side 
 by side, shoulder touching shoulder, they stood by the 
 uncurtained window with the late afternoon sunshine 
 falling over the brown roses in her hat and his smooth 
 dark head, while their eyes travelled over the following 
 lines to " Opportunity " : 
 
 " They do me wrong who say I come no more, 
 When once I 've knocked and failed to find you in; 
 For every day I stand outside your door 
 And bid you wake and rise, to fight and win. 
 Wail not for precious chances passed away, 
 Weep not for golden ages on the wane; 
 Each night I burn the records of the day; 
 At sunrise every soul is born again. 
 Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped; 
 To vanished j oys be blind and deaf and dumb ; 
 My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, 
 But never bind a moment yet to come. 
 Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; 
 I lend my arm to all who say * I can.' 
 No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep 
 But yet may rise and be again a man. 
 Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast? 
 Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow? 
 Then turn from blotted archives of the past, 
 And find the future's pages white as snow. 
 Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell. 
 Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven. 
 Each morning gives thee wings to flee from Hell, 
 Each night a star to guide thy feet to Heaven ! " 
 
 [117] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Is n't that wonderful? " cried Ellis as they 
 finished. " Why, a man could conquer the world after 
 reading that ! I swear to the Lord he could ! ' Each 
 night I burn the records of the day; at sunrise every 
 soul is born again!' Could anything be finer?" 
 
 " And, 4 laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped ; 
 to vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb!' Oh, 
 Verney," rejoined Harriet, scarcely conscious that she 
 had said his name, she had called him so in her heart 
 so long, " is n't that fine ? " 
 
 " Great ! " agreed the young man enthusiastically. 
 
 " And don't you believe it? Is n't it all truer than 
 the other? " 
 
 " I 'm sure of it ! Yours teaches courage and hope 
 — mine, despair. Can you let me have this copy ? I 
 know a number of other men who will be the better for 
 reading it." 
 
 " Of course ; I have another. Besides, I know them 
 by heart." 
 
 " Thanks," he said ; " you don't know how much good 
 you 've done me. I was feeling awfully blue and down 
 on my luck this afternoon, and you and your poem have 
 inspired me all over again — set me on my feet." 
 
 He seized her hands impulsively as he spoke. 
 
 At this moment his mother appeared in the doorway. 
 
 [118] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 FAME, LOVE, AND FORTUNE 
 
 MRS. ELLIS had just returned from a shop- 
 ping trip down town, and having let her- 
 self in with a latch-key, had not been 
 warned by the maid that she had a visitor. Voices from 
 the sitting-room first intimated that some one was there, 
 and as she expected her youngest daughter Carol down 
 from Tuxedo that afternoon, she was not at all sur- 
 prised. That young woman had put off leaving that 
 delightful place until the last possible moment and was 
 to take a later train to the city than her mother's. Mrs. 
 Ellis therefore entered the room on the supposition that 
 her daughter had arrived and that one of the voices was 
 hers and the other that of her son Vernor, whom she 
 had left in the house feeling rather indisposed, when she 
 went down town that morning. 
 
 She was a tall, heavily built woman with a plain 
 fashion of dress, gorgeous rings on the small, well- 
 formed hands, from which she had just stripped the 
 gloves, and a regularity of profile which a rapidly 
 developing double chin had not yet destroyed. A pair 
 of piercing blue eyes behind her glasses united with 
 severely dressed gray hair to give her an expression of 
 severity; and Harriet, as she saw her standing in the 
 
 [119] 
 
The Politician 
 
 doorway and realized whom she must be, made up her 
 mind at once that explanations to this uncompromising 
 and aristocratic old lady would be difficult to make. 
 For her part, Mrs. Ellis peering near-sightedly at them 
 through her glasses down the long stretch of dim-lit 
 drawing-room, where they stood now in the shadow, 
 came to the conclusion as she took in the fact that the 
 man and the girl had been standing with clasped hands, 
 that Carol had only just arrived, and that brother and 
 sister were greeting each other; though even as she 
 came to this conclusion, a vague surprise at the tender- 
 ness of that greeting crossed her mind. Carol and 
 Vernor were seldom demonstrative toward each other, 
 and their relations had been noted in the family for being 
 of the cat-and-dog variety which usually obtains be- 
 tween big brothers and little sisters. However, it was 
 on this supposition that she addressed the two ill-defined 
 figures standing in mute self-consciousness at the other 
 end of the room. 
 
 " Is that you, Carol ? " she asked. " I did n't know 
 you were here. I 've only just returned from down 
 town myself." 
 
 Harriet started. It was worse than she had thought. 
 Mrs. Ellis had not seen the maid, then, and did not know 
 who she was. If she had been troubled at the thought 
 of explaining how she came to know Verney so well, 
 how much more apprehensive did she become when it 
 dawned upon her that Mrs. Ellis had just come in from 
 the street and that she had not been in the house during 
 the entire conversation with Verney. What had hap- 
 
 [120] 
 
Fame, Love, and Fortune 
 
 pened to the maid, then, until whose return only she had 
 allowed the young man to beguile the moments? And 
 how mean of Verney not to have told her at once that 
 his mother was out! But then she should have asked 
 him, perhaps, and perhaps he did n't really know ! It 
 was more Cornelia's fault, after all, that she found her- 
 self in such a position, for asking her to undertake the 
 commission of the bracelet. 
 
 While these thoughts passed swiftly through Harriet's 
 mind, Mrs. Ellis had turned and was going toward the 
 hall, evidently taking silence for consent in the matter 
 of having her question answered, and then it was the 
 kind of question that does n't require an answer. 
 
 " I 'm going up to rest before dinner," she said ; 
 " you children be ready on time, won't you ? I 've 
 brought only Wilson and Katy down with me to-day, 
 so we '11 have it early." 
 
 She would have gone without realizing that she was 
 not speaking to her daughter, and Harriet would have 
 been spared the unpleasant task of enlightening her; 
 but Harriet was not that kind of girl. She had no in- 
 tention of sparing herself at the cost of deceiving Mrs. 
 Ellis and setting a clandestine seal upon her meeting 
 with Verney ; so in spite of the young man's protest — 
 for he knew his mother's deep-dyed veneration for the 
 conventions and had whispered that she had " better let 
 it go at that, and bring the bracelet another day," — 
 she ran after Mrs. Ellis and caught up with her at the 
 foot of the stairs." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Ellis ! " she cried, rather breathlessly, 
 [121] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " you 've made a mistake ! I 'm not your daughter at 
 all. I 'm Harriet Rand, and I came to return Cornelia's 
 bracelet." 
 
 Mrs. Ellis, who had just gathered her skirt for the 
 ascent of the stairs, relinquished it at this surprising 
 address, in favor of adjusting her glasses. 
 
 " What, what? " she said, " I don't understand. Who 
 did you say you were ? " Then upon perceiving that the 
 person she was speaking to was a young and attractive 
 girl of about Carol's age, she spoke more kindly. 
 "What is it, my dear? And what is your name? I 
 should know it, I know, but Carol has so many friends 
 it 's hard to remember them all." 
 
 Harriet saw that the older woman did not connect her 
 with the girl she had seen with Verney the moment 
 before, and that she had more probably jumped to the 
 conclusion that this young girl was a friend whom 
 Carol had brought with her. This made her task more 
 difficult and embarrassed her still more, though at the 
 same time it only made her all the more determined to 
 make it clear to Mrs. Ellis who she really was. 
 
 " I 'm Harriet Rand of Chicago," she repeated 
 desperately ; " I know your daughter, Mrs. Presbey, 
 and she asked me to give you this bracelet." Harriet 
 held it out to her. U I called this afternoon for that 
 purpose, hoping to see you; and while the maid was 
 gone to find out if you were at home your son came 
 in and entertained me." 
 
 If Cornelia Presbey had done as she had told Harriet 
 she would do, and had written her mother that Harriet 
 
Fame, Love, and Fortune 
 
 was coming, and on what errand, the mere mention of 
 the word " bracelet " would have revealed the situation 
 to Mrs. Ellis at once, and all would have been plain 
 sailing. But Cornelia the dilatory, Cornelia the forget- 
 ful, who was always going to do and never did, had 
 forgotten again. And the consequence was that the 
 only part of Harriet's speech that the older lady noticed 
 was the part that seemed to have reference to the con- 
 fidential and intimate attitude in which she had dis- 
 covered this stranger and her son, upon first entering 
 the room, and which now seemed to her to require ex- 
 planation. 
 
 " So you know my son, do you," she asked coldly, 
 and stopped as if for further enlightenment as to the 
 exact degree of Harriet's knowledge. Verney from the 
 doorway where he had been anxiously observing his 
 mother unobserved by her, now stepped forward to take 
 his part in the explanations ; but Harriet, whose blood 
 was up by this time and who suddenly felt not at all 
 afraid of the rather formidable old lady she had been 
 talking to, waved him back. 
 
 " Yes," she said, in leisurely accents ; " I know your 
 son. I met him out in Chicago some time ago." She 
 looked Mrs. Ellis squarely and calmly in the eye. 
 " Here 's your bracelet," she added, " that Cornelia 
 asked me to bring " ; and putting the little package into 
 Mrs. Ellis's unheeding hand, she turned to Verney. 
 
 " I 'm ready to go home, now," she said, " if you '11 
 take me." 
 
 Either the look or the bracelet or the sound of her 
 [123] 
 
The Politician 
 
 daughter's name must have enlightened Mrs. Ellis at 
 last, or perhaps it was the noble air of the girl and her 
 spirit that proved sufficient guarantee of her utter lack 
 of a guilty conscience; for all in a moment the older 
 woman recognized that she had made a mistake in ques- 
 tioning her conduct in any way, and coming swiftly 
 forward took Harriet's hand with all graciousness. 
 
 " I see ! " she said, " you 've brought me back my 
 bracelet. How very good of you, and how very stupid 
 of Cornelia not to let me know you were coming ! — it 
 has made me so slow about realizing who you were." 
 
 " It does n't matter at all, Mrs. Ellis," replied Har- 
 riet, relieved to find that it was only Cornelia's care- 
 lessness and not the unfortunate attitude in which she 
 and Verney had been caught that had caused Mrs. 
 Ellis's doubt of her. " And I 'm very glad to have been 
 of any service." 
 
 u It was nice of you to bring it," reiterated Mrs. 
 Ellis, " and I 'm very grateful to Cornelia for sending 
 such a delightful emissary with this troublesome piece 
 of jewelry. She knew I would like to meet you." 
 
 " Of course she did ! " corroborated Verney, asserting 
 himself now, his eyes kindling with admiration for the 
 character Harriet had shown in handling a rather 
 difficult situation. M And look here, mother, I want Miss 
 Rand to stay to dinner ! " 
 
 " So do I, if she can stay," returned his mother in- 
 stantly, smiling at Harriet. 
 
 " That 's settled then. Here, let 's have your coat ! " 
 he said, before Harriet had time to speak. 
 
 [184] 
 
Fame, Love, and Fortune 
 
 " But I must n't ! " she expostulated. " I have to get 
 home ! " 
 
 " No, you don't ; you told me you did n't have any- 
 thing else to do and you 'd stay if you were asked ! " 
 fabricated Verney, deftly removing the coat which 
 Harriet had not intended to yield. 
 
 " I did n't say any such thing," she said, half laugh- 
 ing, half indignant. " Don't believe him, Mrs. Ellis, 
 will you ? " And she threw that lady a beseeching 
 glance. 
 
 " As if I would ! " replied the Politician's mother, with 
 a look of pretended scorn at her son. " Don't you 
 suppose I know Verney ! But that need n't bother us at 
 all. Independent of his wishes in the matter it would 
 make me very happy to have you stay. I expect my 
 daughter down from Tuxedo every minute, and I should 
 like to have her meet you." 
 
 Harriet hesitated and demurred again, but Mrs. 
 Ellis was so sincere and so urgent, and the look in 
 Verney's eye so threatening, that she at last allowed 
 herself to be persuaded. 
 
 " That 's nice," said Mrs. Ellis ; " it 's a very informal 
 way to ask you, I know, but then it 's the informal 
 season now, before everybody gets back to town. I 've 
 only just arrived myself!" 
 
 " That 's so," said Verney, anxiously. " I forgot 
 that. There '11 be something to eat for dinner, 
 mother? " 
 
 " Those ducks your Uncle Richmond shot. Wilson 
 brought them down with him to-day ; and maybe, bread 
 
 [125] 
 
The Politician 
 
 and butter ! " replied his mother, smiling. " Will that 
 do?" 
 
 " Oh, you know very well that 's not all ! " said 
 Ellis, laughing. His mother showed a certain relish 
 for teasing him at times that often caught him una- 
 wares. 
 
 " And that reminds me," remarked Mrs. Ellis from the 
 stairs, " your uncle is coming to dinner, too ; he may 
 come with Carol." 
 
 " Fine business ! " commented Verney to Harriet. 
 " You '11 like my Uncle Richmond ; he's a wonder ! " 
 
 And Harriet agreed with him when a little later, after 
 she had telephoned her aunt about her plan to stay to 
 dinner at Mrs. Ellis's, Mr. Vernor arrived in company 
 with Carol Ellis. 
 
 Richmond Vernor was a tall, finely-built man with 
 the clean-shaven face of youth and the gray hair of 
 middle age. He didn't look in the least like Verney; 
 but Harriet, as she shook hands with him noticed several 
 points of resemblance between him and his sister, Mrs. 
 Ellis. She was impressed, however, with his cordial, 
 courteous manner and the humorous kindliness of his 
 brown eyes. Verney's sister Carol resembled him 
 slightly, but looked more like Cornelia Presbey. She 
 had the same very fair hair and irregularly attractive 
 features. 
 
 " I 've heard Cornelia talk about you ever so often," 
 said Miss Ellis, very small, very slight, and rather 
 pretty, clasping Harriet's hand warmly as Verney made 
 the necessary introductions and explanations. " And 
 
 [126] 
 
Fame, Love, and Fortune 
 
 I do think," as her brother finished telling the history 
 of the bracelet and its restoration to its rightful owners, 
 " it was nice of you to bring me back the bracelet. 
 Cornelia's such an old slowcoach I thought I 'd never 
 see it again ! " 
 
 Harriet thoroughly enjoyed the dinner, served in the 
 large, dark, high-ceilinged dining-room panelled in 
 black walnut, with the ubiquitous brown holland covers 
 on the seats of the black walnut chairs. 
 
 " Why did n't Wilson take off those old covers, 
 mamma? " said Carol, looking about with discontent at 
 the brown holland aspect of the room. 
 
 " My dear," replied her mother indulgently, " give 
 the poor man a minute ! We 've only come to town to- 
 day, and you know we 're back a whole month earlier 
 than usual this year." 
 
 " On father's account? " asked Verney. 
 
 A shadow crossed Mrs. Ellis's face. 
 
 " Yes," she said ; " although Delia " — Delia was 
 the cook, who had been in charge of the house all 
 summer while her mistress was in Tuxedo — " looks 
 after him pretty well, I don't like to leave him alone 
 any longer than I can help." 
 
 The Politician was silent. He knew his mother's 
 reason for not wishing to leave his father alone was 
 the nervous condition of Mr. Ellis's health, which was 
 supposed to have been the immediate result of a long 
 succession of business reverses. A feeling of remorse 
 came over Verney that he had not himself been with 
 him more. There was no excuse for it, living as he 
 
 [127] 
 
The Politician 
 
 had been in the same house with his father more or 
 less all summer; and he went on eating without saying 
 anything. 
 
 " Carol has already begun to worry about her debut, 
 I see," remarked Mr. Vernor, glancing mischievously 
 at his niece. " She 's afraid you '11 leave the brown 
 hollands on then, Helen ! " And he smiled at his sister. 
 
 " I 'm not at all ! I was n't thinking of it ! " denied 
 Carol, blushing furiously to prove she had been. 
 " You think you know everything, Uncle Ritchie ! " 
 
 " I should think he did too," observed Verney, wak- 
 ing up, " to judge by your blushes." 
 
 " Quite a sunset ! " chimed in young Miss Ellis's 
 other tormentor. " You must get over that habit, 
 Baby, or people will never believe you 're really out ! 
 Ask Miss Rand if that is n't so. I 'm sure she was n't 
 half so nervous about it all as you are." 
 
 " On the contrary," protested Harriet, coming to the 
 rescue of the tormented one, though she smiled reassur- 
 ingly at the older man for whom she had conceived 
 a sudden liking, " I was so nervous and excited about 
 my coming-out reception that when the great day came 
 I did n't want to go down at all, and begged my aunt 
 to let me stay in my room." 
 
 " But she did n't let you ? " queried Miss Ellis, hor- 
 rified expostulation in every tone. 
 
 " Yes," said Verney solemnly, " they let her ; and all 
 the people who came to meet the beautiful Miss Rand 
 went away in tears, they were so disappointed." 
 
 " How can you be so ridiculous ? " laughed Harriet. 
 [128] 
 
Fame, Love, and Fortune 
 
 She did n't stay very long after dinner, for Mrs. 
 Cumloch had promised to send her maid in a cab at 
 nine o'clock. And as Harriet and the two men stood 
 in the hall waiting for the cab to arrive, Mrs. Ellis 
 and Carol having lingered in the dining-room to give 
 some instructions to Wilson, Mr. Vernor said, putting 
 his arm about Verney's shoulders as he spoke, 
 
 " This is a great fellow, Miss Rand, if you did n't 
 know it before. We call him *■ The Politician ' in the 
 family just by way of a joke, but no one takes him 
 and his career seriously except me, and I 'm betting 
 on him ! " he added playfully, slapping his nephew af- 
 fectionately on the back as he spoke. 
 
 The Politician turned a sparkling eye on his uncle 
 and smiled gratefully. " I could n't do anything if 
 you were n't," said he. 
 
 " I 'm betting on him too," asserted Harriet, with 
 the nicest kind of a glance at the young man. 
 
 " Then he can't help winning," Mr. Vernor replied 
 quickly. 
 
 " With two such friends to believe in me," said 
 Ellis lightly, " it would be a pity if I did n't ! I '11 
 probably wake some morning before long and find my- 
 self famous." 
 
 " Yes, with your qualifications all you have to do is 
 to take advantage of your opportunities, and Fame, 
 Love and Fortune, as it said in the poem, are yours ! " 
 Harriet said. 
 
 " Fame and Fortune, perhaps, if I 'm lucky," said 
 Ellis soberly. 
 
 9 [ 129 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 "And why not Love?" asked the girl, too sure of 
 herself to consider the question personal at all. 
 
 " A man can't expect everything," replied Ellis, 
 knowing that in so replying he was avoiding the 
 issue. The arrival of Mrs. Cumloch's maid was an- 
 nounced, and Harriet made her graceful acknowledg- 
 ments and departed. When Verney had returned from 
 putting Miss Rand into the cab he found his uncle, 
 who had been too tactful to go too, still standing in 
 the hall where he had left him. 
 
 " It 's a great thing to have a career, Uncle Ritch," 
 he said, " is n't it? " — yawning to show that he did n't 
 more than half mean what he said. 
 
 Mr. Vernor roused himself as if from a deep reverie. 
 
 " Yes," he said thoughtfully ; " you 're a very lucky 
 fellow, Verney." But Ellis felt instinctively that the 
 remark had reference to something other than his 
 chances to be famous. 
 
 risoj 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MRS. GIBBS ON "BESPONSIBILITY" 
 
 HARRIET now saw a great deal of Carol 
 Ellis. The two had taken a great fancy- 
 to each other, and it was through Carol that 
 Miss Rand met Verney's friend, Mrs. Oliver Ordway, 
 although the Politician, who had been anxious to have 
 them know each other, had been largely influential in 
 bringing the meeting about. It was to oblige Verney, 
 too, that Mrs. Ordway had invited Harriet to a little 
 theatre party she gave one evening, an invitation 
 Harriet accepted unhesitatingly, in spite of her aunt's 
 murmur of protest that she did n't quite like her niece 
 to be so much with people she did n't know herself, 
 although she admitted that the people in question were 
 as nice as could be wished. Harriet, however, gently 
 and persuasively contested this idea. It was sufficient, 
 she thought, if she, Harriet, knew them. What was 
 the use of being an heiress and twenty-four years old 
 if you could n't do about what you liked ? And as 
 usual it ended in unqualified surrender on her aunt's 
 part. 
 
 Mrs. Ordway made a very deep impression upon the 
 young girl, who thought she had seldom seen any one 
 more gracious and more interesting ; and Agnes Ordway 
 
 [181] 
 
The Politician 
 
 was both. Though all unacknowledged, the loneliness 
 of her life — wife as she was to a man engrossed in 
 politics to the exclusion of every other interest — had 
 lent her lovely dark-blue eyes an infinitely pathetic 
 expression. And her restless motions and quick manner 
 of speaking would have betrayed to any one who knew 
 the circumstances, her utter weariness of herself, her 
 impatience of a fate which made no demand upon her 
 many noble qualities, and her unconscious longing for 
 that settled kind of life which is the truest aspect of 
 domesticity, and which her husband's career as a pub- 
 lic character made absolutely impossible. 
 
 There were only four in Mrs. Ordway's theatre party 
 that Thursday night, Mrs. Ordway and Harriet, and 
 Verney and his uncle, Richmond Vernor. Mr. Vernor, 
 with his nephew, had the pleasure of knowing his hostess 
 very well. Harriet was very much pleased when Mrs. 
 Ordway called for her that evening, to find Mr. Vernor 
 of the party, for she liked Verney's uncle, and, with 
 her usual rather youthful but quite attractive enthu- 
 siasm, had continued to be pleased with everything that 
 happened during the evening from the play to the 
 cafe where they went for supper. It was a small 
 place on the first floor of a building on the corner 
 of Fortieth and Sixth Avenue, very popular just 
 then for the purpose in spite of the noise from the 
 elevated which roared outside its west windows. There 
 was nothing very much out of the ordinary about it, 
 however, except that often during the evening some 
 
 [132] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on "Responsibility" 
 
 popular actress or singer of the day would be secured 
 to vary the programme of entertainment furnished by 
 a green-coated band at the end of the room. 
 
 As Mrs. Ordway and her party took their places, 
 Harriet looked interestedly about her at the low- 
 raftered ceiling bright with many colored lights, the 
 bold design of the mural decoration, the waiters stand- 
 ing at attention by each table, and the crowd of nice- 
 looking people with their distinctly on-pleasure-bent 
 appearance. 
 
 " What a delightful place ! " she said. 
 
 " It 's very popular," said her hostess ; " if it were 
 a little later when everybody is back, we should have 
 had to have a table reserved to find one unoccupied." 
 
 Yet in spite of the fact that " everybody " was not 
 back the room seemed crowded enough, and many 
 notables were represented. At a table to their right 
 sat a thin-faced, freckled, light-haired woman dining 
 with another woman and three men, to whom Mrs. 
 Ordway bowed. Upon asking who she was Harriet was 
 told that she was the recently divorced wife of a well- 
 known millionaire, who had not been content with the 
 charms of light hair and freckles alone. At another 
 was a new comet of the theatrical sky who had lately 
 " swam into public ken," and made a sensation, chiefly 
 on the strength of having mastered the English 
 language in eighty days, more or less, and her ability 
 to wear impossibly high collars. At still another 
 an Englishwoman, who had written a book much adver- 
 
 [133] 
 
The Politician 
 
 tised by its immoral character, was dining with the 
 actor whom she had persuaded to play the part of 
 her loose-lived hero in a dramatized version, and the 
 manager who was about to make, or was at least ex- 
 pecting to make, his eternal fortune by producing it. 
 
 " You can't tell, though, Agnes," remarked Verney, 
 " whether the place will be as much patronized this season 
 as it was last. That a thing 's popular one year is no 
 sign it will be the next year. Not in New York, at 
 least." 
 
 " Perhaps not. I wonder if they '11 have some sing- 
 ing to-night ; it 's so warm and pleasant I rather 
 thought they would." 
 
 As Mrs. Ordway spoke, the attention of the party 
 was attracted by a commotion of some sort at the 
 street door. A man who looked like an Italian organ- 
 grinder — slouch hat, dark flashing eyes, and generally 
 picturesque appearance — seemed to be trying to get 
 in, and a number of waiters to be trying to keep him 
 out. Verney called a waiter and asked him what it 
 was all about, and the man told them the organ-grinder 
 was trying to get permission to sing to the people in 
 the restaurant. " He says he has a fine voice and would 
 like to entertain the ladies and gentlemen," explained 
 the waiter. Hardly had the amusement subsided, which 
 this singular request on the part of the organ-grinder 
 had occasioned Mrs. Ordway and her party, when to 
 their surprise they saw the Italian being escorted to the 
 platform at the end of the restaurant. 
 
 After a brief speech in which the proprietor ex- 
 [184] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on " Responsibility" 
 
 plained that he was induced to let the man have his 
 way in the hope of providing his patrons with some- 
 thing new in the way of entertainment, the smiling 
 street-musician stepped forward and in an excellent imi- 
 tation of an Italian speaking broken English, told his 
 now thoroughly expectant audience that he was sorry 
 he had to leave his organ outside, — that, he thought, 
 would have amused them more, but there was a little 
 song they sang in his country he would like them to 
 hear; and began without more ado to sing. It was a 
 very beautiful song, and the singer's voice a marvel 
 of expression and sweetness; and when the last chords 
 of the accompaniment which the green-coated band had 
 played throughout had ceased, the people understood, 
 those who understood music at all, that they had been 
 privileged to hear a performance of no ordinary merit 
 but of unusual quality, and the applause was instan- 
 taneous and prolonged. 
 
 " He could beat the angel Israfel at his own game," 
 said Verney, as the singer nodding and smiling came 
 down from the platform and began to pass his hat, 
 " but for all that I don't believe he 's any organ- 
 grinder; it's one of Antoni's put-up jobs." Antoni 
 was the proprietor of the restaurant. 
 
 " You mean you think it 's a fake ? " said his uncle. 
 
 " Yes. Did n't you notice his hands ? They were 
 as white as a woman's, and you '11 observe that he did n't 
 keep the money he collected, but passed it over to 
 Antoni there." 
 
 " I believe you 're right," commented Mrs. Ordway. 
 [135] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Street musicians don't usually wear diamond rings, 1 
 and he had one on his little finger." 
 
 " Oh, there 's no doubt about it," said Verney ; " it 's 
 just one of Antoni's little schemes to draw the crowd. 
 You see if it is n't ! " 
 
 And a paragraph in the paper the next morning 
 proved the truth of his surmise and acquainted the 
 world at large with the fact that Antoni had surprised 
 his patrons again, and that a more or less well-known 
 concert singer had consented for a " consideration " 
 to disguise himself as an organ-grinder and give the 
 diners in the restaurant one song. 
 
 It was toward the end of the little stir of excite- 
 ment attendant upon this incident that three persons, 
 a woman and two men, came in and seated themselves at 
 the vacant table just to the left of Mrs. Ordway's 
 party. As they took their places, Harriet was aware 
 that she had seen the woman before; that faultless 
 figure and pale gold hair were certainly familiar, like- 
 wise the deliberate stare of the fine dark eyes. It was 
 only a moment, however, before she recognized her. 
 " It 's ' Cora ' ! " she thought, realizing that the 
 woman at the other table was the same whom she had 
 seen with Verney that evening at the theatre a night 
 or two after her arrival in New York. 
 
 "There's Mrs. Willie Gibbs," said Ellis at that 
 moment, nodding and smiling at the people who had 
 just come in. 
 
 " With Mr. Gibbs," said Mrs. Ordway, " wonder of 
 wonders ! " bowing and smiling too. 
 
 [ 136 ] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on "Responsibility" 
 
 " Oh, well, Stevie Cass is with her too," said Mr. 
 Vernor ; " don't forget that ! " 
 
 " And Stevie is a nice boy," said Ellis, pleasantly, 
 " and amusing too. And you know how amusing Wil- 
 liam M. Gibbs, bank president, is ! " 
 
 Everybody laughed. 
 
 " Not that he is n't a very good sort," added Verney 
 hastily, for fear he might be misunderstood to be 
 " knocking " a friend of his ; for he really liked Mr. 
 Gibbs; then he lost interest apparently in the subject 
 and in the next table, and devoted himself to Harriet. 
 This he did so successfully that she forgot all about 
 the troubled feeling she had had at sight of the irre- 
 sistible " Mrs. Willie," and glowed and laughed and 
 was so obviously interested in what the young man 
 was saying, that Mrs. Ordway and Richmond Vernor 
 exchanged significant glances once or twice in the midst 
 of their own equable and intelligent conversation, and 
 green flame shot from the hazel eyes of Mrs. Willie 
 Gibbs at the sight, and poor Stevie Cass was unable 
 to please her in any way he tried. 
 
 In a handsome apartment building on Madison 
 Avenue near Fifty-sixth Street, a few evenings later, 
 the beautiful Mrs. Gibbs sat in an attitude of expec- 
 tancy. Her husband had gone to one of the numerous 
 banquets which, as president of the New York Associa- 
 tion of Bankers, he was obliged to attend, and she was 
 free to spend her evening as she chose. That she 
 chose to spend it in talking with a young and unat- 
 
 [137] 
 
The Politician 
 
 tached bachelor some five years her junior was, she 
 thought, no concern of Mr. Gibbs; and Mr. Gibbs 
 thought so too; but his opinion on the subject was like 
 a taste for Hokusai, — a matter of education, the re- 
 sult of a gentle course of training through which his 
 wife had put him. 
 
 So finished a process was this training that the hard- 
 working, money-making banker had come to the con- 
 clusion that it was his own original idea that a married 
 woman should have all the liberty she wanted, and that 
 as long as his wife was amused he did not at all care 
 who amused her. If he had ceased to be able to amuse 
 her himself, that was his own fault — a very broad- 
 minded and unprejudiced theory, but not one that Mrs. 
 Gibbs would have permitted him to apply to his own 
 case. For him to have attempted to seek distraction 
 beyond the confines of his own hearthstone would in- 
 stantly have brought the roof about his ears. For it 
 just happened to be true, in spite of her fondness 
 for flirtation, that young Mrs. Gibbs loved her elderly 
 husband. Perhaps, too, his confidence in this fact was 
 the secret of his docility in the matter of permitting 
 her to amuse herself with other men. If, however, he 
 had been so foolish as to indulge in jealousy, of all the 
 young men who took pleasure in the society of his hand- 
 some wife, James Vernor Ellis would have been the 
 one to arouse the emotion. 
 
 The two, Mrs. Gibbs and the young man, had known 
 each other since their school-days, and had always had 
 the warmest kind of friendship, which at times hovered, 
 
 [138] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on V Responsibility' * 
 
 dangerously or delightfully, as you choose, near the 
 borderland of flirtation, and in their very young days 
 had come pretty close to being a love affair. Even 
 as recently as the day when Mrs. Gibbs, as Miss Cora 
 Keator, had told her friend of her engagement to the 
 elderly banker, it was in the nature of a blow to Ellis's 
 young affections. But when with grieved lips and a 
 hurt look in his eyes, he had told her so, Miss Keator 
 had only laughed and rubbed his hair the wrong way — 
 a thing Verney particularly disliked and had always re- 
 fused to let her do — and called him " a funny boy " ; 
 and then with cruel kindness had analyzed his true feel- 
 ings in the matter with a penetration that was not to be 
 denied, and showed him that the last thing in the world 
 he really wished was to marry a woman five years older 
 than himself. After the wedding she had spent a year 
 abroad, during the first part of which Verney hardly had 
 felt able to smile ; but later on had come to realize that 
 life was worth living even though Cora Keator was 
 married; and by the time she and her husband had 
 returned, he had so far recovered his usual equanimity 
 that he had been the first person to greet them at the 
 dock. Since when he had adapted himself to the new 
 basis of friendship with the greatest cheerfulness and had 
 been almost as devoted to the fascinating Cora as ever. 
 Her marriage, he found, made no difference at all in 
 her fondness for his society ; and Mr. Gibbs was such 
 a good sort he seemed rather to encourage Verney to 
 see his wife than otherwise. 
 
 Cora Gibbs, for her part, had accepted the young 
 [139] 
 
The Politician 
 
 man's devotion with equal satisfaction, though not in 
 quite the same spirit. Womanlike, she was unable alto- 
 gether to forget that there had been a time when things 
 were different, when he cherished a warmer sentiment 
 for her than mere friendship ; and while she did not 
 actually desire a conflagration, she was still anxious at 
 least to keep the old fire lit. 
 
 The idea, then, that Verney was paying attention 
 to Harriet Rand, was perhaps in love with her — which 
 his absorption in her the other evening at the restaurant, 
 a laughing word to that effect from Mrs. Ordway, 
 and her own jealous fears all led her to entertain — was 
 extremely distasteful to her. She could n't marry him 
 herself certainly, and she would n't have wished to if 
 it had been possible; nevertheless she did not want any 
 other woman to marry him. In a word, she was just 
 fond enough of him not to be able to imagine her world 
 without Verney in it, and would have gone far to pre- 
 vent its becoming so ; for although sufficiently generous 
 in other matters, she did n't care in the least how sel- 
 fish she was about this particular young man, whose 
 homage she had allowed to become indispensable to her 
 happiness. 
 
 The truth was that Cora Gibbs belonged to that 
 dog-in-the-manger class of married women who think 
 nothing of binding a young bachelor to them by every 
 art known to their sex, and then proceeding to make 
 it their life's business to keep him from marrying, 
 although they have themselves exercised that preroga- 
 tive. This act of concentrated selfishness they disguise 
 
 [140] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on " Responsibility' ' 
 
 under a professed interest in the welfare of the victim, 
 urging upon him the inexpediency of marrying too 
 young and by interfering here and advising there, 
 generally succeed in tiding him along until the habit 
 of bachelorhood becomes fixed upon him and he learns 
 to look only to his worst enemy for all his joy. 
 
 It was on account of this selfish side of Mrs. Gibbs's 
 friendship for Verney that she found the thought that 
 he was on the point of breaking his chains so very hard 
 to bear; for if her friendship had been of the right 
 kind, she would have rejoiced in the event of his mar- 
 rying happily. Her feeling of surprise that he had 
 not at least confided in her regarding this recent fancy 
 of his added also to her disturbed state of mind. But 
 this was because she did not really know Ellis so well 
 as she believed she did. She would have said, if any 
 one had asked her, that so strong was the bond between 
 them there was no thought the young man had of which 
 she was not aware, and that he confided in her about 
 everything. But she was mistaken. No woman ever 
 really knows a man any more than any man ever really 
 knows a woman ; and Mrs. Gibbs, in supposing that Ver- 
 ney Ellis was hers to do with as she would, was only 
 making the same mistake which any other woman no less 
 intelligent would have made under the same circum- 
 stances. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Ellis was not at all the kind of 
 man to fall a victim to the selfishness of the young 
 married woman. He had far too much character, and 
 the reason he didn't tell her all his secrets was not 
 
 [141] 
 
The Politician 
 
 that he did n't have any to tell, but because they had 
 nothing to do with her. 
 
 It was nearly nine, and the beautiful Cora looked 
 very impatiently at the clock. Verney was late, just 
 when she was most anxious to see him; for she meant 
 to find out that very evening if there was any truth 
 in Mrs. Ordway's gossip about the young man and 
 the Chicago heiress. She made a very pretty picture 
 with her yellow gown, white skin, and sparkling hair; 
 and Verney arriving a moment later did not miss a 
 detail of it. 
 
 " I thought you were never coming ! " said she, rising 
 to greet him and displaying her beautiful figure to 
 much advantage in the act. 
 
 " I 'm awfully sorry, Cora ! " said Ellis, taking both 
 the hands she gave him in graceful welcome and hold- 
 ing them for a moment ; " but I could n't get here 
 earlier. I 'm so busy these weeks before the conven- 
 tion I really should not have come at all." A harassed 
 expression passed over his face. 
 
 " Never mind, as long as you 've come," returned 
 the young married woman ; " I waited dinner a little 
 while for you, it 's true, but it does n't matter a bit. 
 Willie is the only person who minds when dinner is late, 
 and he 's dining out to-night." 
 
 " You must n't ask me again," said Ellis earnestly ; 
 " it 's no use. I can never make it, and it only puts 
 you out." 
 
 " Not in the least," replied Mrs. Gibbs tranquilly, 
 " and we '11 have some of it together anyhow." She 
 
 [142] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on "Responsibility" 
 
 laughed, pressed an electric button, and on the appear- 
 ance of the butler asked him to bring whiskey and 
 soda. 
 
 Verney selected a low chair very near her and sat 
 down. He knew he was going to enjoy the evening 
 although he knew equally well that he should not spend 
 it in that way, that the " Cause " was calling him ; 
 for his friend Ordway was not by any means so strong 
 a possibility for the nomination as he would have liked 
 to have him. But after all, why not? He was n't a 
 slave; the laborer was worthy of his hire, and he had 
 a right to take an evening off once in a while. And 
 Mrs. Willie Gibbs was such good company ! In her 
 society he felt such a delightful sense of security, that 
 he might say anything he chose, and his friend would 
 understand. And he knew also — and expected much 
 entertainment from the fact, that there was nothing 
 Mrs. Gibbs, smart, sophisticated, and worldly-wise, 
 dared not say. Also that she was at her daringest with 
 him. 
 
 " Tell me something new," he said, sipping his 
 whiskey contentedly and glancing at the evening paper 
 she had laid down to greet him ; " I have n't read the 
 paper yet, I 've been too busy." 
 
 " In other words ' Amuse me, slave ' ? " laughed Mrs. 
 Gibbs. 
 
 " That 's what I came for," he acknowledged. 
 
 " Well, there 's nothing amusing in the paper," she 
 told him ; " not a thing in it, except that hogs are de- 
 clining again! Disagreeable, rude things! I can't see 
 
 [143] 
 
The Politician 
 
 why they should be so exclusive, can you ? * She 
 laughed at her own conceit and Ellis joined her. 
 
 " Oh, well," he said, " gossip then ! Who 's going to 
 get divorced from whom?" 
 
 "Implying that I'm well up in scandal? It's too 
 bad of you, Verney ; you 're always accusing me of that, 
 and really, I don't gossip a bit." 
 
 " Not a bit — only a whole lot," returned Ellis cheer- 
 fully ; " but I was n't criticising, Cora, you know that." 
 
 " You 'd better not ! But by the way, have you heard 
 about Roily Bristed? " 
 
 " No, what? I said I had n't read the papers." 
 
 " He 's embezzled, speculated with the firm's money, 
 and lost it. A cousin of mine who is an intimate friend 
 of Mrs. Holly's, told me. It 's not in the papers yet." 
 
 " Though it will be before long if you have any- 
 thing to say about it! But you don't really tell me 
 Roily 's done a thing like that, really gone to smash 
 in that fashion ? " 
 
 " Yes, he 's absolutely down and out, safe out of the 
 country, as it happens. But the disgrace, think of it ! " 
 
 " You don't say so ! Poor fellow, I am sorry for 
 him. And for his wife, too." Verney spoke with feel- 
 ing. He knew the popular, likable young broker well. 
 " How 'd he happen to get so hard up ? I knew he 
 spent a lot, but then I thought he had it to spend." 
 
 " Oh, the usual thing ! " replied Mrs. Gibbs non- 
 chalantly, " fast women and slow horses ! " 
 
 Ellis laughed. 
 
 [144] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on " Responsibility' ' 
 
 u I guess that 's summing up the case a little ! " he 
 said. " Poor Roily ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs played with her empty glass thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " it is sad. One more good sport 
 gone. But for all that, it happens to be the only thing 
 that 's new to discuss ! " 
 
 " Excepting you. You 're always new. Let 's talk 
 about you." 
 
 " I 'd like to, but as a subject for conversation I 'm 
 nothing to talk about ! " 
 
 " That 's a pity," Verney said, " because I can't think 
 of a better one. You won't let me talk about me, you 
 know," he added whimsically. 
 
 That was true. Mrs. Gibbs in the " I 'm-older-than- 
 you-little-boy " attitude which she had chosen to assume 
 toward this one of her many admirers — a dangerous 
 attitude, by the way, in spite of the five years' differ- 
 ence in their ages, when indulged in by so fascinating 
 a woman as she was, toward so fascinating a man as 
 Verney Ellis — had long ago forbidden him to talk poli- 
 tics to her. She pretended the subject bored her, and 
 even went so far as to poke fun at Verney's ambitions 
 for political reform, taunting him with having caught 
 the " new blood in politics " fever, as she called it, and 
 refusing to take him seriously at all. And Verney liked 
 it from her, and was glad she did n't talk about his 
 work to him, just as he was glad that Harriet Rand 
 did. It seldom follows that because a man likes a thing 
 «> [ 145 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 in one woman he likes it in all the others he knows. So 
 he let Mrs. Gibbs jeer at him and his ambitions to her 
 heart's content. 
 
 " Don't go," she said, as the young man after an 
 hour of idle, intimate, delightful talk, reluctantly 
 pleaded the necessity for his departure ; " you have n't 
 stayed a moment." 
 
 She leaned forward over the table toward him, her 
 bright hazel eyes fixed upon him under their blue-veined 
 lids. 
 
 Ellis hesitated, his glance unconsciously returning 
 the fire of hers, but he spoke resolutely. 
 
 " I must," he said. " I have an appointment to meet 
 a man at ten o'clock." 
 
 " I know who it is, — it 's that old Cash Connolly 
 you 're always talking so much about ! " 
 
 Verney laughed. 
 
 " How did you know ? " he said. For it happened 
 that Mrs. Gibbs's surmise was correct. Cash Connolly, 
 a prominent District leader, was the man he was going 
 to see, for Connolly had promised to talk with him about 
 the possibility of swinging the Eighth District, of 
 which he was supreme dictator, for Ordway, at the com- 
 ing convention. 
 
 In previous talks Verney had been so eloquent in 
 pointing out the advantages that would accrue to the 
 Eighth and to its leader personally, should Ordway be 
 established as the next Governor, that already the 
 shrewd Irishman had committed himself so far as to 
 
 [146] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on "Responsibility" 
 
 say " almost thou persuadest me," and Verney was hop- 
 ing great things from the present interview. 
 
 "Really," his hostess added, "I'm quite jealous of 
 that man ! " 
 
 Verney rose. " You need n't be," he said ; " you 
 know that as far as mere pleasure is concerned, I 'd 
 much rather stay here." 
 
 " That 's why you go, I suppose," said Mrs. Gibbs ; 
 and then, suddenly and impulsively, " don't go — yet. 
 Stay just a moment until — until — " She stopped 
 — they were both standing now , — and brushed a trace 
 of cigarette ash from his sleeve, then let her hand, as 
 if inadvertently, remain on his arm. 
 
 Ellis bit his lip hard, but betrayed no disquiet at 
 her touch. 
 
 " Until what? " he asked. 
 
 " Willie said he was coming back from his banquet 
 early," she said, removing her hand. " I told him if 
 he would bring some one home with him I 'd try and keep 
 you for some bridge." 
 
 She spoke hesitatingly, her eyes on the floor. 
 
 Verney felt that she had not said what she had been 
 going to say. Her plans for his entertainment did not 
 usually include Willie. 
 
 " Would n't that be bully ! " he said, ironically. 
 " Now, what were you really going to say ? " 
 
 Cora Gibbs laughed mischievously, a very devil of 
 impudence of a sudden in her eyes. " I was going to 
 say," she said, " don't go until you 've told me whether 
 
 [147] 
 
The Politician 
 
 you 're in love with that Miss Rand from Chicago you 
 were having such a good time with at Antoni's, the other 
 evening." 
 
 Verney's face assumed its most reserved expression. 
 
 "What if I am? "he said. 
 
 " Nothing," she replied ; " only I thought if you had 
 really done anything so exciting as to fall in love, you 
 ought to tell me about it ! What 's the use of being 
 old friends if we don't tell each other things ? " She 
 looked up at him with innocent eyes. 
 
 Verney sat down again slowly, and Cora, inwardly 
 triumphing that she had kept him — though the means 
 was not to her taste — sat down also. 
 
 " What makes you think I 'm in love with her? " he 
 asked, beginning to select with much deliberation a 
 cigarette from the box on the table. 
 
 " Oh, because you 're so cross when I mention her 
 name. Men are always cross when they 're in love ! " 
 
 " Surely some other reason ? " 
 
 " Yes, besides that, Carol told me that you wrote to 
 each other all the time when Miss Rand was in Chi- 
 cago." 
 
 "Carol!" ejaculated Verney, roused to indignation 
 by this evidence of spying on the part of his younger 
 sister. " What on earth should she know about my 
 affairs? Little fool!" 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs screamed with laughter, although it was 
 a very pretty scream. 
 
 " There, now, I 'm sure of it," she crowed ; " or you 
 [148] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on 'Responsibility" 
 
 would n't get so angry. Where there 's so much smoke, 
 there must be some fire!" 
 
 Verney found the particular cigarette he seemed to 
 have been looking for, and put it between his lips, un- 
 lighted. 
 
 " I 'm not in love, just the same," he said, " with Miss 
 Rand," he had difficulty in saying the name, " or any 
 one else. You ought to know that. For the reason 
 that I have told you more than once — that I don't 
 intend ever to marry. And I don't intend to marry be- 
 cause I can't do that and keep in politics too. The de- 
 mands made upon a man's time if he goes in for public 
 life necessitate his giving up marriage altogether or neg- 
 lecting his wife — and I 'd rather give up marriage." 
 
 " Rather than your career? You prefer fame to 
 love?" 
 
 " If you want to call something you think you ought 
 to do a ' career,' yes." 
 
 " Something you think you ought to do? How do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean I think it 's a duty to try and improve pres- 
 ent day politics which are admittedly in a bad condi- 
 tion, are corrupt and impure, and that if I do what I 
 can to accomplish that object I can be of service to 
 the country." He spoke simply, as if patriotism were 
 the virtue commonest to man, and looked at her as if he 
 expected her to take as a matter of course his having 
 it to such a degree. But she did n't, she could n't begin 
 to understand an ambition so high and disinterested. 
 
 [149] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " So you 're not going to marry ? " she repeated won- 
 deringly. 
 
 " No.'* 
 
 "Never?" 
 
 " As far as I know. That is, if the present circum- 
 stances of my life remain the same." 
 
 " Never is a hard word." 
 
 " And human resolution reputedly weak ? " He 
 smiled. 
 
 " Yes," she said seriously. 
 
 And " yes " he agreed, serious himself. 
 
 " Then you admit there is a chance of your marrying 
 after all? " 
 
 " If you insist. About as much as that I shall wake 
 suddenly and find myself President instead of a hardly 
 known politician at the beginning of his career, or that 
 somebody will leave me a million ! " 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " Such satire ! " she said ; " yet after all neither 
 of those things is impossible. They really might hap- 
 pen ! " 
 
 " Before I die, perhaps." 
 
 The indifference of his tone did not escape her. 
 
 " And you 're not wildly interested in your old age, 
 are you, Verney," she said, understanding suddenly 
 that to this intensely ambitious, energetic young man, 
 the present was his whole life. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " Not now," he asserted. 
 
 [150] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on " Responsibility " 
 
 There was a pause, then she said musingly, 
 
 " It seems very hard, just the same, for a man as 
 young as you are deliberately to plan to give up marry- 
 ing ! Is n't that sacrificing too much ? " 
 
 She had spoken her true thought before she realized 
 that in urging the Politician to marry she was doing 
 just what she had intended not to do. 
 
 " It is hard," said Ellis thoughtfully. "But then," 
 he added more lightly, " if a man will insist on having 
 an ambition he should be willing to sacrifice something 
 for it." 
 
 " Even a woman ? " she asked, with peculiar signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he demanded, puzzled by her 
 tone. 
 
 " Nothing to be short about, nothing very serious," 
 she replied, settling back in her chair as if in prepara- 
 tion for a long talk and observing with satisfaction 
 that Verney had laid aside his cane and put down his 
 cigarette. " I only meant that if that 's the case, if 
 those are really your principles, you should be very care- 
 ful indeed about your attitude toward women — the 
 unmarried ones I mean ! " She laughed. 
 
 He smiled too at her distinction in favor of married 
 women, of which he had always been aware, though his 
 mind was too much occupied with trying to under- 
 stand what she was getting at, to make his amusement 
 more than transitory. 
 
 " I 'm still in the dark," he said. 
 [ 151 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " About not letting them think you mean to marry 
 them," said Mrs. Gibbs. 
 
 Verney stared at her a full half-minute ; it took that 
 long for him to grasp her idea. Then he laughed de- 
 risively. 
 
 " How foolish I As if they ever thought any such 
 thing! I give them credit for more sense. The girls 
 I know, at least. As for going around telling myself 
 to be careful or some one will fall in love with me, why 
 that 's plain ridiculous. I 'm not such a conceited ass, 
 I hope." 
 
 " But you should," she said calmly ; " you should do 
 just that thing. Every man in the world that 's worth 
 looking at has that responsibility to face. If you 
 don't know that, it 's time you did. You 're not a boy 
 any longer, Verney." 
 
 She spoke kindly and very sweetly, with an apparently 
 disinterested friendship that was surprising, unless of 
 course she happened to have reasons of her own for not 
 wishing him to remain longer in ignorance of his re- 
 sponsibility — unless she thought that to open his eyes 
 to it now, would be to check his fondness for Harriet 
 Rand's society before he had gone so far as to fall 
 in love with her. Mrs. Gibbs, it must be understood, did 
 not believe that Verney would be able to keep his reso- 
 lution not to marry if he should ever really fall in 
 love. But her words made no impression on the young 
 man. 
 
 " I don't believe it a minute," he said impatiently, al- 
 most disgustedly. " Why have n't I ever heard about 
 
 [152] 
 
Mrs. Gibbs on "Responsibility" 
 
 it before, about this f responsibility ' business, if there 's 
 really anything in it? " 
 
 " Because, my dear boy, you 're unusually lacking in 
 the vanity of your kind," returned his self-appointed 
 instructress. " If you were not, you could n't help 
 seeing it. The more attractive a man is, the greater 
 his responsibility, and you 're very attractive, Verney." 
 
 He made a gesture of irritation. 
 
 " Well, I am not wall-eyed or half-witted, if you mean 
 that," he said, " but I must say I 've never thought I 
 had the fatal gift exactly." 
 
 " Marvellous ! Wonderful ! " said Mrs. Gibbs under 
 her breath. " Unique, absolutely unique in my ex- 
 perience of men ! " Then aloud, " You ought to be put 
 in a museum, then, as the only living example of a man 
 without any egotism." 
 
 " You can make fun all you like," answered Verney, 
 indifferently. " The fact remains that I don't take 
 any stock at all in your extraordinary theory! What 
 did I do with my cane? " He rose to go. 
 
 " It 's true, though, and you '11 understand it some 
 day, I predict. Where are you off to now? To serve 
 your country ? " 
 
 " To see Connolly, as I told you," he replied shortly, 
 nettled by her mocking manner. " I 'm so late now 
 I '11 have to work all night, probably, to finish what 
 I 've got to do ! " 
 
 " All right, General Grant ! " she said, laughingly, 
 and saluted the young man in pretended homage, " only 
 don't take my head off about it, will you? It shall 
 
 [153] 
 
The Politician 
 
 serve its country, as much as ever it likes. So there 
 now ! " 
 
 And Verney, realizing at once that it was a waste of 
 time to try to talk seriously of his work to this irritat- 
 ing witch, laughed with her, although he knew it was 
 at himself. 
 
 " That 's a good boy ! " said the witch approvingly. 
 " Don't wait too long before you come again ! " and 
 she smiled her brightest at him as they parted. 
 
 But when the door had closed behind him her smile 
 vanished, and the brow of the beautiful Mrs. Gibbs 
 grew dark, and her expression very thoughtful. She 
 sat down and leaned her head on her hand. 
 
 " He did n't like my asking him if he was in love 
 with the girl ! " she said aloud, " and he flushed when 
 he spoke her name." She paused in her meditations, got 
 up and walked restlessly around the room. 
 
 " I wonder if Agnes Ordway was right," she said, 
 " I wonder if she was right ! " 
 
 [154] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 TEMPTATION 
 
 IT was almost six of an afternoon not many days 
 later, and although stenographers and clerks had 
 long ago gone home, Verney was still sitting at 
 his desk in his office in Nassau Street. He had a slip 
 of paper in his hand, and seemed to scrutinize it as if he 
 could not look at it long enough. There was n't much 
 on it, the slip of paper — only a few figures, but it 
 seemed to have the power to give pain ; for as he gazed, 
 Ellis's smooth face, which was already pale and weary, 
 grew drawn, and he caught his under lip in his teeth 
 with a cruel grip. Only a few figures stating the young 
 man's liabilities and assets, but they stood for great 
 anxiety and distress of mind ; for upon investigating his 
 exact financial standing he was shocked to find how 
 much in excess of the latter the former were. 
 
 He had been worrying about his affairs for some 
 time past, but the situation as disclosed to him that 
 afternoon was worse than he had pictured it could be 
 in his most pessimistic moments. His accounts were 
 alarmingly short on the credit side and alarmingly 
 long on the debit side, and the list of outstanding obliga- 
 tion to be met was appalling. He groaned in looking 
 it over for the second time, and smiled a little bitterly, 
 
 [155] 
 
The Politician 
 
 for most of the items were mementos of expenses in- 
 curred in putting through some reform measure in his 
 district, or in connection with some campaign. The 
 perfectly legitimate expenses incidental to running a 
 political campaign are enormous, and if they were listed 
 for the benefit of any one not familiar with the facts, 
 would hardly seem credible ; and Ellis, who never spared 
 expense where a principle was to be upheld, and never 
 let lack of funds prevent him from carrying out any 
 scheme he was interested in, had been in the habit of 
 putting his hand into his own pocket whenever the 
 funds appropriated for the scheme ran low, as they 
 very frequently did. 
 
 It was an ambition with him never, if he could help 
 it, to let a good man lose an office for want of financial 
 backing; and whenever a contingency arose which de- 
 manded that more money be spent or the battle lost, 
 he spent the money, though it meant going without 
 the luxuries of life, if not the necessities. As his 
 principles would not permit him to take advantage of 
 his chances to graft, and as the time he spent in the 
 pursuit of politics was just so much time taken from 
 the law, so that the income he derived from his practice 
 was very small, the day had come, as he must have seen 
 it would come had he not been too blinded by his en- 
 thusiasm for the work his soul loved, when continued 
 indulgence in this reckless policy at last obliged him 
 to face more or less straitened circumstances. 
 
 With little or nothing coming in, and all the money 
 [156] 
 
Temptation 
 
 there was going out, it was hardly surprising that his 
 arrears should eventually have brought him to an abrupt 
 standstill. As he reckoned it, it would take about six- 
 teen thousand dollars to cover his obligations and set 
 him on his feet again. How was he possibly to earn 
 so much money? Why, he could n't do it in a year un- 
 less — unless — 
 
 The late twilight had set in, and a big moon, chalk- 
 white like the face of a clown, peered in at the young 
 man from between two neighboring skyscrapers where 
 it was neatly sandwiched, but Verney was n't looking 
 at it at all. With a groan he dropped his face in his 
 hands. The rest of his unfinished thought had come 
 to him. He could n't possibly make sixteen thousand 
 a year or anything like it unless he gave up politics 
 and stuck to his practice alone. It would have seemed 
 to any one of his acquaintances a reasonable and simple 
 enough remedy, in fact, the only sensible thing a man 
 in his position could do, but to the Politician it seemed 
 the bitterest pill life had yet asked him to swallow. 
 The generality of the phrase to " give up politics " 
 particularized, meant that he must give up the leader- 
 ship of his District, and in resigning that, he would 
 be relinquishing his hold on the whole political fabric 
 and would be putting himself out of the running for 
 the chance of holding higher office. 
 
 Resign the leadership of his District! The thought 
 was enough to make him groan. His District ! His 
 organization which looked to him for the salvation of 
 
 [157] 
 
The Politician 
 
 its political soul; the trustful flock under his care, in 
 shepherding which through campaign after campaign 
 he had spent the busiest, most engrossing, most excit- 
 ing hours of his life ! He had worked like a horse for 
 two and a half years, ever since he had completed his 
 term as assemblyman at Albany, and now just as his 
 District was in the best shape it ever had been in, he 
 must leave it, it seemed — abandon it — give into other 
 hands the men he had worked with so long, know their 
 waywardness no longer, their devotion and loyalty no 
 more. And for what a reason ! Just for the mere lack 
 of money, just that he might spend his time in the 
 getting together of wretched, inanimate but necessary 
 — ah, how necessary ! — silver dollars. 
 
 For the same reason, he remembered, he had been 
 obliged to refuse a judgeship a few years ago, because 
 the salary that went with it was not so much as he could 
 make in one year at his practice; and for the same 
 reason he had been obliged to decline to return to the 
 Legislature the year before last. That had been espe- 
 cially hard, for he had loved the life at Albany, and had 
 been very much interested in the part he played in it as 
 assemblyman. The sense of fighting, with great issues 
 at stake on a busy day in the House, appealed to him; 
 when men hurried up and down the aisles, pages ran 
 hither and thither, and overwrought members at different 
 desks besought the attention of the Speaker with vocif- 
 erous voice and furious gesture; and the Speaker, his 
 friend Ordway, calm-faced, cold-eyed, tapped patiently 
 for order on the little square of marble in the corner of 
 
 [158] 
 
Temptation 
 
 his desk. Also he had loved the quiet days when the 
 House seemed to have been in session for months and 
 there was little or nothing to do, and he had plenty of 
 time to lean back from his desk and consider the passing 
 of some new bill he was planning, and the assemblymen 
 around him read newspapers, and the only sound to 
 break the stillness was the voice of the reading-clerk. 
 How much he enjoyed, in those days when he had been 
 running for the office of assemblyman from his district, 
 the excitement of the campaign ! How interested in it 
 all his mother and father had been, in spite of their 
 reasons for opposing his going into politics! How 
 eagerly they had followed the course of the campaign ! 
 How loyal and devoted, too, had been the butcher and 
 baker and other tradespeople who looked after the 
 welfare of the house of Ellis, how zealous to get their 
 friends to vote for Mr. Verney ! And his old nurse, 
 who still lived with the family, and whom Verney had 
 referred to since childhood as " Nanna," how anxious 
 she had been for her favorite's success, how she had 
 cried with joy when he himself brought her news of 
 his election! 
 
 Poignant with pain as these reflections were now that 
 he had begun to think they were all memories of the 
 past and that such moments were never to be his again, 
 Verney could not help smiling as he thought of the 
 Scott brothers, who lived on Eighteenth Street, six 
 young men who were great friends of his, and the 
 ease with which he had, every election-time, talked them 
 all into voting the straight Republican ticket, although 
 
 [159] 
 
The Politician 
 
 they were all professed Democrats! He laughed aloud 
 as he recalled how on the last occasion of the sort 
 they had rebelled, in spite of the eloquent hours he 
 had spent urging them to vote for the best man, no 
 matter what party he belonged to, and that the best 
 men that particular year were all Republicans — and 
 they had refused to do anything of the sort. They 
 were Democrats, they had said, as their father and 
 grandfather had been before them, and they 'd like to 
 see Verney make 'em vote anything but the straight 
 Democratic ticket! Thus they had sworn to him, and 
 to each other, before they went to vote the morning of 
 election day, but late election night, notwithstanding, 
 each had gone home to the house on Eighteenth Street, 
 removed his shoes before mounting the stairs, for fear 
 of waking his brother, and crept shame-faced to bed; 
 for each one in succession when he had actually come to 
 the point of voting, had found himself somehow or 
 other unable to go against Verney, and rather than 
 offend him, each and all had climbed ingloriously on 
 the band wagon and voted the Republican ticket. 
 
 But there were to be no more days like those; his 
 political career was over, the chance to rise — to use 
 a position of power for good — was gone ; his great 
 ambition to raise the standard of politics, to clear the 
 reputation of politicians, was out of his power to 
 realize. He groaned again as he thought of it, and 
 the tears — there was no one there to see — started to 
 his eyes and blurred the implacable row of figures on the 
 paper before him and turned each separate one into a 
 
 [160] 
 
Temptation 
 
 little dancing devil that shouted at him, " What are 
 you going to do about me ? " 
 
 For there is unfortunately no premium attached to 
 the career of the honest, uncorrupt, high-minded man 
 in politics. The only reward such public service has 
 to offer is the opportunity for graft and that the man 
 of integrity rejects, which is in itself an explanation 
 of the corruption of present day politics. When public 
 service must mean financial sacrifice few " good men " 
 can afford to go into that kind of life ; and the reason 
 unprincipled men can afford to do so is that they go in 
 for what they can get out of it. Here, for instance, 
 was Verney Ellis, a young man whose only motive in 
 entering politics was a patriotic one, to see what good 
 he could do; yet because it was necessary for him to 
 make money in order to live, he was forced to abandon 
 his high ambitions and give up the life he loved. It 
 seemed as if something were very wrong with the whole 
 scheme of things, if it was possible that the lack of 
 money should influence his career more than the coun- 
 try's need for right-minded men in public life; and yet 
 apparently, in this case it was so. What a reproach to 
 the richest country in the world ! 
 
 Minute after minute passed while Ellis faced with 
 what fortitude he could the terrible necessity of re- 
 signing the leadership of his District as the only means 
 of saving the situation financially. If only he could 
 think of another way out of it! Of something else he 
 could do ! He could n't ask his father for the neces- 
 sary sixteen thousand, considering Mr. Ellis's late 
 " [ 161 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 business reverses; but he would not have stopped at 
 shovelling coal if he might have raised the required 
 sum by that means. 
 
 The moon, which had escaped from its trap between 
 the tall buildings and now was showing its jolly clown's 
 face far up in the sky, had begun to look less chalky 
 and to take on a silver tone, filling Nassau Street with 
 its early splendor, before the Politician raised his head 
 from his hands, his problem solved. By the mercy of 
 God, or by the inspiration of the devil, he was n't sure 
 at the time which it was, another way out of his 
 difficulty had been shown him. 
 
 " I must marry a rich girl ! " he said softly, musingly, 
 as he put away his papers and reached for his hat and 
 gloves ; then with sober face and slow step, he left the 
 office and made his way up town. 
 
 Earlier that same afternoon, Harriet Rand was sit- 
 ting in her room at the Holland House, deeply en- 
 gaged in thought, and the subject of her thoughts was 
 Vernor Ellis and his career — which her confidence in 
 him assured her would land him eventually in the White 
 House. Her aunt had gone out with Mrs. Chittenden, 
 and Miss Rand was Waiting for Carol Ellis to arrive, 
 that engaging and vivacious young person having in- 
 vited Harriet to go with her to a small tea given by 
 Mrs. de Albert, a young married friend of Miss Ellis's. 
 
 " It 's very informal — so few people are in town," 
 said Carol, who had called for Harriet in due time, as 
 she and her friend got out of the taxicab that had 
 
 [162] 
 
Temptation 
 
 brought them to the door of Mrs. de Albert's house in 
 Seventieth Street. 
 
 The confusion of laughter and talk in the room where 
 the tea was going on halted for the fraction of a second 
 as the two girls entered, and until the nine or ten 
 women sitting and standing about, who all knew each 
 other more or less intimately, assimilated the fact that 
 the slight, large-eyed girl in dark blue with Carol Ellis 
 was a stranger, and then the chatter flowed on evenly 
 with polite indifference. 
 
 Carol introduced Harriet at once to their hostess, a 
 young matron with a high color and a high voice, and 
 Mrs. de Albert introduced them both to Mrs. Harris 
 from California for whom the tea was given. After 
 a few words with this very amiable lady, whose sole 
 mission in life seemed to be to agree with people, and 
 whose staple remark in conversation was " You 're so 
 right ! " they moved on toward a sofa not far away 
 from the tea-table where two or three attractive girls 
 were sitting. Miss Ellis knew them all and soon made 
 them acquainted with Harriet. Miss Gladys Leverich, 
 who was one of them, Harriet thought particularly 
 attractive. They were very busy talking and laughing 
 while they drank their tea, when Miss Rand felt 
 suddenly that some one was staring at her, and glancing 
 up she encountered the brilliant hazel eyes of Mrs. 
 Willie Gibbs. 
 
 Harriet stared back a moment in a casual, uninterested 
 manner, then turned away her gaze. A little later, 
 
 [163] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Carol, who had left her friend with Gladys Leverich 
 while she spoke to some one who had just come in, 
 seized upon Miss Rand and began introducing her right 
 and left in her informal, jolly way, and almost before 
 she knew it the girl found herself face to face with 
 Mrs. Gibbs who was, she felt in a subtle, intuitive way, 
 inimical to her. 
 
 " Mrs. Gibbs," said Carol introducing them, " do 
 you know Miss Rand? " 
 
 " She 's very handsome," thought Harriet to herself, 
 a kind of regretful quality in the admission in spite of 
 herself ; and " How pretty she is ! " thought Cora Gibbs, 
 " much prettier even than I imagined at first." 
 
 And then, drawn to each other, in spite of their mutual 
 feeling of distrust, by the knowledge that each was in- 
 terested in the Politician, they sat down in adjoining 
 chairs and began to talk. After a few minutes' con- 
 versation, however, Harriet found that she could not 
 get on at all well with Mrs. Gibbs. She was rather 
 amusing, the young heiress thought, and she said a 
 number of clever things, but they had a doubtful flavor 
 about them. Things Harriet would never have thought 
 of laughing at herself, Mrs. Gibbs apparently seemed 
 to think excruciatingly funny. 
 
 " It 's a pity you did n't come to New York when 
 the season was on, when there were dances and things," 
 she told Harriet. " Hardly any one is home now. 
 These women you see to-day are here only temporarily, 
 between visits in the country or to do some shopping, 
 
 [164] 
 
Temptation 
 
 or something. If I were n't getting ready to go abroad 
 next month I should n't be here myself.'* 
 
 Harriet said she did n't especially care for dances 
 and things. She had been to so many at home, and 
 she supposed they were much the same. New York 
 was interesting to her, in season and out, and it was 
 the best time to shop when there were fewer people in 
 town. 
 
 The first portion only of her remarks caught Mrs. 
 Gibbs's attention. " Don't care about dances ? " she 
 said ; " well, that is strange ! But I think you would, 
 and I think you 'd find them different, if you went to 
 one in New York. I never will forget one of the Friday 
 evening cotillions that Billy Vandewater led — a very 
 attractive fellow, by the way, you must meet him, — the 
 horse-and-driver figure, particularly ! " 
 
 " Did it go so well? " enquired Harriet perfunctorily, 
 not a bit interested. 
 
 " Go well? " repeated the light-hearted and beautiful 
 Cora Gibbs, laughing delightedly at the very remem- 
 brance ; " my dear, it was a regular romp I No place 
 for lisle stockings, I assure you ! " 
 
 Miss Rand, though she could not help getting an 
 immediate and vivid impression of the figure in question 
 from this vigorous and descriptive line, was not in the 
 least amused by it, and made no attempt to reply; 
 she felt justified by its questionable taste in letting her 
 attention wander to the other people in the room. Her 
 averted head, however, did not seem to bother Mrs. 
 
 [165] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Gibbs a bit, who continued to prattle happily on as if 
 she had the most interested of auditors. 
 
 So it happened that Harriet presently found herself 
 listening without intending it, to a conversation be- 
 tween a woman standing near her, whom she did not 
 know, and Gladys Leverich. She had been hearing 
 what they said without exactly taking it in, when a 
 sentence from Miss Leverich caught her attention. In 
 a momentary pause that seemed to come in the talk 
 all over the room, she heard the New York girl's high 
 sweet tones saying, " Ask Verney Ellis, he told me so 
 himself." 
 
 " What did Verney Ellis tell you? " asked Mrs. Gibbs 
 (she also had heard) serenely enough but insistently 
 nevertheless. "Tell us, won't you, Gladys?" 
 
 Apparently Miss Leverich's answer to this question 
 was of interest to every woman in the room, for no 
 other conversation was continued. 
 
 " Why, he said," replied the young girl, " that if 
 Oliver Ordway were nominated Governor they might 
 nominate him for Attorney-general ! " 
 
 " Really ? How perfectly fine ! " came the chorus 
 from every part of the room, and Harriet perceived, 
 and not without a certain pang, that Ellis was very 
 well known to all these women. 
 
 " That 's nothing new," remarked Mrs. Gibbs care- 
 lessly, while Miss Rand realized still more acutely, as 
 the beautiful Mrs. Willie made the remark, that it was 
 not such a distinction to be friend and confidante to 
 Verney Ellis as she had imagined. " It 's been talked 
 
 [166] 
 
Temptation 
 
 about a long time," continued Mrs. Gibbs ; " he told me 
 years ago ! " 
 
 She rose as she spoke and picked up a magazine from 
 the table and began to glance through it as if the sub- 
 ject no longer interested her. Mrs. de Albert, who 
 knew Cora Gibbs very well, came over to her and laid 
 her hand on the other woman's shoulder. 
 
 "Peevish, Cora?" she whispered loudly; "but never 
 mind, you ought to know Verney Ellis by this time! 
 I don't believe there 's a woman in New York worth 
 knowing that he has n't confided in at one time or an- 
 other." 
 
 " I 'm sure I don't care," returned Cora, wriggling 
 from under her would-be consoler's hand, and continu- 
 ing to turn the leaves of the magazine. 
 
 Mrs. de Albert, who perhaps had not been so anxious 
 to soothe her friend as to amuse herself, went away 
 laughing, to greet a newly arrived guest; and Harriet, 
 who had heard, moved away too, with a sense that she 
 was n't having a good time at all, and a wish that she 
 had not come. 
 
 In reality it was nothing out of the way or at all 
 discreditable to him that Ellis should have known all 
 these women well — rather a compliment, on the con- 
 trary, for they were all nice and as a group unusually 
 attractive ; but to Harriet, who did n't understand his 
 attitude in the matter of having women friends — which, 
 briefly defined, was a feeling that in numbers lay safety 
 — the idea that her hero was everybody's hero came 
 as a revelation that was also something of a blow. 
 
 [167] 
 
The Politician 
 
 When you 're trying to put some one on a pedestal, it 
 makes you feel chagrined to find that he 's already there 
 without any of your help. She was therefore very glad 
 indeed to see that the person whom Mrs. de Albert had 
 gone forward to greet was Mrs. Ordway. Now she 
 would really enjoy herself after all, she thought, going 
 up to the young Speaker's wife. For she really liked 
 Mrs. Ordway and wanted her for a friend. Mrs. 
 Ordway for her part, seemed very glad to see Harriet, 
 and they were soon absorbed in a discussion of art, in 
 which both were interested. 
 
 " You must come and see my studio," said the older 
 woman when she found that Harriet had one herself 
 in her home at Lake Forest. " I spend a great deal 
 of time there. Mr. Ordway is away so much." 
 
 " I should like to come very much," replied Harriet, 
 " although I can't pose as being any sort of critic. 
 I love the work, but I don't do as much as I should, or 
 so my aunt says." 
 
 " Oh, but you must! " returned Agnes ; " it 's a shame 
 to hide your light, to have a talent and not use it. It 's 
 ungrateful, I think." 
 
 " To Providence for giving it to you? " 
 
 " Yes. Having it confers an obligation, you know." 
 
 " If it 's a very great talent," returned Miss Rand, 
 " but for myself I rather hate to run the risk of adding 
 anything to the mediocrity of the world, there 's so 
 much of it already." 
 
 " That 's true, of course," said Mrs. Ordway, her face 
 [168] 
 
Temptation 
 
 — which had the young look that married women often 
 have who have had no children — very thoughtful, 
 " but you see I have so little to occupy my time, and 
 I must keep busy about something ! " There was a 
 passionate intensity in her tone. 
 
 Harriet, who did n't understand her friend's loneli- 
 ness and the reason for it, was wondering what she 
 meant by saying she had to keep busy about something, 
 so long as she had her husband's career to be interested 
 in, and might perhaps have asked the other to explain, 
 when their conversation was broken in upon by the 
 gay voice of Mrs. Gibbs. 
 
 " Don't stand there and talk, you two, in that dread- 
 fully serious, exclusive fashion," she said ; " I know it 's 
 something terribly intellectual, I can tell by your faces, 
 and we 've got something so exciting to talk about over 
 here!" 
 
 Mrs. Ordway and Harriet looked over there and saw 
 that the crowd had thinned out, leaving a small group 
 sitting in a confidential ring around the tea-table. 
 
 "What's your exciting subject, Cora?" Mrs. Ord- 
 way said, smiling at Mrs. Gibbs, as she and Harriet 
 joined the group. 
 
 " It 's a question," said Mrs. Gibbs, standing in the 
 middle of the circle of women, her face flushed and mis- 
 chievous, a cigarette between her first and second fingers. 
 " We 're trying to decide what a woman marries a man 
 for!" 
 
 It was the time of day most dear to the woman who 
 [169] 
 
The Politician 
 
 makes a business of amusing herself, when the stress of 
 the afternoon's gayeties is past and those planned for 
 the evening are still far enough away to permit of a 
 few moments of relaxation before the duty of dressing 
 again presents itself. A delightful sense of peace, of 
 leisure with no immediate necessity of hurrying any- 
 where for some time yet, pervaded the room. A big 
 yellow lamp stood sentinel by the sparkling tea-table 
 with its dainty freight of liqueur glasses and teacups, 
 and slender forms with comfortably crossed knees leaned 
 gracefully back in the chintz-covered chairs. Voices 
 were low and laughter was frequent, while white fingers 
 made frank excursions to the big silver-rimmed glass 
 bowl on the table where Mrs. de Albert kept her 
 cigarettes. 
 
 Harriet had never approved of the habit of smoking 
 for women, and was very glad to see that Mrs. Ordway 
 refused the cigarettes when they were passed to her. 
 It was very lucky that Harriet Rand did not have to 
 depend on her drawing for her living ; she was too fond 
 of the conventions to have made a good Bohemian. 
 She was also, however, too wise to criticise where she 
 was not called upon to do so, and too truly kind and 
 generous to be intolerant; so she refused them herself 
 with a smile and did not explain that she never smoked. 
 
 " What do you marry a man for? " repeated Mrs. 
 Ordway, " that 's easy : So you won't be lonely in your 
 old age ! " 
 
 She smiled bravely around her as if to defy any one 
 [170] 
 
Temptation 
 
 to say that if that had been her ambition in marrying, 
 it did not look so far as if it stood much chance of being 
 gratified. 
 
 " I don't agree," said Mrs. Gibbs. " Who cares 
 what happens when they're old?" She looked as if 
 she did n't, certainly, with her splendid spirits and 
 warm, brilliant beauty. 
 
 " Next ? " she said looking questioningly round the 
 circle of laughing faces. 
 
 Gladys Leverich rose to the occasion. " To have 
 little thrills run up and down your spine when your 
 eyes meet his," she declared. 
 
 A smile went round the ring, and every woman looked 
 at the other, as if to say " We know she 's right, but 
 do we dare say so ? " 
 
 " I don't care, that is the reason ! " insisted Gladys, 
 perceiving that her idea was to get no support, and 
 compelled to uphold it herself. 
 
 " To have a strong shoulder to cry on ! " drawled a 
 sophisticated-looking young person with ironic em- 
 phasis. 
 
 "Oh, Amy! How can you be so silly?" they all 
 exclaimed, laughing. That idea, as they knew its 
 author intended it to do, seemed most ridiculous of all 
 to this smart, alert, self-reliant group of women, as 
 typically independent as the modern woman can be. 
 
 An older woman with good-humored eyes, who had 
 been married a long time and whose talent for listening 
 patiently to other people's troubles made her beloved of 
 
 r m 1 
 
The Politician 
 
 young women and old, made the next suggestion. 
 " To have children," she said with a vanquished smile 
 that anticipated the storm that followed; for a chorus 
 of protest and expostulation and even derisive laughter 
 greeted her remark. 
 
 " The idea ! " said every one, and turned hastily to the 
 next reader of the riddle. This was the guest of honor, 
 Mrs. Harris. 
 
 " Because no one else has asked you," she said simply, 
 and realizing from the very look of her that she meant 
 it, their laughter rang. 
 
 " Or because your mother made you," said a dark- 
 faced young married woman with a habitually discon- 
 tented expression. This solution was passed quickly 
 by, however. Everybody knew that poor Martha 
 Wotherspoon, who had lately become Mrs. Reid Ken- 
 nard, had married the man of her mother's choice — 
 who was twice her age but fabulously wealthy — in- 
 stead of her own choice, a nice young man without a 
 cent. 
 
 " Come, come ! " said Mrs. Gibbs impatiently looking 
 round at the women who had not yet answered, " this 
 will never do ! Every county must be heard from, or 
 we '11 never discover the answer ! How about it, Connie 
 Wilde? What does a woman marry a man for? " 
 
 " For fun ! " replied Miss Wilde, who was exceedingly 
 pretty but did not look as if she had a sensible idea 
 in her head. 
 
 " To get married ! " suggested Mrs. Underhill, a 
 smart-looking young matron who sat next to her; 
 
 [ 172 ] 
 
Temptation 
 
 " that 's what most women do it for, I think. At least 
 when I look at some husbands that 's the only explana- 
 tion that occurs to me." She laughed satirically. 
 
 Mrs. Harris rolled appreciative eyes at the speaker. 
 " You 're so right ! " she said. 
 
 Whereupon Bessie Underhill seemed very much 
 amused — perhaps because she had happened to meet 
 Mr. Harris and had set him down at once for one of 
 the husbands to be explained in that way; for she 
 laughed so hard that she grew almost hysterical and had 
 to have another creme de menthe to quiet her. 
 
 Harriet could n't stand it any longer, she thought it 
 was all too silly for anything, and the frivolous treat- 
 ment of the sacred subject of marriage quite unworthy. 
 She did n't realize, not knowing these women well, that 
 their frivolity was only the mood of the moment, the 
 result of the irresponsible nature of the hour, and their 
 sense of relaxation; for most of them were in reality 
 women of character. 
 
 " I don't think any one has given the right answer 
 to your question, Mrs. Gibbs," she said boldly and very 
 gravely. " I think that what you marry a man for is 
 to help him! To do all you can to make him succeed 
 in his work — in his career." 
 
 It was a brave thing to do, to express an opinion 
 that was in the nature of a rebuke in a gathering where 
 she was so little known, but the courage of her convic- 
 tions was something Harriet did not lack. Amazed 
 silence followed this speech for a moment ; then the older 
 woman who had ventured to speak in behalf of the chil- 
 
 [173] 
 
The Politician 
 
 dren, said sweetly : " I agree with you, Miss Rand. 
 We were getting too silly ; but, of course, we all really 
 feel that way about it, too." 
 
 A murmur of assent corroborated this statement, and 
 pleasant glances were cast in the direction of the 
 Chicago girl who was not afraid to speak her mind, 
 though her opinion had been cast in such serious mould 
 as to check the spirit of levity in which the others had 
 been giving theirs. They did not altogether relish being 
 rebuked, but they could not help admiring the rebuker 
 for her courage. 
 
 There was a general movement to go, and Mrs. Ord- 
 way as she rose, by way of restoring to the atmosphere 
 the ease of the moment before, reminded Mrs. Gibbs 
 that she had not yet been heard from on the subject of 
 the afternoon's discussion. 
 
 " What do you think we marry a man for, Cora ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs put her finger to her brow, as if in deep 
 thought, then threw wide her hands in a gesture of 
 despair. 
 
 " I 'm sure I don't know ! " she said. 
 
 A few moments later, as Harriet and Carol, who were 
 among the first to go, were standing on the steps wait- 
 ing for their cab to arrive, the former heard a swift 
 whisper at her shoulder, and turning, found Mrs. Ord- 
 way's face close to hers. 
 
 " My dear," said Agnes Ordway very low and 
 hurriedly, " what you said about marrying to help a 
 
 [174] 
 
Temptation 
 
 man was quite right, is quite true as a general thing, 
 but not in the case of a man whose work is politics." 
 Her blue eyes sought Harriet's dark ones with a certain 
 intensity of expression. " Don't marry a politician," 
 she repeated warningly, " if you want to help," and 
 swept away to her automobile. 
 
 Although Harriet did not understand the warning 
 at the time, or what had prompted it, it was given, as a 
 matter of fact, because Mrs. Ordway had divined that 
 Harriet had had Verney Ellis in mind in saying that the 
 reason a woman married a man was to help him in his 
 career, and that Harriet thought she could help him ; and 
 the married woman wanted to save her friend from dis- 
 covering as she had done in her own case, that she would 
 not be allowed to help. For Mrs. Ordway's own expe- 
 rience had been of the sort to make her feel that, 
 contrary to the custom of the Englishman, who never 
 thinks of excluding his wife from any part of his 
 affairs, in this country the last thing a man wants 
 to do, is to make his wife his confidante in business 
 matters, and that this was especially true if his business 
 happened to be politics. Even if he had the inclina- 
 tion to take her into his confidence, she had come to the 
 conclusion he hadn't the time, so tremendous is the 
 activity necessitated by a political career in the United 
 States. 
 
 When Miss Rand reached the Holland House that 
 afternoon, which was not until half past six, she found 
 that Verney Ellis had called in her absence. Her 
 
 [175] 
 
The Politician 
 
 aunt's voice from an inner apartment apprised her that 
 the card was on the table in their reception room and 
 that Mr. Ellis had only just gone. Harriet picked it 
 up with a feeling of keen disappointment. 
 
 " He must have stopped on his way up from the 
 office," she thought. " How too tiresome I missed 
 him ! " 
 
 [176] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 "who knows but the world may end 
 
 TO-NIGHT? " 
 
 THE first of September was on Saturday, and on 
 that afternoon there was to be an open-air horse- 
 show not far from New York, for which Mrs. 
 Ordway had made up a party and invited Harriet Rand. 
 The others who were going were Carol Ellis, Gladys 
 Leverich, Gerald Merrick, and, of course, Verney. 
 The latter had offered to drive them out by coach, the 
 coach in question belonging to a friend of Ellis's for 
 whom he often drove ; and Mrs. Ordway was very much 
 pleased with the idea; so it was a great disappoint- 
 ment when the young man telephoned her at the last 
 moment that he would be unable to go after all. It 
 was only two weeks to the convention, and he was very 
 busy, he told her. He was sorry not to have them go 
 out by coach, but if she wished he could get some one 
 else to drive. Mrs. Ordway, too irritated with him 
 to flatter him by explaining that she did n't want any 
 one else, told him that she had changed her plans 
 anyway, and proceeded to take her guests out by motor. 
 " That 's the worst of knowing the boy so well," she 
 said ruefully ; " he thinks he can fail me at the last 
 minute like that, and that it does n't matter a bit L " 
 12 [ 177 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " It does n't," said Harriet serenely. They were in 
 their box at the horse-show. " Oh, look at those bays ; 
 I like them far the best ! " She called Gerald Mer- 
 rick's attention to an unusually fine pair of harness 
 horses just passing. 
 
 She had been at many such exhibitions, but because 
 of her great love of horses, such shows never lost their 
 charm for her, especially when they were given in the 
 open air. People passing in the promenade nodded 
 and smiled at Mrs. Ordway's party or came in to talk ; 
 but although a number of them were known to her, 
 Harriet's interest still was centred in the green-hedged 
 ring with the judges' stand in the middle. She had 
 come to see the horses, not the people. That is not 
 saying that the people were not worth seeing, for it 
 was an unusually smart assemblage, and with the show 
 horses and liveried attendants in the ring, the group 
 of booted and spurred horsemen about the judges' 
 stand, the green-roofed boxes from which the purple 
 and yellow colors of the club floated, made a brilliant 
 picture under the bright September sun. 
 
 It was only when Mrs. Gibbs stopped to speak to 
 them, very beautiful in an elaborate costume of laven- 
 der shaded by a lavender parasol, with an admirer at 
 each elbow, that Harriet was able to withdraw her 
 gaze from the tourney in front of her, where the flower 
 of equine chivalry in burnished armor of black, brown, 
 and bay, broke lances with each other for the favor of 
 the judges. 
 
 [178] 
 
The World May End 
 
 " Hello ! " said Cora Gibbs, one lavender shoe on the 
 step of the box, her color deep rose, her eyes warm 
 and lustrous under the shadow of a small bed of pansies 
 which had been cleverly metamorphosed into the form 
 and semblance of a hat, and which graced her head 
 with such exquisite sympathy for the gold of her hair 
 that the artist in every human being that beheld it, 
 whether envious woman or admiring man, bowed down 
 in homage. 
 
 " Where 's Oliver, Agnes ? Could n't he come ? " she 
 said, nodding to Harriet, and to the two young men 
 in the box, who had sprung to their feet. 
 
 " No," smiled Agnes ; " he never comes to things like 
 this, you know ; he has n't time." 
 
 " And Verney Ellis ? I thought you told me he was 
 going to be with you." 
 
 " He was," replied Mrs. Ordway as sweetly as before, 
 " only something prevented at the last moment." 
 
 " What a bad Verney ! " said Mrs. Gibbs, arching 
 her brows significantly at Harriet. " I should speak 
 to him if I were you, Miss Rand." 
 
 And before Harriet could decide whether to refute 
 by speech or silence this public imputation that she was 
 directly concerned with the actions of Verney Ellis, 
 Mrs. Gibbs had turned to Mrs. Ordway with a change 
 of subject. 
 
 " Are you going to exhibit to-day ? " 
 
 " Yes, my hunter Tybalt," replied Agnes Ordway, 
 who owned some fine horses, " in the jumping class." 
 
 [179] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " That comes next," observed Harriet, consulting her 
 programme. 
 
 " And I see the groom walking him about over there 
 beyond those carriages," added Mrs. Ordway. " I 
 think I '11 go and see how he is ! " 
 
 " Let me go with you, Mrs. Ordway, do ! " entreated 
 Harriet, who was anxious to see her friend's horse, but 
 more anxious not to be left with Mrs. Gibbs, who had 
 settled down in the box. 
 
 They found Tybalt in excellent spirits, but Stephen, 
 the groom, had bad news for his mistress. It seemed 
 the young woman, a professional who was to have 
 ridden the horse, had sprained her ankle in dismounting 
 from another horse and had only just been taken to 
 the club-house. 
 
 " She 's in too much pain to ride, they say, Mrs. 
 Ordway," said the man. 
 
 Mrs. Ordway looked much taken aback. 
 
 " How terrible ! " she said. " I have n't time to get 
 any one to take Miss Bush's place. We are in the next 
 class, and I can't ride myself, — I 've never ridden at 
 a horse-show." 
 
 " I have," said Harriet, who had made up her mind 
 immediately to help her friend out of her difficulty ; 
 " I 've done it lots of times at home." 
 
 " Can you? Will you? " implored Mrs. Ordway, all 
 hope at the suggestion. 
 
 Harriet replied by signalling a carriage standing 
 near. 
 
 " We '11 just have time," she said, as they got in, 
 [180] 
 
The World May End 
 
 " to drive to the club and get that habit off Miss Bush 
 before they call our class." 
 
 The carriage raced to the near-by club-house and in 
 an incredibly short time the moaning Miss Bush was 
 divested of a correct and very good-looking habit, and 
 they were back at the ring, Harriet appearing very 
 handsome in her borrowed plumes and not a bit flurried 
 by her haste in donning them. 
 
 " Has he any tricks ? " she asked Stephen as he took 
 her boot in his hand for the mount. 
 
 " Hold him hard when he is coming up and let him 
 have his head when he lands," replied the man. 
 
 And with that, Harriet went on her way to the ring. 
 
 " Who 's that ? " asked a young man who arrived at 
 the horse-show just as she entered. He touched with 
 his light cane a groom lounging on the rail as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " I swear to the Lord if it is n't Harriet ! " next 
 said the late arrival, who was Mr. Verney Ellis, with- 
 out waiting for the man's " I don't know, sir." 
 
 The explanation of the young man's appearance on 
 the scene at that late hour, after he had definitely told 
 Mrs. Ordway that he was too busy to go, lay in his 
 reason for changing his mind about going in the first 
 place. It was all the result of a revulsion of feeling 
 following his resolution to marry a rich girl as a means 
 of extricating himself from his financial difficulties 
 without abandoning his beloved politics. On the im- 
 pulse of the moment, spurred on by that dark hour 
 in his office, he had called on Harriet with the vaguely 
 
 [181] 
 
The Politician 
 
 defined purpose of beginning the campaign for her 
 favor at once, and on finding that she had gone out, 
 his real nature asserted itself, and he left the hotel 
 shuddering at the mere thought of the thing he had 
 been about to do. So intense was his self -contempt — 
 indeed, his horror — that he, Verney Ellis, should have 
 sunk even during the space of a passing mood to the 
 level of those despicable beings who marry for money, 
 that he could not telephone Mrs. Ordway quickly 
 enough to excuse himself from her party to the horse- 
 show. To keep out of Harriet Rand's way and avoid 
 her at every opportunity he had resolved should be 
 his greatest care hereafter, so that he might never have 
 even the chance so to accuse himself again. 
 
 This was in the morning, but by one o'clock he had 
 changed his mind again, and, realizing that such an 
 extreme measure was only the result of his guilty con- 
 science, he decided that it would not be necessary after 
 all to forswear Harriet's society absolutely in order to 
 keep his self-respect, and that he would take the 1 :30 
 train to the country and join Mrs. Ordway 's party. 
 He knew his friend Agnes well enough, he thought, 
 to make the uncertainty of his political engagements 
 a sufficient excuse for his indecision in regard to accept- 
 ing her invitation. 
 
 The horses were lined up in the centre of the ring, 
 near the judges' stand, while the various attendants in 
 purple and yellow livery busied themselves erecting the 
 barriers in preparation for the jumping which was to 
 come next. Harriet was perfectly calm and confident. 
 
 [182] 
 
The World May End 
 
 Tybalt suited her exactly, and she felt that she would 
 understand him, although he needed very delicate hands 
 to keep him from dancing and fussing. 
 
 " Easy, boy, easy," she said softly to the one pointed 
 ear pricked back toward her as it came her turn to 
 jump and she and Tybalt left the safe shelter of the 
 judges' stand. As she cantered slowly around the ring 
 a number of people who had not noticed her before 
 broke into admiring ejaculation. In the first place 
 Mrs. Ordway's horse was a superb animal ; and Harriet's 
 steady seat, the easy, hardly perceptible sway of her 
 slight figure to his canter, and the beautiful set of 
 her shoulders, were things worth noticing. The fact 
 that so few people knew her aroused interest as well, 
 and as she encountered the first gate in her path every 
 one was busy asking who the handsome girl with the 
 black eyes on the bay horse could be. 
 
 The first time around the ring Harriet accomplished 
 both jumps with no difficulty, a burst of applause 
 indeed testifying to the fact that Tybalt had not so 
 much as touched either of them, but the second time 
 she had trouble with the last jump. Either Tybalt 
 had become excited by his triumph, or had allowed the 
 applause to get on his nerves, or else had decided that 
 three successful efforts of the kind was enough for 
 that day. Whatever the reason, he mortified Harriet 
 and disappointed the spectators, with whom he was a 
 prime favorite, by refusing the jump. 
 
 Once more his rider galloped him back, and wheeling, 
 put him at the bars, and once more he balked in a dis- 
 
 [183] 
 
The Politician 
 
 agreeable and emphatic manner, sitting down on his 
 haunches with his nose touching the greens with which 
 the bars were decorated. 
 
 The third attempt, Harriet, whose blood was up and 
 who was excited enough by now, made with the deter- 
 mination to get the horse over or die. She knew he 
 could do it; he should not do himself and his rider 
 and his owner the injustice of failing. She had been 
 patient and coaxing before, but now she threw such 
 mild measures to the winds and taking Tybalt well up 
 by the head struck him smartly with her whip. The 
 horse, who had been prancing along as belligerently 
 as if he were the Tybalt of Shakespeare looking for 
 a chance to get under Mercutio's guard, reared sud- 
 denly under the blow, and then to Harriet's satisfaction 
 settled down to a steady gallop. 
 
 But the last jump was evidently not destined to be 
 successful, for just as he neared the gate and was 
 taking off, an attendant stepped forward in a belated 
 attempt to place one of the bars more securely, and 
 Tybalt, taking fright, rushed the jump without rising 
 enough and crashed heavily through the bars, throwing 
 his rider some distance. 
 
 A murmur of consternation rose from the boxes as 
 Harriet struck and lay still, and men came running 
 from all sides. The first person to reach her, how- 
 ever, was Verney Ellis, who from a point near at hand 
 had been watching with the deepest anxiety her efforts 
 to get the bay horse over the last jump, and who had 
 vaulted the hedge that enclosed the ring the second 
 
 [184] 
 
The World May End 
 
 the accident happened, and had run to her side at top 
 speed, swearing with heart-felt earnestness as he ran. 
 
 But in spite of his hurry, horse and rider were both 
 up by the time he arrived, and when he saw that Har- 
 riet was not hurt, he seized her arm and gave it a shake. 
 
 " What did you want to do that for? " he said, his 
 eyes flashing. " You might as well kill a man as scare 
 him to death ! " 
 
 But Harriet saw that his face was pale, and in spite 
 of his roughness a great gladness welled up in her heart 
 because she knew that he was moved — that he would 
 have cared a great deal if she had been killed. 
 
 " I 'm not hurt," she said, smiling faintly ; and then, 
 to the mixed assemblage of grooms, spectators, and 
 judges, "is the horse all right?" 
 
 Tybalt was, — absolutely uninjured, marvellously 
 enough, — and upon perceiving this, Harriet took the 
 reins from the panting animal's neck, and turning to 
 Verney said coolly, " Put me up." 
 
 "Put you up?" he repeated, staring. "Well, I 
 should say not ! Do you think I would let you ride 
 him again after a close call like that? " 
 
 " Certainly," she said. " I '11 have to try it again, 
 you know. " 
 
 " But you might have been killed ! " he expostulated. 
 
 She looked him straight in the eye. " You don't 
 want them all to think me a coward, do you ? You 'd 
 do it yourself in my place, you know you would." 
 
 She had appealed to the right chord in Verney, his 
 admiration for nerve, and he put her on her horse 
 
 [185] 
 
The Politician 
 
 again without another word. A burst of hand-clapping 
 as Harriet made ready for her last attempt to get over 
 the fourth jump showed that the spectators shared 
 Verney's admiration; and when the feat was finally 
 accomplished with great ease and in perfect form, the 
 applause and enthusiasm were unbounded. 
 
 That night at the dance which was given at the club- 
 house and for which many New York people, including 
 Mrs. Ordway and her guests, stayed over night, Har- 
 riet was the centre of attention. Her accident and 
 courage that afternoon had won her notice from every 
 one; and then, too, the news that she was an heiress 
 had spread about, and an heiress is an heiress, whether 
 she comes from Chicago or New York. 
 
 Verney from his place among the stags at one end 
 of the room noticed gloomily and with unjustifiable 
 irritation that she was in danger of being the most 
 popular girl in the room. It was very hard to see all 
 those Johnnies out on the floor falling all over each 
 other to get a dance, when he knew that he would have 
 had no difficulty at all in getting one if he had allowed 
 himself to ask. But he would n't. That was just the 
 point. For in order to prove to himself that he had 
 entirely and completely conquered the temptation to 
 try to get himself a rich wife, which had assailed him 
 the other afternoon in his office, he had set himself to 
 the task of not dancing with Harriet that evening. 
 But though he had succeeded so far in his deter- 
 mination that he had let half the evening go without 
 so much as speaking to her, he found that he was 
 
 [186] 
 
The World May End 
 
 quite unable to dance with any one else. Even the 
 fascinating Mrs. Gibbs failed to move him from his 
 place in a group of men where he stood with folded 
 arms and set lips, staring morosely out over the whirl- 
 ing ballroom in a vain attempt not to see the wistful 
 glances which Harriet, ignorant of the reason for such 
 conduct and expecting much after the feeling he had 
 displayed at the time of the accident, sent him from 
 time to time over the heads of a ring of admirers. 
 
 Cora Gibbs began by ridiculing him and ended with 
 blandishment; but Achilles steadfastly refused to stop 
 sulking and dance with her, and she eventually went 
 away in a rage on the arm of a delighted partner. 
 Verney's misery at last became so apparent that it 
 attracted the attention of one Billy Vandewater, a man 
 of good family, bad reputation, and attractive per- 
 sonality. 
 
 " Why weep ye by the tide, laddie ; why weep ye by 
 the tide ? " he carolled sympathetically, strolling up to 
 where Verney stood. 
 
 " Not dancing to-night," Ellis replied shortly. 
 
 " No ? " said Vandewater. " Anything the matter 
 with your legs, or is n't She here ? " 
 
 " Wrong again," said Verney ferociously (he was 
 just waiting for some one upon whom to avenge his 
 quarrel with fate, and Vandewater, although he knew 
 him very well, had been almost impertinent) ; " I 'm not 
 dancing because I thought you would be and I could 
 then avoid talking to you." 
 
 The other stared a little, surprised by such warmth, 
 [187] 
 
The Politician 
 
 and then remarked coldly, " Nice little temper you 've 
 got, Ellis. But I won't trouble you any longer with 
 my presence if you '11 present me to that Miss Rand 
 from Chicago they 're all making such a fuss about. 
 I saw you talking to her this afternoon at the show 
 when she was thrown." 
 
 " You want to meet her ? " asked the Politician, his 
 eye side-wise as if he were considering the proposition 
 favorably. 
 
 " That 's about the size of it," assented Vandewater 
 expectantly. 
 
 " Well, you can't ! " announced Verney violently ; " I 
 won't present you or anybody like you ! Ahoy there ! 
 Gladys ! " he added, addressing Miss Leverich, who hap- 
 pened along at this moment with a stout, bald-headed 
 man in tow. 
 
 Gladly the young girl came to a halt. Vernor Ellis 
 was an ideal of hers, and she had been promenading 
 on one excuse or another between every dance directly 
 in front of him all the evening in the hope of realizing 
 a dance with him. 
 
 " Where did you come from? " she asked, as if she 
 had only just seen him. 
 
 " I 've been waiting for a dance with you," said 
 Verney. " May I have the next? " 
 
 " But it 's mine," interposed the bald-headed one : 
 " we were only waiting for the music to start." 
 
 " So was I," said Verney, placing a tentative arm 
 about Miss Leverich's waist as he saw that the musicians 
 were about to begin to play, and before her rightful 
 
 [188] 
 
The World May End 
 
 partner could interfere, he had glided away with his 
 prize to the strains of a waltz. 
 
 " Upon my word," said Bald-head, goggling after 
 them, " if Ellis has n't got his nerve ! " 
 
 Gladys Leverich, little curly-headed thing with 
 pointed chin perpetually in motion and large and 
 lambent eyes, exerted all her powers to entertain her 
 partner, whose piratical method of obtaining the dance 
 was just to her taste, and more or less succeeded. After 
 all, Verney thought, it would n't do to mope with the 
 men all evening. He must dance and have the appear- 
 ance of enjoying himself or his abstinence might be 
 attributed by Harriet to its true cause. 
 
 " I can always tell a debutante from a girl who 
 has been out a year or two," he said to Miss Leverich. 
 "Can't you?" 
 
 " Why ? " asked Gladys, giggling expectantly. 
 
 " By the way they treat their partners at a cotillion. 
 A debutante never wastes time talking to the partner 
 she 's with, but spends it gazing out over the sea of 
 dancers, Penelope-wise, in quest of Ulysses with a favor, 
 perched on the edge of her chair already to spring. 
 Men as individuals don't interest her, only collectively, 
 as a means of proving to the other debutantes how 
 popular she is." 
 
 Miss Leverich laughed. " And the girls who have 
 been out a season? " 
 
 " Ah, they 're different 1 They 've got some sense ! 
 That 's why I 'd rather dance with them [this was 
 Glady's second year], they know their business bet- 
 
 [189] 
 
The Politician 
 
 ter, stick to the bird in the hand, you know, and devote 
 every energy to making him think he 's the one and 
 only real thing." 
 
 " But what good does it do her? What is the 
 result?" 
 
 " The result, dear child," said Verney, looking down 
 at her as they danced, with his wisest, most elder- 
 brotherly look, " is that her partner comes back for 
 another dance and the debutante's partner does n't." 
 
 " Will you, do you suppose ? " asked Miss Leverich 
 pointedly. Verney said he would, — and did. Several 
 times. Dancing after that, first with his sister, and 
 then with a covey of the debutantes whose methods he 
 had just been deriding; his sparkling eye, quick smile 
 and the spots of color on his cheek bones lending his 
 assumed gayety such an appearance of reality that Har- 
 riet, when her partners gave her time to think of any- 
 thing else, observed it with amazement not unmingled 
 with reproach. 
 
 How could he have such a good time without once 
 dancing with her? Had she mistaken his interest in 
 her, then? It was inexplicable. 
 
 Ellis having run off a string of three or four buds 
 in succession, had asked a young matron whom he 
 had only just met, to dance, — when he caught sight 
 of Harriet dancing for the second time with Billy 
 Vandewater, who had managed to get introduced with- 
 out Verney's help. The sight put the finishing touch 
 to his ill-humor, occasioned by his resolve not to dance 
 with her himself, and his chafing spirit broke its bonds 
 
 [190] 
 
The World May End 
 
 at last. With manifest confusion but great firmness 
 nevertheless, he excused himself from dancing with the 
 young matron on the ground that he was suddenly 
 feeling very ill, and murmuring something about " hop- 
 ing for another chance," left her and sped over toward 
 Harriet. 
 
 The girl had stopped dancing and she and Vande- 
 water were standing by a frappe table when Verney 
 came up. She looked very lovely in her gleaming gown 
 with pearls on her throat. The enviable distinction pos- 
 sessed by one girl in ten of looking as well at the end of 
 a dance as at the beginning was hers, and not so much 
 as a lock of her beautiful dark hair, which stood out 
 at the back of her head in a great knot high enough 
 to reveal her neck in all its young charm, was dis- 
 arranged. 
 
 " When are you going to dance with me? " said 
 Verney, to whom her loveliness was revealed as if for 
 the first time. " I 've been waiting for a chance to ask 
 you all the evening." He realized suddenly with what 
 intensity he had been longing for the privilege he had 
 thought to deny himself. "When may I have one?" 
 
 Harriet hesitated. She knew that was n't strictly 
 true and that Verney had wilfully neglected her up 
 to that moment, no matter what had changed his mind 
 now, and she was n't sure she felt like forgiving him so 
 easily as that. He had been very unkind. 
 
 "I hope soon," she said, looking at her fan. 
 
 Vandewater sensed the snub implied by her refusal 
 to name any particular dance for the one she was to 
 
 [191] 
 
The Politician 
 
 have with Verney, though it was ever so slight, — and 
 smiled triumphantly. 
 
 " Not this one at any rate," he asserted with delib- 
 erate swagger ; " I 'm dancing this one with Miss Rand." 
 
 The red-veined eyes of incontinence and the clear 
 high gaze of integrity met, and with the meeting a 
 spark seemed to fly as if for proof of contact. 
 
 " You 're mistaken," said Ellis ; " this happens to be 
 the very dance I had planned to have with Miss Rand." 
 
 " I said it was mine," returned the other, scowling 
 dreadfully while the color began to creep up into his 
 dark face. 
 
 " No, you 've been fortunate enough to dance twice 
 with her already, — that 's enough for you." 
 
 " Miss Rand thought not," replied Vandewater, still 
 polite, though he trembled with rage ; " she promised 
 me this dance, too. Did you not?" He turned to 
 Harriet as he spoke. 
 
 The bewildered and very much dismayed bone of con- 
 tention cast the two young men a troubled, appealing 
 look as they stood glaring at each other like two young 
 game cocks picking a fight; that most ancient of all 
 instincts in the male human being, the instinct to quar- 
 rel for the possession of a woman, fully aroused in 
 them both. 
 
 " I think I won't dance this dance at all," she said 
 at last; " it 's nearly over now (the music for the dance 
 had indeed begun long ago), so I can't very well give 
 it away. Let's just stay here and talk, it's so much 
 cooler ! " and she smiled diplomatically over her fan 
 
 [192] 
 
The World May End 
 
 first at one heated young man and then at the other. 
 It has been recorded that she was a clever girl. 
 
 Nevertheless both cave-men were disappointed in her 
 decision, for each had expected to triumph over the 
 other — to crush, metaphorically speaking, the other's 
 skull with his wooden club and bear the woman off as 
 his prize, — and here was the woman herself, who was n't 
 supposed to take part in the conflict, jumping in and 
 settling the thing peaceable-like and calling it a draw. 
 How uninteresting and civilized! Yet Verney, because 
 his wit was superior to the other's, managed to lend 
 to this unsatisfactory outcome of his and Vandewater's 
 measuring of clubs, the appearance of victory for him- 
 self by turning to Harriet the minute she had made 
 her impartial pronouncement on the subject, and ask- 
 ing her for the next dance, which Harriet without 
 attempting to disguise her pleasure in the request, im- 
 mediately accorded him. Whereupon Vandewater having 
 sense enough to perceive that he had been out-generaled, 
 bowed in acknowledgment of his rival's successful coup 
 and left them, muttering something about a partner 
 he had forgotten. 
 
 And then they began to dance, Ellis and Miss Rand. 
 Lightly and gracefully he guided, gracefully and 
 lightly she followed, and quick-beating hearts, shining 
 eyes, and deepening color testified to their delight in 
 their mutual accord. They did n't have to say any- 
 thing, their nearness was enough. Through the glass 
 doors of the ballroom blew in the sweet autumn air 
 from the Jersey Hills, and a line or two from a favorite 
 13 [ 193 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 poem of his ran persistently in Verney's head as he 
 danced, because, he supposed, of its appropriateness to 
 his mood and to his feeling that in dancing with Har- 
 riet he was doing something he very much liked to do 
 for the last time, and the very sweetness of the moment 
 convinced him that it was for the last time. 
 
 " One more night am I deified ; who knows but the 
 world may end to-night? " it went repeating itself over 
 and over in his brain. Yet, though he would never 
 again so indulge himself, he was conscious that it was 
 wrong to indulge himself at all. Where was his deter- 
 mination to fight his base temptation to pay any atten- 
 tion to this rich girl in the hope of extricating himself 
 from his difficulties by means of her wealth? Where 
 was the remorse he felt when it so nearly mastered 
 him on another occasion ? Something, some other power 
 he was not acquainted with, seemed determined to make 
 him play the part of a cad against his will. Else 
 surely with every atom of right feeling within him 
 protesting, with every dictate of conscience against it, 
 he would not now be dancing with her. 
 
 Quite unconscious of the troubled thought that filled 
 her partner's brain, Harriet, on the other hand, was 
 thinking only as her step answered the entrancing call of 
 the waltz music in perfect accord with his, and she felt 
 the firm, delicate pressure of his arm about her, that 
 a perfect moment had been given her; that in spite 
 of his strange conduct earlier in the evening, her friend 
 after all had wished to dance with her, and in that 
 thought she was happy. What did it matter then what 
 
 [194] 
 
The World May End 
 
 her feeling for him was called, whether love or friend- 
 ship ? 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs, as she watched them from a doorway, 
 all unobserved by the oblivious pair, remembering what 
 it was like to waltz with Verney, and that he had refused 
 to dance with her that evening, clenched her hands in 
 jealous rage, and hurriedly left the ballroom. 
 
 " One more night am I deified," sang Ellis's heart, 
 as he danced with the keen joy of one who does con- 
 sciously something he knows to be wrong just because 
 he wants to do it ; " who knows but the world may end 
 to-night?" 
 
 [195] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 VERNEY TAKES THE VEIL 
 
 ALL the way down to New York on the train 
 Verney reproached himself for dancing with 
 Harriet when he had made up his mind not 
 to do so. He had left the ballroom immediately after 
 that one forbidden waltz with her, and with a hurried 
 word about having to get back to town that night for 
 explanation of his abrupt departure, had fled for the 
 station and caught the last train down. As a matter of 
 fact, however, he had intended to stay over Sunday with 
 the rest of them; but with the ceasing of the music to 
 which he and Miss Rand had been dancing, he was 
 overwhelmed with remorse and shame to think that he 
 had broken his resolution so easily ; and in mortal fear 
 that he was on the point of yielding again to the temp- 
 tation of paying court to the heiress in earnest, he had 
 prudently, like the warriors in Caesar's Commentaries, 
 " sought safety in flight." 
 
 For that day had made it clear to him that the 
 nature of his temptation lay not alone in Harriet's mil- 
 lions, and that the necessity for giving up her society 
 in the future was very real. First, by means of the 
 accident at the horse-show and his own surprising mani- 
 
 [196] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 festation of emotion on that occasion, and second, by 
 means of his little brush with Vandewater, which had 
 proved to him that he was capable of feeling jealousy 
 where she was concerned, he had discovered that it was 
 by no means out of the question for him to fall in love 
 with Miss Rand. 
 
 This possibility rendered the situation more difficult 
 in his eyes because it made the danger of his eventually 
 asking her to marry him much more serious, and he 
 emphatically did not wish to marry. Of that he was 
 as certain, now that he had come to his right mind in 
 regard to that base idea of his that he would marry 
 for noney (which was in his opinion the sole practical 
 reason for marrying at all), as that he did not wish 
 to give up politics, and his belief that he could not 
 do both was deep-rooted. 
 
 " You 're a fine fellow, Verney," he said to himself 
 in disgust, as he settled down in the smoking-car too 
 absorbed in abusing himself for having failed so 
 signally to stick by his principles, even to light a cigar. 
 " What on earth are you about, anyway ? What kind 
 of blackguard are you? The sort that marries a rich 
 girl and spends her money trying to see how high he 
 can climb on the political ladder, and neglects her in 
 the process ? Answer, ' No.' Well, then, have n't you 
 strength of mind enough to give up seeing her before 
 things go any further? Well, I should hope so ! Then 
 stop dancing with her and talking with her and going 
 to see her all the time! Stop behaving like a weak- 
 
 [197] 
 
The Politician 
 
 minded child and make up your mind like a man, and 
 when it 's made up, stick to it ! " 
 
 But as he sat frowning in the stuffy car, his arms 
 folded, his teeth catching his lower lip, he realized 
 miserably, with an infinite self-pity, that he had made 
 up his mind, that that was why he had left the dance, 
 why he did not stay in the country with the rest, why 
 he was sitting there in the almost empty car at that 
 late hour, speeding back to New York, the only man 
 in the whole world who was not privileged to stay and 
 dance with Harriet. 
 
 He found his father up, when he reached the house 
 in Twelfth Street and let himself in with his latchkey. 
 Mr. Ellis was also alone, for Mrs. Ellis had, gone out 
 to Ardsley-on-the-Hudson to spend Sunday with one of 
 her married daughters. 
 
 " Is that you, Vernor? " he enquired from the top of 
 the stairs. 
 
 Verney said it was, and bounded upstairs three at a 
 time. 
 
 " Anything the matter? " he asked anxiously. 
 "Couldn't you sleep?" His father was in bedroom 
 gown and slippers. 
 
 " Oh, I 've slept a little," replied the older man ;. " but 
 I heard you come in and thought if we talked a little 
 while it would do me good. I feel so restless, and I 
 have a little pain." 
 
 " It 's cold in here," said Verney, following him down 
 the hall to a spacious bedroom at the back of the house 
 which Mr. Ellis occupied now because it was so much 
 
 [198] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 quieter, and perceiving that the fire on the hearth had 
 nearly burned out. " It 's a cold night, if it is only 
 September," he said, and laying aside his coat set him- 
 self to the task of coaxing up the fire. He had a big 
 blaze in a minute. "How is that, sir?" he asked, 
 springing up. " And now, where 's the whiskey ? " 
 
 Mr. Ellis smiled. " You know I don't take it any 
 more, son. The doctors say it 's bad for me." But 
 he eyed the glasses and decanter Verney had taken from 
 a little cupboard in the dressing-room, wistfully. 
 
 " Oh, damn the doctor ! " said Ellis cheerfully. " A 
 little won't hurt you ; it 's taking it all the while that 
 hurts. Here 's how ! " And he handed his father one 
 glass, touching its rim as he did so with his own. 
 
 Mr. Ellis hesitated. 
 
 " Pitch in ! " commanded his son. " It will do you 
 good. It 's my opinion you gave it all up too sud- 
 denly, father. That 's a good enough reason for mak- 
 ing a man feel sick ! " 
 
 His father smiled and did not gainsay him, but 
 Verney feared, and he knew, that there was deeper and 
 more serious cause for his ill health than that. Only 
 a month or two ago the doctor had told the old man 
 that while he might live many years, he would have to 
 fight continually an organic disease which must in the 
 end conquer him, since medical science had failed to 
 discover a complete cure for it. But because he was 
 a man of great character, of tender, loving heart and 
 superb courage, Mr. Ellis had not permitted the doctor 
 to tell his wife or children. As long as the disease per- 
 
 [199] 
 
The Politician 
 
 mitted him, as it now did and would be likely to do until 
 the very end, to go daily to his office and to keep his feet, 
 he intended to preserve his secret. That his health was 
 not good his family could not help being aware of; 
 but the grief and anxiety which knowledge of the name 
 of his destroyer would have brought them they should 
 never have, he had resolved, if it was in his power to 
 prevent it. In comparison to saving them that, the 
 loneliness and sadness of keeping the knowledge to him- 
 self, of depriving himself of the sympathy of his 
 loved ones, counted for nothing. 
 
 " Here 's to celibacy, the most desirable of all states ! " 
 said Verney, filling his glass again and drinking it down 
 with a kind of reckless gayety. " What ! Not an- 
 other? " to his father, as Mr. Ellis rejected his offer 
 to fill his glass. 
 
 " No, my boy," said the older man ; " one 's enough. 
 I took that only to oblige you." 
 
 Verney laughed. " Was it the toast you did n't 
 like?" he said. "But I couldn't expect you to drink 
 that. It would be like asking you to wish I were n't 
 here. And of course I don't mean that ! It 's such a 
 lot of fun to be here ! " he added, with a laugh that 
 did n't sound as if he quite meant what he said. " I 
 don't know that I 've ever thanked you enough for that." 
 
 His father looked quickly up at his son standing in 
 his shirt sleeves, glass in one hand, decanter in the other, 
 his face flushed, his eyes brilliant. He did n't know him 
 so very well, he and Verney really saw so little of each 
 other; he was in better touch, perhaps, with Clinton, 
 
 [200] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 his oldest son, who was a partner in the law firm of 
 Ellis & Ellis; but he was exceedingly fond of Verney 
 just the same, and secretly very proud of the boy's 
 success in politics. He had a vague suspicion now that 
 Verney for some reason was unhappy that evening ; but 
 the animation and vim with which his son went on to 
 give him an account of the day's doings at the horse-show 
 and the dance banished it at once. 
 
 " Then you had a good time ? " he said satisfiedly. 
 
 " Wonderful ! " replied Verney, " never had a better ! " 
 
 Mr. Ellis leaned back in his chair and sighed con- 
 tentedly. " And the Baby? " he said. " Did she have 
 a good time too? " 
 
 " Best ever ! " said Verney from the hearth-rug, where 
 he was sitting cross-legged, and proceeded to give a 
 glowing, highly colored account of Carol's popularity 
 at the ball to her doting father, old Mr. Ellis nodding 
 his head and smiling delightedly the while. 
 
 It was almost as good as having them with him, his 
 wife and daughter, to hear about their good times. Now 
 that the doctors had told him the nature of his illness, 
 the greatest pleasure he had was to have them with him, 
 except the thought that they were away enjoying them- 
 selves. His being lonely did n't count beside that. 
 And that was the pathos, the injustice, of his keeping 
 his secret to himself. If they had known, his wife and 
 the daughter who was still at home, who loved him as 
 dearly as he loved them, they would never have left him 
 alone a moment. 
 
 *' I wish Carol had come back with me ; I wish mother 
 [201] 
 
The Politician 
 
 were n't away too," said Vernej, prompted by a sudden 
 acute perception, inspired by his own wretchedness, of 
 his father's feeling of loneliness. 
 
 " Oh, no ! I 'd much rather have Carol stay and have 
 a good time ; and as for your mother, she 's been 
 promising Winifred to go out there over Sunday for the 
 last month or so," replied his father, smiling cheerfully. 
 " And I 'm not deserted, you know, when I have you. 
 It 's a long time since we had a talk." 
 
 Verney admitted with compunction that it was, and 
 reaching up, put his hand over his father's where it lay 
 on the arm of his chair. 
 
 " How 's politics ? " asked Mr. Ellis, with a pleased 
 smile, knowing that no other subject of conversation 
 was so dear to his son's heart. 
 
 Verney's face clouded. 
 
 " I 've been thinking of giving up the leadership of 
 my District," he said ; " my financial affairs are in such 
 an awful way, I 'm afraid I can't afford to be leader 
 any longer — it takes so much time from the office." 
 
 " My poor boy," said his father commiseratingly ; 
 " that 's hard, I know, and I sympathize with you while 
 I 'm obliged to say that I think it 's the only right thing 
 for you to do." 
 
 " I expected you would feel that way about it," re- 
 turned Verney. " You always have felt that way about 
 my being in politics." 
 
 " And you know why — because I want to see you 
 settled in life, enjoying an assured income, before I 
 die. Not that I don't expect to be with you a long 
 
 [202] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 time yet," he added, hastily, as Verney looked up, " only 
 it 's natural, you know, for a father to feel that way. 
 If you had children yourself you 'd understand." Ver- 
 ney moved uneasily. 
 
 " You know I have n't any money to give you, 
 Verney," Mr. Ellis continued. " I 've met with great 
 reverses this last year or so and have been unfortunate 
 in getting rid of some of my property." He stopped 
 and sighed. 
 
 " I know, sir," said the younger man, with feeling. 
 " But don't let it worry you on my account." 
 
 " I don't want it to," said his father ; " that 's why 
 I 'm so urgent that you should give up politics and 
 stick to the law. I '11 always have enough to leave your 
 mother and the Baby plenty when I die, and your other 
 sisters are married. As for your brothers, why, they 're 
 well placed. Clinton will inherit the business of Ellis 
 & Ellis, and Benjamin, though he 's not rich, has at 
 least a settled salary he can depend upon. So you see 
 it 's on my youngest son's account that I most regret 
 that I have so little to leave my children when I die." 
 
 " Don't talk of dying," said his son, who would have 
 taken his father's words more to heart if he had only 
 known what the doctors had known a long time, and 
 what Mr. Ellis knew now. " I tell you you need n't 
 bother about me! I can take care of myself." 
 
 " You can if you will, — if you will stick to your 
 practice. You 've made a splendid start, you know, and 
 you 're a brilliant man, Vernor. I wish you would. 
 There's no future in politics, believe me. No reward 
 
 [203] 
 
The Politician 
 
 that is a jiist equivalent for the time spent in that sort 
 of work, no money to be made out of it. At least by 
 a man of honor, as I know my son is. Your leadership 
 of the District, for instance, what practical substantial 
 return has it ever offered you that pays you in actual 
 cash — which you need in order to live properly — for 
 devoting your time to it rather than to your law 
 business? " 
 
 " I can't give it up, though, father," replied Verney, 
 wilfully avoiding the issue and speaking in low, de- 
 termined tones. 
 
 Mr. Ellis looked at the bowed head pityingly. " It 's 
 hard, I know, — it 's hard to ask it of you, especially 
 when I know your ambitions are such disinterested ones ; 
 when I know you 're the kind of politician the country 
 is n't ashamed of and would delight to honor ; but I 'm 
 your father and I have to have your material welfare 
 at heart. To me that must come first." 
 
 " I 'd rather starve than back out now, — they need 
 me ! " said the young man passionately. 
 
 " Pooh ! Pooh ! " said Mr. Ellis, forcing himself to 
 disregard that passion, not to look at the knuckles of 
 his son's clinched hands. " Of course they do in a way, 
 but they could easily enough find some one to fill your 
 place ! There 's nothing in the world so cruel, so cal- 
 lous, as the political machine. The wheels must go 
 around, no matter whose blood oils them. The harder 
 a man works, the harder he is worked. And that 's 
 my son all over. You would cheerfully work your- 
 self to death in the interests of the Republican party 
 
 [204] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 and the party would cheerfully let you — but that 's 
 all the good it would do you. You know yourself how 
 you slave over your District, yet what reward have you 
 ever had? " 
 
 " I don't want any reward. I only don't want to 
 leave them in the lurch." 
 
 " Nonsense. Just as if they could n't get some one 
 else to do your work." 
 
 " I don't want any one else to do my work." 
 
 Mr. Ellis gave it up. " My poor boy," he said, 
 " I wish I could persuade you. You have character 
 enough to do it, I know. At least you were able to re- 
 fuse that chance to be a judge you had last year." 
 
 " Yes," said Verney harshly, " I was. I did that 
 for the sake of making money, because I knew I could 
 make a few more miserable dollars at the law, and I 
 refused to go back to Albany for the same contemptible 
 reason. And that 's enough ! I won't give up the 
 leadership ! the work I love ! Holding office does n't 
 begin to compare, anyway, with the joy of working 
 for one's District, of feeling yourself a part, no matter 
 if it 's only a little insignificant unit, of a great 
 organization like the Republican party, and of seeing 
 that your part is in good order, that the rivet you 're 
 responsible for is in place ! " He rose in his agitation 
 and walked the floor excitedly. 
 
 Mr. Ellis's eyes filled with tears. " I 'm sorry," he 
 said, " not to appear to sympathize with you when you 
 feel so strongly. Perhaps I 'm not a very good father 
 to you to advise you to give up what you care so much 
 
 [205] 
 
The Politician 
 
 about, but that 's the best advice I know how to give." 
 
 Vernej was deeply moved, his father's tears stirred 
 his filial tenderness to its depths. 
 
 " You are ! " he cried, flinging himself down at his 
 father's feet and putting his hand on his knee ; " you 're 
 the very best father a boy could have ! And if I — if I 
 — ever have a son — " He hesitated and stopped. 
 
 " Yes ? " said his father wonderingly. 
 
 " I '11 try to be just the kind of father to him you 've 
 been to me," finished Verney courageously, though for 
 all his courage he could n't quite keep the huskiness 
 out of his voice. 
 
 His father patted his head. " Come, we must go 
 to bed now," he said. " I feel much better for this 
 little visit with you." And Verney saw with pleasure 
 that Mr. Ellis's color was much better and his voice 
 firmer. 
 
 The young man sprang to his feet. " Oh, do you 
 sir?" he said. "Here, let me help you!" And he 
 proceeded carefully and solemnly to assist Mr. Ellis 
 to bed, fussing over him as if he had been a child. 
 First the fire had to be fixed for the night, then a glass 
 of water brought, then the light adjusted, Verney 
 talking lightly and cheerfully all the time he was per- 
 forming these services about the prospect he had of 
 receiving the nomination for Attorney-general if Ord- 
 way were named for Governor. This bit of news 
 pleased and comforted Mr. Ellis greatly. The salary 
 was considerable, and it meant that his son would have 
 
 [206] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 a fixed sum to depend upon for four years at least, if 
 he were elected. 
 
 " Well, if you will go in for that kind of life, I sup- 
 pose an Attorney-generalship would make it really pos- 
 sible. And of course the office would help your general 
 practice of law." 
 
 " It would make everything right for me," replied 
 Verney. " The salary 's about eight thousand a year, 
 I believe, and with that amount assured, I don't think 
 I 'd have to give up my District after all, at least not 
 for four years." 
 
 " Perhaps, but oh, my son ! If I only had the money 
 I once had it would be so different for you ! You could 
 climb as high as you like ! " 
 
 " Oh, I '11 get high enough ! Don't you care, father. 
 How's this light?" 
 
 " Just right, thank you. I think I shall sleep now," 
 returned his father from the bed. 
 
 " Then good-night," said Verney. 
 
 " Good-night," said Mr. Ellis, and then, just as the 
 young man was closing the door, " Oh, Verney ! " 
 
 Verney in reply, hand on door-knob, patiently: 
 " Yes, sir? " 
 
 Mr. Ellis, irrelevantly : " What was that toast you 
 gave when we were having our whiskey ? " 
 
 " What toast? Oh," with sudden recollection, " you 
 mean ' to celibacy ' ? " 
 
 " Yes, what made you say that ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," with a forced laugh. " Only 
 [207] 
 
The Politician 
 
 that I 'm too busy to marry, I guess. You know I *ve 
 always said that if I ever married I 'd have to hire some- 
 body to live with my wife I" 
 
 The old man smiled at this cynicism. Nevertheless 
 his voice was earnest when he said : " But I don't like 
 you to say that. You should marry, you know ; it 's 
 only right and natural. I want you to have a home 
 of your own and a wife and family, Verney, some day ; 
 and I hope you will." 
 
 Verney swallowed very hard. " I hope so, sir," he 
 said, recognizing for the first time in its poignancy 
 that he had cherished a hope of this kind subconsciously 
 ever since he had become a grown man, and that with- 
 out it he was going to be very lonely. 
 
 " Good-night, father," he said gently and without 
 a trace of this feeling in his voice. 
 
 Outside in the dark hall he stood perfectly still while 
 the hardship of the thing he had made up his mind to do 
 slowly and clearly revealed itself to him. It had been 
 difficult for him to grasp in the abstract the magnitude 
 of the sacrifice he was contemplating in resigning his 
 hope of married happiness, but now that Harriet Rand 
 had provided him with a concrete example of what it 
 might mean to give it up, understanding had come to> 
 him with the force of a blow. And with his enlighten- 
 ment a kind of rage possessed him, a feeling that he* 
 was meant to be happy as well as successful, and thai! 
 fate had no right to ask of him that he should chooser 
 between one and the other, and forbid that he should be: 
 both. 
 
 [208] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 " I won't stand it ! " he said to himself in a spirit of 
 revolt, and running rapidly downstairs. " I won't let 
 it bother me any longer. Not to-day at least. I 've 
 had enough for one day ! Let 's see, it 's only one 
 o'clock. I '11 get some men in and have an old-fashioned 
 party ! " He threw back his head, standing all alone 
 in the lower hall and laughed, his eyes began to sparkle 
 and a feverish color rose to his cheek bones. 
 
 He ran to the butler's room at the back of the house 
 and beat on the door. " Wilson ! " he called, " get 
 up ! There 's going to be a party ! " Hardly waiting 
 for the man's sleepy " All right, sir," he tore to the 
 telephone and called up a number of choice spirits, 
 trusty night-owls that he knew he could count on find- 
 ing alive and awake at that hour. Tommy Beekman 
 he found, as he knew he should, at Brooke's playing 
 bridge, Harold Alden at the Yale Club, and with Robin 
 Hill, who lived next door, and three of the Scott 
 brothers from Eighteenth Street, he had what he called 
 a " full house." 
 
 None of them seemed at all surprised at Ellis's rather 
 unusual summons. Verney was celebrating, was he? 
 That was all right. Would they come and help? 
 Watch them. And come they did, arriving by motor 
 and on foot one after another, just as Verney and the 
 faithful Wilson had finished setting out the things to 
 drink and smoke which formed the leading features of 
 the impromptu entertainment, a huge silver punch bowl 
 figuring most prominently. 
 
 " Well, well ! And well again," said Tommy Beek- 
 14 £ 209 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 man, who was the last to arrive. " What is little Verney 
 up to now? " 
 
 " He 's celebrating, he says," answered Carrington 
 Scott, youngest of the three Scott brothers present, 
 " but he won't tell us what about." 
 
 " Ah, Tommy ! " said Ellis, " I 've been waiting for 
 you. Good man to come ! " And he pushed the silver 
 punch-bowl and several specimen ingredients for the 
 mixture toward Beekman, who could mix a punch that 
 the most expert denizen of the region behind the bar 
 could not hope to emulate. 
 
 " Make a drink ! " comma Jei Verney, leaning toward 
 his friend and laughing ; " make it sky-high and sky 
 blue! Make it strong enough to kill care! Make it 
 deep enough to drown sorrow! Make it as sweet as 
 the kiss that hopeless fancy paints on lips that are for 
 others! Make it as cool as Heaven, as hot as hell- 
 fire! Make its blend the essence of flowers and so far 
 from the taste of tears that grief shall be a stranger 
 when we drink it! Make it — " He stopped, and the 
 men around the table, who had been staring at him in 
 fascinated admiration caught the infection of his 
 riotous gayety, artificial though it was, and with one 
 accord broke into applause. 
 
 " Go on," they entreated ; " go on ! " 
 
 " Make it, — " began Ellis again, then he sat down 
 suddenly, smiling confidentially at Beekman. " Make 
 it anything you like, Tommy, old boy," he said, " so 
 long as you make enough of it ! " 
 
 [210] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 Which, as a closing sentiment, was loudly approved 
 by all. 
 
 The punch completed, Verney was on his feet again 
 proposing a toast. " To celibacy, most desirable of all 
 states ! " he said. 
 
 The half -raised glasses of the other men came to a 
 halt. 
 
 " Oh, come ! " they said. " Can't you think of some- 
 thing more cheerful than that ? For a toast ? " 
 
 " No," said Verney ; " it 's my party, and every man 
 must do as I say, so hurry up and drink it ! " 
 
 His domineering eye won the day and his guests 
 drank obediently. All, that is, except Larry Scott, the 
 eldest of the six brothers, who was present and who 
 happened to be engaged. 
 
 " I can't drink it," he protested ; " I 'm going to be 
 married." 
 
 " Can't be helped," said Verney ; " every one must 
 drink it, so down you go ! " He seized Scott by the 
 shoulder and pinned him firmly to his chair. 
 
 " It is n't polite to your host not to. Besides, we 
 did ! " cried the others, and with firm hands forced that 
 part of the obnoxious draught which did not seek Larry 
 Scott's shirt front down his unwilling throat. 
 
 The party was on. 
 
 At three in the morning Verney's old nurse " Nanna " 
 came downstairs and knocked at the dining-room door. 
 
 "Mr. Verney!" she called; "Mr. Verney!" But 
 nobody heard her. The revellers on the other side of 
 
 [an] 
 
The Politician 
 
 the door had by that time reached that most pleasing 
 stage of their revel when everything they said was 
 funny, when roars of laughter greeted every remark, 
 even if it was only " You 're another," or " Please pass 
 the punch," and were too busy hurling these and similar 
 witticisms at each other to notice the knock. 
 
 Nothing daunted, the old woman put her face down 
 close to the crack of the door. 
 
 " O Mr. Verney ! " she called ; "do come to bed ; it 's 
 three o'clock ! " 
 
 Anxiety for his health, which she knew late hours and 
 too much to drink invariably affected, was her only 
 motive in interfering; not at all a wish to rebuke him. 
 That kind of party was familiar to her, and she was 
 too used to it to be shocked now. Ellis heard her this 
 time and opened the door. His hair was slightly ruffled 
 and his eyes bright like sapphires and his color high. 
 Otherwise he presented his usual immaculate appearance 
 and his speech though careful and plentifully inter- 
 spersed with pauses, was clear. 
 
 " Evening, Nanna," he said ; " come in and have 
 something. Won't you ? " He motioned toward the 
 punch bowl. 
 
 " No, no ! " she said hurriedly ; " I don't want any. 
 I want you to come to bed, my lamb. You '11 kill 
 yourself if you keep it up much longer." 
 
 " Sorry, Nanna," replied her lamb, " but I can't do 
 it. I 'm taking the veil, you know, and these good 
 men," he waved grandiloquently toward his friends 
 around the table, " are helping me take it." 
 
 [212] 
 
Verney Takes the Veil 
 
 " Promise you '11 come in an hour," said the old 
 nurse, perceiving at once that he was n't to be moved, 
 and backing out of the room. 
 
 " All right. In an hour, if I 'm not dead then," he 
 agreed, bowing very low with his hand on his heart, 
 and adding as she closed the door, "Ave! moritwri te 
 salutant" 
 
 But it was two hours before the party broke up. 
 Verney's last conscious act when he finally reached his 
 bed that night was to turn his face away so that he 
 might not see the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, whose 
 sorrowful eyes kept reproaching him from the wall. 
 But he could not so easily escape his guilty conscience; 
 for in turning he found the sardonic eyes of the 
 Emperor Napoleon fixed upon him from the other wall, 
 the left one winking at him with mortifying intelligence. 
 
 [213] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE STRUGGLE AT SARATOGA 
 
 AS a natural result of Verney's resolution to 
 forswear every chance of furthering the 
 friendship between himself and Harriet, 
 she saw nothing at all of him for the next ten days or 
 so. They were pleasant ones, in a sense, because they 
 were spent in New York, her aunt having consented to 
 occupy her friends the Chittendens' house for them 
 while they took a two months' trip abroad, but she was 
 much troubled by this sudden defection on the part of 
 the Politician. She knew he had been very busy, for 
 the State Convention that was to nominate the Repub- 
 lican candidate for Governor, not to mention the can- 
 didate for Attorney-general and other important offices, 
 met in less than a week, on September 14; but she 
 could n't quite see why he had n't time to run in for 
 a minute or even to telephone ! Especially when he 
 knew how anxious she was to hear how things were 
 going, and what his and Ordway's chances of nomina- 
 tion were. 
 
 The thing that made his conduct more inexplicable 
 than ever was her remembrance of that dance they had 
 together at the time of the horse-show. Surely, she 
 thought, he was happy then as well as she; indeed it 
 was her increased confidence in his friendship for her 
 
 [214] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 dating from that dance, that had led her to anticipate 
 more than usual proof of it from him upon her return 
 to New York. Perhaps she had offended him uncon- 
 sciously, and she spent much time in going over in her 
 mind every detail of that evening's events in an effort 
 to discover the cause, but without succeeding. Their 
 parting was abrupt, it was true, but then that was his 
 fault, and he said he had a train to catch. It was very 
 strange; she couldn't understand it a bit and spent so 
 much time trying to fathom the mystery that she be- 
 came very silent and developed a preoccupied, sober 
 manner that at last attracted her aunt's attention, so 
 that she asked her niece what was the matter. Worse 
 than that to the girl was Mrs. Cumloch's accusation, 
 when prolonged questioning did not serve to disclose 
 the cause of Harriet's low spirits, that she was in love. 
 
 Harriet recovered her usual fire in a flash and denied 
 it with scorn, especially when her aunt dared to name 
 Verney Ellis as the supposed object of her affections. 
 
 " Can't a girl be friends with a man, be interested in 
 his career when she has n't anything interesting to do 
 herself, no object in life except to travel around, and 
 spend money on herself, without every one thinking she 's 
 in love? " she demanded indignantly. 
 
 " Oh, it does n't matter what you call it I " her aunt 
 replied shrewdly, and the implication brought a resent- 
 ful color to Harriet's face. She spoke calmly, how- 
 ever, which did credit to her self-control, believing as 
 she did that Mrs. Cumloch's charge was unfounded. 
 
 M Nevertheless, Aunt Lydia," she said, " you are mis- 
 [215] 
 
The Politician 
 
 taken. Nothing is farther from my mind than being in 
 love with any one." 
 
 This irritated Mrs. Cumloch, whose disappointment 
 over Harriet's refusal of George Benton lay very near 
 the surface. 
 
 " I know you think so," she said, " and until now 
 I have seen for myself that it was true. You have 
 never until just lately showed any signs that your heart 
 was capable of being touched, and that in spite of the 
 fact that you have had one of the most estimable young 
 men I know," — this bitterly — " in love with you." 
 
 "And what signs do I show now?" asked Harriet, 
 more curiously than defiantly; she was aware of her 
 aunt's pet grievance and made allowances for it. 
 
 The older woman stared at her a moment as if trying 
 to decide on the best definition of her meaning to give 
 her niece. " You 're more human," she said slowly ; 
 and then more positively, " yes, that 's it, more human." 
 
 The girl laughed. " I don't think I know exactly 
 what you mean, Aunt Lydia," she said. 
 
 " It 's difficult to explain, but I think that where you 
 previously put too much emphasis on the things in life 
 that have to do with the mind and the soul, and too 
 little on the things that have to do with the affections, 
 you now are finding out that it 's a fine thing to have 
 a heart, after all." 
 
 " But how do I show it, this humanizing process ? " 
 inquired Harriet, as interested in what her aunt was 
 saying as if it were said about some one she did not 
 know, instead of about herself. 
 
 [ 316 ] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 " By your anxiety to do things for people, for one 
 thing. I 've always known you were naturally kind 
 and impulsive, but I think you 've repressed it here- 
 tofore, and now you 're discovering that we need more 
 love in the world than education or religion, and that 
 the truest expression of love is service." 
 
 " Do you mean that I 've been ungenerous until now, 
 that I did n't do things for people ? " Her eyes were 
 very wide and almost dismayed. 
 
 " No, no ! my dear, not at all ! " her aunt hastened 
 to say, gathering her into a fond embrace ; " only that 
 previously you did things for people more with your 
 money — by paying other people to do things for them, 
 and now you do things with your hands, yourself. 
 Your donations to charity are very large and as gener- 
 ous as they can be, but you 've never felt the necessity 
 of giving your time to the poor as well, and I believe 
 you would now." 
 
 " But supposing it 's so, what does that prove ? " said 
 the girl. 
 
 " It proves to me that your outlook upon life has 
 changed. It used to be that of a child, and now it 's 
 a woman's. And I 've always known, Harriet, as long 
 as I 've known you, that it would take just that — your 
 falling in love — to develop you, to make a woman of 
 you." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but you must n't forget that I deny that 
 I am in love," said Harriet, but quite sweetly, the 
 harmony usual between aunt and niece having been re- 
 stored by that embrace. 
 
 [217] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Mrs. Cumloch rose and went to the desk in the room 
 in Mrs. Chittenden's house that she was occupying. 
 " Then why do you cover every scrap of paper in the 
 house with these? " she asked, with a kind of mischie- 
 vous triumph, and put in her niece's hand something she 
 had taken from the desk. It was a half-sheet of note 
 paper closely filled with very well executed profile and 
 full-face sketches in pen and ink of a young man with 
 hair brushed straight back from a lofty forehead, level 
 eyebrows, high cheek bones, and a wonderfully well-cut 
 mouth, under which was written " The Politician." 
 
 Harriet blushed as she looked and made no reply. 
 It is n't in either author or artist to deny his own work. 
 
 Miss Rand's only comfort during this trying period 
 of absolute silence on the part of Verney Ellis was 
 Mr. Vernor, who had been very kind and polite about 
 occasionally taking Mrs. Cumloch and her niece to the 
 theatre, and had formed the habit of calling at the house 
 in Forty-ninth Street. It was on his way to his own 
 apartment farther up town, and he often stopped on 
 his way home from the office to see if he could do any- 
 thing for his charming friends from Chicago. He was 
 an interesting man, Richmond Vernor, wonderfully 
 well informed, and better than that, endowed with an 
 amusing way of imparting his information to others ; 
 and he soon came to be a great favorite with Mrs. Cum- 
 loch. As for Harriet, she could have loved him for 
 one thing alone, because he brought her news of the 
 Politician. 
 
 [218] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 Mr. Vernor, who was not lacking in astuteness, had 
 perceived this, and made a point of telling her every- 
 thing he could about his nephew and his affairs. He 
 perceived also, and that not without wonder, for he 
 greatly admired Miss Rand and had had every reason 
 heretofore for believing that Verney did too, that her 
 eagerness to hear news of the young man was caused 
 by his continued non-appearance in Forty-ninth Street. 
 The fact that Verney was unusually occupied at this 
 time did not altogether explain matters to him any 
 more than it did to Harriet; for he knew that nothing 
 was ever too much for Ellis to accomplish, and that he 
 would have come if he had wished to come, no matter 
 what his other engagements. Impelled by his failure 
 to analyze the situation for himself, he had ventured 
 to interrogate Verney on the subject. 
 
 " Why don't you call on Miss Rand any more ? You 
 used to see so much of her," he said, " and she 's here 
 for such a short time." 
 
 " She 's going to be in New York several weeks yet," 
 his nephew replied in noncommittal tones, " and lately 
 I have been very busy." 
 
 This was a good reason in a way for his neglect, but 
 Mr. Vernor was assured it was not the true one. 
 
 " She 's a very beautiful girl and a very charming 
 one," he remarked tentatively. 
 
 " I know it," was the somewhat discouragingly short 
 answer. 
 
 " And what 's more," continued the self-appointed 
 [219] 
 
The Politician 
 
 inquisitor, undismayed, " if I 'm not mistaken, she 's 
 very fond of you." 
 
 Verney was on guard at once. He was afraid his 
 uncle was going to talk to him about his " responsi- 
 bility " just as Mrs. Gibbs had done, and it was going to 
 bore him to death as well as irritate him, because he did 
 not believe a word of it. So far he had only considered 
 the possibility of his falling in love with Harriet, and 
 that problem had been sufficiently complicated to pre- 
 vent him from thinking of the possibility of her falling 
 in love with him, even if his persistent refusal to admit 
 the existence of such a possibility had permitted him 
 to do so. 
 
 " You 're mistaken, Uncle Ritchie," he said, in meas- 
 ured, positive tones, " except as a friend she does n't 
 think anything of me one way or another." 
 
 Mr. Vernor said nothing to this, but got up and 
 walked about the table once or twice. They were din- 
 ing together in his apartment. 
 
 " Let me tell you something," he said, gently, 
 sitting down at last. " Do you know, I have a theory 
 — I 've had it a long time — that when a woman 's in 
 love it is made manifest by a sort of halo about her 
 head, which constitutes the phenomenon of love." 
 
 " Hum," said the younger man. 
 
 " And that the composition of this halo is the same 
 as the light that shines in her eyes, that shines and 
 shines with a radiance that I 'm sure can be reflected 
 only from the Throne. And it 's visible only to people 
 who are in love themselves." 
 
 [220] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 "Well?" said Verne y. It irritated him to have to 
 admit it, but somehow his uncle's theory interested him. 
 
 " I think Harriet Rand has that halo about her head," 
 said Mr. Vernor thoughtfully. 
 
 "Why do you think so?" 
 
 The older man looked carefully at the cigarette he 
 was rolling; it was an operation he was fond of and in 
 which he was expert, and he waited until he had finished 
 sealing the white lip of the little square of tobacco- 
 filled paper before he spoke. " I 've seen it." 
 
 " But I thought you said only those who — " began 
 Verney. 
 
 " I know," returned the other, " only those who are 
 in love themselves. Well? " 
 
 Verney was bewildered for a minute. He did n't 
 know of any girl with whom his uncle could be in 
 love. Then it dawned on him. It was Harriet Rand 
 herself his uncle meant! Intimate as their relations 
 were, the young man felt abashed by this astounding 
 confession. 
 
 " Nothing," he said, in reply to his uncle's query. 
 
 Richmond Vernor looked at him quickly. " Don't 
 think I mean the halo is for me, however," he said ; " it 
 isn't," sadly— "that I know well." 
 
 " For whom is it, then ? " something impelled Verney 
 to ask in very low tones. 
 
 " For you," replied his uncle simply. 
 
 Ellis had been expecting, had been fearing, the other 
 was going to say that, but now that it was said he 
 found that he felt unaccountably moved and touched. 
 
 [221 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Yet he still felt just as sure that it was n't true — that 
 Mr. Vernor was mistaken. It was only a sentimental 
 fancy of his uncle's induced by his own sentiment for 
 Harriet. He felt assured that he need not take the 
 matter seriously or attach any significance to the halo 
 idea. No, it was only a conspiracy on the part of 
 Mrs. Gibbs, his uncle, and the whole world, to try and 
 make a conceited ass of him. 
 
 " That 's a very interesting theory of yours, Uncle 
 Ritch," he said decidedly, " but forgive me if I say 
 I think it 's only a theory, and that as far as you 've 
 applied it to me, it 's absolutely erroneous. Why, I 
 know, I happen to know that Miss Rand thinks more 
 of my work, of my being in politics, than she does of 
 me. She 's a very intelligent girl, and she 's interested 
 in a subject that grows in interest with every year — 
 political reform. It 's my ambitions in that direction 
 that attract her, not I. A man would be an egotis- 
 tical fool to believe anything else, no matter who said 
 so, if he 'd had as little reason for believing it as I 've 
 had!" 
 
 As he spoke, his confidence came back to him in a 
 flood-tide, and he recognized with relief that this was 
 so, and that the other aspect of the affair was the 
 wrong one. Fortunately; for he realized too that if 
 there had been any truth in what Mr. Vernor had said, 
 the situation would have been rendered hopeless, where 
 now it was only difficult. His resolution to see as little 
 of Harriet as he could had only been strengthened by 
 this talk with the older man, and the twelfth of Sep- 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 tember came and found him at Saratoga, without Har- 
 riet's having heard a word from him. 
 
 He had left New York the night before on the mid- 
 night train, to attend the Republican State Convention 
 at Saratoga with Rupert Mathers, leader of the New 
 York County delegation. They were going a little 
 ahead of the other delegates as there was work to be 
 done in cementing the anti-Downes feeling of a number 
 of doubtful counties; and there were people up-State 
 known to Verney Ellis and not to the chairman for whose 
 conversion Mathers relied upon his lieutenant. 
 
 A test vote had been taken on the preceding Tuesday 
 at the primary elections — no wonder Verney had been 
 busy the week before, the burden of the work in con- 
 nection with that event having fallen upon his shoulders 
 — to see whether the majority of enrolled Republicans 
 really favored Downes's reelection or not. The con- 
 clusion was favorable to Verney's plans for his friend, 
 as it had been discovered that the majority were against 
 the renomination of the present Governor. The touch- 
 and-go nature of the situation was best demonstrated 
 by the universally expressed opinion of political leaders 
 that the contest would be determined by the way in 
 which New York County went, that county having a 
 hundred and eighty-seven delegates in the State Con- 
 vention of about one thousand. 
 
 Verney in his room at the United States Hotel felt 
 more than satisfied with the situation. The up-State 
 counties he had been in doubt of were pledged to stand 
 against Downes to the last; and the name of Oliver 
 
 [223] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Ordway as a possible candidate was heard more and 
 more frequently. He had his friend's assurance, too, 
 that he would not withdraw his name no matter what 
 the outcome was; that as his own county and several 
 others had already been instructed for him, he would 
 not consider it fair to do so. The Politician felt that 
 this gave him carte blanche to go ahead and do all that 
 was in him to increase his friend's following; and the 
 thought made him feel so confident and sure of success 
 that he forgot all about his good resolutions and sat 
 down and wrote Harriet all about it, explaining 
 minutely his former fears, his present hopes, and the 
 reasons he had for thinking the latter were going to be 
 realized. Not one word did he say, however, of apology 
 or explanation in regard to the recent hiatus that had 
 occurred in their friendship, and he dismissed his own 
 prospects for the Attorney-generalship with a line at 
 the end to the effect that they were about as likely to 
 offer him the nomination for that office as to make him 
 " President of Cuba " ; so that Harriet, reading the let- 
 ter in her room in the Chittendens' house, though thrilled 
 to see the name of " The United States Hotel " on the 
 envelope as evidence that her letter was from the scene 
 of battle, was not at all satisfied with its contents. 
 
 The opening of the Convention on September 14?, 
 found two-thirds of it against the Governor and it was 
 admitted by both factions, for and against him, that 
 there were more than enough delegates to prevent his 
 nomination if they could be united for any one else. 
 
 [ 224 ] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 The reasons which the Republican leaders had for op- 
 posing Downes were substantially the same as those 
 which Verney Ellis had given Harriet on the occasion 
 of Mrs. Cumloch's dinner at Lake Forest at the close of 
 the National Convention, and were briefly — his recom- 
 mendations for a direct nominating primary election 
 law, and for the public service commissions laws — and 
 his refusal to consider a political endorsement as valu- 
 able for an appointment to office. There was more 
 resentment against the latter policy than either of the 
 others perhaps, because more than anything else, it 
 struck a blow at the existence of the Republican 
 organization in New York ; their belief in the necessity 
 of which was a religion with its members. Then, too, 
 the leaders were all honestly and sincerely of the opinion 
 that the Governor's renomination would mean defeat 
 for the Republican ticket. As the chairman of the 
 Republican State Committee had said the day before 
 as he stood on the veranda of the United States Hotel 
 talking to a large group of up-State delegates : " If 
 Downes is renominated it will mean the greatest slump 
 at the election the Republican party of the State has 
 ever experienced." 
 
 Inability to select the right man to unite their votes 
 upon as opposing candidate for the nomination was the 
 chief stumbling-block in the way of the political leaders. 
 Several good men had been suggested who were con- 
 sidered to stand high enough in the people's estimation 
 to capture the popular vote when it came to the election, 
 15 [ 225 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 and who were all likely to carry the Republican ticket 
 to success, and among them Verney's friend Ordway ; 
 but somehow or other for this reason or that, the leaders 
 had been unable definitely to decide on any one of them. 
 
 That was the situation when the Convention opened, 
 and it was not materially changed on the second day; 
 therefore, perceiving that the time was growing short 
 and that something must be done quickly, a conference 
 of the leaders representing both the Downes and the 
 anti-Downes factions met early that morning to see 
 how matters could be brought in short order to a satis- 
 factory conclusion. It adjourned after protracted dis- 
 cussion, the only result having been a decision to meet 
 again, and a more or less friendly agreement that in 
 the interval the nomination should be offered to a man 
 regarded, at least by those opposed to Downes, as meet- 
 ing the needs of the case. When the day's session, 
 which had begun at two o'clock, had been concluded 
 without any nominations having been made, its only 
 feature of importance the speech of a member of the 
 Cabinet who was chosen temporary and permanent 
 chairman, the conference met again. Those present at 
 the meeting, over which the chairman of the State 
 Committee presided, included the member of the cabinet, 
 ex-Governor Orme of New York, National Committee- 
 man Fairchild, Senator Gray from Syracuse, Repre- 
 sentative Thomas J. Beekman of Albany, friend and 
 devoted ally of Verney's, Speaker Oliver Ordway him- 
 self, and his faithful lieutenant, James Vernor Ellis. 
 
 At this conference the efforts of those opposed to 
 [226] 
 
"Anyone rather than the present Governor" 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 the Governor to find a suitable candidate for the 
 nomination came to a head, and much pressure was 
 brought to bear upon the member of the cabinet to 
 accept it. Great hopes had been built on this plan, 
 but the cabinet member M knocked them all into a 
 cocked hat " by refusing. His reason, he explained, 
 was that if he accepted, as senior member of the cabinet 
 he could justly be accused of disloyalty to the Presi- 
 dent, who was well-known to be backing Downes; and 
 having delivered his ultimatum on the subject, in com- 
 pany with most of the men who were friendly to the 
 Governor he left the conference for his hotel and went 
 to bed. This was at two in the morning, and the op- 
 position, who had banked everything on his acceptance 
 of the nomination, gave way to despair at the summary 
 departure, and there was some talk of withdrawing their 
 objections to Downes and of supporting him. 
 
 It was at this moment so opportune for his plans, 
 that Vernor Ellis who had been biding his time, rose 
 and called the attention of the conference to Speaker 
 Oliver Ordway, who was, he said, in every way qualified 
 for the nomination. With force and some eloquence 
 he dilated upon his friend's ability, already proved in 
 the office he then held, upon the neutral character of 
 such a choice, and lastly upon the urgent necessity of 
 deciding upon someone at once. With tireless energy 
 he elaborated the numberless reasons why they should 
 nominate almost any one rather than the present Gov- 
 ernor again, and his fellow politicians listened. 
 
 Downes was an enemy of organization in the first 
 [227] 
 
The Politician 
 
 place, Verney reminded them, without which no perma- 
 nent good could be achieved; he believed also in one- 
 man power, which could be only temporarily efficacious. 
 Every one admitted, and Verney was convinced of it 
 himself, that political organization, like labor unions, 
 was in need of reform, that both were illustrations of 
 the great abuse of a great use, that both had been 
 conceived and instituted to attain right results, and that 
 both had been corrupted. But, he asked, was that 
 any reason why either should be abolished? No. 
 When a good thing had become bad you reformed it — 
 you did n't abolish it. But Mr. Downes did n't think 
 so, he thought it should be destroyed. Would they let 
 Mr. Downes be nominated, then? Just for lack of 
 the will power to agree upon some one else? He hoped 
 he knew them better than that. Surely they thought 
 as he did, that one of the most important things to 
 be aimed at in reforming politics was to lessen the 
 expenditure of money. Did they mean to nominate a 
 Governor who advocated direct primaries, which be- 
 sides being themselves a serious obstacle to party 
 organization, necessitated the expenditure of more 
 money than was spent in any other political operation. 
 If they doubted this statement they had only to look 
 up the records of the contest for the senatorship in a 
 certain Western State in which a very wealthy man 
 named Peterson had defeated a man named Matthewson. 
 Verney said he did n't know if they knew it, but it was 
 a fact — he had good authority for the statement — 
 
 [228] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 that nine hundred thousand dollars had been spent at 
 that primary contest, and that Peterson had openly 
 stated in advance that he was ready to spend five hun- 
 dred thousand dollars more to be declared at the 
 primaries the choice for United States Senator. And 
 in New Jersey, too, where the direct primary system 
 was in operation, a great deal of money had been spent. 
 
 Could they endorse an administration that approved 
 of a system so bad in its effects, Verney wanted to know. 
 Were they not aware, too, that by the direct nomina- 
 tion system a nomination might be made by a minority, 
 which could not happen in a convention where the 
 choice was always that of the majority of delegates? 
 
 Having thus rapidly reviewed some of the reasons 
 for not supporting Downes in any event, which in his 
 estimation were of the greatest importance, Verney 
 went on to score the Governor on his own account. 
 One thing in particular he had never been able to for- 
 give him, and he dwelt at length upon it. It was 
 an act of injustice and bad judgment which provided 
 this young politician with no end of capital in urging 
 the leaders present to offer the nomination to Speaker 
 Ordway. 
 
 When one of them, Senator Gray, although they were 
 all on the point of assenting to Verney's proposition, 
 suggested — perhaps by way of proving that he had 
 no greater objection to Ordway — that the Speaker 
 might be too young a man to fill the office of Governor 
 of the State of New York, Verney, who had paused 
 
 [229] 
 
The Politician 
 
 a moment to take breath and to catch his lip with his 
 teeth, leaped to meet the objection like a hound from 
 leash. 
 
 What had the young Turks done for their country 
 by way of securing good government, he would like 
 to know? Wasn't it their determination to have jus- 
 tice, their armed interference, that had won a charter 
 for Turkey? It was the day of young men, and 
 Downes had had four years of power ; why was n't it 
 fair to give another and a younger man a chance? 
 
 Perhaps it was their desperation, perhaps it was the 
 appeal to their prejudices and their principles which 
 Ellis's speech had made, or perhaps a feeling of relief 
 on the part of the older leaders that the honor should 
 be given to a man like young Ordway of neutral posi- 
 tion as to the contending factions, who was not of 
 equal prominence or directly in competition with them, 
 that won the day. Perhaps it was all these reasons 
 combined with the fact that they were quite wearied 
 out and ready to snatch at any reasonable suggestion 
 made by any one. At any rate, the result was that 
 Ellis's earnest advocacy of his friend as Republican 
 candidate for Governor met with unanimous approval; 
 and when the members of the conference who had stayed 
 to the end adjourned toward four o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, it was with the intention of nominating Speaker 
 Ordway on the morrow. 
 
 But not one of the tired men who sought their rooms 
 in the hotel where most of them put up, was as tired 
 or as happy as Ellis. His success in getting his fel- 
 
 [230] 
 
The Struggle at Saratoga 
 
 low politicians to unite upon Ordway as the right man 
 to oppose Downes was happiness enough; but as it 
 happened, the last thing the conference had done was 
 to name him for Attorney-general at the same time. 
 It was not altogether unexpected, but highly gratify- 
 ing just the same, that they should have done so, and 
 he thought with a glow how pleased his father would 
 be. And Harriet, — yes, she would be pleased too. 
 Physically exhausted, but with an absolutely tran- 
 quil mind, he composed himself to rest that night; 
 and not even the uneasy mutterings of a callow delegate 
 from up-State who slept next door and whose inability 
 to sleep quietly had somewhat disturbed Verney the 
 night before, or the fact that the daylight had begun 
 to come in at the windows, could keep him from dream- 
 less slumber. He was not fated to sleep long, however, 
 for at seven in the morning a boy knocked on his 
 door with a telegram. It was from his mother, saying 
 that his old nurse Nanna was very ill with pneumonia, 
 and that she was asking for him. 
 
 [231] 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 "friends, how goes the fight?" 
 
 ELLIS was very much troubled by this news. 
 He supposed his mother had sent the tele- 
 gram hoping that he would return to New 
 York at once, but he didn't see how he could do it. 
 Only a woman who understood nothing at all about 
 politics and who did not sympathize with her son's 
 interest in that direction could ask it of him. And yet 
 he would have liked to go. It was hard that old Nanna 
 should be so ill and he not there; especially when she 
 was calling for him! That he couldn't bear to think 
 of ! How kind the dear old woman had always been to 
 him, how good! And always he had been her favorite, 
 that he knew. 'Way back when he was a little bit of a 
 boy he could remember how she had fended for him, 
 quarrelling with the nurses in charge of the other 
 children to get her child his rights. And even now that 
 he was grown up, how well she looked after him, what 
 loving care she took of his clothes, how particular she 
 was to see that he had something to eat when he came 
 home late at night too tired and too busy to have 
 thought of dinner! 
 
 It was very pitiful, and Verney — breakfast quite for- 
 gotten — walked sadly toward the telegraph office. 
 
 [232] 
 
-How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 Nothing except the present crisis, this convention at 
 Saratoga, could have kept him from going to his old 
 nurse's bedside; but as it was, he felt he could not 
 leave, not with his friend's fate hanging in the balance 
 on the very morning of the nominating day. After 
 working so hard he could n't leave his task undone, — 
 it would be betraying his friend's interests. 
 
 " They need me here," he telegraphed his mother ; 
 " I must stay. Keep me informed how she is." 
 
 It was an exciting day, that final one of the Re- 
 publican State Convention. Armed with their over- 
 night determination to present Speaker Ordway's name 
 as their candidate for Governor, the leaders opposed 
 to Downes felt that the battle would be fierce, and 
 the result close. Indeed the profoundest uncertainty 
 as to the outcome of the contest prevailed; and while 
 strong anti-Downes men were heard declaring that it 
 looked to them as if the opposition to the Governor's 
 nomination were disintegrating and that they should n't 
 wonder if he won on the first ballot, the most loyal 
 of the Governor's friends expressed their doubt that 
 he would win at all with practically two-thirds of the 
 Convention against him. Verney Ellis, however, with 
 the chairman of the State Committee, Rupert Mathers, 
 of New York County, and Thomas J. Beekman, of 
 Albany, formed a solid nucleus of anti-Downes men 
 whose confidence that the Governor would be defeated 
 had never wavered. 
 
 " He can't get the necessary 506 votes to nominate 
 him," said Beekman, who was as ardent a champion 
 
 [233] 
 
The Politician 
 
 of Ordway and as earnest an enemy of Downes as Ver- 
 ney, as he and Ellis took their seats in the Convention 
 hall. 
 
 " Now that the fight has been carried into the Con- 
 vention," returned Verney, " we will surely win." 
 
 The plan of the leaders opposed to the Governor was 
 to have the names of a number of candidates placed 
 in nomination before the Convention with the idea that 
 these men would get enough votes to prevent Downes 
 from being nominated on the first ballot, and then to offer 
 the name of Speaker Oliver Ordway as candidate. 
 
 This programme they carried successfully through. 
 The atmosphere had been decidedly tense, for news of 
 the selection of an opposing candidate by the faction 
 not in sympathy with Downes had leaked out, when the 
 chairman, who was also a member of the cabinet, entered 
 the hall to open the Convention; but it was relieved 
 immediately by the burst of cheering lasting two 
 minutes which greeted his appearance. 
 
 The business of the day was then speedily despatched, 
 the temporary organization made permanent, the 
 report of the credentials committee submitted and 
 adopted, the platform reported and read. Whereupon, 
 the nominating having begun, the leaders of the Re- 
 publican organization rose in their might and hurled 
 the names of half a dozen candidates for Governor 
 before the Convention. The well calculated effect of 
 which manoeuvre was to scatter the votes of 505 of the 
 delegates out of the 1010, which left exactly that num- 
 ber, 505 votes, at Downes's disposal effectually pre- 
 
 [234] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 venting his nomination on the initial ballot by rendering 
 the vote a tie. Following which a second ballot was 
 entered upon, when the chairman of the State Com- 
 mittee who was also Lieutenant-governor and an ardent 
 anti-Downes man, appeared upon the platform and 
 nominated Speaker Ordway. Three-fourths of the 
 packed audience responded with applause; whereupon 
 Beekman, who was president of the Albany County 
 Committee, stepped out on the platform and seconded 
 the nomination. 
 
 A demonstration of disapproval arose at this moment 
 from the galleries where groups of Downes sympa- 
 thizers were seated. Beekman rebuked it harshly. 
 " There seems to be doubt in some quarters whether 
 this is a Republican Convention," he said, " but it is. 
 Have you forgotten that in supporting the present 
 Governor you are advocating a man who considers him- 
 self too big for his party, too big for the party that 
 elected him in the first place ? " He was a short, stocky, 
 young man, Beekman, without much presence, but the 
 strength of his convictions, the sincerity of his beliefs, 
 served him for presence and eloquence alike and made 
 him for the moment a great orator. After a sensible 
 and telling argument to prove Ordway's eligibility for 
 the office of Governor, he went on to give a brief but 
 earnest exposition of what he called the present Gov- 
 ernor's inadequacy, characterizing him as a narrow and 
 egotistical, though able man. 
 
 But the part of his speech that won the most dele- 
 gates to his cause was what he said in regard to the 
 
 [235] 
 
The Politician 
 
 interference of the President in the question of the 
 candidacy for the Governorship of New York. An- 
 other fiat had gone forth from the White House only 
 that morning by means of telegrams to the effect that 
 Downes must be declared by the Convention to be the 
 Republican candidate for Governor. 
 
 " Will you be dictated to, my friends — free-think- 
 ing, independent representatives of counties that belong 
 to the most important State in this independent country 
 — by an autocrat, by the first emperor in the White 
 House? " he asked with passionate intensity. 
 
 And whether justifiably made or not, that appeal 
 to the feeling most characteristic of our nation, the 
 spirit of liberty, of resentment of coercion, — was not 
 lacking in effect and with results that were unfavor- 
 able to the Downes faction. Delegates responded to 
 Beekman's call for more supporters of the Ordway 
 movement from every side, and the chairman of Albany 
 County, as he stepped down from the platform, felt 
 that the battle was as good as won and that he had done 
 yeoman's service to the cause. 
 
 Verney Ellis, listening appreciatively, felt that he had 
 indeed. The Politician had not at all envied his friend 
 the opportunity to make the speech, or wished to figure 
 so prominently in the Convention as Beekman had; he 
 was only glad his friend had done the work so well. 
 Having set with his own hand the wheels in motion 
 which were to accomplish his heart's desire, having 
 slaved untiringly to insure the success of his plans, he 
 was content to leave the completion of the work, the 
 
 [236] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 finishing-off of the ends to others, provided that they 
 were competent. So long as Ordway won he was satis- 
 fied, whether or not he had himself a conspicuous place 
 on the programme of events that had brought it about. 
 As he had once told Harriet, he was one of the practi- 
 cal politicians who helped other men to run for office 
 rather than the kind whose sole aim was to run for 
 office himself. 
 
 There was a chance of course that he would be 
 nominated for Attorney-general, but the possibility 
 was one he had not in any sense sought; and exciting 
 and pleasing as it was, he had quite lost sight of it 
 in the greater issues of the day. It was with no feeling 
 of envy, therefore, but with the frankest sort of pleasure 
 that he welcomed Beekman back to his seat, congratu- 
 lating him upon saying the right thing at the right 
 time; and little Tommy Beekman, who thought the 
 world of Verney and admired him tremendously, smiled 
 delightedly at the other's praise. 
 
 A messenger boy walking slowly down between the 
 rows of seats, stopping at intervals to call : " Tel'- 
 gram for Mr. Ellis ! Tel'gram for Mr. Ellis ! " inter- 
 rupted the conference of the two young men. Verney 
 claimed the yellow envelope when the boy's attention 
 had been attracted, and opening it found that it was 
 a " come-at-once " summons of the familiar type, this 
 time from his sister Carol, stating that Nanna was much 
 worse. 
 
 In despair he handed the despatch to Tommy and 
 rapidly outlined the situation. " She 's dying, you 
 
 [237] 
 
The Politician 
 
 know, and she has been so devoted to me. I owe her 
 so much, it seems inhuman not to go." 
 
 " It 's an awfully tough position to be in," sympa- 
 thized his friend, " but I don't see how you can go 
 just now." 
 
 " I can't," acknowledged Verney, mournfully, " not 
 until I find out whether Ordway gets the nomination 
 or not. I 've seen him through so far, I must see it 
 out," and he handed the waiting boy a hastily scribbled 
 message saying that he was coming as soon as the Con- 
 vention was over and would probably reach New York 
 late that night. 
 
 When the placing of names in nomination had been 
 concluded, the secretary boomed out the call for the 
 first county in the roll, — Albany. Beekman, who 
 had been waiting for this moment with the impatience 
 of the pardoned criminal for the day of liberty, as 
 chairman of the county called, literally hurled him- 
 self from his seat and cast the 28 votes in his delegation 
 for Ordway. A burst of applause followed that had 
 grown in volume since that occasioned by the first 
 mention of the young Speaker's name. 
 
 There was little excitement after that until Kings 
 County was called, the intervening counties having 
 divided their allegiance about evenly between the Gov- 
 ernor and Ordway. The Lieutenant-governor, who was 
 chairman of that county committee, rose smiling, as 
 if he were thoroughly enjoying himself. 
 
 " Kings casts 138 votes for Ordway," he shouted, 
 [238] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 and Ordway's popularity having increased steadily, a 
 tumult of cheers responded. 
 
 And so the battle went ; first a county for one, and 
 then a county for another; or perhaps a county for 
 Ordway would contain a District or two for Downes, 
 and vice versa. So even were the two candidates, the 
 others having been lost sight of early in the race, that 
 by the time the " N's " were reached, neither had the 
 advantage of the other. Then New York County was 
 called. It was an intensely exciting moment, and peo- 
 ple held their breaths, delegates and spectators alike; 
 for this was the deciding county, its vote would deter- 
 mine the contest. 
 
 Verney, who was alone now, for Beekman had left 
 him to sit with a group of political leaders on the 
 other side of the crowded hall, bent his head and prayed, 
 for he did n't feel quite certain what New York was 
 going to do. He knew that Mathers, the chairman, 
 was favorable to the Ordway movement ; but New York 
 was a large county to handle. 
 
 Mathers, a tall, thoughtful-looking, light-haired, 
 young man with a high, bald forehead, rose calmly from 
 his chair. " The second district of New York County 
 casts ten votes for Governor Downes ; the remaining 
 177 votes for Oliver Ordway," he announced in a firm 
 voice. 
 
 This made certain Ordway's nomination, and in- 
 stantly, although the end of the balloting showed the 
 contest to have been close with only 551 votes for 
 
 [239] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Ordway and 416 for Downes with 43 scattering, the 
 5,000 persons crowded into the Convention hall, touched 
 off the only big noise in the whole proceedings, save 
 perhaps the demonstration given the cabinet member 
 earlier that day. 
 
 Verney waited only until the nomination had been 
 made unanimous, the motion to make it so having been 
 made by a former Downes man, before he left the 
 Convention. The remaining events of the afternoon, 
 the nominations for the minor offices such as Attorney- 
 general, he learned afterwards. There was a four 
 o'clock train to New York which he wanted to catch; 
 but before leaving the hall he went around to where 
 Ordway sat, to congratulate him. 
 
 " I 've you to thank, Verney ! n said the young 
 Speaker gratefully, his dark face pale from the strain 
 of the past hours, but happy, and his dark prophet's 
 eyes luminous with visions of the good he was going 
 to do, the great things he was going to accomplish 
 in his new position of power. 
 
 However, he did not attempt to express to his friend 
 any of his feeling of exaltation. He knew Verney 
 was feeling the same way — as much so as if the 
 chance to fill so directly their splendid dreams for the 
 making of new political history that should be clean 
 and pure and free from corruption were his own, in- 
 stead of his friend's. A pressure of the hand was all 
 that was needed to cover the situation completely 
 between these two young men who understood each other, 
 and Verney was soon explaining to the newly made 
 
 [240] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 candidate for Governor why he could n't stay until the 
 end of the Convention. 
 
 " How about the Attorney-generalship ? " said Ord- 
 way, immediately. " Can't you stay and see how that 
 goes, whether you get the nomination ? " 
 
 " No, I can't, Oliver," returned Verney, " I must get 
 that four o'clock train. Poor old Nanna may be dying, 
 you know." 
 
 " Of course," said the other, sympathetically. 
 " Well, good-bye, good luck ! " 
 
 Verney was out of the building and was looking at 
 his watch to see if he would have time to go to his 
 hotel for his bag before making his train, when little 
 Tommy Beekman came running out after him. 
 
 " Ordway 's won ! " he shouted, " We 've won ! Oh, 
 damn it, Verney, but I 'in glad ! " His face was 
 wreathed in smiles, his voice suspiciously near to tears, 
 and Verney, forgetting his train and his trouble for 
 the moment, rushed to meet his friend, whom he had 
 not seen since Ordway's nomination had been assured. 
 Tommy and he had worked shoulder to shoulder in the 
 cause, and now that success had attended their efforts, 
 they felt the need of rejoicing together. 
 
 " Is n't it fine, Tommy ? I swear to the Lord I 
 never was so happy about anything in my life ! " he 
 said, and Beekman for answer in a paroxysm of joy 
 flung both arms around Verney's neck and swung clear 
 off the ground. He was quite short, and Ellis just 
 under six feet. 
 
 " But the nomination for Attorney-general, are n't 
 16 [ 241 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 you going to stay until that 's decided ? " asked Tommy 
 when they were both calmer, " are n't you going back 
 to New York with the rest of us, and help celebrate ? " 
 
 " I can't," said Verney, impatiently ; suddenly recalled 
 to the pressing nature of the reason that made this 
 delightful plan impossible. 
 
 He looked at his watch, and with a hasty, " Bye, 
 Thomas ! " was off in the direction of his hotel at a 
 dead run. Reaching it, he literally hurled the amount 
 of his bill at the astonished desk clerk, and snatching 
 his bag jumped into a hack and tore down to the sta- 
 tion, which was not far away, arriving just in time to 
 bundle on the four o'clock express for New York before 
 it pulled out. 
 
 In a pleasant back room of Mrs. Ellis's residence 
 in Twelfth Street an old woman lay very ill, so ill, 
 indeed, that the family doctor — nothing was considered 
 too good for old Nanna in that household — had given 
 her only a few more hours to live. Deprived by death 
 in her early years of husband and little son, she was 
 quite alone in the world and had no relative or friend 
 to come and sit by her dying bed. She belonged to 
 that most unselfish class of women who spend their lives 
 in mothering other people's children, only to be for- 
 gotten as a rule by the child they cared for and the 
 parents to whom they have rendered this inestimable 
 service, when their time of usefulness is past. This 
 was not true, however, in the case of Verney's old 
 nurse, who, long after the children had grown up, had 
 
 [242] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 continued to live with the Ellises, beloved and respected 
 by everybody in the house. 
 
 This had been arranged to please Verney, who, as 
 a little boy when he was first taken from his nurse's 
 charge and sent to school, petitioned that Nanna never 
 be allowed to go away; but as time went on Mrs. Ellis 
 found it a practical arrangement as well, as the old 
 woman up to her last illness was active and able and 
 was always finding some new way to make herself use- 
 ful. Her chief care, nevertheless, continued to be for 
 Verney, whom she had never been able to consider grown 
 up; and the other servants in the house soon realized, 
 and invariably warned newcomers that this was the case ; 
 that in regard to any neglect of " Mr. Verney's " in- 
 terests old Nanna had to be reckoned with. 
 
 He was her child, her more than son, her idol, her 
 very all; and now that she felt her end was close upon 
 her, the one thing she asked of life was to see once 
 more the beloved face, to hear again the familiar young 
 voice asking "Where's Nanna?" the minute he was 
 in the house. She could go weeks without seeing him, 
 content with tidying his room, mending his clothes, 
 making some little trifle for him to wear — she was 
 an accomplished knitter, — but the day that brought 
 her a glimpse of him was a red-letter day for her, and 
 when he was pleased to laugh and joke with her, as he 
 often did when he had a minute to spare, no girl 
 receiving her first compliment could have been more 
 pleased. 
 
 " Is he coming? " she asked for the hundredth time 
 [243] 
 
The Politician 
 
 from the bed where she lay exhausted and wasted by 
 her short fierce struggle with the dread disease from 
 which she was suffering and which she realized was on 
 the point of being victorious. " Surely he must be 
 coming now, Miss Carol?" She had been asking that 
 question all that day and the preceding one in her 
 delirium, and now that her head had become clear, late 
 that afternoon, she was asking it still. 
 
 This interval of reason, however, far from being a 
 good sign, the doctor had told the watchers by the 
 bed was a sure precursor of death. 
 
 " No, Nanna, not yet ! " poor Carol who was sitting 
 beside the bed, her nose red, her eyes swollen — all the 
 family were devoted to Nanna — had been forced to 
 reply; and she went to the window to see if a cab were 
 turning up the block. 
 
 " I wish the young man could be hurried," said the 
 trained nurse from the other side of the bed, a typic- 
 ally calm, unimaginative young person in white linen, 
 with the air common to her kind, of expecting to 
 get at once anything she might ask for, " this anxiety 
 is bad for the patient." 
 
 The old woman in the bed spoke again, but this time 
 less plaintively and what was more pathetic, with con- 
 fidence. 
 
 " I know he '11 come," she said, " when he knows his 
 old Nanna is going to leave him ! Verney ! Verney ! 
 Nanna wants you, dear ! " 
 
 The young girl in the window rose softly and left 
 the room that the " patient " might not see her tears. 
 
 [244] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 " Oh, why does n't he come ? " she said to her mother 
 outside on the landing (Mrs. Ellis had come to enquire 
 how the sufferer was) ; " it 's the cruellest thing I 
 ever heard of, to keep her calling for him like that just 
 for the sake of his old politics ! If he does n't come in 
 time — if Nanna dies — " she broke down altogether 
 and sobbed aloud. 
 
 The doctor, who had not long been gone, hurried by 
 them at this moment and entered the room, and through 
 the opened door they heard the old woman singing 
 " Lead, Kindly Light." Nanna had been well educated 
 and a devoted church-goer. 
 
 " The night is dark, and I am far from home ! " 
 came the weak voice of the dying woman in the room, 
 reinforced by the stronger one of Miss Hallie, the nurse. 
 With the last verse, however, — 
 
 " And with the morn those angel faces smile 
 Which I have loved long since, and lost a while," 
 
 sung brokenly and with touching expression, Miss 
 Hallie joined the group in the hall, an unwonted emo- 
 tion in her cold young face. 
 
 " She 's getting delirious again," she told them, 
 resolutely applying her handkerchief to her eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Ellis entered the room, and on hearing the 
 door open Nanna raised herself suddenly in her bed. 
 " I knew you 'd come ! " she said, " My baby ! My 
 little Verney ! " 
 
 But the light of reason was no longer in her eyes. 
 
 It was ten o'clock that evening before Ellis reached 
 [245] 
 
The Politician 
 
 New York. He had telegraphed from the train when he 
 expected to arrive, but no one came to meet him as he 
 had hoped, to give him the news, and he ran up the 
 steps of his home with foreboding in his heart. 
 
 His sister Carol, who had been watching for him, 
 opened the door. 
 
 " Is she — is she — ? — " began Verney, his charm- 
 ingly enunciative voice broken and breathless with haste 
 and anxiety. 
 
 " She died an hour ago, calling for you," replied 
 Carol, who was yet too unreconciled to his tardy arrival 
 to wish to spare him anything. 
 
 His Uncle Richmond, who had gone down to the train 
 after all to break the news of his old nurse's death to 
 Verney, but had in some way missed him at the station, 
 came in at this moment. He had been at his sister's 
 all the afternoon and evening, feeling that his presence 
 was a comfort to her and to Carol in this sad crisis, 
 and had felt the pathos of the dead woman's situation 
 not a little; but at sight of his nephew he could not 
 suppress his eagerness to hear how the day had gone 
 for him at Saratoga. 
 
 News of the Governor's defeat and Ordway's nomina- 
 tion had already appeared in the papers, but not the 
 nominations for the minor offices which had been made 
 later. 
 
 " Well, friend, how goes the fight? " he said. 
 
 " She 's dead," replied the Politician, who stood in 
 the hall with bent head. " I got here too late. I 
 hurried all I knew, but it was too late." 
 
 [246] 
 
"How Goes the Fight?" 
 
 " I meant the outcome of the Convention, dear boy," 
 said his uncle gently placing a kind hand on the droop- 
 ing shoulders, " did you get the nomination for Attor- 
 ney-general? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Verney. 
 
 " Here 's a telegram for you," said Carol, picking 
 one up from the hat-rack, " it came just before you 
 did, and I forgot about it until now." 
 
 " You open it, Uncle Ritchie," said Ellis to Mr. 
 Vernor, turning away his head as he spoke. He was 
 sick of telegrams. 
 
 The older man obeyed, and reading it, a smile lit up 
 his face and he handed it triumphantly to his nephew. 
 
 It was from Ordway, announcing Verney's nomina- 
 tion as Republican candidate for Attorney-general. 
 
 [247] 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 RIVALS 
 
 THE first news that Harriet had of Verney's 
 nomination was when she read it in the papers 
 at the breakfast table the next morning. With 
 pulse and heart-beats a trifle accelerated she eagerly 
 scanned the list of nominations made in the convention. 
 " For Governor," she read, " Oliver Ordway," 
 " For Lieutenant-governor, Morris Gray," 
 " For Secretary of State, Samuel S. Kerning," 
 " For Attorney-general, James Vernor Ellis," 
 and read no further. 
 
 But though she was unable to keep from rejoicing 
 that this good fortune had befallen Verney, she could 
 not on the other hand help wishing she had learned 
 the news from him. He might so easily have tele- 
 graphed. She felt certain, however, that he would call, 
 that whatever reason he imagined he had had for ignor- 
 ing her heretofore would be forgotten in this impor- 
 tant crisis, and that he would come at once to receive 
 her congratulations. Expecting him momentarily then, 
 when he did appear — which was not for three days - — 
 her enthusiasm had vanished and the warmth had de- 
 parted from her welcome. His tardiness in sharing 
 his good news with her hurt her more than anything 
 
 [248] 
 
Rivals 
 
 he had yet done. She was convinced by it that his 
 dependence upon her for sympathy in his political hopes 
 and ambitions had been a mockery, his confiding his 
 plans to her nothing more flattering than the whim of 
 a moment. She had his utter disregard of her at this 
 important moment of his career as proof of his in- 
 sincerity. 
 
 Verney meanwhile had been making a hard struggle 
 against his inclination to do just what Harriet expected 
 him to do — call and tell her all about it. Tired from 
 his three days of mental and physical activity at the 
 Convention, worn out from the strain he had been under 
 there and the sleep he had lost, and melancholy and 
 dispirited as a consequence of his old nurse's death and 
 the pathetic circumstances under which she had died, 
 for which he felt more or less to blame, the only thing 
 Verney felt he really wanted to do was to go and 
 see Harriet. No wonder, then, that his recent deter- 
 mination to give up his friendship with her, celebrated 
 with so much pomp on the occasion of the ceremony of 
 taking the veil, wavered, and that the third day of 
 temptation found it abandoned and Ellis on his way to 
 Forty -ninth Street. From which it is to be judged 
 that Verney was no better at keeping good resolutions 
 than any one else, although to do him justice, he would 
 have kept this one if he had thought for a moment that 
 it had anything to do with any one but himself. But 
 he did n't. He thought, on the contrary, that his con- 
 viction that a man in his circumstances should not 
 marry, and the resolution to put love out of his life 
 
 [249] 
 
The Politician 
 
 which he had made on the strength of it, was his affair 
 alone, affected him only, and that he was less guilty 
 in breaking that resolution than if it had affected any 
 one else. 
 
 As he swung off the Madison Avenue car at Forty- 
 ninth Street and walked east toward the house Mrs. 
 Cumloch was now occupying, he found himself happier 
 than he had been for some time, and it was with a warm 
 sense of pleasure to come that he felt in his pocket for 
 the small white campaign button, printed in black with 
 the legend " For Governor, Oliver Ordway " which he 
 had saved as a souvenir from the State Convention to 
 give to Miss Rand. 
 
 His pleasant anticipations were dispelled however when 
 he found that Harriet had already four callers that Sun- 
 day afternoon. He was terribly disappointed ; he had not 
 dreamed that she would not be alone ; and then, Harriet 
 herself was not any too delighted to see him, was in 
 fact horribly cold and distant. With a forced manner 
 quite different from his usual friendly, pleasant one 
 he spoke to the other men in the room, Gerald Mer- 
 rick, his Uncle Richmond, Robin Hill, and Billy Vande- 
 water. The stress and strain of the last few days had 
 been too real, had pulled him down too much, to admit 
 of a better simulation of an enthusiasm he did not feel. 
 
 " Hail the conquering hero ! " said Billy Vandewater, 
 banteringly as the newcomer found a seat on the outer 
 rim of the circle about Harriet, and Verney, who had 
 forgotten it for the moment in his general feel- 
 
 [250] 
 
Rivals 
 
 ing of weariness and depression, remembered quickly 
 that he hated Billy Vandewater. 
 
 A chorus of congratulation and question followed, 
 more or less sincere — for Verney was a favorite — 
 but was construed by its perverse object as perfunctory 
 and dismissed by him as briefly as possible. Harriet, 
 he noticed with bitterness, had been markedly behind 
 the others in congratulating him upon his nomination, 
 and had hardly done anything except fiddle with the 
 tea things since he had made his appearance. He be- 
 gan to wish he had n't come. Why should she fail him 
 now, just when he was most in need of sympathy? 
 What had he done to displease her ? Had n't he the 
 best reason in the world for keeping away from her and 
 was n't he here at the cost of breaking his resolution ? 
 Had n't he written her a letter from Saratoga ? What 
 more did she want? But in thus justifying himself 
 to himself he had overlooked the highly important fact 
 that Harriet was ignorant of the nature of his " best 
 reason in the world for keeping away," utterly in the 
 dark as to his motives for behaving as he had done. 
 
 Absorbed in these unprofitable reflections, it took him 
 some time to notice that he was being left entirely out 
 of the conversation and that Harriet was leading it 
 with a brilliancy and light-heartedness, not to say abil- 
 ity for ignoring him, that amazed Verney, accustomed 
 as he was to the first claim upon her attention. Yet 
 Harriet was not showing a petty resentment in her in- 
 difference to his presence. He was too obsessed by his 
 
 [251] 
 
The Politician 
 
 own side of the question, too occupied with his work 
 to realize it, but he had nevertheless given her just 
 cause for feeling hurt; and one letter from Saratoga 
 quite devoid as it was of apology or explanation of his 
 inexplicable change of attitude toward her, had not suf- 
 ficed to banish that feeling. With all the will in the 
 world she found she could not feel the same toward him : 
 and try as she would, her efforts to talk to him as natu- 
 rally as of old were failures. And Verney, appreciating 
 this, fell a prey to the deepest gloom and in the most 
 approved Death's-Head-at-the-Feast style, sat silent 
 with folded arms in the midst of the laughter and talk. 
 
 " Are n't you going to have anything to eat ? " Har- 
 riet said at last when his silence had lasted a long while, 
 with a fair imitation of her old sweet smile, her black eyes 
 glooming at him from behind the tea-urn. 
 
 He started as if awakened from a bad dream, and 
 looking up quickly, saw that his uncle and the other 
 two men had gone and that only Billy Vandewater was 
 left besides himself. The realization gave him new life 
 and energy, and he made up his mind in a flash to sit the 
 other out and have Harriet all to himself, when he hoped 
 they might come to a better understanding. For he 
 saw that he had hurt her, and whether he understood 
 how he had done so or not, it troubled him. 
 
 He drew up his chair nearer to the girl's. " Yes, in- 
 deed I am," he replied, " everything you have. I 'm 
 hungry ! " He smiled brilliantly and the color rose in 
 his pale face. 
 
 Harriet, who had observed his pallor and despondent 
 [252] 
 
Rivals 
 
 air with secret concern, for all she had felt so unable to 
 show it, was greatly cheered by this return of his old 
 spirits and almost made up her mind to forgive his recent 
 unkindness then and there. 
 
 " Those soft chocolatey things are the best," she 
 said, taking a plate from the table and offering it to 
 the young man. 
 
 Vandewater thought it time for him to " come in." 
 
 Making an excuse of his failure to reach the Sheffield 
 tray with his empty cup from where he sat, he moved 
 his chair up on the other side of Harriet's, a trifle 
 nearer perhaps than Verney had moved his. 
 
 " How 's politics ? " he asked, thinking it advisable to 
 address Ellis in friendly fashion, at least as a starter. 
 
 " Fine, thanks," returned Ellis pleasantly. " How 's 
 leading cotillions ? " 
 
 Verney 's reference was satirical, as the accomplishment 
 was the one ostensible occupation Vandewater was known 
 to have in life. Although he had been admitted to the 
 bar he did not practise, for a fortune inherited directly 
 afterwards had placed him beyond the need of doing so. 
 
 " Have some more tea, Mr. Vandewater? " interposed 
 Harriet hastily, scenting the battle afar off. 
 
 " ' " There is n't any more," said Alice,' " volunteered 
 Verney quoting glibly from Lewis Carroll, and he tipped 
 the tea-pot as he spoke to prove the truth of his words. 
 
 " I '11 get it filled," Harriet said laughing, his manner 
 was so absurd ; " just ring that bell over there will you, 
 Verney ? " 
 
 " Don't trouble, Miss Rand, I did n't want any more," 
 [253] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Vandewater said stiffly, at last able to swallow the resent- 
 ment which Verney's remark had aroused, and which the 
 discovery that he and Harriet called each other by their 
 first names had not tended to appease. 
 
 Harriet did not, however, entirely restore Verney to 
 her good graces that afternoon. She tried to, but the 
 hurt was too deep to make such a rapid healing anything 
 but superficial. Something was evidently very much 
 amiss, seriously wrong. 
 
 Verney observed with concern that she was natural 
 with him only by fits and starts and that she seemed much 
 more at ease with Vandewater, turning to him more 
 frequently and seeming more anxious to hear what he 
 had to say on the various subjects of conversation that 
 were brought up. A horrible feeling that he was mak- 
 ing a mistake in supposing that she would want to talk 
 to him alone came over him, as he saw how gladly and 
 how often she appealed to the other man, and he began 
 to think she would prefer to have Vandewater the last 
 caller to take his leave. She might even be in love with 
 the fellow, for all he knew ! There had been plenty of 
 time for that phenomenon to have occurred, his exag- 
 gerated state of apprehension told him, during the 
 two weeks in which he had seen nothing of her himself; 
 and which the rich and idle Mr. Vandewater had probably 
 put to good advantage. 
 
 The thought almost compelled him to take his de- 
 parture at once, but his reluctance, which by this time 
 seemed inborn in him, to leave the other man victor of 
 any field upon which they had both entered, kept him 
 
 [254] 
 
Rivals 
 
 where he was. If it had been any other than Billy Vande- 
 water, if other people had been there, he would not have 
 hesitated; but the bare idea of seeming to retire beaten 
 under the eyes of this extremely distasteful person made 
 his gorge rise and glued him to his chair. He would 
 sit Vandewater out at any cost. Unfortunately for 
 the success of this plan Miss Hand's other caller had hit 
 upon the same scheme, had made up his mind about the 
 same time to sit his rival out ; and as with him a deter- 
 mination amounted to obstinacy, it seemed quite likely 
 the call would never terminate, and that the three would 
 sit there all night. 
 
 It was the girl herself who finally put an end to the 
 situation. Rising with the sweetest kind of dignity, she 
 gave each young man in turn her hand in token of dis- 
 missal and explained very gently but decidedly that she 
 was very sorry she could n't ask them to dinner but 
 she was dining out herself and it was time to dress. She 
 was sure they did n't know how late it was. 
 
 Verney was the first to reach the street. Mortified 
 that he had allowed his feeling of antagonism for Vande- 
 water to lead him into showing a lack of consideration 
 for Harriet, convinced that he had displeased her by his 
 conduct that afternoon, and half angry with her as 
 well for having rebuked them — for though accom- 
 plished with exquisite tact the dismissal had been in the 
 nature of a rebuke — this unreasonable young man with 
 the boyish quickness of temper came at once to the con- 
 clusion that it would be a matter of necessity as well as 
 expediency on his part to forgo her society in the future. 
 
 [255] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Here," he said, stopping a small boy of the street 
 urchin variety who was sauntering by, " don't you want 
 a souvenir from the Saratoga convention ? " He fished 
 out the white tin button from his pocket as he spoke 
 with " For Governor, Oliver Ordway," on it which he 
 had been too disgusted with the result of his call to offer 
 to Harriet. 
 
 " Sure," said the small boy who made it a rule to take 
 anything that was offered him and who always wanted 
 everything, halting expectantly. 
 
 He showed more enthusiasm, however, and less matter- 
 of-fact acquiescence when he actually saw what it was 
 the " swell " wanted to give him, and as Verney ex- 
 plained its significance his eyes snapped with delight. 
 Here was a trophy indeed to display before the other 
 " kids," a campaign button from the scene of battle 
 with the name of the victorious Republican candidate for 
 Governor on it! 
 
 " Dontcher want it yourself? " he asked, gazing 
 amazedly up into the young man's face as Verney pinned 
 it carefully on the ragged lapel of his little jacket. 
 
 " No," said the Politician, " not any more. I was 
 going to give it to my girl, but she 's gone back on me ! " 
 
 He had hardly released the boy whose impatience to 
 go and " show the other kids " had made the process of 
 pinning on a lengthy one, when Vandewater caught up 
 with him. 
 
 " Going my way ? " asked Verney, casual but polite. 
 
 " No, I 'm not," said the other, " I just wanted a 
 match, if you have one." 
 
 [256} 
 
Rivals 
 
 " Certainly," said Verney, offering a box of safeties. 
 
 " Thanks," said Vandewater lighting his cigarette 
 carefully and returning the box. Then, just as he 
 turned away, " Oh, by the by, Ellis, perhaps you '11 be 
 interested in something I 've just decided to do? " 
 
 " Perhaps," returned Verney lightly, pausing to hear 
 what the other had to say. 
 
 " I 'm going to run for Attorney-general on the 
 Democratic ticket," said Vandewater. 
 
 17 [ 257 ] 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE ONE THING A WOMAN MUST NOT SAY 
 
 ALMOST a month had passed since the open-air 
 horse-show, but the beautiful Mrs. Gibbs had 
 not as yet forgotten that on the occasion of 
 the club dance in the evening Verney Ellis had not danced 
 with her and had danced with Miss Rand. The very 
 recollection of their utter absorption in each other as 
 they danced, and their indifference to her presence as she 
 watched them from the door, made her wince and writhe 
 and set her hazel eyes to sparkling. For the plain truth 
 and the ugly truth was that the beautiful Mrs. Gibbs 
 was jealous of the young heiress from the West. She 
 would not have admitted it herself, however, but would 
 have characterized her feeling as a perfectly just resent- 
 ment of Harriet's apparent appropriation of her prop- 
 erty, and during the weeks that followed the dance where 
 such a marked instance of that appropriation had taken 
 place, she thought of nothing but how she might weaken 
 the girl's influence — turn Verney's mind from all 
 thought of her. Interference was really necessary; if 
 something was n't done in a hurry, she almost feared 
 he might marry Miss Rand ! And then what would be- 
 come of his career? and incidentally — though this 
 reason Mrs. Gibbs was careful to keep in the background 
 
 [258 J 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 of her mind, — what was to become of her little flirta- 
 tion with the young man? 
 
 The bare idea of such a traitorous act on Verney's 
 part as getting married set his self-appointed guardian 
 and supposed friend to plotting to see what spoke could 
 be applied to this threatening wheel. It should be ap- 
 plied with a skilful hand, of course, and if possible was 
 to be the smallest, most microscopic of spokes — a mere 
 hint or suggestion — but applied it must be. Of that 
 she was convinced. Did any one have the right to de- 
 prive her of the thing that most amused and interested 
 her in life, her friendship with Verney Ellis? She 
 thought not. 
 
 The first thing to be done toward accomplishing her 
 purpose was to get hold of the young man himself, 
 but for some reason this seemed very difficult to do. 
 Except for a brief word at a dinner-party one evening 
 she had not had speech with him since the day of the 
 horse-show. She had written him her prettiest notes 
 proposing luncheon down town and quiet dinners with 
 " Willie away," and had telephoned him till she was 
 ashamed to do it again, but Verney had declined all in- 
 vitations to go and chatter with his charming friend. 
 He was " busy " he said, in answer to them all, invariably 
 that and nothing more. 
 
 And this was only the truth. He was busy. Vande- 
 water with all the money he wanted to back him, and 
 some friends with political influence, had had no difficulty 
 in getting himself nominated for Attorney-general at 
 the Democratic Convention, held not many days after 
 
 [259] 
 
The Politician 
 
 the one at Saratoga. The campaign for Governor, with 
 the other offices included in the Republican and Demo- 
 cratic tickets, had been begun with a rush, for it was 
 late in starting that year like the national campaign and 
 had to be a short one; and with his friend Ordway's 
 interests to work for as well as his own, Verney felt he 
 had his hands too full for idling. 
 
 Chance favored Mrs. Gibbs, however, when every- 
 thing else had failed, and returning from down-town one 
 morning in her brougham, she saw the graceful, erect 
 form of the Politician walking down the avenue. In a 
 second she had signalled her coachman to draw in to the 
 curb and Verney, halted by a violentty waved handker- 
 chief, perceived that he was run to earth. With his 
 sweetest smile, therefore, in token of surrender he stepped 
 into the carriage beside her. 
 
 " Let 's go somewhere for luncheon ! " said the fair 
 pirate of the high avenue. 
 
 " Anywhere, everywhere, I will follow on ! " replied 
 Verney in hymnal paraphrase. Having been fairly 
 caught, he was resolved to be an amiable prisoner, and 
 then he never attempted to deny that he was fond of 
 Cora Keator Gibbs and of talking to her, or rather of 
 listening to her talk. 
 
 " Sherry's," said Mrs. Gibbs to the coachman. 
 
 Verney glanced covertly at his watch. He had a 
 pressing engagement at the Republican headquarters at 
 two o'clock, for having devoted himself conscientiously 
 to his law business all that morning he felt at liberty 
 to do a little work on the campaign. It was then twelve 
 
 [260] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 — just time enough to lunch with a woman. Though 
 it often took more than two hours he had never been 
 able to do it in less. With Cora Gibbs, fortunately, he 
 could reduce the time to its minimum. That was the 
 advantage of knowing her so well. They were early 
 enough to get a table in the corner and by the window, 
 the two essentials to thorough enjoyment of a luncheon 
 tete-a-tete, and Verney sat down with a feeling that it 
 was n't half bad to eat in Christian fashion again. He 
 generally had a sandwich and something to drink in the 
 middle of the day, or if more than usually pressed for 
 time, only something to drink, and sometimes neither. 
 
 Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, to have leisure 
 forced upon you if you did n't ever feel like taking it 
 yourself. 
 
 " Let 's have melons first," he said ; " you can't have 
 them much later than September." 
 
 " Yes," agreed Mrs. Gibbs, raising her veil and remov- 
 ing her gloves. 
 
 " And let me see, — how would a frightened egg do 
 after that?" 
 
 She laughed. " I don't know what that is," she said. 
 
 " Yes, you do. The way they cook eggs here — " 
 He looked at the waiter for assistance, who said he knew 
 what the gentleman meant and would bring it. 
 
 " You don't seem to think this is my luncheon ! " 
 Mrs. Gibbs reminded him, when they had finished order- 
 ing and the waiter had departed. 
 
 " I don't," said Verney smiling, " because you know 
 and I know that it 's mine and under no circumstances 
 
 [261] 
 
The Politician 
 
 could it be yours ! " He might have added with truth : 
 " Also that you can afford to pay the ten dollars it 's 
 going to cost, and I can't," if the truth on such matters 
 were ever spoken. 
 
 " Why did n't you come and let me congratulate you 
 on your nomination? " she asked him, leaning both 
 elbows on the table, and looking at him a little reproach- 
 fully. 
 
 " I could not find the time, Cora. I swear to the 
 Lord I could n't ! " he assured her earnestly ; " I 've been 
 too awfully rushed." 
 
 " I know and I understand," she replied soothingly. 
 It was n't her plan to scold him ; she wanted him to be in 
 the best of humors when it came time to hurl her bolt. 
 " I would n't have wanted you to come if it meant slight- 
 ing your work, you know that." 
 
 "I do," he said gratefully ; " you always understand 
 everything. I don't have to be forever thinking what 
 I 'm saying and doing for fear of offending you, as I 
 have to with most women." 
 
 " Careful, Verney, careful ! " she admonished play- 
 fully. " You '11 have to do lots better than that if we 
 are to remain friends, — only friends ! " Her laugh 
 rang, but her eyes were tender. 
 
 " Why ? I don't have to feel * responsible ' when I 'm 
 with you, do I? You 're not going to apply your pre- 
 posterous theory to us, are you ? " 
 
 She saw that she had taken the wrong tack and re- 
 assured him hastily. " I should think you did n't ! 
 
 [262] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 What! with your sister Cora? Years and years older 
 than you? " 
 
 It was Verney's cue to deny, and he always took it 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 " Younger, you mean," he said. " I give you my 
 word, I never saw anything younger than you are to- 
 day ! " he gazed appreciatively at her brilliant color, her 
 dazzling hair, and sparkling eyes, which formed such 
 bright contrast to her severely plain suit of dark blue. 
 
 " There you go again," she remonstrated, " but it 's 
 no use ; I have a stiff neck — caught cold in it yesterday 
 — and my head won't turn ! " 
 
 " Can't I say nice things, then, when I think them ? " 
 
 " All you want, on the contrary," she replied with 
 emphasis. " I 've an ostrich's digestion for nice 
 things ! " 
 
 The time went very pleasantly for Verney, and Mrs. 
 Gibbs, with whom it was a conviction that to make a 
 man laugh was to render him half won and to make him 
 think he could make her laugh was to render him all 
 hers, had kept him so charmed first with her and then 
 with himself, that he was very nearly in a good enough 
 humor, she thought, to be approached on the subject of 
 his folly in paying serious attention to Harriet Rand. 
 
 " Have you heard Stevie Cass's latest ? " she asked, as 
 they began their fruit salad. 
 
 " No ; what 's the bright boy been saying now ? " 
 asked Verney, smiling in anticipation of something good. 
 Cass was quite the professional wag. 
 
 [263] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " It was apropos of Roberta Caldee's breaking her 
 engagement to Nate Bronson because she discovered 
 he 'd been engaged before," Mrs. Gibbs began with 
 relish. " It 's awfully sacrilegious, but Stevie said," — 
 she interrupted herself to laugh — " that the first com- 
 mandment according to Roberta, was ' Thou shalt have 
 no other girls before me!'" 
 
 Verney nodded approvingly. " That 's one of his 
 best," he said. 
 
 " You 've heard it before ! You know it ! " accused 
 Cora. 
 
 " No>, I know Stevie ! " Ellis replied. 
 
 " And he told you himself? " 
 
 " Yes, I saw him last night. He never likes to have 
 his friends miss his good things, you know." 
 
 " Poor Stevie ! He ought to be in a better business 
 than making jokes! He has too little money to spend 
 to be idle." 
 
 " Especially when he has so many girls ! Never saw 
 such a fellow for girls ! If he sends flowers to them all, 
 it must break him ! " 
 
 " He does, but it does n't break him, because he sends 
 all the bills to his father! But tell me, Verney, speak- 
 ing of girls, have n't you a new one yourself? Billy 
 Vandewater was saying only the other day that you were 
 seriously interested in your friend from Chicago ! " 
 
 " We have talked about that before," said Verney, 
 with deep displeasure. The quotation from Vandewater 
 and the expression " your friend " were equally distaste- 
 ful to him. 
 
 [264] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs saw that her approach-shot, so to speak, 
 had not landed on the green, and she dropped her light 
 tone immediately and spoke pleadingly, leaning toward 
 him with earnest eyes. 
 
 " Don't be cross," she said. " I don't want to talk 
 about it because I want to pry into your affairs or gos- 
 sip, but only because I 'm interested in you, and I don't 
 want you to do anything I should consider foolish with- 
 out trying to stop you ! " 
 
 " And what would you consider foolish ? " he asked, 
 somewhat softened by her apparent sincerity and anxiety 
 for his welfare. 
 
 " Marrying," she said. 
 
 Verney looked out of the window. " I told you what 
 I was going to do about that the other week. I told 
 you I did n't intend to marry, and why." 
 
 " Yes, you did, and I approved of your resolution. 
 But what I 'm afraid of is, that if you really permit 
 yourself to fall in love, you '11 break your resolution. 
 It 's easy enough to stick to it while there 's no tempta- 
 tion to face, but — " 
 
 " But when there is, you think I won't be able to with- 
 stand it ? You have n't a very high opinion of my will 
 power ! " he interrupted. 
 
 " It is n't that, only I can't help feeling anxious." 
 
 " Why? What is it to you? " He was beginning to 
 wonder that she should show quite such concern. 
 
 " Oh, Verney ! I should be so disappointed, so sorry ! 
 I could n't bear to see you give up your career, your 
 ambitions, at your age." 
 
 [265] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " I think it would be a pity myself, if I did." 
 
 " Such a pity ! And I 'mi awfully afraid you 're 
 going to do it ! I 've some very good intuitions where 
 my friends are concerned, and I seem to feel, I seem to 
 feel — " her tone was that of a seer — " that you 're 
 on the point of committing yourself to Miss Rand ! " 
 She did feel that way, but it was her jealousy, not her 
 intuition, that told her so. If she had only understood 
 the situation a little better, if her clairvoyance had only 
 been able to inform her of the true state of the case, that 
 far from being on the point of committing himself to 
 Miss Rand, Verney had only lately taken a positive 
 resolution never even to call upon her again — how much 
 trouble the beautiful Mrs. Gibbs would have saved her- 
 self ! " And I 'm so proud of you, Verney, you know ! " 
 she went on, murmuringly. " I hate to see you throw 
 yourself away so young. No man with so brilliant a 
 prospect before him as you have " — the emphasis on 
 the " you " was most flattering, and Ellis was not in- 
 sensible to it — " can afford to tie himself up in that 
 way. Not until he 's years older ! " 
 
 " I agree with you perfectly," said the young man. 
 " There 's no doubt in the world in my mind that mar- 
 riage now would interfere with my work. Unless, of 
 course I were such a brute as not to let it interfere ! " 
 He paused. " So you see it looks as if I would have 
 to remain a bachelor." 
 
 "Because you're not a brute?" 
 
 " Just that. So you see you 're worrying yourself 
 unnecessarily." 
 
 [ 266 ] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 " Oh, do you think so? " she cried gladly. " Can you 
 really assure me of that ? I 'm so pleased, so relieved ! " 
 Then rapidly, impulsively, " I 've planned such great 
 things for you, you know. I expect you to go so far ! 
 Quite as far as the White House ! " She smiled very 
 engagingly at him. 
 
 He smiled too. The White House was not an am- 
 bition of his, but he felt she said it to prove her de- 
 votion to him and her faith in his success, and did not 
 gainsay her. 
 
 " Pretty nearly time to go," he said. " I know it 's 
 rude to look at my watch like this, but that 's what you 
 get for lunching with a man with political engagements 
 to keep." 
 
 But Mrs. Gibbs did not rise. She was not ready to 
 go yet, she had one more question to ask the young man. 
 She had not heard Verney deny his devotion to Harriet 
 Rand quite as explicitly as she wished him to. The gen- 
 eral statement that he was not going to marry did not 
 altogether satisfy her hunger to hear that he was, as he 
 had always been, or as she thought he had always been 
 — hers and hers only. 
 
 "You aren't interested in her, then? Billy Vande- 
 water was mistaken ? " she said — the knowledge that 
 she was doing a foolish thing, that she was in danger of 
 losing all the effect of her previous diplomacy by this 
 bald, point-blank question, lending a peculiarly breath- 
 less quality to her voice. 
 
 Verney looked at her in some surprise. " I did n't 
 say that," he asserted ; " I could n't, because I happen 
 
 [267] 
 
The Politician 
 
 to think a great deal of Miss Rand, if that 's whom you 
 are talking about." 
 
 " You mean you 're in love with her? " asked Mrs. 
 Gibbs, carried on to her fate by a resistless tide of jeal- 
 ousy that swept away every other consideration whether 
 of propriety or diplomacy. Her insatiable curiosity to 
 know the worst rendered her indifferent to the risk she 
 ran that Verney would discover her true motive for ad- 
 vising him against marriage, that it had been her own 
 selfish desire to retain her hold upon him, and not solely 
 an interest in his welfare. And this in spite of the fact 
 that she knew, as a woman of her intelligence could not 
 help knowing, that such a discovery on his part would be 
 as mortal a blow to their friendship as his marriage could 
 possibly be. 
 
 " You mean you 're in love with her? " she repeated 
 while Verney hesitated. 
 
 " I hardly know," he said. He was certain he was 
 not in love with Harriet, but he was not certain he 
 was n't very near it. At any rate he did not propose to 
 discuss the pros and cons of the matter with Cora Gibbs. 
 
 " That means you are ! Oh, Verney ! Verney ! " 
 wailed Cora Gibbs, concluding the worst from this non- 
 committal statement ; and then with a masterly effort to 
 regain her impersonal interested-friend manner, " I 'm 
 so disappointed! What will become of your career?" 
 
 Her persistent interference in his affairs angered 
 Verney. 
 
 " What 's Miss Rand got to do with my career? " he 
 asked fiercely. " I would be obliged if you would leave 
 
 [268] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 her out of the discussion. Besides," he added less 
 sternly, " as I 've told you before, I don't intend to 
 marry, so what difference does it make whether I 'm in 
 love or not ? " 
 
 But that was just where Mrs. Gibbs disagreed with 
 him. She thought it made all the difference in the 
 world, so much, indeed, that if he was in love — and she 
 had about made up her mind by this time that he was — 
 she was convinced, as she had confessed to him she was, 
 that no amount of resolutions by themselves would serve 
 to keep him from marrying. 
 
 There was only one recourse at her command that 
 she could think of with which to try to avert this terrible 
 catastrophe. If tears and entreaties and a confession of 
 her feeling for him could keep Verney single he should 
 not be lost for want of them. In her determination not 
 to be beaten, not to allow the young man to escape from 
 under her influence, she did not recognize this as the 
 argument of despair and the same disastrous policy 
 which her cooler common sense had rejected a moment 
 ago. Truly she was being carried on to her fate by a 
 resistless tide. She cast a glance in the mirror as they 
 left the room and saw with satisfaction that she was 
 looking her very best, for her very best as she knew 
 well, would be a compelling factor in the success of her 
 next move. 
 
 " Get in and let me drop you where you want to go," 
 said she, as her brougham drew up at the curb outside. 
 
 Verney hesitated. He had begun to feel that he was 
 being coerced ; from what motive he did n't quite 
 
 [ 269 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 gather, but the feeling was a definite one. It was also 
 likely to be fatal to Mrs. Gibbs's plan, since there is 
 nothing so unmanageable as a young man who begins 
 to get the idea that he is being " managed." But in 
 spite of this apprehension Ellis decided to accept Mrs. 
 Gibbs's offer after all. The probabilities were that she 
 had not meant to be domineering or anything more than 
 friendly, in taking such an interest in his affairs, and 
 anyway he was late for his appointment. 
 
 " Thanks," he said, getting in after her. 
 
 " Verney," Mrs. Gibbs said solemnly when they had 
 gone a few blocks in the direction Verney had wished to 
 go, which fortunately for her schemes, led through 
 quiet and deserted streets. " Do you really know why 
 I was so anxious for fear you were going to marry that 
 girl?" 
 
 " Yes," he replied, looking at her in astonishment and 
 not liking the " that girl " at all, " you thought it 
 would be an unwise thing to do if I were going to suc- 
 ceed in politics, was n't that it? " 
 
 " No," she said softly, and he realized suddenly how 
 near she was ; " I was anxious only on my own account, 
 not yours, because I did n't want to have our friendship 
 broken up, because I didn't want to lose you, because 
 I 'm fond of you myself ! 
 
 " Don't go and get married, Verney dear," she hur- 
 ried on before he could interrupt. " Don't go and spoil 
 everything. We 've had such good times together, and 
 we can have so many more if only you will be sensible 
 and not tie yourself down to a hearthstone ! And I can 
 
 [270] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 help you, advise you in the difficult path to success 
 you 've cut out for yourself, ever so much better than 
 any little fool of a girl who knows nothing at all. You 
 know I can ! " Her flushed face and pleading, shining 
 eyes lent her an almost supernatural loveliness. 
 
 " Ah, Verney, Verney ! " she cried in answer to his 
 look of utter amazement and incredulity, " don't you 
 understand? It 's just that I can't give you up, I can't 
 let you belong to any one else! I can't, indeed, I 
 can't!" 
 
 He felt her arms go about his neck and a soft, ex- 
 quisite cheek pressed against his chin. 
 
 " If you do," she murmured in his ear, " if you do go 
 and marry some one else and never come to see me any 
 more " — with a half -hysterical sob — " I shall die ! " 
 
 It was a rude shock to the Politician. Until now he 
 had relied upon the clever and beautiful Mrs. Gibbs 
 for common sense before everything else, had taken for 
 granted that she understood as well as he did himself 
 the irresponsible nature of the affair between them, es- 
 pecially as it was founded upon a lifelong intimacy. 
 
 Yet here she was hysterical in his arms like any 
 ordinary woman, reiterating the astonishing confession 
 that she was in love with him — that is, if his stunned 
 faculties permitted him correctly to grasp the situation. 
 It was incredible to the point of being ridiculous, and 
 he could hardly recognize unemotional, calm, brilliant 
 Cora Gibbs, his friend and comrade of so many evenings, 
 pleasantly spiced with flirtation as they had been — his 
 admiration for whom he had never made any attempt to 
 
 [271] 
 
The Politician 
 
 \ hide — in this sobbing, demoralized creature that clasped 
 his neck so wildly. 
 
 Very gently but decidedly he removed her clinging 
 fingers, forcing her to sit upright. " I 'm sorry, Cora," 
 he said gravely. " I had n't the least idea of this — that 
 you felt that way." And by the very tone of his voice 
 she saw that it was all over, that her trump card had 
 met with disastrous and overwhelming defeat. 
 
 In the shock of this rebuff as they sat and stared at 
 each other she realized that she had made a mistake and 
 an irretrievable one, that she had said the one thing a 
 woman who has not been asked to say it must never say 
 to a man, if she does n't want to lose him at once and 
 forever. She had told him, or intimated at least, that 
 she cared for him, and far from binding him more 
 firmly to her, the intelligence had put an end to the 
 intimacy as summarily as a scissors severs a taut string. 
 It was n't true, of course ; she did n't really love him in 
 the sense that she wished to marry him, for she was 
 married already and happened to love her husband; 
 but her vanity had not been able to suffer the thought 
 that another woman should deprive her of this young 
 man's society, upon which she depended for most of the- 
 amusement she got out of life, and had compelled her 
 to try to keep him hers at any cost. But in telling him 
 as a means to this end that she loved him, she had over- 
 reached herself; for having said it, she could not go- 
 back on it — a confession of love being the one thing 
 a woman cannot retract. 
 
 Furious with herself for her folly in getting into this 
 [272] 
 
A Woman Must Not Say 
 
 false position, furious with him for being the cause of 
 her discomfiture, poor Cora pressed a button that sig- 
 nalled her coachman, and the carriage stopped. 
 
 " This is where you wanted to get out, is n't it? " 
 she said coldly enough, though the fury of a woman 
 scorned smouldered in her eye, and she jerked open the 
 door. 
 
 The tone of Verney's reply was emphatic and de- 
 cided. 
 
 " I think it is," he said. 
 
 [278] 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 LIGHT 
 
 HARRIET'S hurt feeling that Verney had not 
 behaved at all kindly toward her in not com- 
 ing to see her immediately upon his return 
 from Saratoga had endured several days after that 
 Sunday when he and Vandewater distinguished them- 
 selves by trying to sit each other out. It was swallowed 
 up, however, in a flood of sympathy and concern one 
 afternoon during a talk with Mr. Vernor, when she 
 learned from him that Ellis's affairs were in bad shape 
 financially and that his chance of making a successful 
 run for Attorney-general was a small one if more money 
 were not forthcoming. It looked, Mr. Vernor said, as 
 if his nephew would not be able to meet the ordinary 
 legitimate expenses of the campaign. 
 
 Vandewater, on the other hand, was spending money 
 right and left with a free hand at the dictation of the 
 Democratic politicians who had his interests in charge, 
 and the result was beginning to show itself in the rapid 
 development of a large and powerful constituency in his 
 support. While the opposing candidate — Verney — 
 was practically running his own campaign, Vandewater 
 was entirely in the hands of his political friends, who 
 
 [274] 
 
Light 
 
 for this reason and that, chiefly self-interested ones, 
 had promised to get him the office for which he was 
 running. Having nothing whatever to say about the 
 conduct of the campaign, the young millionaire's only 
 responsibility was to make a speech whenever his 
 sponsors saw fit, and he was therefore free from the 
 anxiety and worry to which Verney, as his own sponsor, 
 was subjected. And Vandewater had proved himself 
 not at all bad at making a speech. He talked easily, 
 and seemed to have the trick of amusing his audiences, 
 and greatest of all, he had a cast-iron nerve that no 
 contretemps, however disturbing, could shake. Verney 
 was finding him a hard man to beat. 
 
 And this state of affairs had so troubled Mr. Vernor, 
 whose nephew's success was as dear to him as his own, 
 that he was unable to forbear speaking of it to Har- 
 riet, and he poured the whole story of Verney's in- 
 ability to compete with Vandewater's millions, and the 
 sixteen-thousand-dollar handicap of debt under which 
 he was laboring, into her sympathizing ears. 
 
 Harriet was shocked to hear it. It was difficult for 
 her to believe that any one could be in such desperate 
 case for the lack of so commonplace a thing as money. 
 She had had it to spend all her life, and she found it 
 hard to imagine what it would be like not to have it. 
 Mr. Vernor's picture of Verney's straits made her 
 realize it for the first time, and the realization wrung 
 her heart. How terrible that her hero should run the 
 risk of losing the election for such a reason ! The idea 
 
 [275] 
 
The Politician 
 
 became positive torture to her, and the night following 
 Mr. Vernor's call she found herself quite unable to go to 
 sleep as usual. 
 
 The knowledge that her friend, that Verney, was in 
 such trouble, that he had the need of money to struggle 
 against to bother him as well as the other hazards of 
 the campaign, kept her awake. The picture of the 
 Politician loaded down with care, harassed and anxious 
 and pale as she had seen him once on that afternoon when 
 they compared their poems on " Opportunity," would 
 persist in appearing before her mental vision and pre- 
 vented her from closing her eyes. At last she could bear 
 it no longer. She sprang up, lit the gas and throwing 
 a warm quilted robe about her, went to her desk. If 
 he had no other friend to help him out in this emergency 
 he had at least one. Why had n't she thought of it 
 before. She would send him a cheque herself that very 
 moment. 
 
 It was only one o'clock. Parker should post it that 
 very night, so that Verney would get it the first thing 
 in the morning and not suffer his distress of mind an 
 instant longer than was necessary. With dark hair 
 loosely tied back falling over one silk-clad shoulder and 
 small fingers travelling swiftly over a page of her 
 cheque book, in the simplest faith that as it was sent 
 so would it be received — a simplicity by the way that 
 always went hand in hand with her most generous im- 
 pulses, her noblest deeds — Harriet filled out a cheque 
 for twenty thousand dollars to the order of James Ver- 
 nor Ellis. This she enclosed in an addressed envelope 
 
 [276] 
 
Light 
 
 with her visiting card upon which she wrote the fol- 
 lowing lines : 
 
 " Dear friend, accept this from a friend to use as you see fit, 
 and save me from the distress of mind which the knowledge of 
 your distress of mind for the lack of that of which I have so much, 
 is causing me." 
 
 Few words, in comparison to the magnitude of the 
 gift accompanying them; but the greatest deeds are 
 done with the least noise, and they seemed to Harriet 
 quite adequate to convey her meaning. Having de- 
 spatched Parker grumbling on his midnight errand, she 
 went back to bed, satisfied that she had done an em- 
 inently right and proper thing — the mere duty of a 
 mere friend, and friendly she still believed her interest 
 in the young man to be; then she went to sleep, happy 
 in the thought that the morning would find Verney free 
 from care. 
 
 Ellis was lying on the lounge in his room at eleven 
 o'clock the next day when a servant brought him up his 
 letters. He had but lately returned from a tour of 
 speech-making through the State with Oliver Ordway; 
 he had managed to exhaust every ounce of nervous 
 energy in him during the process, and had received 
 doctor's orders upon his return home not to leave his 
 room or do any work of any kind for three days, if he 
 wished to repair the damage done and prevent further 
 mischief. 
 
 It was the second day of his imprisonment, for as 
 such he regarded it, and the depression of spirits which 
 always accompanied these periods of forced inaction 
 
 [277] 
 
The Politician 
 
 had complete possession of him. His body might rest 
 if compelled to, but his restless, eager mind would not. 
 To-day it ran exclusively upon his old anxiety — where 
 was he to find money to discharge the obligations he 
 had already incurred, and those he would have yet to 
 incur if he was to make any kind of a running against 
 Vandewater? Where could he turn for help? to whom 
 could he possibly go ? The question revolved itself over 
 and over in his brain until he thought he should go 
 mad. 
 
 The arrival of Wilson, therefore, with his mail, was a 
 welcome diversion. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, throwing away the cigarette 
 the doctor had forbidden him to smoke — the fifth that 
 day — and reaching out his hand for the letters. 
 
 " Anything I can do, sir? " queried the servant, with 
 a pitying glance at the languid movements of the young 
 man, his dark-circled, sleepless eyes and colorless face. 
 
 " Don't think so. Unless you brought me a whiskey 
 and soda ! " He smiled mischievously. He knew, and 
 Wilson knew, that whiskey and soda, like the cigarettes, 
 was on the condemned list. 
 
 " I 'm afraid not, Mr. Verney ; you know the doctor's 
 orders," replied the man, a sympathetic note in his voice. 
 
 Verney smiled wearily. " Oh, yes, I know ! Black 
 beans three times a day and ennui all the time — was n't 
 that the bill of fare he was good enough to prescribe ? " 
 
 Wilson was " afraid so " and withdrew. 
 
 The prisoner turned over his letters listlessly. The 
 familiar faces of three bills " past due " confronted him, 
 
 [278] 
 
Light 
 
 a letter in Harriet's handwriting, and an invitation. 
 The first three he put aside unopened, scanned the last 
 hurriedly and threw it in the grate — it was an invita- 
 tion to dinner to meet a popular debutante of the season 
 — and then turned eagerly to the letter from Harriet. 
 He could n't imagine what she could have to say to 
 him, but certainly she was a fine little girl ; and although 
 it seemed circumstances had decreed that they were to 
 see no more of each other, that did not prevent him from 
 taking pleasure in hearing from her. 
 
 It did not take him a moment when he had opened the 
 envelope to read the few lines inscribed upon Miss 
 Rand's visiting card, or the few figures inscribed on the 
 cheque, but it did take him some time to grasp what it 
 all meant. When he did, he lay very still with his arm 
 across his eyes and the cheque between his fingers for 
 a long, long time. And who shall say what temptation 
 did not assail him, what glorious visions of obligations 
 met, enemies defeated, the feel of that slip of blue paper 
 did not conjure up? What overpowering impulse to 
 accept what the gods had set before him, asking no ques- 
 tion for conscience' sake, did not rise w T ithin him? 
 
 Never had the way been so dark before him as at that 
 time. That sixteen thousand dollars which he had dis- 
 covered it was necessary for him to make that year in 
 order to cover his liabilities was just as far from realiza- 
 tion as it had been a month ago ; his campaign expenses 
 grew heavier every day ; and he had been able to spend 
 practically no time at all in his law office since his nom- 
 ination. And now, he had suddenly come into the 
 
 [279] 
 
The Politician 
 
 possession of sufficient funds not only to meet his in- 
 debtedness, but to help him through his campaign as 
 well ! Here he held it in his very hand, a free gift from 
 a friend whose wealth was so great that the loss of the 
 amount sent would never be felt, a gift unsought and 
 unsolicited by him, a cheque for twenty thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 He rose and walked slowly to his desk and began at 
 once to write a letter. He wrote slowly and with ap- 
 parent difficulty, his lip held tight in his teeth and his 
 brow knit, but when he had finished and had signed his 
 name to what he had written, he looked up and nodded 
 reassuringly at the picture of Abraham Lincoln on the 
 wall. 
 
 It was Harriet who opened that letter (for it was to 
 her he had been writing), in the beautiful old library 
 in Mrs. Chittenden's house, her favorite sitting-room. 
 It said: 
 
 " Dear Harriet: 
 
 " I am returning the cheque which you were so very kind as to 
 send me yesterday. I would do so in person if the doctor had not 
 ordered me to stay indoors for three days on account of a slight 
 indisposition. I appreciate to the utmost the divine friendliness 
 with which you sent it, the divine compassion and generosity which 
 prompted the act, and I pray that my inability to accept it will not 
 wound you; but Harrie dear, I can't take it. I can't explain 
 why very well, but the fact is it 's impossible for a man to accept 
 obligations of that kind from a woman. 
 
 " Your very grateful friend, 
 
 " James Vernor Ellis." 
 
 When Harriet had read to the end and had found 
 enclosed the cheque she had sent off so happily, so joy- 
 
 [280] 
 
Light 
 
 ously, her disappointment was so keen that the tears 
 filled her eyes. She tore the rejected bank order in two 
 and, bowing her head, cried and cried. She had wanted 
 to help him, but she had not been allowed to! A con- 
 vention, a mere notion of honor, a false pride, had kept 
 him from accepting it. It had seemed so natural to help 
 him, such a simple matter just to send the money and 
 say no more about it, she could n't quite understand why 
 she had not been able to. She had wanted to do it 
 more than anything she had ever wanted to do before 
 in her life, but this great joy had been denied her. She 
 had so much money she could n't begin to use it all or a 
 third of it, but she could not give any of it, not even 
 so small a sum as twenty thousand dollars to her friend 
 who needed it so much! Her sobs redoubled at the 
 thought. 
 
 Why did she cry? Was it her friendship for him 
 that made her feel the disappointment so cruelly? Was 
 this emotion that was shaking her, friendship? The 
 question arrested her tears. She stood on a sudden 
 self -revealed — this girl who had never been in love be- 
 fore and had not for that reason been able to recognize 
 it when it came to her, and she knew on the instant that 
 it. was love, not friendship, this feeling that had over- 
 whelmed her; she knew that it was love, not the friend- 
 liness with which he had credited her, that had prompted 
 her to wish to render Verney assistance — that had made 
 her send him the cheque. 
 
 A glow that had its inception in her heart mounted to 
 her brain and suffused her consciousness. She bowed 
 
 [281] 
 
The Politician 
 
 her head again, but this time shed no tears. What 
 happiness ! She loved him ! 
 
 It was thus she was found by a maid an hour later 
 lying full length in a Morris chair, her cheek pressed 
 close against the letter that had so lately left his hand. 
 Harriet had forgotten that it was receiving day and she 
 was sorry to hear that Mrs. William Merivale Gibbs had 
 been shown into the drawing-room and had asked to see 
 her. She would a little rather have seen no one on that 
 day! 
 
 [282] 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE FURY OF A WOMAN SCOENED 
 
 IF any one had told Harriet Rand when she arrived 
 in New York that summer of the Republican 
 National Convention, that any act in the life of a 
 woman whom she knew so little as she did Mrs. Willie 
 Gibbs would have power to alter the current of her own, 
 she would have scouted the idea as highly improbable. 
 
 Yet such was the case. An act of Mrs. Gibbs was 
 potent to do just that thing, so to affect Harriet Rand 
 that the heretofore favored and propitious course of her 
 life should become all in a moment troubled and tumultu- 
 ous. And this act was the young married woman's 
 break with Verney Ellis, a break which had been thrust 
 upon her by her own folly in opening his eyes to the 
 true character of her professed friendship for him. 
 Although entirely the result of her own error in judg- 
 ment, Mrs. Gibbs's discomfiture on that occasion none 
 the less resulted in a feeling of bitter anger against the 
 cause of it; which in turn resulted in a determination 
 that whatever happened he should not be allowed to 
 marry Miss Rand. For the idea that this was Verney's 
 unacknowledged end and aim had taken hold of that 
 lady's brain with all the pertinacity of a delusion, and 
 her determination to frustrate it was the only balm she 
 
 [283] 
 
The Politician 
 
 had for the intolerable sting of wounded self-love. He 
 must be punished for that humiliation, and since Harriet 
 had been instrumental in bringing it about she did not 
 much care if the weight of the punishment fell upon her 
 as well. Having lost Verney herself, she had made up 
 her mind that Harriet should lose him too ; and that this 
 would mean a certain amount of unhappiness for the 
 girl she did not doubt, for she took it as a matter of 
 course that the Chicago heiress was as much in love with 
 the young politician as she, Mrs. Gibbs, supposed him 
 to be with her. 
 
 It is an absurd comparison to use in connection with 
 so beautiful a woman as Mrs. Willie Gibbs, to say that 
 she resembled a red Indian on the warpath as she stood 
 on the steps of Mrs. Cumloch's house in Forty-ninth 
 Street, the afternoon following the memorable scene 
 with Verney; yet no savage in war paint and feathers 
 on a still hunt for a scalp could have had less pity or 
 more hate in his heart, than she when she asked to see 
 Miss Rand. 
 
 Harriet, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes as the 
 only signs of her late emotion, received her with great 
 apparent cordiality, although in truth the girl was a 
 little surprised to receive a call from Mrs. Gibbs, their 
 acquaintance was so slight. 
 
 " How do you do ? " she said ; " how very nice of you 
 to come ! " And she explained how sorry she was her 
 aunt was not in. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs acquiesced politely in this regret, although 
 [284] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 she reflected privately that the circumstance was a fortu- 
 nate one. Mrs. Cumloch 's presence would effectually 
 have prevented her from carrying out the plan she had 
 in mind. 
 
 The conversation was at first rather forced and de- 
 voted chiefly to the discussion of the advantages of life 
 in an apartment, and the fall styles in clothes; but it 
 leaped presently, for neither Harriet nor Mrs. Gibbs 
 was stupid, from this plane of commonplace to the rarer 
 heights of literature and art, and they were soon dis- 
 cussing everything from Ibsen to Gibson, Harriet with 
 the accuracy of the thoroughly well-informed, and her 
 caller with the random brilliancy of a quick but ill- 
 trained mind. The young girl thought the older woman 
 had never seemed so attractive, and even went so far as to 
 regret that she had called her, even in her mind, 
 " fast." Not a single remark that could be construed 
 as " broad " did Cora Gibbs utter that afternoon ; only 
 the most charming things, clever, friendly, and joyous. 
 Harriet became more and more entranced, yielding up 
 her guileless, sincere heart to this captivating witch in 
 utter ignorance of the jealous purpose behind this 
 seeming graciousness that was rendering the witch's 
 heart, though usually mild and merciful enough, as 
 hard as flint. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs beheld her hostess's increasing favor with 
 satisfaction. Step number one was accomplished. She 
 had gained her victim's confidence. The next one was 
 more difficult, perhaps, for the conversation had to be 
 
 [285] 
 
The Politician 
 
 brought around to Verney Ellis. But this too she 
 achieved with the same consummate skill. Harriet was 
 made to mention his name herself. 
 
 " Was n't it splendid about Oliver Ordway's getting 
 the nomination for Governor? " asked Mrs. Gibbs in 
 a carefully casual tone, when the need for a new topic 
 of conversation made itself felt for a moment ; " Agnes 
 was so delighted ! " 
 
 " Yes, and about Vernor Ellis getting the nomination 
 for Attorney-general, too," said Harriet quickly, anxious 
 that her hero should get his due of praise. 
 
 " Oh, decidedly ! I think so too. I was just as 
 pleased and excited about that, — only of course I know 
 Agnes Ordway so well and I was specially pleased that 
 she was n't disappointed," replied the other. " Verney 
 Ellis, you know " — she smiled — "is a great admira- 
 tion of mine ! I 'm years older than he is " — crafty 
 admission, — " but I 'm not ashamed to admit I think 
 he 's the very brightest, most charming boy I know." 
 
 This frank avowal disarmed Harriet, and any doubts 
 she might have had as to the nature of Mrs. Gibbs's 
 admiration for Verney were swallowed up in the con- 
 viction that it had never been anything but friendly 
 and impersonal. She felt now that she could speak 
 of Verney to Mrs. Gibbs without any feeling of self- 
 consciousness. And it was a relief. She loved to talk 
 about the Politician, and Mrs. Gibbs seemed to know 
 him so well. 
 
 " He is bright and charming," she said sweetly, " and 
 most awfully clever ! Don't you think so ? " 
 
 [286] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 " He 's brilliant. I 've known him since childhood, 
 and his mentality has always impressed me with its 
 superiority." 
 
 " He said you were one of his oldest friends," remarked 
 the girl, looking up innocently. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs winced. It was all very well to admit 
 her years herself, but to hear it from the lips of such 
 fresh, dazzling youth was unpleasant. However, things 
 like this she knew had to be with every famous victory ; 
 so she swallowed the pill bravely and returned to the 
 attack. " Dear me, yes ! " she agreed ; " I 've looked 
 after him and been an elder sister to him ever since 
 I can remember." 
 
 " How well you must know him ! " enviously. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs smiled and with such apparent kindness 
 that the triumphant nature of the smile was quite dis- 
 guised from Harriet. Another step had been accom- 
 plished. Miss Rand had been brought to realize that 
 Mrs. Gibbs's acquaintance with Verney was of long stand- 
 ing and her knowledge of him likely to be founded on 
 fact, and was therefore properly prepared to take as 
 law any hint Mrs. Gibbs might see fit to drop regarding 
 any principle or theory the young man might entertain. 
 Say, for instance, his views on the incompatibility of 
 marriage with the pursuance of a political career. And 
 this of course was necessary. Her authority must be 
 established, for like the most successful of diplomats, 
 she was relying upon the truth for the successful 
 execution of her design, and what she was going 
 to tell Harriet that afternoon was nothing if not true. 
 
 [287] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Her only care was to make Harriet appreciate that 
 fact. 
 
 " I shall be very much interested in the State elec- 
 tions this year," Mrs. Gibbs said next, " knowing as I 
 do three of the candidates for office." 
 
 " Three? " enquired Harriet. 
 
 " Yes. Two on the Republican ticket and one on 
 the Democratic, Verney, Oliver Ordway, and Billy Van- 
 dewater." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Vandewater ! I forgot about him." 
 
 " He became the Democratic candidate for Attor- 
 ney-general — at the last moment, you know. Really, 
 it was rather strange, — the whole business. I never 
 knew him to be interested in politics before, and his 
 resolution to run was so sudden." She looked keenly 
 at Harriet as she spoke. Some hint of the rivalry 
 between the two men for Miss Rand's favor had gotten 
 out and reached her ears, and she wondered if it had 
 had anything to do with Vandewater's hasty leap into 
 the political ring in direct opposition to Verney. 
 
 It had, of course, had everything to do with it, but 
 Harriet's utter unconsciousness of that fact enabled her 
 to put Mrs. Gibbs's conclusions on the subject to con- 
 fusion. 
 
 " Was it sudden ? " she said, innocently. " I did n't 
 know. But then I don't know a great deal about Mr. 
 Vandewater anyway." The indifference of her tone 
 seemed to say she didn't care to, either. 
 
 " You 're not betting on him, then? " said the other, 
 tentatively, anxious to draw Harriet out on the sub- 
 
 [288] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 ject of her regard for the contesting candidates for 
 Attorney-general as far as possible. 
 
 " No, are you ? " — in surprise. " Surely he has n't 
 the character or integrity that Mr. Ellis has! Little 
 as I know him, I seem to feel that ! " Her tone and 
 face were glowing. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs was quite satisfied. It was just as she 
 thought. The girl was heels over head in love with 
 Verney. Well, she shouldn't have him, just the same! 
 The registry of this primitive, elementary vow was 
 marked by a hard line about its author's beautiful 
 mouth. 
 
 " No, he has n't," agreed the older woman. " He 's 
 bright in his way, Billy, but you 're quite right ; he 
 has n't the character Verney has." 
 
 " I can't imagine his not winning. I can't imagine 
 their not wanting him ! " said Harriet. 
 
 "Who? Verney? No. He '11 win. He 's that kind 
 of man." 
 
 Harriet's Madonna eyes loomed big and black at her 
 caller. " And it won't be the last time he '11 win, either," 
 she said. " I believe " — her voice rang a little — 
 " that the country has no better single hope of political 
 reform — of obtaining better government — than its 
 hope in him." 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs stared. Here was enthusiasm with a 
 vengeance. How like Verney that speech sounded ! He 
 was always talking about " the country ! " The girl 
 was certainly in love with him! Why, she was even 
 taking all his theories and ambitions about politics seri- 
 i9 [ 289 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 ously! Though she was ever so fond of the young 
 man herself, she knew she never had been able to be 
 interested in his work. If it had not aroused a fury 
 of jealous rage and envy in her, Harriet's artless 
 revelation of the extravagant nature of her infatuation 
 for Ellis would have made Mrs. Gibbs feel inclined to 
 laugh. 
 
 She recovered her usual equable poise very quickly, 
 however. It would not do to let the girl see that she 
 resented her intimate possessive interest in a man whom 
 she had so long regarded as her own especial property. 
 That the property in question had very lately and 
 with a definiteness that was unmistakable, broken from 
 her hold, did not make her resentment less, but rather 
 increased it. She would have given worlds for the right 
 to resent, and the consciousness that she had it no 
 longer lent an extra smart to her wound. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she agreed quickly, " he '11 go far, no 
 doubt ! " She meant, as Harriet had not, in the way 
 of holding office. " That is, if he 's able to keep his 
 resolution." This with deliberate carefulness. 
 
 " Has he one? Any specific one? " asked Harriet in- 
 differently. " I had n't heard of it." 
 
 Her indifference was very near to foiling Mrs. Gibbs's 
 purpose. The latter saw at once that it would be 
 necessary to pique her hostess's curiosity in order to 
 interest her in what she had to say, what must be said, 
 in fact, in order to attain her ends. 
 
 " I suppose not," she said. " He would n't be likely 
 to tell it to you." 
 
 [290] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 Harriet was silent a moment. She could n't help 
 wanting to know what it could be that Verney wouldn't 
 be likely to speak about to her, but she did n't want 
 to ask Mrs. Gibbs. She felt somehow, instinctively, 
 though for what reason she couldn't imagine, that 
 it would gratify that lady to have her ask. But her 
 curiosity was too much for her. 
 
 " What is his resolution ? " she asked. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs's heart leaped with joy. 
 
 " He 's made up his mind not to marry," she said 
 quietly. " He thinks — and I agree with him — that 
 he can't marry and go in for public life, too. That 
 he would n't have time to do both. On the theory that 
 a good artist does n't make a good husband, you know." 
 
 Harriet showed no sign that this intelligence was at 
 all disturbing. 
 
 " And why would n't he be likely to tell me that ? 
 He seems to have told you." 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! " — with a deprecating laugh, — 
 " don't you see ? I 'm a married woman and an old 
 friend; of course he confides in me. And although he 
 might confide in you on almost any subject, he could n't 
 about that ! Don't you know him well enough to realize 
 that he couldn't tell that to a young unmarried girl, 
 just because she was young and unmarried? He 'd 
 think, you know, that people would be justified in call- 
 ing him a conceited ass if he went around warning his 
 girl friends that he was n't a marrying man." 
 
 This sounded very reasonable to Harriet — very like 
 the truth. 
 
 [291] 
 
The Politician 
 
 "Yes, I do see that," said she. "That would be 
 rather silly." 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs nodded. " And then of course he 's had 
 the idea so long now that he 's not going to marry, 
 it would n't occur to him to talk about it. He 's grown 
 used to it." 
 
 " I suppose it 's a real necessity, his resolution ? " 
 said Harriet, in a rather puzzled voice. She had so 
 little suspected the existence of an incontrovertible pre j - 
 udice against love on the part of the Politician, it was 
 so difficult to reconcile it with her knowledge of him 
 so far, that she was slow in grasping the significance 
 of Mrs. Gibbs's revelation and in perceiving how it 
 might bear upon her discovery of the real state of her 
 own feelings toward the young man. 
 
 " Beyond a doubt," returned Cora Gibbs. " If you 
 knew what a struggle it was for him as it is to find time 
 to do all he undertakes, to keep up with his law prac- 
 tice and his political work, too, you 'd understand at 
 once the impossibility of his undertaking domestic cares. 
 Verney married would be Verney without a career. He 
 simply could n't do it ! " 
 
 " Not even if his wife had money ? " Harriet's tone 
 was a shade combative. She was beginning to realize 
 that Mrs. Gibbs had some motive not apparent on the 
 surface, for discussing at such length Verney's ideas 
 on the subject of matrimony, and that it was not an 
 altogether friendly one. Her anxiety to inform Harriet 
 upon every detail was rather too manifest. 
 
 Mrs. Gibbs looked up surprised. She had not ex- 
 [292] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 pected argument from her victim but only acquiescence 
 in her fiat. The emergency demanded a decisive blow. 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! " she expostulated, " if he had made 
 such a resolution — that he would n't marry, because he 
 couldn't do that and remain in politics too, without 
 being unfair to his wife, — could he, do you think, let 
 the possibility that his wife might have money make 
 any difference ? " 
 
 Harriet did not answer. The logic of Mrs. Gibbs's 
 question was indisputable. She knew Verney too well 
 to fail to see that as a man of honor he could not 
 let that possibility make any difference. 
 
 " He 's a man of strong will," continued the other ; 
 " a resolution once made, he never alters it." 
 
 This statement she made because she wanted Harriet 
 to believe it, not because she believed it herself. For 
 of course the truth was that she did not have any such 
 confidence in Verney's will, but rather feared that if 
 sufficient temptation presented itself he would break his 
 resolution. Was n't it that very fear, that he was at 
 that time on the point of breaking it, that had brought 
 her to see Harriet? 
 
 Miss Rand sighed. She was almost beaten. 
 
 " What if he fell in love? " she asked, but in a tone 
 of wavering confidence. A pain that had made itself 
 felt, although faintly, with the first word Mrs. Gibbs 
 spoke in regard to Verney's belief that he must of 
 necessity remain a bachelor, was growing big and bigger 
 in her heart. 
 
 " He would never fall in love," replied her enemy, 
 [293] 
 
The Politician 
 
 swooping eagerly upon this chance to end the combat 
 by a mortal thrust. " He 's been too long armored 
 by his conviction that he must remain unmarried, to 
 run the risk of making himself unhappy in that way. 
 He may make love " — she glanced with half concealed 
 triumph at the still face of the girl, and herein lay 
 the real sting of her whole discourse, — u I 've no doubt 
 he does, but he does n't mean a word of it. He 's the 
 most conscienceless flirt in the world, absolutely insin- 
 cere and irresponsible. You see from the very nature 
 of things he can't very well be anything else. And 
 you 'd be surprised, Miss Rand, you would indeed, if 
 you knew how easy the women make it for him." 
 
 She smiled, and Harriet instantly became convinced, 
 as Mrs. Gibbs had meant her to, that she was one of 
 the women who had " made it easy " for Verney. It 
 came suddenly home to her as she sat and watched her 
 caller smile, that if it was true that Verney did not 
 intend to marry, conversely it must be true that any 
 indication of interest from him, no matter how warm 
 it might seem to be, must mean nothing. Friendship 
 it might mean, of course, but friendship to her was 
 nothing. When the heart asks for love no other senti- 
 ment will answer. 
 
 As this terrible thought found place in Harriet's 
 consciousness her mind went rapidly back and reviewed, 
 each with a separate pang, the various occasions upon 
 which Verney by word or look or speech had endeared 
 himself to her, and which she had thought proved she 
 was dear to him. Only that day she had come to the 
 
 [294] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 conclusion that her feeling for him was love, but the 
 complementary feeling that he cared a little for her, 
 had been present, too, though unconsciously. The possi- 
 bility which she felt she was justified in considering, that 
 he might care at some future time, was present in her 
 mind at the beginning of her talk with Mrs. Gibbs, 
 but of this possibility that lady's remarks on the sub- 
 ject of Verney and his principles had robbed her. 
 
 She leaned back suddenly in her chair. As she 
 thought it over, it all seemed only too likely to be true. 
 In the light of Mrs. Gibbs's revelations his hitherto 
 inexplicable conduct toward her ever since the horse- 
 show, his apparent devotion to her at one time and 
 his indifference at another, was explained. He had 
 never been serious from the start, why then should he be 
 consistent? No, she had been mistaken. She had 
 misinterpreted his interest in her. He had never meant 
 anything at all either by speech or look or act, not 
 even by written word! A voiceless sob arose in her 
 at that thought, as she remembered one sentence in the 
 note which she had just received from him which seemed 
 proof of the existence of a tenderness for her: where 
 he said, " But, Harrie dear, I can't take it ! " She was 
 so happy when she read it ; now she knew she must never 
 think of it again, that it meant nothing, that it was 
 only his way of talking and writing to women, that it 
 was all a mistake, that she had deceived herself! 
 
 The conviction came as a revelation to her, in spite 
 of the fact that she had always been aware from the 
 first moment of meeting him, that Verney was fond of 
 
 [295] 
 
The Politician 
 
 and used to feminine society, and she turned very pale. 
 It is difficult for even the least egotistical of us to 
 escape the fallacy of supposing that we are ourselves 
 exceptions to any rule ; and the two discoveries Harriet 
 had made within twenty-four hours — that her feeling 
 for Verney was love, and that his for her had never 
 been and never could be anything but friendship — were 
 on that account none the less of a shock to her. Her 
 paleness frightened Mrs. Gibbs. It left no doubt in 
 her mind that her work was done ; that Harriet had been 
 made to see that the Politician was not for her, that 
 she must turn her thoughts from him; and for a com- 
 plete estrangement between the two she relied upon the 
 girl's pride, which she thought would cause her to avoid 
 Verney and effectually prevent explanations. At the 
 same time her jealousy had made her more vindictive 
 than she at first intended to be, and the sight of the 
 girl's suffering inspired a tardy and faint remorse. 
 
 " What is it ? " she said, leaning anxiously toward 
 Harriet. " What is the matter? " 
 
 " Nothing," was the courageous reply. " Nothing." 
 
 " But you are so pale. Shall I get you some water? " 
 She rose and bent over the nerveless form of her young 
 hostess. 
 
 Harriet, who had not until then been conscious of 
 any feeling except despair, was now aware of another 
 feeling — of a flood of burning indignation and resent- 
 ment against the speaker. In spite of the seeming 
 solicitude manifested in the beautiful face bending over 
 her, she saw in it nothing but enmity toward her, and 
 
 [296] 
 
A Woman Scorned 
 
 in the brilliant hazel eyes nothing but triumph. Her 
 unsuspicious, trusting nature was at last aroused to the 
 true character of her caller, and she saw that this appar- 
 ently casual visit had been made with a purpose, to 
 destroy her happiness in Verney. She threw out one 
 hand, as if to ward off and repudiate the other's offer 
 of assistance, and sprang to her feet. The fine rich 
 color flooded her white face, and her voice trembled, 
 yet she spoke deliberately and with dignity. 
 
 " I don't believe a word you tell me about Mr. Ellis ! " 
 she said. " I consider you incapable of speaking the 
 truth ! " And then in a low, heartrending tone that 
 proved this spirited defiance the last rally of pride, that 
 proved she feared that her visitor spoke the truth, 
 " What have I ever done to you that you should hurt 
 me so? " 
 
 Conscience-stricken and without a word — for she 
 was, after all, a woman and possessed in a measure of 
 the softer attributes of womanhood, — Mrs. Gibbs hur- 
 ried from the room and let herself out of the house 
 without waiting for maid or butler to perform that 
 office for her, and immersed herself in her carriage. 
 One might have thought from her haste that she was 
 afraid the bloody scalp dangling at her belt would be 
 observed. 
 
 [297] 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WHAT MONEY CANNOT BUY 
 
 ON the evening of the same day that had already 
 proved so momentous for Harriet and was to 
 prove still more so before it was done, she 
 received a call from Verney Ellis, the very person she 
 was most anxious to see, since her whole hope was 
 now centred in the possibility that Mrs. Gibbs was 
 mistaken, and his " resolution " and consequent insin- 
 cerity a figment of her fancy. For although the beau- 
 tiful Mrs. Willie had succeeded in hurting Harriet by 
 informing her of Verney's conviction that he could not 
 marry, and the light treatment of herself on his part 
 that it implied, she had not succeeded in reducing her 
 to that state of hopeless broken-heartedness which would 
 have led her to give Verney up without further words 
 and at once to cut short her stay in New York. 
 
 Harriet's acceptance of Mrs. Gibbs's statement of 
 the case was not so unquestioned as that, although it 
 had seemed so in the first moment of suffering. Her 
 faith in Verney was stronger than Mrs. Gibbs had any 
 idea of; and upon thinking it all over when her enemy 
 had gone, she was more than half inclined to believe 
 that there was something wrong somewhere, that there 
 was some aspect of the situation which Mrs. Gibbs had 
 
 [298] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 overlooked or had not taken into account, and that she 
 could learn what it was from Verney. In holding this 
 opinion she was very wise. The element that the young 
 married woman had overlooked was the existence of a 
 very real attachment on the young man's part for 
 Harriet ; and his struggle, in the interests of his chosen 
 work, to prevent this from becoming a warmer feeling, 
 accounted far more satisfactorily and justly for the 
 apparent insincerity of his conduct toward Harriet than 
 did Mrs. Gibbs's charge that he was a hardened and 
 heartless flirt. 
 
 The term of imprisonment which the doctor had im- 
 posed upon him had not altogether passed, but his 
 restless soul had not been able to abide in patience the 
 last minute of it ; and on this, the evening of the third 
 day, he had dressed, gone down to dinner, and left the 
 house shortly afterwards to go and call upon Harriet. 
 It was in direct defiance, of course, of his resolution to 
 see no more of her; but he thought that by saying 
 to her now what he had on his mind to say, there would 
 be less probability of his breaking it again. 
 
 The incident of the twenty-thousand-dollar cheque 
 worried him considerably. He was very glad his illness 
 had been sufficient reason for his returning it by letter, 
 for he hated the idea of a personal transaction of that 
 ungracious nature between them ; but thank her in per- 
 son also he must. It was such an astonishing thing 
 for her to do, such an undreamed-of act of friendship, 
 generous beyond belief! Really, it seemed to prove 
 such a devotion to him that, although he knew Harriet's 
 
 [299] 
 
The Politician 
 
 interest in politics by this time had become almost a 
 hobby, it was difficult to account for it altogether in 
 that way. He began, in short, to be a little puzzled 
 to account for it, unless in a way that made his face 
 grave with anxiety and his teeth close nervously on his 
 lower lip. He could not, he must not think of that! 
 Yet the thought would come to him, and it made him 
 tremble. What horrible thing had he done now? Had 
 disastrous consequences, unsuspected by him, resulted 
 from this sweet, enthralling friendship with this sweet, 
 enthralling girl? He devoutly hoped not, but it was 
 with a good deal of apprehension that he found him- 
 self in the library waiting for Harriet to come down, 
 and with the resolute determination that some time dur- 
 ing the evening, in an impersonal, general sort of way, 
 of course, if he had the chance, he would explain to 
 his friend the position he was in and the exact state 
 of the case; he would show how his political ambitions 
 affected the question of his marrying and of his resolu- 
 tion in that regard. If the slightest germ of an idea 
 of the kind he dreaded had begun to take possession of 
 her, it would be the only fair thing to do to show her 
 its impossible nature. 
 
 Harriet's cordial, frank manner when she did come 
 down relieved his mind not a little. Before her friendly 
 smile his misgivings utterly vanished. He began even 
 to feel ashamed to think he had given way to them 
 and to accuse himself mentally of deserving the epithet 
 of " conceited ass " he had been at such pains to avoid 
 so long, and of meriting which he had expressed such 
 
 [300] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy- 
 abhorrence to Mrs. Gibbs. Her matter-of-fact treat- 
 ment of the episode of the cheque, the unembarrassed 
 calm with which she told him that she had hoped to be 
 able to help him. in that way but that she saw now it was 
 impossible, that it was nothing at all for him to be 
 grateful about, and she 'd rather he would forget the 
 whole incident, and the fact that she then dismissed the 
 subject, served to convince him further that his appre- 
 hensions had been unfounded. 
 
 But even while he became certain that he had been 
 wrong in attributing to her a warmer feeling for him 
 than friendship, he realized that the danger of his 
 developing a warmer feeling for her was still present; 
 accordingly, his determination to keep himself in the 
 future beyond the reach of it became firmer than ever. 
 She had never seemed so fascinating to him as she did 
 that evening. An unusual and beautiful color glowed 
 in her cheeks, and the luminous blackness of her eyes 
 was a miracle to behold. And then her thought for 
 him, her superb offer of assistance on the instant that 
 she heard of his need, had touched him too nearly, was 
 too recent not to have left him very tender toward her. 
 He did n't know of any other friend he had, man or 
 woman, that would have done as much for him. 
 
 " That 's a wonderful frock," he said, the first words 
 of greeting over and the subject of the cheque disposed 
 of in the matter-of-fact manner that was so satisfactory 
 to him. " Where this side of heaven did you find any- 
 thing so entrancing? " 
 
 " Aunt Lydia found it for me," said Harriet ; " but 
 [301] 
 
The Politician 
 
 I 'm glad you like it, I like it so much myself ! " She 
 laughed happily. It did n't matter to her what they 
 said or whether they talked at all, it was just enough 
 to look at him. It was so infinitely blessed to be with 
 him again, to have him sitting right by her there on the 
 divan ! No detail of him, neither his smooth dark head 
 with the hair brushed well away from the parting, nor 
 the thin curve of his lips, nor the clear brilliance of his 
 blue eyes under their straight, heavy brows, escaped her 
 — except for the absence of color in his face she would 
 never have known he had been ill. 
 
 The peace of the moment was indescribably sweet to 
 her; how could she, she wondered, disturb it by setting 
 herself to the task of finding out if what Mrs. Gibbs 
 had told her about him that afternoon was true; if 
 he had any such adamantine prejudice against the tender 
 passion as that lady had declared he had ; and if he was 
 indeed the cold-blooded incarnation of insincerity he 
 had been declared to be. She would not do it. She 
 must know, of course, how it was with him sooner or 
 later, and she intended to find out that evening before 
 he left, but not yet. Not just that minute! 
 
 " I hope you are feeling quite well again? " she said. 
 " I was alarmed when you said in your note that the 
 doctor had forbidden you to go out for three days ! " 
 
 "Oh, he always does that," said Ellis; "if I am 
 ever foolish enough to admit I don't feel up to the 
 mark he comes down on me with a three-days' verdict. 
 Next time I won't tell him ! " He smiled. 
 
 [302] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 " This campaign has been very hard on you," she 
 said. 
 
 " Yes. Night has been like day to me, I 've had so 
 much to do." 
 
 " And how are things going? " She leaned toward 
 him anxiously. She feared from what Mr. Vernor had 
 told her that they were going far from well. 
 
 Verney's face grew very grave. 
 
 " I rather think the Democrats will elect an Attorney- 
 general this year," he said. 
 
 She gave an exclamation of dismay. " Oh, Ver- 
 ney, no ! " 
 
 He nodded. " I 'm afraid so. And I am sorry, too. 
 Vandewater is not just the man I 'd like to see in 
 the office. He 's not an able lawyer, in the first place ; 
 and he has n't the faintest conception of public duty, 
 in the second." 
 
 " Then he won't be elected." 
 
 He smiled at her faith in the fitness of things as 
 a factor in elections. " Well, I don't know. However, 
 it won't bother me much if he is, so long as New York 
 elects a Republican Governor ! " 
 
 She looked at him in amazement. He was evidently 
 in an excessively disheartened mood that evening. She 
 thought it must be because he had been ill, it was so 
 unlike him even to admit the possibility of defeat. 
 
 " Oh, but you must," she said ; " you must care ! 
 You '11 never win if you don't. And you must win ! 
 Things look black to you now, perhaps, but it 's only 
 
 [303] 
 
The Politician 
 
 a mood, it 's only a temporary condition of things, I 'm 
 sure." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 His hopelessness alarmed her. She feared it as an 
 indication that he was going to fail. She wondered 
 despairfully what she could do to rouse his fighting 
 spirit again, to restore him to his old state of confi- 
 dence in himself. 
 
 " Do you often read the Bible? " she asked abruptly. 
 
 Astonished, he answered, " Yes. I think it 's the fin- 
 est literature in the English language." 
 
 " Do you read it to get help, too ? " she pursued. 
 
 " Yes," he said again consideringly. " Why ? " 
 
 " Because I thought if you did it would be interest- 
 ing to try a way of getting help from it that I 've 
 heard about all my life from an old sewing-woman that 's 
 lived with us for ages — at home in Lake Forest, you 
 know. Her name 's Dilly, and she 's the dearest, fun- 
 niest old soul ! You don't know what she 's been to me." 
 The eyes of the motherless girl filled with tears at the 
 memory of her old friend's kindness. " Why, I 
 could n't get along at all without Dilly ! " 
 
 "What is it? The way, I mean?" he said, more 
 interested in the evidence of feeling Harriet displayed, 
 perhaps, than in her plan. 
 
 " Why, she says, Dilly says, that if you 're in trouble 
 or doubt, or if things are going wrong with you, that 
 if you open the Bible anywhere, it does n't matter where, 
 you '11 always find something to fit your particular 
 need." 
 
 [304] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 She rose, went to a table, and took from it a fat 
 brown Bible. " Let 's try ! " she said. 
 
 Her manner was half smiling, half serious, and the 
 young man felt the cloud of pessimism and discourage- 
 ment that obsessed him lift a little as he looked at her. 
 The child-like faith with which she had proposed this 
 superstitious way of helping him out of his black mood 
 touched him and appealed to his listless spirit. 
 
 " Let 's," he assented with a brighter expression than 
 he had yet had, and they sat down together on the 
 divan, the big book resting on their laps. 
 
 " Now open it ! " she said confidently. " You shut 
 your eyes, though, first, Dilly says, and then open the 
 Bible and put your finger on a page without looking, 
 and then look and see what you have found." 
 
 " All right ! " he agreed ; " I '11 open the book and 
 put my finger on the page, but I won't shut my eyes 
 unless you promise not to pinch me or burn my hand 
 with a cigarette ! " 
 
 " Oh, how can you be so silly ? " she laughed. " And 
 you should n't make fun about the Bible ! It 's 
 wicked ! " 
 
 " I 'm not making fun," he declared indignantly. 
 " It would n't be funny at all to be pinched or burned ! " 
 
 " Hurry up ! " she admonished, " and try. I 'm so 
 curious to see if it works ! " 
 
 He closed his eyes, opened the Bible, and placed a 
 challenging forefinger on one side of the left page. She 
 hung over him breathless with excitement to behold the 
 result of Dilly's recipe for curing worried people. 
 20 I 305 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Oh, look ! " she cried. " Oh, look ! " 
 
 He looked. His finger was upon the eleventh verse 
 of the ninth chapter of Ecclesiastes, and he read it 
 aloud, slowly and wonderingly. 
 
 " I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the 
 swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, 
 nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of 
 skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." 
 
 " f But time and chance happeneth to them all ! ' " 
 she repeated, her eyes wide with wonder. 
 
 He closed the Bible and put it back on the little table 
 where it was kept. 
 
 " It worked all right," he said, returning to her, 
 though he did not sit down. " Dilly is a wonder. I 
 can't think of anything in the Good Book that more 
 directly applies to my case. It as good as says, ' Don't 
 let the material advantages which your antagonist has 
 over you discourage you, for the battle is not always 
 to the strong, nor riches to men of understanding.' 
 In other words, every man has an equal chance, and 
 the man who tries his utmost, does the very best he can, 
 need not despair. Yes " — thoughtfully, — " I think 
 Dilly's plan a very good one." 
 
 They were both silent a moment, he leaning musingly 
 against the high mantelpiece, she sitting with her 
 hands clasped and a glad look in her face. She had 
 wanted to help him in this the darkest hour of the cam- 
 paign, and she had succeeded. 
 
 " May I smoke? " he asked, and came over and took 
 a chair near her. " I feel better, more hopeful," he 
 
 [306] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 told her, " about the campaign. I was discouraged 
 when I came ; I get that way once in a while. Because 
 I want so much to win, I suppose. You see it means 
 a great deal more to me to have Ordway succeed and 
 to succeed myself, than only a personal or party triumph. 
 We 're not running for office only because we 're anxious 
 for our own interests, but because we 're so much the 
 nearer to restoring public confidence in the kind of men 
 they call politicians, and to restoring faith in the organ- 
 ization ; and you see, if we make good, if people find 
 we 're not simply working for ourselves, if they find 
 we 're working for the best good of the public, it will 
 go far toward accomplishing that. 
 
 " Oh, I feel it so strongly ! " — he got up and threw 
 his cigarette in the fireplace — " that the purification 
 of our politics rests upon the purification of the men 
 in control, not upon the destruction of the political 
 organization itself ! " 
 
 Harriet watched him and never afterwards forgot how 
 he looked, — striding up and down before her in his 
 earnestness, young, ardent, and aspiring. She looked 
 at him with desperate admiration, a defiant clinging to 
 her old feeling of hero-worship that was the result of 
 her conviction that soon, very soon, she must ask him, 
 indirectly or directly, whether Mrs. Gibbs's judgment 
 of him was the true one. 
 
 " It 's a great cause to champion," she said. " I 'm 
 very proud of you for championing it ! Are there many 
 interested in it? " 
 
 " Yes ! A great many, but not enough, not enough ! " 
 [307] 
 
The Politician 
 
 he spoke impatiently. " Numbers of things seem more 
 important than politics to most men ! They 're more 
 easily interested in other things." 
 
 A tremor of anticipation shook her. The moment 
 had come when the painful task she had set herself must 
 be begun. 
 
 "In girls?" She smiled. 
 
 He looked at her quickly as if the coincidence of her 
 introducing the subject upon which he had made up 
 his mind to speak to her that evening, the subject of the 
 inexpediency of marriage for the man in politics, had 
 aroused a suspicion that she knew he had so determined. 
 But her face was innocent and calm. The opening had 
 been given him by accident. Relieved at the ease with 
 which he had found it, he rushed ahead. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " they get interested in girls. In get- 
 ting married. And in order to keep their families they 
 go into business, — scores of them for every one that 
 goes into politics. There 's no money in politics, you 
 know. I mean of course for an honest man. So, you 
 see, an honest man without means can't afford to adopt 
 that career for his life's work. Not if he 's married 
 and has other people dependent on him. And then, if 
 he can afford to, the chances are that a big interest 
 like that in his life — if he 's married, I mean, — will 
 make him unwilling or unable to give his time to politics. 
 That 's the main reason," his voice did not falter, " why 
 I myself have never been able to think of marrying. I 
 want to give all my time, except just enough to earn 
 my daily bread, to politics." 
 
 [308] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 " How much you care about it all ! " said Harriet, 
 leaning back against the cushions of the lounge, the 
 sudden need of support strong upon her. 
 
 " Yes," he assented gravely, " more than for any- 
 thing else in the world. It 's the work I love, and I 
 must devote myself to it with singleness of purpose 
 without letting anything else, any other interest, have 
 a place in my thoughts ! " 
 
 She understood him. He meant by any other interest, 
 Love. She suffered at the thought. 
 
 " Is n't it a big price to pay ? " she said. 
 
 " Perhaps, but we must pay a price for anything 
 that 's worth while, and for myself I 'm content that it 
 should be so. I should consider it ignoble to accept the 
 gift of life without giving something in return." He 
 paused. " I wish I could make you understand how I feel 
 about my work," he added wistfully, in an unconscious 
 endeavor to justify to her, as if he felt she had a right 
 to ask justification of him, his determination to put 
 happiness that had to do with the affections out of his 
 life. " I feel the same way about it as a man I know 
 did about his wife. He lost her very suddenly ; he 
 thought the world of her, and she died." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said Harriet, forcing herself to at- 
 tend. " How did he bear it? " 
 
 " He did n't. He gave up. Left his business ; luck- 
 ily he could afford to ; and all he does in the world now 
 is to sit and read. He reads three or four books a day, 
 he tells me, just as fast as he can, so as too keep his 
 mind from the loss of her, and that in spite of the fact 
 
 [309] 
 
The Politician 
 
 that his eyes are bad, and that oculists have told him 
 if he keeps on he '11 be blind in a year or so." 
 
 Harriet was interested in spite of herself. " How 
 awful!" she said. "And he still keeps on? " 
 
 " Yes. He does n't care whether he goes blind or 
 not, you see. He does n't care about anything any 
 more." He was silent a moment. Then he said, 
 " That 's the way I feel about my work : if I had to give 
 it up I 'd never be able to interest myself in anything 
 else. I'd read myself blind, — just as he's doing." 
 
 " I see," she said faintly. 
 
 " It is n't that I don't want to marry, you under- 
 stand," he added, a new thought striking him ; " only 
 that I can't if I do anything else. Of course, I want 
 to, every man does, and all the more because I know that 
 kind of happiness is denied me. All my life I 've wanted 
 what I can't have!" He spoke with passion, and the 
 girl, in spite of the pain his words caused her, felt her 
 heart go out to him in sympathy. She understood as 
 she had not done before how well Verney knew the value 
 of what he was giving up, and she admired him in- 
 voluntarily for his character in being able to do so in 
 spite of that knowledge. " So I leave the marrying to 
 others. I 've got my work to do," he ended, and there 
 was a finality about the words that made Harriet recog- 
 nize beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mrs. Gibbs had 
 spoken the truth regarding the young man's principles. 
 She saw plainly — with what inward grief and bitter 
 disappointment only she knew — that henceforth she 
 and this man she had so recently begun to idolize must 
 
 [310] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 go separate ways, that since his friendship had not been 
 enough for her he must be nothing to her, that she must 
 see him no more. 
 
 She did not try to think at the moment whether Mrs. 
 Gibbs's charge that he had been insincere and lacking in 
 honorable conduct toward her, was true as well; that 
 was lost sight of in the great elementary fact that no 
 matter whether they loved each other or not, whether 
 she loved him or he loved her, they could never have each 
 other. That was the one point her brain had grasped 
 as a result of this conversation with Verney. Beside it 
 the ins and outs of how it had all happened mattered 
 nothing. The blow had fallen, and she cared not 
 whether it was her fault or his that she had so deceived 
 herself, and that she was enduring at that moment such 
 intolerable sufFeringc She rose and confronted him as 
 he leaned against the tall mantelpiece, his eyes on the 
 floor. 
 
 "Then you're not going to marry any one?" she 
 asked with heart-breaking sweetness, a low note of 
 tragedy in her voice. 
 
 " I can't," said Verney, without looking at her. 
 
 " Ever? " she said, still in that same voice. 
 
 " No," he said. He knew that he had to say it, but 
 it was harder than he had thought. A horrible fear 
 came over him that his premonition had been right after 
 all, her feeling for him was more than friendship. 
 
 The uncontrollable tears filled Harriet's eyes. She bit 
 her lips till they were white, they would tremble so. 
 
 M It 's been so nice to see you," she said, as if the call 
 [311] 
 
The Politician 
 
 were at an end and he had spoken of going. " Come 
 and tell me about the campaign when you have time." 
 
 Vernej saw that it was over and that he could go, and 
 he saw too, that strangely enough he did not want to go. 
 The color rushed to his face and tender words to his 
 lips. Renunciation and gratified ambition seemed of a 
 sudden meaningless and empty things ; and the only de- 
 sirable things in life the gift of warm red blood and 
 the love of woman. He knew that if he had let himself, 
 he could have loved this girl. The pause before he spoke 
 was in reality not more than a few seconds in duration 
 but to him it seemed aeons long. As they stood gazing 
 at each other a newsboy's cry outside in the street broke 
 the stillness. 
 
 " Extry ! Extry ! Republican candidate for Gov- 
 ernor scores rival ! " came the loud hoarse voice and 
 trailed away down the street. 
 
 It was like a call to battle in Verney's ears, very faint 
 and far off, but a distinct call just the same. He started 
 and spoke. 
 
 " Thanks," he said earnestly ; " I will." A second's 
 hesitation and then very low, " And you don't know what 
 it means to me to have a friend like you." 
 
 Then he left her. 
 
 Now it is to be chronicled at this juncture that if 
 Harriet Rand had given way to the extent of one sob 
 to the storm of emotion struggling within her, if she 
 had said so much as one word in protest against her fate, 
 if it had been only his name, " Verney ! " that almost 
 anything might have happened. Say, for instance, that 
 
 [312] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 he would have caught her in his arms and held her to 
 him and told her not to cry ; that he did n't care half as 
 much for his old politics as he did for her, that he loved 
 her, he really did, and any amount of other foolishness. 
 
 But that sob did not escape, that word did not pass 
 her lips, and he was able to leave the house without meet- 
 ing the Madonna eyes and the look of deathly hurt in 
 them. For Harriet Rand was and always had been what 
 George Benton called a " dead game sport." She could 
 not keep the tears from starting, but she could and did 
 keep them from falling. 
 
 So that Vernor Ellis, if he had but known it, should 
 have been grateful to the girl all his days, since what he 
 had done had been what he wanted to do most ; for with- 
 out her cooperation in that crucial moment he could 
 hardly have won through that day and been able to abide 
 by his resolution. Had she been of weaker stuff, it is 
 safe to say it would have been the career, not the girl, 
 that the Politician would have renounced. Even as it 
 was, the result of their conversation was that Verney 
 had at last been brought to see his responsibility. What 
 all Mrs. Gibbs's lectures on the subject and his uncle's 
 advice had failed to accomplish, the sound of grief in 
 Harriet's voice had accomplished in a moment. Not 
 that he for an instant believed that Harriet was actually 
 and already in love with him, but only that with her 
 faltering question, " Then you 're not going to marry 
 any one ? " the idea had occurred to him with a positive- 
 ness no man could doubt, which Verney through his lack 
 of vanity had doubted too long, perhaps, for the girl's 
 
 [313] 
 
The Politician 
 
 peace of mind, that if he were to try, if he should 
 make it his business to try to win her affections, he would 
 stand a very big chance of succeeding. 
 
 For him, then, to have realized this possibility at that 
 moment, caring as much for her as he did, and not to have 
 put his arms about her and committed himself to caring 
 more, was nothing short of heroic; in Verney Ellis 
 more than another man, for a genuinely kind heart and 
 an intense aversion to causing suffering were eminently 
 characteristic of him. 
 
 The thought that comforted him the most afterwards 
 whenever a guilty sense of his responsibility in the 
 matter came over him was that it would not have been 
 right to Harriet to behave otherwise than he had done. 
 For he knew better than any one else that the only kind 
 of devotion he had to offer any woman was at best a 
 divided one ; and he had seen for himself in the case of 
 Agnes Ordway, that unhappiness, and danger of worse 
 where the woman was concerned,, was the inevitable re- 
 sult of that divided devotion. 
 
 That he should ask Harriet to occupy the kind of 
 anomalous position that Mrs. Ordway occupied as the 
 wife of a politician, neglected and forced into other 
 company than her husband's for diversion, seemed to 
 him unthinkable; and the idea that she might through 
 him acquire that pathetic loneliness of look that the 
 older woman had to such a degree made him congratulate 
 himself a dozen times for her sake — that he had not 
 yielded to the temptation to take what a subtle something 
 in the air seemed to hint might perhaps be his for the 
 
 [314] 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 taking. Then too he could not but believe that his giv- 
 ing up his chance with Miss Rand had no greater signifi- 
 cance as far as she was concerned than the withdrawal 
 of a promising entry on her matrimonial books — as 
 he put the thing to himself — and that some other com- 
 petitor would rank as high as he had and higher before 
 they were closed. 
 
 It was these two convictions which saved him on that 
 agitating evening from the greatest unhappiness a loyal, 
 high-principled, warm-hearted young man can have — 
 the knowledge that through his thoughtlessness a girl 
 in every way entitled to a man's love has begun to think 
 more of him than it is in his power to reciprocate, and 
 gave him the courage not to respond in spite of the 
 promptings of a heart that said: "Do it! Do it! 
 Don't let her marry some one else, marry her yourself ! " 
 
 As for Harriet, she too came in time to see that 
 what had happened was for the best for her and for 
 him. That with his ambitions he could never be happy 
 if he were to marry, since he thought it was inevitable 
 that the one thing must interfere with the other — and 
 that it was true as Mrs. Gibbs had said, that Verney 
 married would be Verney without a career. And both 
 women were right in believing this, that with every in- 
 tention to the contrary, Verney was naturally of too 
 kind a heart to be capable of always sacrificing his 
 wife's claims upon his time to the claims of his work, 
 and that it would mean eventually his withdrawal from 
 politics. 
 
 To ask this of the kind of enthusiast that Verney was, 
 [315] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Harriet grew to realize would be cruel, and that though 
 he might make the sacrifice cheerfully he would never be 
 able to forget that he had made it. Although he might 
 seem to be content once it had been made, she felt that 
 like the soldier who abandons the army to please his 
 wife, he would always hear the bugles blowing, and that 
 not all the kisses in the world could keep the sound of 
 them from his ears. And then again she did not want 
 him to give up his career. She believed in him and 
 the good he was going to do if he achieved his ambi- 
 tions, and she was patriotic enough to want him to suc- 
 ceed. She cared so much for him that, even if she 
 had not believed in him, she still wanted him to remain 
 in politics if that was his heart's desire. She saw, too, 
 and this was perhaps the thought that comforted her 
 the most, that what Mrs. Gibbs had said about his in- 
 sincerity and indifference to his responsibilities was un- 
 just and false. 
 
 Harriet was too noble herself not to acquit him in- 
 stantly of such an ignoble charge as that, when she 
 heard him set forth with such earnestness his reasons for 
 adopting his resolution and his difficulty in keeping it. 
 His " Of course I want to marry, every man does. I 
 always want what I can't have," was pathetically en- 
 lightening. And if she had doubted the genuineness of 
 his regard for herself even more seriously than she had 
 done, that " you don't know what it means to me to have 
 a friend like you " of his at parting would have served to 
 drive that doubt from her mind. 
 
 Of course he was fond of her, and in the light of that 
 [316] 
 
"Why did this happen to me?" 
 
What Money Cannot Buy 
 
 conviction which had been momentarily disturbed by the 
 misrepresentations of the malicious Mrs. Gibbs, and was 
 now fully restored to her, it was easy enough to under- 
 stand that his apparent lack of good faith toward her 
 on those occasions when he had seemed to give her 
 reason to think he cared more for her than he did, had 
 only been the result of the terrific struggle going on 
 within him between his resolution and his inclination, 
 the temporary weakness of a young man not by nature 
 adamantine placed in a hard and peculiar position. 
 
 So while Verney was finding comfort in the thought 
 that what had happened was best for Harriet, Harriet 
 was finding comfort in the thought that it was best 
 for Verney. But a resigning thought is not resigna- 
 tion ; and though it stayed up her hands and made pos- 
 sible what was otherwise unbearable, nothing, nothing 
 — so weak is human nature, so uncontrolled the passions, 
 so universal the law that we must think of ourselves 
 first, — nothing could stay the tide of grief that en- 
 gulfed Harriet when Verney had departed, or check 
 her tears as she lay prostrate on the big divan in the 
 library where he had left her. 
 
 " Why did this happen to me? " she cried, unable to 
 understand why this blow had fallen upon her, petted 
 heiress that she was, favored of fortune, brought up to 
 think that she was born to the divine right of happiness, 
 " why did this happen to me ? " 
 
 And it was a long time before the thought " It 's best 
 for Verney " came to comfort her. 
 
 [317] 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 "so they drew on towards the house of the 
 interpreter" 
 
 VERNEY ELLIS'S resolution to put out of his 
 life all thought of marriage, to the sincerity 
 of which his recent experience with Harriet 
 Rand so emphatically testified, was in a sense an example 
 of the old, old question of a man's choosing between love 
 and ambition, which is as ancient as the history of the 
 world ; which Napoleon decided for himself by renounc- 
 ing Josephine, and Marc Antony by renouncing the 
 Caesarship of Rome. But the feature that distinguished 
 his case from other cases was the unselfish motive that 
 ruled him in making that choice. Unlike that of the 
 illustrious personages just named, his ambition was not 
 selfish. It must rather be remembered in extenuation 
 of the undeniable fact that he had brought unhappiness 
 into the life of Harriet Rand, that his resolution had not 
 been taken that he might satisfy his own craving for 
 distinction. It had been taken not so much that he 
 might be enabled to see to what an eminence James 
 Vernor Ellis might climb, as to see what James Vernor 
 Ellis could do toward improving political conditions in 
 his country, in so far as his limited field of activity 
 offered him opportunity. His problem was not one of 
 
 [318] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 choosing between love and a career, but between love of 
 country and love of woman. Not that he would have 
 so described it himself. He did not think he was any 
 more patriotic than the next man, or that he had been 
 in any sense heroic in giving up his chance with Harriet 
 Rand. He had something to accomplish in his life that 
 he thought it was necessary to accomplish ; which made it 
 equally necessary that he should not do anything else. 
 That was all there was to it, in his opinion. 
 
 The mingled remorse and regret that he felt during 
 the days that followed his memorable understanding 
 with Harriet was not to be compared in degree of suffer- 
 ing with what she felt. Absorbed as he was in working 
 for his friend Ordway's interests and his own in the 
 State campaign, he was able to put the dreadful feeling 
 of loss that had overwhelmed him immediately upon 
 leaving Harriet's presence, almost entirely out of his 
 consciousness. 
 
 Not so the girl. She had met the force of the blow 
 which the alignment of her life had sustained when the 
 impossible nature of her attachment for Verney had been 
 made clear to her, with her whole being. The hurt was 
 both mental and physical; and far from being able to 
 put it out of her mind, she could not keep her thoughts 
 from dwelling upon it. 
 
 The effort of appearing natural and untroubled, so 
 that her aunt might not surmise that anything had 
 gone wrong, became daily more intolerable, and she 
 longed inexpressibly for solitude and silence and the 
 absence of the necessity for self-control, so that she 
 
 [319] 
 
The Politician 
 
 might let her unhappiness have its way. But although 
 her grief was great in proportion to the fact that it was 
 the first of the kind in her life, it was not so desperate 
 that she had given up hope of rising above it. As 
 plainly as she saw the necessity of adjusting herself to 
 the idea of living without Verney, her good sense told 
 her she would succeed. Change of scene was, however, 
 she realized, an essential to success; and that it should 
 be immediate she thought was more than advisable. 
 
 She could not be gone for more than a week, she 
 knew; because a dinner, which Mrs. Ordway was going 
 to give in honor of the nomination for office of her 
 husband and Verney Ellis, required her presence in New 
 York at the end of that time ; and no matter how much 
 she might wish to get out of it, the thought that Verney 
 might divine the true reason for her absence if she 
 made some excuse and stayed away determined her not 
 to miss it. She was, besides, a courageous creature, 
 and the duty of being friends with Verney and friends 
 only having been made plain to her, she was not the one 
 to wish to shirk her first meeting with him in that char- 
 acter. The only place in the world where she thought 
 she could find solace for her aching heart was Lake 
 Forest, her beloved home in the country where she had 
 spent her childhood. It was different, of course, from 
 what it was then, for Mrs. Cumloch had only recently 
 substituted the Italian palace that now adorned it in 
 lieu of the spreading old-fashioned house which Har- 
 riet's mother had known ; but the woods about it were 
 the same, the ravines and drives ; and Harriet had grown 
 
 [320] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 to love its splendid gardens and wonderful velvet lawns, 
 nor had the perfectly appointed house with its rich, 
 luxurious tone ever been anything but pleasing to her. 
 
 But it did n't really matter whether she had been ac- 
 customed to live in a palace or a hut, that had no part 
 in her longing for a week in Lake Forest. What she 
 wanted was " home," to breathe again the friendly air 
 of the part of the country where she had been born, 
 to feel the prairie breezes of Illinois on her cheek, to 
 look from her window out over the lawn to the tree- 
 filled ravine where she and Pauline Wright and Francis 
 Morton and George Benton had played Indian as 
 children. Yes, she wanted to go home; that was all 
 she wanted, and home she decided to go. 
 
 Mrs. Cumloch was very much surprised when Harriet 
 informed her of her plan, and she demurred not a little, 
 although she admitted she had engagements in New 
 York which made it impossible for her to go with her 
 niece — when it became apparent that Harriet intended 
 to go alone. 
 
 " It will be only for a week," the girl told her, 
 " and the caretaker and his wife will be there, and 
 Dilly and the stablemen, and I '11 bring Maggie " — 
 Maggie was the cook — " out from the town house with 
 me if you say so. Oh, it will be all right, Aunt Lydia, 
 don't worry ! " 
 
 And the independent young woman even refused to 
 
 take Rosa with her, the maid who attended both the 
 
 older lady and the younger one. She did not want, she 
 
 said, to deprive her aunt of the maid, who had been with 
 
 21 [ 321 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 her a long time, but in reality she thought the privilege 
 of having her stateroom to herself more than made up 
 for having to button her own shoes. 
 
 Harriet completed her arrangements for her trip to 
 Chicago so expeditiously that the afternoon of the day 
 on which she had made up her mind to go found her on 
 board the Twentieth Century Limited, saying good-bye 
 to Mrs. Cumloch, who had come down against the girl's 
 wishes, to see her off. They parted with great ap- 
 parent tenderness on Harriet's part and a somewhat 
 irritated bewilderment on that of the older lady. She 
 had not been able to get out of her niece any better 
 explanation of her sudden flight, than the assurance 
 that she was homesick for her horse Phantom! 
 
 This absurdity, offered in Harriet's gravest, most 
 convincing manner, Mrs. Cumloch received in scornful 
 silence, and with a shrewd guess at the truth she in- 
 wardly made up her mind that her niece's sudden de- 
 termination to have a week by herself in Lake Forest 
 had something to do with that graceless, conscienceless 
 scamp, Verney Ellis! For the Politician was not a 
 favorite with Mrs. Cumloch. She wanted her niece 
 to marry George Benton, and she had feared for some 
 time that the unfortunate infatuation for the young 
 New Yorker was going to make that amibition more 
 unlikely to be realized than ever. 
 
 Oh, but it was good to get home ! The first sight of 
 the beaconing waters of Lake Michigan, as the Limited 
 swept through the northwest corner of Indiana, filled 
 
 [322] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 Harriet with joy, and banished for the moment the 
 pain in her heart. She did not stop long in the city, 
 however, but only took time to go up to the house on 
 the Drive to arrange about bringing out the cook, 
 Maggie, to Lake Forest, as she had promised her aunt 
 to do. She did not go to see any of her friends. Lake 
 Forest was her goal, and she could not get there soon 
 enough; and then she was not anxious to have to ex- 
 plain just what had brought her back to Chicago in 
 such a hurry and without Mrs. Cumloch. It was there- 
 fore more annoying than pleasant to have Cornelia 
 Presbey drop in to see her before she had been half an 
 hour in the house. She feared just at that time the 
 sharp eyes of Verney's sister, who had guessed long ago, 
 as Harriet was aware she had, the girl's attachment for 
 the Politician. But Cornelia had seen the motor at the 
 door and must needs come in to see " if they had gotten 
 back." 
 
 " And you mean to say Mrs. Cumloch 's still in New 
 York — you came alone ? " she asked, all bright hair 
 and breeziness, when she had embraced Harriet. 
 
 " Yes," said Harriet, answering both questions at 
 once, " and I 'm going back myself in a few days." 
 
 " But why, why did you come ? " interrogated the 
 other, her curiosity not at all satisfied. " What is there 
 to bring you home so suddenly and for so short a 
 time?" 
 
 Harriet was fond of Mrs. Presbey, but she knew when 
 she considered that curiosity even in a friend had been 
 carried too far. 
 
 [323] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " I came to see about closing the house in the country 
 for the winter," she replied, looking her friend straight 
 in the eyes and with such an expression of calm de- 
 fiance in her own, that the latter saw she was not to be 
 further questioned. 
 
 " Oh," Mrs. Presbey said, hurriedly ; " of course ! " 
 and launched into a voluble account of all she had been 
 doing herself since Harriet had left. That topic ex- 
 hausted, she told Harriet that if there was anything she 
 could do for her, to help, she would love to do it, and 
 took her departure — only to tell her husband that even- 
 ing when he came home, that Harriet was in love with 
 Verney and that Verney had declined to be in love with 
 her, and that Harriet had run away to Chicago to hide 
 the first pangs of her broken heart. 
 
 " Do you really think so ? " asked Lawrence Presbey, 
 more to get further details of the affair out of his wife 
 than because he doubted her judgment. He had learned 
 in the course of ten years of married life to rely im- 
 plicitly upon Cornelia's intuitions. 
 
 u I know so," said his wife positively ; and then, with 
 scorn, " it 's just like Verney to miss a chance like 
 that!" 
 
 And Lawrence Presbey, divining that Harriet's for- 
 tune was the " chance " referred to, gave a noncom- 
 mittal " um-um ! " in reply, deprecating in true masculine 
 fashion, not the mercenary sentiment, but such frank 
 expression of it. 
 
 When Harriet reached Lake Forest at last, and caught, 
 sight of the familiar countenance and substantial form 
 
 [324] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 of her aunt's coachman waiting to welcome her as she 
 stepped off the train, her lip trembled, she was so glad ! 
 She had expected him to meet her, of course, for she 
 had telegraphed, but it was so good really to see him! 
 
 It was her meeting with Dilly, however, the faithful 
 handmaiden — if a woman of Dilly's mature years 
 may be termed a maiden — who had sewed for Harriet 
 since her young girlhood, that caused the complete de- 
 struction of the girl's self-control that had ruled her 
 so long ; for except for that first outburst when Verney 
 had left her the fateful day of her enlightenment, she 
 had not once given way to tears. 
 
 " What ever made you come back all on a sudden 
 without your aunt this way, Miss Harrie ? " enquired 
 Dilly of the prunes and prisms mouth and crinkly eyes, 
 as she came out to greet Harriet when the runabout 
 had stopped under the porte cochere. Her uncompro- 
 mising knob of gray hair at the back of her head, her 
 big-bowed spectacles and dumpy figure, did not make 
 the little New England woman anything but homely, but 
 to Miss Rand she was as beautiful as an angel. 
 
 " O Dilly, I 've come home ! " she cried in a thrilling 
 voice, and burst into tears. 
 
 The period of readjustment was not a long one for 
 Harriet. After all, her attachment for Verney had been 
 quickly formed and had been of short duration, and it 
 was not remarkable that the process of bringing herself 
 back step by step to the feeling of friendly admiration 
 and regard she had first entertained for him should be 
 as speedy. Having come such a little distance on the 
 
 [325] 
 
The Politician 
 
 road to love she had not far to go back, now that she 
 was obliged to retrace her steps. And perhaps this was 
 all the more possible because her feeling for Verney had 
 partaken so largely of hero-worship, which as a senti- 
 ment often reaches as great heights as love, but is more 
 easily conquered. It is not to be denied, however, that 
 it was fortunate she was able to turn back when she did, 
 before her feeling, whatever it was, had grown too strong 
 to be uprooted. 
 
 Her first day at Lake Forest was one that Harriet 
 never forgot, it was so supremely wretched. She had 
 arrived in the morning and had taken to her bed, where 
 the tears which she had denied so long, and of which those 
 she had shed on Dilly's shoulder were only the advance 
 guard, held sway. With wild sobs she told herself that 
 she wished she were dead, that she should never get over 
 it, and promised herself a hundred times that she would 
 go to Verney the minute she got back to New York and 
 tell him she loved him, and that he could neglect her all 
 he liked and spend all his time on politics if only he 
 would marry her. 
 
 A girl of less character would undoubtedly have fol- 
 lowed this course long ago. Unable to accept her un- 
 happiness without protest, such a girl would have gone 
 to the young man at once, thrown herself in his arms, 
 and besought his compassion in the hope that she could 
 by such means force him to abandon his principles and 
 give way to his love for her. But Harriet Rand was 
 neither so foolish nor so weak. That was something 
 Mrs. Gibbs might do, but not she. Stress of emotion 
 
 [326] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 might suggest the idea, but pride and good sense would 
 prevent her from any real attempt to carry it out. 
 
 The next day brought her a visit from her friend 
 Pauline Wright, very much surprised to learn by chance, 
 through Dilly, that Harriet was home. 
 
 " Why did n't you let me know, Harrie ? " she said, 
 gently reproachful ; " Dilly says you got so tired out 
 having a good time in New York that you had to come 
 home and get rested, but I don't see that that 's any 
 reason for not seeing me." 
 
 She removed the faded summer hat she wore from her 
 waving ash-brown hair, carefully sticking the hat pins 
 through it, and sat down on the foot of Harriet's bed. 
 
 " It is n't any reason," Harriet said, wondering mean- 
 while if she should tell Polly. 
 
 " What have you been doing with yourself while I 've 
 been away ? " she asked, deciding that she would n't 
 tell just then. " Let me see, how long is that? " 
 
 " You went to New York the last week in June. 
 About three months, Harrie." 
 
 Harriet's sigh was like a burning breeze on a desert 
 isle. 
 
 "It seems much longer. But what's the news? 
 Anything? " 
 
 " Nothing much. Francis — " that was the young 
 man whose views on politics had clashed with Verney's on 
 the occasion of Mrs. Cumloch's dinner after the Con- 
 vention — " has gone away. On a trip with his father." 
 
 She paused. 
 
 " And George Benton ? Is he here ? " asked Harriet, 
 [327] 
 
The Politician 
 
 surprised at herself for asking. She had not expected 
 from her broken heart that much interest in a man again. 
 
 " Yes, I saw him the other evening." A delicate pink 
 crept into Pauline's fair cheek. 
 
 But Harriet was too occupied with her own thoughts 
 to notice it. 
 
 " He is a nice boy," she said musingly, as if some one 
 had been arguing the point with her. 
 
 " I think so," assented the other softly, and then with 
 the confidential archness that their long intimacy war- 
 ranted, " how 's Mr. Ellis? " 
 
 The tears, never far away just then, rushed to Har- 
 riet's eyes. Self pity welled up in their brown depths 
 and she turned her face in toward the pillow. 
 
 " Don't ask me ! " she said. " Oh, Polly, I 'm so 
 miserable ! " 
 
 For a moment an expression that might have been 
 concern but which seemed more like consternation, 
 passed over Pauline's face, then it was all tenderness. 
 
 " You poor dear," she said ; " tell me all about it ! " 
 
 And Harriet telling her, found that the luxury of woe 
 was incomplete without the ear of sympathy; and 
 when she had finished a broken account of her little 
 ill-fated love story, she clasped her friend around the 
 neck and sobbing cried, " Polly, Polly ! Why did 
 it happen to me ! " 
 
 The role of comforter was the one most suited to 
 Pauline Wright's character, whose heart was all com- 
 passion, and whose voice was made to soothe. All 
 the afternoon she sat with Harriet, ministering to her 
 
 [328] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 grief with wise word and tender caress; and when she 
 had brought her to a less tragic mood, kissed her gently, 
 promising to come again. Then she went back 
 through the grounds of the big house, across the 
 ravine, over some fields to the little house where she 
 lived. It was a familiar walk — she and Harriet had 
 traversed it many times going back and forth to see 
 each other, and she had always loved it; but that 
 evening it seemed to have lost its familiar look and its 
 lovableness. There was no longer to her any beauty or 
 gladness in the world. " If only Verney Ellis had cared 
 for her," Pauline thought — " perhaps — perhaps — " 
 
 She had kept her lamp trimmed a long, long time; 
 but now, it seemed, it had been in vain. 
 
 Harriet took life very easily those days at Lake 
 Forest. Profound exhaustion was her dominant physi- 
 cal sensation; she slept late in the mornings and often 
 did not rise immediately when she wakened. She would 
 lie in bed looking out through the flowered chintz 
 hangings of her windows on the artificial pool fringed 
 with barberry and late blooming plants on the lawn 
 below, and think and think. Slowly, very slowly, she 
 was coming to the conclusion that meant peace if once 
 definitely arrived at — that perhaps, after all, life with 
 Verney Ellis might not mean happiness ; that to marry 
 a man whose whole heart was in an outside interest, 
 who was one-ideaed on any subject as Verney was about 
 politics, might even mean unhappiness. And always 
 when she had reached that point in her meditations the 
 face of Agnes Ordway, wife of the Republican candi- 
 
 [329] 
 
The Politician 
 
 date for Governor of New York, would come before 
 her mental vision with its beautiful sad mouth, and sad 
 beautiful eyes; and while it brooded over her the lips 
 seemed to repeat what Mrs. Ordway said to Harriet 
 that afternoon at Mrs. de Albert's tea, " Don't marry 
 a politician if you want to help." 
 
 Harriet wondered at the time what the young married 
 woman meant when she gave that warning; now, in the 
 light of her own experience, her own knowledge, she 
 understood. Mrs. Ordway had divined her deep interest 
 in Verney and had been prompted to speak the cryptic 
 sentence from a hope that she might prevent her from 
 suffering the same lonely fate that she herself had suf- 
 fered, that of marrying a man whose work, not his wife, 
 is his passion, and whose interest in that work keeps 
 him most of the time away from home. The girl smiled 
 sadly to herself as she remembered the intense feeling 
 with which Mrs. Ordway that same afternoon had de- 
 clared that she relied upon her art to fill her time, and 
 how puzzled she herself had been to account for that 
 intensity. It was all clear enough now; that pathetic 
 something she had noticed about Agnes Ordway's ex- 
 pression when they first met, but which she had not 
 understood, was loneliness. 
 
 So Harriet thought and slept, and slept and thought ; 
 and rest " knit up the ravelled sleave of care " by night ; 
 and the face of Agnes Ordway helped her through the 
 day, and with every hour her healing grew more pro- 
 nounced. Silence and solitude and a sense of her 
 
 [330] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 remoteness from the scene of her hurt had their way 
 with her; and Maggie made her delicious things to eat 
 and brought up her breakfast in the morning; and 
 Dilly, the ever faithful, brushed out her long beautiful 
 hair for her at night until she felt sleepy, and told 
 her quaint stories, in the dry, satirical way that was 
 such a surprising contrast to her commonplace, homely 
 personality, about her girlhood in New England. Har- 
 riet would begin by smiling just to please Dilly, and 
 end by laughing heartily because she could n't help it. 
 
 When she had finally closed the door upon her young 
 mistress, Dilly would go downstairs and find Maggie, 
 and the two faithful old souls over a late cup of tea 
 would unite in anathematizing " the black-hearted 
 villain " — Maggie's words — who had brought such 
 unhappiness into their darling's life. For it had not 
 taken either the kind-hearted old Irishwoman or the 
 shrewd New Englander long to decide that as the be- 
 ginning and end of all trouble was Man, a man had been 
 the cause of Harriet's present state of depression, and 
 that their idol was suffering from " a disappointment 
 in love." 
 
 On the fourth day of her self-inflicted retirement 
 Harriet's splendid health came to the rescue, and she 
 found to her surprise that she had a great deal more 
 energy and ambition than she had ever thought to have 
 again. It was three o'clock of a crisp October day. 
 There had been a hard frost over night, and the skies 
 above and the earth beneath were iron-bound. Har- 
 riet was not up ; she had not yet felt the need of aris- 
 
 [331] 
 
The Politician 
 
 ing, or that there was anything to arise for. But that 
 afternoon somehow it was different. A sudden revul- 
 sion of feeling came over her. Thinking became a 
 burden to her, inaction hateful, and lying in bed a 
 shameful thing. She became aware that a tide of 
 healthy blood was coursing through her veins, no matter 
 how sick her mind might be, and as she looked eagerly 
 out upon the day, she knew on the instant that the thing 
 she wanted most in the world was to be on a horse 
 again. 
 
 She rang for Dilly, a passion of energy in the pres- 
 sure of her fingers on the white-enamelled button in the 
 wall. 
 
 " Dilly," she said, when the handmaiden arrived in 
 haste — and her voice had the ring of new bells — 
 " draw me the coldest bath you ever saw, find me some 
 riding things, and tell some one to saddle Phantom and 
 have him at the door in half an hour." 
 
 Dilly stood astonished at this command, at the fire 
 of tone and look, but her protests that it was too raw 
 a day, that the roads were icy and her pet not well 
 enough for such violent exercise, were utterly disre- 
 garded by the " pet." Harriet was usually expeditious 
 in getting dressed, but to-day she surpassed herself. 
 Her cold plunge was the matter of a minute, and she 
 was braiding her heavy hair, doubling and tying it, 
 when Dilly returned from a trip to the camphor closet 
 with her riding things. 
 
 The girl laughed as the little dumpy woman entered, 
 her arms full of black cloth habit, riding boots jammed 
 
 [332] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 under her chin, and a derby hat at a rakish angle on 
 her old gray head. 
 
 " If you could see how you looked, Dilly ! Like a 
 regular old sport!" she cried. 
 
 Dilly smiled as if complimented. 
 
 u It was the only way I could get them all down to 
 oncet," she said. 
 
 She and Maggie watched Harriet ride off, a slim dark 
 figure with a peach-blow china chin that made a daz- 
 zling linen stock beneath it less dazzling — on a slim 
 dark horse. 
 
 " Is n't she the brave gurrl ! " said Maggie to Dilly, 
 her huge mouth wide with admiration. 
 
 " Her heart 's begun to mend," said Dilly to Maggie ; 
 " you can see that without looking ! " And both 
 nodded their heads wisely. 
 
 It was by no means a perfect day for riding. The 
 sky hugged the earth except for a bright streak that 
 circled the horizon like light under the edge of a circus 
 tent, and a turbulent wind, resenting its despotic com- 
 pass, hurried about as if striving to find a place of 
 escape. But unpleasant as it was, the day held no threat 
 for Harriet. She was glad, on the contrary, to find it 
 so aggressive, and she told Phantom in an exuberant, 
 satisfied voice that she loved " weather." The sense of 
 exerting her will again, if it were only in resisting the 
 influence of an unpropitious day, was a tonic to her, 
 and the sense of freedom from the tyranny of the mind 
 to which she had been so much a slave of late made her 
 spirit soar. 
 
 [333] 
 
The Politician 
 
 She lifted the tall hunter into a gallop, heading him 
 west over the lowland lying directly behind her home ; 
 Phantom responding, took the road into his confidence, 
 promised to stay by it as a true horse should, patted it, 
 played with it, teased it prettily, and then with fine 
 faithlessness, spurned it utterly, and barely touching it 
 with his proud feet, advanced in a series of great bounds 
 that proved his natural element the air, and all winged 
 things his kin. Harriet's delight in the motion was 
 keener than it had ever been before. Turning in her 
 saddle, she waved a defiant farewell to dull care, nor 
 did she draw rein until the big veins on Phantom's neck 
 had begun to stand out like a bas-relief map, and the 
 good sweat had metamorphosed his dark skin into glis- 
 tening black satin. 
 
 She had ridden two or three miles when she turned 
 south on a road with which she was not familiar. On 
 both sides of it lay a flat expanse of low land, treeless 
 and fenceless and covered with short yellow grass that 
 was almost dead. To her left at the roadside where 
 enormous straw-stacks stood sheltered by some trees, a 
 wagon track led out into this open land, used doubtless 
 by the farmers to get in hay. The prospect of a gallop 
 across country appealed to the girl on horseback as she 
 surveyed the level, grass-covered expanse, as an attract- 
 ive substitute for the trammelled pleasures of the road, 
 and she turned Phantom eagerly into the wagon track. 
 
 It had been a very rainy October in Lake Forest, 
 although of this Harriet was unaware, but the night's 
 frost had hardened and the wind had dried it to such 
 
 [334] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 an extent that she did not at first discover its real con- 
 dition, and did not hesitate to ride at a brisk canter. 
 Much to her disappointment, however, it grew softer 
 and softer as she proceeded, until she was presently 
 obliged to slow down to a walk and pick her way rather 
 carefully ; and before many minutes had passed patches 
 of water appeared here and there, the tops of the grass 
 just showing through them. 
 
 She began to see that her cross-country ride was not 
 going to be so pleasant as she had thought, and that 
 instead of the springy turf she had hoped to find she 
 was encountering muddy bottomland. She wondered if 
 she had not better turn back; but on looking behind 
 her she realized that it would be just about as far to 
 retrace her steps as to go on until she reached a line 
 of trees some distance away, which she felt sure fringed 
 the edge of another road running parallel to the one 
 she had left; and then, too, it seemed so ignominious to 
 go back, so much more like giving up. Miss Rand was 
 constitutionally averse to giving up. She kept on hop- 
 ing that the ground would improve. Instead of im- 
 proving, however, it treacherously and ruthlessly pro- 
 ceeded to belie her faith in it and grew, with each step 
 the snorting Phantom took, softer and blacker. 
 
 A thin glaze of ice developed the trying habit of 
 appearing on certain boggy holes and of concealing 
 their depth, and the patches of water grew more and 
 more frequent. Phantom did n't like it at all, and 
 showed his dislike by blowing apprehensively through 
 his nostrils and lifting his feet with deliberate caution. 
 
 [335] 
 
The Politician 
 
 He was a dainty beast and jealous of his white pasterns 
 and black oiled hoofs. His rider had much ado to get 
 him along, and it was only by keeping up the constant 
 iteration of a cheery " Come, boy, come ! " that she 
 managed to keep him moving. She knew he had a child's 
 faith in the sound of her voice. But in spite of the 
 increasing difficulty of proceeding she still thought it 
 was foolish to go back. The trees were so much nearer 
 now, she felt confident she would soon reach the other 
 road. 
 
 In this expectation, however, she was shortly disap- 
 pointed, for thirty yards or so from the trees, further 
 progress was impeded by a swath of black mud so wide 
 and so threatening in aspect that Harriet dared not 
 cross it. She looked back rather desperately, for the 
 thought of retracing her steps now, all that long weary 
 way that she had won with such effort, made her heart 
 sink. The road she had left seemed very far away 
 indeed. She could only tell where it was by the hay- 
 stacks she had thought so large then, and which now 
 seemed like so many thimbles. With her head turned 
 over her shoulder she sat as motionless as the pillar of 
 salt into which Lot's inquisitive spouse was turned, and 
 longed with all her heart to be back on that fair high- 
 way that she had deserted in her pride. How foolish 
 she had been ! If only she had known how faithless the 
 new love was going to prove, she would never have for- 
 saken the old with such recklessness. 
 
 Wishing could not remedy her rashness, however, 
 and sighing she withdrew her gaze from the coveted 
 
 [336] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 haystacks and began following the swath of mud in 
 the hope of finding a place to cross. She was a long 
 time finding it, but the stretch of mud dwindled pres- 
 ently into a succession of spots, and at length she was 
 able to pick her way over it in safety. 
 
 The patch of ground between her and the row of 
 willow trees was traversed as quickly as its spongy con- 
 dition would permit, and Harriet eagerly surmounted 
 the bank on which the trees stood only to find on the 
 other side instead of a road, a ditch of water some six 
 feet wide and Heaven only knew how deep. The dis- 
 appointment was a terrible one. It was getting so late 
 and she was so tired of mud and water and of her 
 horse's uncertain steps, and she had counted so on find- 
 ing a road! Must she go back, after all? 
 
 She looked behind her again and shivered. Mist had 
 begun to roll up over the bottomland and she could not 
 see her lighthouse — the haystacks — any more, and 
 she realized with a sense of shock, that she had n't any 
 idea in which direction lay the road ! The late sun lit 
 with its frosty gleam so much level, water-covered land, 
 it was all so much alike, she could n't remember at 
 what point she had entered upon it. Absurd as it 
 seemed, she was lost within a mile of a public highway, 
 within five miles of her own home, on a stretch of boggy 
 pastureland where nobody doubtless had ever been lost 
 before. 
 
 Trying to ignore the panic that was beginning to 
 rise in her heart, she walked her horse slowly down 
 stream in an attempt to find a better place to cross, his 
 & [ 337 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 hoofs crashing through thin ice into unsuspected holes 
 at every step. Ugly clouds, gliding one after another, 
 Indian file, effaced the sun. A large white bird, with 
 black tips to his wings, of a species unknown to Har- 
 riet, flying very near the ground, executed a number of 
 difficult manoeuvres, with the conscious grace of an ac- 
 complished skater cutting figure-eights, and settled at 
 last on a mound of earth not far from her. It lent the 
 last touch to Harriet's sense of the unreality of it all, 
 and she felt that if she cried out suddenly she would 
 wake and find it only a nightmare. If she had been 
 lost " miles from any human habitation " as good Sir 
 Walter would say, " on a Scottish moor, with night 
 coming on," instead of at about six o'clock of an after- 
 noon in a stretch of open country that could not have 
 exceeded in dimensions two miles square, she could not 
 have felt more bewildered. 
 
 A narrower part of the stream, however, she did at 
 length discover, and she and Phantom faced it 
 desperately. On the other side of it, directly in front 
 of them, another expanse of watery waste extended, but 
 over to the right the ground was much higher, and she 
 saw farm lands reclaimed from the marshes by delightful 
 looking fences, with a grove of trees in the immediate 
 foreground and in the distance, oh, rapturous sight! 
 the gray roofs of farm buildings. People were over 
 there, nice, safe, good people, who would love to com- 
 fort her and do things for her if only she could get 
 to them! 
 
 She would get to them, and very quickly, for she was 
 [338] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 very tired and wanted to rest. But first that stream 
 must be crossed. She rather dreaded the cold water, 
 but it couldn't be very deep she thought, just a ditch, 
 though a thin coating of ice on top of it completely 
 disguised its real depth. 
 
 " In we go, Phantom dear," she said ; and the 
 thoroughbred obediently plunged into the water. 
 
 To Harriet's consternation it proved much deeper 
 than she had expected, for it came as high as the saddle, 
 and what was worse, there seemed to be at least three 
 feet of mud beneath it. Phantom strove gallantly to 
 pull himself and his rider through it and out on the 
 other side, but he only seemed to sink deeper with every 
 plunge. The water came sloughing up into the girl's 
 lap now and she began to think she had better climb 
 off the horse's back and give him a chance to extricate 
 himself unimpeded by her weight. 
 
 She did not much fancy struggling through three 
 feet of mud and water in her soaked riding-skirt, even 
 though she knew it was not deep enough to drown her; 
 but it began to seem expedient, for Phantom in his 
 efforts to get out of the ditch had only succeeded in 
 miring himself more thoroughly than ever. It was a 
 dismal plight to be in, but help was close at hand. 
 
 In a paddock just the other side of the clump of 
 trees that effectually screened it from sight, was a small 
 training-ring, around which a man in riding things had 
 been driving a young horse, when he suddenly discovered 
 from the vantage point of his seat in the sulky, the 
 unfortunate predicament of the horse and rider who, 
 
 [339] 
 
The Politician 
 
 his groom had told him, had been wandering about on 
 the muddy marshland for the last half-hour. He lost 
 no time in going to the rescue — more especially since 
 he realized as he ran that the luckless rider was a woman. 
 
 " Hang on, I 'm coming," he shouted, as he saw 
 her make a movement to dismount, and when he had 
 reached the spot, " Harrie ! " he cried, " by all that 's 
 wonderful ! " 
 
 At any other time if she had been her sane, sensible 
 self and not somewhat unnerved by her rather trying 
 experience, she would have been very much surprised 
 to perceive that her rescuer was George Benton, and 
 would have wondered much how he happened to be in 
 that out-of-the-way spot just then, but it did not occur 
 to Harriet at the moment that it was at all extraor- 
 dinary. It only seemed a part of her strange adventure 
 and quite in keeping with its dreamlike aspect, to find 
 his familiar face — red from anxiety and running, the 
 eye-glasses pushed awry — gazing at her in astonish- 
 ment from the top of the bank she and Phantom had 
 failed to surmount. 
 
 But he did not waste many seconds in wondering how 
 she got there and where she came from. 
 
 " Hold on ! " he reiterated, and sliding down the 
 bank, waded into the water up to the top of his puttees 
 and placed a firm hand on Phantom's bit, who instantly 
 ceased plunging. 
 
 Benton's touch and voice always had upon horses 
 the effect of inspiring confidence, and the animal, with 
 his help, was very soon able to scramble out of the ditch. 
 
 [340] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 " Thanks," said Harriet politely, much as if he had 
 given her his arm over a crossing. She was not un- 
 grateful, but very tired, and he was too intent on 
 getting her back to solid ground to notice what she 
 said. When they reached the roadway where stood 
 the sulky which he had left so hurriedly, with the groom 
 at the horse's head, he lifted the girl, whose exhaustion 
 had not escaped him, without ceremony from the saddle 
 and into the trap, and then got in himself. 
 
 " Take Miss Rand's horse to the stable as quick as 
 you can, and see that he gets a thorough rub-down 
 and a feed," he said to the man. Then he drove 
 rapidly off in the direction of the gray roofs Harriet 
 had noticed and yearned for from the other side of 
 the ditch, and which she now knew belonged to Benton's 
 stock farm. That she had not recognized it before 
 was owing to her novel and unusual method of approach- 
 ing it. 
 
 The drive up through the pastures to Benton's 
 handsome brick residence, artistically modelled on the 
 farmhouse style as to exterior, but thoroughly modern 
 and luxurious as to interior, did not take five minutes, 
 and by the time they reached its wide white, brass- 
 knockered door and hospitable front porch, Harriet 
 had explained to him how it was that the necessity of 
 closing the house in Lake Forest for the winter had 
 brought her West for a week (the man was too ac- 
 customed to taking her word for gospel to consider this 
 excuse insufficient), and how a thoughtless fancy for a 
 cross-country gallop had brought her to the uncom- 
 
 [341] 
 
The Politician 
 
 fortable, if ridiculous, plight from which he had so 
 opportunely rescued her. And he had explained in his 
 turn how it was that he had chanced to see horse and 
 rider struggling in the ditch, and his surprise when he 
 had discovered who the rider was. 
 
 Upon entering the house, Benton's housekeeper and 
 distant cousin, Mrs. Pratt, took charge of Harriet and 
 helped her to remove her wet riding-skirt and splashed 
 coat before a fire in an upstairs room. The good lady 
 was very kind and urged the loan of a black silk dress 
 upon her guest, until her own things should have dried ; 
 but the girl declined the offer, declaring that her boots 
 would muddy it, and that a long coat of some sort 
 over her riding-breeches and linen waist was all she 
 needed. Whereupon a covert driving-coat belonging 
 to the master of the house was produced, which covered 
 Harriet almost to her heels, and in which she clattered 
 joyously downstairs to the dining-room where Benton 
 and a supper which the young man had ordered made 
 ready at once, awaited her. All her old spirits had re- 
 turned to her by this time. The anxiety incident to 
 her adventure was forgotten, and she was gloriously 
 hungry. 
 
 " I know you 're having dinner early just on my 
 account," she said, as they sat down, flashing an ap- 
 preciative glance at her host, " but I 'm glad of it ; 
 I 'm simply starved ! " 
 
 " Not so very. I have it early myself in the country. 
 And it is n't dinner, it 's supper. I 'm very much of a 
 farmer, you know." 
 
 [342] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 He smiled happily as he spoke. It was too wonder- 
 ful to be true that Harriet should be sitting opposite 
 him at his own table, even if old Mrs. Pratt was there 
 too, when only a little while ago he had thought her 
 far away in New York. In his satisfaction over this 
 miraculous fact he failed to see anything out of the 
 way about her costume, though the covert coat was so 
 big for her that she had to turn back the sleeves, and 
 it trailed on the floor when she sat down. 
 
 " Is n't it becoming? " she asked, inferring from his 
 prolonged scrutiny that it was the coat that had caught 
 his attention. 
 
 " What? " he asked, innocent of any other motive 
 for his gazing than a desire to feast upon the sight of 
 her; and understanding this suddenly, she laughed 
 pleasedly. 
 
 She was enjoying the whole thing exceedingly, the 
 old-fashioned dining-room — painstakingly old-fash- 
 ioned, with the very best old-fashionedness that money 
 could buy, beamed ceiling, mullioned windows, china 
 cupboards and all, that its owner had had copied from 
 an old New England farmhouse, — the unshaded can- 
 dles on the dark shining surface of the table, the de- 
 licious cold chicken, tender salad, and hot tea, and the 
 aged domestic whose partiality for her master was so 
 great that she insisted upon passing everything to him 
 first, causing that gentleman such embarrassment. 
 
 As for Benton himself, her heart had never been so 
 warm toward him. Had n't he as much as saved her 
 life? And dear me, how good everything tasted! 
 
 [343] 
 
The Politician 
 
 She only hoped, and expressed as much to the other 
 two at the table, that Phantom was enjoying his oats 
 as much as she enjoyed her supper. What was the 
 aged domestic bringing in now? 
 
 She turned around in her chair with a childish 
 eagerness which Benton — with whom she had always 
 been at her gravest and most dignified — had never 
 seen her display before, and thought utterly fascinat- 
 ing. 
 
 " Honey ! " she cried, gazing with rapture at the 
 crystal bowl of golden translucence that was passed 
 to her. " Hot biscuits and honey ! O Georgie, what 
 a nice boy you are ! " 
 
 " It 's from my own apiaries," he said, flushing with 
 pleasure at her pleasure ; " I knew you liked it ! " 
 
 After supper Harriet donned her skirt and coat, now 
 quite dry and beautifully brushed, and Benton drove 
 her home in a runabout. The distance between their 
 homes was quite five miles by the road, but somehow 
 on this occasion, and this had not always been the case 
 on similar ones, it seemed as short to Harriet as to him. 
 
 That evening as she made ready for bed, rather 
 early, for the day's events had tired her, she regaled 
 Dilly, who was assisting in the ceremony, with an ac- 
 count of her adventure, between little bursts of song. 
 
 But Dilly, who was by nature a pessimist, and proud 
 of it, though she acknowledged her delight that so 
 much of her pet's old spirit had seemed to return, 
 was not at all certain that the advent of George Ben- 
 
 [344] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 ton as a factor in Harriet's recovery of it, was to be 
 regarded with any confidence. 
 
 "That's all very well, but just the same, Miss 
 Harrie, I hope you 're not going to be foolish enough 
 to trust a man again ! I would n't trust one " — if 
 she had been a French marquise who had dealt with 
 countless lovers in her time, this funny dumpy little 
 woman with the pursed mouth and tight-screwed hair 
 could hardly have spoken with an air of more experience 
 — " around the corner as long as he was able to sit up 
 and blow a feather off the table ! " 
 
 But Harriet's surprising answer to this bit of un- 
 compromising scepticism was a joyous laugh. In the 
 young, not time but perfect health is the most potent 
 quantity in the healing of a broken heart. 
 
 After that they rode every day of the remainder of 
 the week, she and George Benton, and the amount of 
 time she devoted to meditating upon her disappoint- 
 ment, and to arguing herself out of the idea that her 
 life without Verney Ellis was going to mean nothing 
 but unhappiness for her, grew less and less. 
 
 On the last day of her stay in Lake Forest, as they 
 were riding together for the last time before her depar- 
 ture for New York that afternoon, George Benton, as 
 was quite proper and fitting, asked her again if she 
 wouldn't marry him. He had not asked her before, 
 fearing to end those precious days with her prema- 
 turely, as her refusal of him must have done. They 
 were riding up the beautiful winding drive that 
 
 [345] 
 
The Politician 
 
 approached Mrs. Cumloch's country house through 
 the park she had had laid out. 
 
 " Could n't you possibly think of it? " he said. " I 'm 
 a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, I know, with nothing 
 to interest myself in but my horses, but I 'd try awfully 
 hard to make you happy." 
 
 He reached over and closed his right hand over one 
 of hers, reins and all. 
 
 She turned the deep gaze of the Madonna eyes he 
 worshipped upon him, soberly, consideringly, silently. 
 She thought he had never come so near being hand- 
 some, with the flush of honest feeling in his face, the 
 faithful eyes dim behind their glasses, and his broad- 
 shouldered, thin figure that never looked so well as in the 
 saddle. 
 
 " I love you so very much ! " he said, when he had 
 waited a moment for her reply. 
 
 Ah! That was what she had wanted to hear, and 
 he had nearly made the mistake of not telling her, in 
 his fear that she had heard it so often she would not 
 care to hear it again. 
 
 Her delicate skin took on a deeper bloom. Her 
 spirit answered gratefully to that simple statement, 
 warmed to it, and clung to it. Certainly it was a 
 wonderful thing to be loved, and by a man she thought 
 as much of as she did of the one who was pleading 
 with her now. 
 
 There was, too, a new masterfulness about his plead- 
 ing that she liked, that had never been there before 
 though he had asked her that question a great many 
 
 [346] 
 
The House of the Interpreter 
 
 times, and that was the result of the something new 
 that had characterized their intimacy of the past few 
 days, of that atmosphere of hope which had been cast 
 about those delightful hours together which had been 
 granted George Benton, he knew, by special dispensation 
 of Providence! It is a well-known fact that the man 
 who asks knowing that he has a chance, is a different 
 creature from the man who asks knowing he has none. 
 There is a ring and a way about the first that goes 
 far toward getting him what he wants. At least it had 
 that effect now, in Benton's case. 
 
 Harriet turned her fingers under the possessive hand 
 that covered hers, and clasped his rather tightly. 
 
 " You 've asked me that a great many times, George," 
 she said, " and I 've said ' No ' a great many times. 
 But now — but now — " 
 
 She took her hand from him and regarded him with 
 a touching expression of confidence, of affection, and 
 of shy gladness. 
 
 " Although I can't say ' yes,' I won't " — very 
 slowly — " say * no.' " 
 
 Touching her horse with her spur, she rode off at 
 a gallop toward the house, leaving behind her an in- 
 credulous, much amazed man with a hope in his heart 
 that he would not have exchanged for any certainty 
 in the world — except one. 
 
 [847] 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 YERNEY LOSES HIS TEMPER 
 
 MEANWHILE the Republican State Cam- 
 paign, which was Verney's especial care and 
 chief interest, was becoming with each day 
 more engrossing. As a stone that is sent rolling down a 
 hill increases its momentum with every turn, so the cam- 
 paign gathered impetus as it neared election day. 
 
 The papers had more and more to say about the 
 Republican candidate for Governor, one day picturing 
 him addressing a village audience in " characteristic 
 attitude," and the next devoting a column to a review 
 of his political career, under some such heading as 
 " prominent in politics at thirty-four." And with 
 him the Republican candidate for Attorney-general 
 was often named. 
 
 Even in the last week the Democratic candidate for 
 Governor had lost his old position as a five to four 
 favorite. Everywhere Ordway money had become more 
 abundant and aggressive. In the Wall Street district 
 it was nine to ten on the curb, and on the Stock 
 Exchange it was being offered at nine to ten without 
 takers. The odds on the young candidate were length- 
 ening all the time, as his sane, practical policies were 
 unfolded in his speeches and his unrevolutionary atti- 
 
 [348] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 tude was made clear toward such questions as direct 
 primaries and public service commissions. 
 
 To the former he was opposed, characterizing the 
 system of direct nomination as an experiment which 
 appeared to contain evils as great as those of the 
 present system. While he acknowledged that the pur- 
 pose of the direct nomination plan was commendable, 
 to give members of the party at large a greater share 
 in the choice of the party's nominees and to put an 
 end to corrupt boss domination, he maintained that it 
 had not worked out that way in other States where it 
 had been in use. It had resulted in increasing the 
 power of money in politics, he said, by making neces- 
 sary the expenditure of large sums at the primaries, and 
 had doubled the labor of election to office by necessi- 
 tating two campaigns instead of one; and in this con- 
 nection — since it is true the man must seek the office, 
 not the office the man — it had acted as a deterrent to 
 the entry of the best men into public life. He said too 
 that he could not endorse the system because he regarded 
 it as an obstacle to organization, inasmuch as the party 
 would find it difficult to act under it for the purpose 
 of fusion with other parties, or for the suitable dis- 
 tribution of offices among localities or groups in the 
 party. Also, with direct primaries there was the possi- 
 bility, as had been proved in other States, of nomina- 
 tions being made by a minority of the party, while 
 he himself believed in the convention system of nom- 
 inating in which the majority ruled and where repre- 
 sentation was by delegates. As for abuses in party 
 
 [349] 
 
The Politician 
 
 management, the existence of which he did not 
 deny, he was convinced they could be corrected. 
 
 He was opposed also to the public service commis- 
 sions as a means of regulating public affairs, and on 
 the ground that their continued and indiscriminate use 
 would result in a government by commissions instead 
 of by the officers elected under the Constitution. He 
 was quoted as saying, however, that he believed a cer- 
 tain amount of regulation was necessary, and that if 
 he should come into office he would recommend to the 
 Legislature the retention of the commission system in- 
 augurated by the preceding Governor for some time 
 longer, in order to give it every chance of proving its 
 efficiency in that respect, although he would at the 
 same time endeavor to limit the commissions so as to 
 render them less expensive and more quick to act. 
 
 Ordway announced himself in short as being for less 
 legislation on new and untried lines, and less interfer- 
 ence with personal and economic liberty; and these 
 doctrines (which were identical with those Verney fa- 
 vored and which constituted his reason, apart from 
 personal friendship, for desiring Ordway's election) 
 the young candidate was endeavoring to disseminate 
 throughout the State and in Manhattan. As they 
 struck the keynote of the temperate and neutral mass 
 of voters who form a class between the two extremes 
 of the reformers and the indifferent, he was winning to 
 himself many adherents. Speaking in opera houses, 
 townhalls, and often from the end of a railroad car, 
 he had travelled from one town to another, spreading 
 
 [ 350 ] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 the gospel of Republicanism as he saw it, and meeting 
 everywhere with an enthusiastic reception. 
 
 A ten-o'clock meeting at Fredonia filled the opera 
 house to overflowing, and hundreds were unable to get 
 in. At Oswego he was met by a company of militia, 
 from which place he went by automobile to the mills 
 across the river, where he made a brief out-of-doors 
 address to hundreds of the operatives. At Syracuse, 
 although he did not speak, he kept open house in the 
 car and shook hands with a great number of people. 
 Practically the whole town of Batavia, where he gave a 
 five-minute talk from the platform, turned out to greet 
 him; and at Dunkirk, when his train pulled into the 
 depot one night at about eight o'clock, he found a 
 typical election-time throng of people filling the 
 streets, cheering and burning red fire. 
 
 On some of these occasions, Verney, who accompanied 
 Ordway on his campaign tour, was the principal speaker ; 
 but during the three days wl ; ch the candidate for 
 Governor had reserved for campaigning in Manhattan, 
 the young men worked separately, addressing inde- 
 pendent audiences. The Politician was confident of 
 success, at least, of his friend's success. 
 
 " Of course we '11 win," he told Ordway confidently one 
 day. " The national ticket and the State ticket are sure 
 to be victorious. The head of each, at least, I mean," 
 he added, smiling at the other. " Wall Street shows 
 plainly enough which way the wind is blowing; stocks 
 are holding firm, and people are n't a bit excited, just 
 waiting, that 's all." 
 
 [ 351 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 And indications seemed to justify his optimism. A 
 triple canvass of the same districts by different per- 
 sons had been made by an enterprising voting league, 
 and from the result of this poll it seemed that Ordway 
 would have only from seven to eight votes on the 
 average of each election District behind the Republican 
 Presidential candidate. It looked as if he would be 
 elected Governor of New York State by a large major- 
 ity, and that his total vote would not be likely to 
 fall behind the head of the ticket to a greater extent 
 than forty thousand votes. 
 
 As for the less important contest between Verney 
 and Billy Vandewater for Attorney-general, the chances 
 of each candidate seemed more nearly equal. The 
 respective status of each had been clearly defined in the 
 public mind at the beginning of the campaign by the 
 sobriquets which had been given each by his enemies. 
 Vandewater's good family, good looks, and good money, 
 together with his generally well-dressed appearance and 
 his habit of riding to all political meetings in a large 
 60-horse-power motor car, had earned for him that of 
 " the silk-stocking candidate " ; and Verney, in spite 
 of his good family, and on account of his well-known 
 position of influence in the Republican party machine 
 (he had been executive member of his District for a 
 long time), had become generally known as " The 
 Politician," — the same name by which in derision Mrs. 
 Presbey and others of his family who were not in 
 sympathy with his political aspirations were accustomed 
 
 [352] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 to call him, and by which he was known to Harriet 
 Rand's tenderest and most admiring thoughts. 
 
 Yet each candidate had as many friends as enemies 
 among the voting public who adhered neither to one 
 party nor to the other; for while there were large 
 numbers of persons who were irked by the Demo- 
 cratic candidate's habitually immaculate appearance, 
 his chauffeur, and the air of condescension which was 
 as much a part of him as his dissipated eyes, there 
 were a great many who gloried in that very conde- 
 scension and boasted that " our candidate belongs to 
 one of New York's oldest families." Some human be- 
 ings seem naturally to thrive on boot-licking, and among 
 these Vandewater found ardent supporters. 
 
 There were also a great number of people who thought 
 Verney's knowledge of affairs, his practical acquaint- 
 ance with politics, an advantage rather than a detriment 
 in the matter of his proving an efficient Attorney- 
 general. They thought a man who was familiar with 
 the operation of the voting system on election days 
 would be better able to prosecute cases having to do 
 with illegal voting, — and an Attorney-general would al- 
 most certainly have to face cases of that kind during 
 his term of office, — than a man who was n't. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, so far as Verney's success 
 in the campaign was concerned, in elections the voters 
 who really stop to consider the merits and demerits of 
 a candidate^ are in the minority; and the voters who 
 hurrah for the man who seems the most popular, who 
 23 [ 353 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 talks the loudest and sets up the most drinks are in 
 the majority. On the same principle that a man at 
 a ball goes up to ask for a dance to the girl who is 
 already surrounded by men instead of to the one who 
 is not. Half the time he does n't really think she 's 
 so much more attractive than her less fortunate sister, 
 but he goes because the other men are there, and he 
 wants to be in the swim. 
 
 " Entertaining " was certainly Vandewater's long 
 suit. He had unlimited private means, so that his ac- 
 tivities were not at all restricted by the meagre sums 
 appropriated by his party for his campaign expenses. 
 Halfway through the campaign it was his boast that 
 he had dined or lunched with every " boss " of any 
 account in New York City, and this had kept him a great 
 deal busier than in expounding the principles of 
 Democracy. 
 
 Yet, too, it was generally conceded he made a good 
 speech. If he didn't succeed in proving the superior- 
 ity of his party over the other, or in showing cause 
 why he should be elected rather than his rival, he did 
 succeed, chiefly on account of the facility with which 
 he kept an audience amused, in drawing large crowds 
 to hear him speak, and establishing a wide personal 
 popularity. And personal popularity is oftentimes all 
 that is required to elect a man. 
 
 This Verney knew very well, and he was too good 
 a politician not to understand how great an appeal 
 Vandewater's free-handed generosity and his trick of 
 being amusing made to the popular mind. That was 
 
 [ 354 ] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 what made him so anxious about the result of the con- 
 test, — because he was himself terribly handicapped in 
 the first respect by the shortness of his campaign funds, 
 and in the second by his own limitations as a speaker. 
 It was true, as he was quite aware, that his very earn- 
 estness prevented him from making his speeches as 
 entertaining as his rival's. He had so much to say, it 
 took so much time to tell the people what he thought 
 they came to hear, what his party was able to do for 
 them, and in what manner their candidate for Governor 
 and he himself intended to serve them if they had the 
 chance, that he could n't find time to drag in stories 
 for the sole purpose of getting a laugh. This is not 
 to say that he never told them, but that he did so only 
 when they served to illustrate a point and were not 
 irrelevant. For while he believed devoutly in the im- 
 portance of employing the right kind of method to 
 gain attention for what he said, he believed even more 
 devoutly in the importance of having something worth 
 while to say, and of saying it. 
 
 It was on the first night of the three days which 
 Verney had planned to devote exclusively to speech- 
 making in New York, that he found he had to address 
 the largest gathering he had faced since the beginning 
 of the campaign. 
 
 The meeting was held in one of the down-town 
 theatres and every possible device to attract a crowd 
 having been employed by the party managers, includ- 
 ing fireworks from the roof of the building, three 
 blocks of red fire outside and a brass band at the door, 
 
 [355] 
 
The Politician 
 
 it was packed to suffocation. Ellis, seated on the plat- 
 form with a large representation of the political intel- 
 lects of the city headed by a political club, looked about 
 with satisfaction at the well-filled house, the rows of 
 G. A. R. men in front, the crowded galleries, and the 
 women in the stage boxes. He was n't fond of speak- 
 ing, and he had a poor opinion of his powers in that 
 line, but he was grateful for the sake of the party he 
 represented that the seats were all taken. 
 
 The president of the political club had just risen for 
 the purpose of introducing the candidate for Attorney- 
 general as the principal speaker of the evening, when 
 the young man's eye caught sight of three late arrivals 
 entering the box directly to the left of the stage and 
 taking possession of the remaining seats in it. They 
 were Mrs. Cumloch, Miss Rand, and George Benton. 
 
 Verney smiled faintly. He was glad Harriet had 
 come. They had not seen each other since Mrs. Ord- 
 way's dinner party the day after Harriet's return from 
 her week in Chicago, which Verney understood had to 
 do with the necessity of closing the house in Lake 
 Forest for the winter. On that occasion they sat side 
 by side at the table and talked to each other as freely 
 and laughed as gayly as if they had never in their lives 
 known an unhappy moment together, as if the golden 
 thread of their feeling for each other had never been 
 abruptly broken, as if the voice of fate — which was 
 in Verney's case the voice of ambition whether unsel- 
 fish or not — had not said to them " Stop ! Thus far 
 
 [356] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 and no farther. Hereafter your ways must be 
 separate ways." 
 
 As for George Benton's presence in the box, it was 
 easily explained. He was a man of quick action when 
 once aroused, and acting at once on the hope Harriet 
 had held out to him when they parted in Lake Forest, 
 he had followed her to New York on the next train. 
 His sudden arrival had greatly surprised Mrs. Cumloch, 
 who was unable to keep herself from building all sorts 
 of air castles on the strength of it. She did not quite 
 dare, however, to question her niece, and the less so as 
 Harriet seemed to take Benton's arrival as a matter 
 of course. The week following had seen the young man 
 from Chicago in the role of the most devoted of suitors, 
 walking on the Avenue with Miss Rand, motoring with 
 her, and going with her to the theatre, though in the 
 latter case Mrs. Cumloch invariably made one of the 
 party. 
 
 News of this devotion of his had been brought to 
 Verney's ears by Mr. Vernor, who had never been able 
 to break himself of the habit of dropping in on his 
 friends in Forty-ninth Street even after the advent of this 
 ardent young man from the West, who seemed to be 
 thoroughly at home there, so that even if Verney had 
 not remembered Benton, whom he had met in June at 
 Mrs. Cumloch's dinner in Lake Forest, he would have 
 known who he was and of his attentions to Harriet. 
 He knew, too, and from the same source — for Rich- 
 mond Vernor had never ceased to mourn that his nephew 
 
 [357] 
 
The Politician 
 
 persisted so determinedly in refusing to take advantage 
 of his chance with Miss Rand, which the older man 
 was as positive as ever still existed, and to reproach 
 him for the same, — that Billy Vandewater had by no 
 means retired from the r aning himself and, so far as 
 his campaign activities would permit, had been assidu- 
 ously pressing his suit with the young heiress by means 
 of daily instalments of flowers and bonbons and flying 
 calls at her house in his motor between speeches. 
 
 But these things Verney heard with the mask-like 
 calm and indifferent smile of the non-combatant. The 
 news of this ardent courtship by these rival suitors of 
 the girl, whose society he had himself once sought with 
 the same ardor, concerned him, he felt, no more than 
 " the thunder of the captains and the shouting " con- 
 cerns the soldier in the battle who lies dead under their 
 feet. 
 
 He was out of the fight, he knew, and though it 
 might be harder than he thought, though it might make 
 him suffer as he had not thought of suffering, he must, 
 he knew equally well, remain so. He must sit by, 
 looking on without lifting his hand to prevent it, until 
 the end — until the girl had promised to make one or 
 the other of the contestants, a happy man. That was 
 his portion in life, that was the part he had elected to 
 play. 
 
 There were present, Verney saw as he rose to begin 
 his speech, a number of what the newspapers call society 
 people, most of whom he knew. In one group under 
 the chaperonage of the gay little Mrs. de Albert he 
 
 [358] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 saw Gladys Leverich and his sister Carol and the two 
 young men who had been with Mrs. Ordway's party 
 at the open-air horse-show, Robin Hill and Gerald Mer- 
 rick. In another he recognized Mrs. Ordway herself 
 and two men who had been at college with Oliver 
 Ordway, and who were now his wife's almost constant 
 companions. In an upper box he observed the beau- 
 tiful Mrs. Gibbs's plumed hat and long slender shoulders 
 just visible above its railings, and smiled to see the 
 blonde head and boyish form of Stevie Cass beside her. 
 
 " Poor Cora ! " he thought pityingly — for pity is 
 the only sentiment a man cherishes toward the woman 
 who has tried to make a fool of him and failed, — 
 u she must amuse herself, I suppose," and he turned 
 to face his audience. 
 
 It was not with satisfaction, however, that he faced 
 it. His minute's survey was sufficient to tell him that 
 it was largely composed of that element among the 
 public which looks upon elections and campaigns only 
 as a chance for fun. He was neither a great actor nor 
 a born orator, but his training in politics had endowed 
 him with the great actor's and born orator's faculty 
 of " sizing up " an audience. It was disappointing 
 to find it so, but- he was none the less certain that 
 curiosity and a desire for entertainment had gathered 
 these people together, more than anything else. 
 Among the " society people " present, for instance, he 
 knew his friends had come only to hear Verney Ellis 
 speak, — no matter what he said, — and his enemies to 
 ridicule Verney Ellis, — no matter what he said. It 
 
 [359] 
 
The Politician 
 
 was maddening, but true, that in both cases their inter- 
 est was purely personal. As for the main body of 
 people there, he felt that they were indifferent. Their 
 attitude said plainly enough, " These elections have noth- 
 ing to do with me, but I '11 listen," as they leant back 
 in their chairs and prepared themselves for the duty 
 with the air of doing some one a favor. 
 
 There were indeed any number of indications observ- 
 able to his quick eye that helped to convince him that 
 the enormous concourse of people sitting there in the 
 theatre waiting to hear him speak had come for any 
 number of other reasons besides a desire for light on 
 the question of the State elections. The simple state- 
 ment of fact that was all that had been required of 
 him by his village audiences in his tour of the State, 
 and that had been all-sufficient to press home the fit- 
 ness of the Republican party to select men for public 
 office who would make for honest and efficient govern- 
 ment, he realized would be powerless to make an 
 impression on this cosmopolitan New York audience, 
 whose sole idea that evening was to be diverted. 
 
 The fact was they did n't care about the elections, 
 these people ; they did n't care who won or what party 
 came into power. With a feeling of indignation that 
 it was so Verney saw that it was his task that night 
 to make them care; that his problem was not to prove 
 the superiority of one candidate or one party in the 
 coming elections, but to arouse interest in the elections 
 themselves. The smiling, tolerant front which his 
 hearers in general presented to him, which said as plainly 
 
 [360] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 as words could say it, " I came to be amused, I wonder 
 if the young man on the platform is going to do it," 
 enraged Verney not a little, and he fell upon it with 
 the bitter determination to dent it or die. 
 
 In the heat of his resentment of this attitude, in his 
 eagerness to make his auditors discard it, he forgot his 
 dislike of public speaking and dared to be eloquent. 
 But true eloquence is as different from spread-eagleism 
 as the sun from the moon, and Verney, to achieve it, 
 had to steer a masterly course between the rocks of 
 flamboyancy and the reef of false sentiment ; and being 
 a first-class politician he accomplished the feat without 
 once mentioning Alexander Hamilton, or beginning a 
 period with " from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the 
 statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate," or indulging 
 in " grand grammar." 
 
 He began his speech with a fiery denunciation of 
 indifference as an attitude toward elections. He said 
 it was the duty of every one to be interested, that it was 
 the duty of every man to join the army of voters and that 
 that army should go to the polls just as any army 
 went to war, — to fight. That if the people believed 
 the party bosses controlled the primaries, that was all 
 the more reason why they should attend the primaries 
 in force to protect their interests, instead of staying 
 away, and that every man who did n't vote at the pri- 
 maries was a deserter. He said the Republic needed the 
 support of every one of its citizens if it was to endure ; 
 and that if every citizen took an interest in govern- 
 ment it would endure; and that Governments in the 
 
 [361] 
 
The Politician 
 
 past had been well known to have fallen from lack of 
 the support of the people. Here he was interrupted, 
 to his surprise — for he was not looking for applause, 
 — by a burst of cheering. Those who least deserve 
 it are usually the ones most complacent about ac- 
 cepting flattery, and the loudest cheers that met Ver- 
 ney's implication that the people were all-powerful, came 
 from the throats of those least active in public affairs. 
 
 " You say one man's vote can't matter ? " he 
 asked, leaning forward with flashing eyes. " I say you 
 are wrong. The cooperation of every citizen in the 
 Republic is essential to the preservation of the balance 
 of power upon which the perfection and endurance of 
 our political fabric depend. 
 
 " You say that 's too much to ask of every citizen ; 
 that he has n't time to cooperate, to show interest 
 in public affairs ; that if honest and efficient government 
 is dependent upon personal exertion, it 's too big a 
 price too pay? I say again that you are wrong; that 
 no price is too big to pay for honest and efficient govern- 
 ment [he raised his hand to quell the instant applause 
 this statement elicited], and that no patriot can do less 
 than pay it." The clapping burst forth unchecked. 
 
 " And I use the word ' patriot ' seriously," he went 
 on, " although a great many people don't seem to under- 
 stand what it means. They seem to think patriotism 
 is a thing to be ashamed of, a sentiment to be put away 
 and only brought out and used on the Fourth of July 
 and other national holidays ; but it 's not. It is n't a 
 brass band and a bunch of flags, it 's a concrete force 
 
 [ 362] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 for good " — he nodded energetically to emphasize 
 each word, — " that if put into practical operation in 
 politics at election times can meet corruption on its 
 own ground and vanquish it single-handed!" (Ap- 
 plause. People like to hear about vice being put to 
 rout, even if they are too lazy to want to help to rout 
 it themselves.) 
 
 " To my mind a man requires to be only two things 
 in order to be eligible to public office, a patriot and a 
 politician. In order to see why the second require- 
 ment is necessary, assuming that the first is admitted, 
 the definition of the term ■ politician ' must be 
 thoroughly understood. 
 
 " The general interpretation of the word is, I believe, 
 synonymous with the term ' ward boss. 9 It is at least 
 synonymous with the phrase * power wielded for evil.' 
 This idea is so common it has become a fact that the 
 worst thing one enemy in the campaign can say about an- 
 other is that he 's a * politician.' " He stopped and 
 smiled, as the audience, realizing that he made this state- 
 ment from personal experience, laughed appreciatively. 
 
 " But this connotation of the word is not the correct 
 one," he went on. " To be called a politician is not 
 in itself a reproach to any man. Because, as I read 
 in some magazine recently, no man can be, not to say 
 a successful, but a competent public man, unless he 
 understands and likes and practises the game of 
 politics." 
 
 ("I guess that's so," said those present who had 
 previously thought all politicians must be bad men, 
 
 [363] 
 
The Politician 
 
 and " Of course, that 's so," said those of the maligned 
 who were there.) 
 
 " A very good definition of a politician that I found 
 in the same article," continued Verney, " is that he 's 
 a man who possesses certain qualities that are essen- 
 tial to a proper conduct of public affairs, and without 
 which he will fall short of the highest efficiency if 
 opportunity should place him in an important admin- 
 istrative position. 
 
 " That is n't to say, you know," he added earnestly, 
 " that there are no corrupt politicians. I would n't 
 attempt to deny that any more than I would attempt 
 to deny that there are corrupt men in any other walk 
 of life ; and to quote further, it is n't to say that every 
 politician is a good administrator, either, but it is to 
 say that every good administrator is a politician. [Ap* 
 plause.] 
 
 " You are not to understand from this that I think 
 that only a politician by actual practice is eligible to 
 office, but that I am convinced the man who proves to be 
 able when in office has generally by nature something 
 of the politician in him. 
 
 " It is not, either, only the men who have power 
 and money that get the offices ; the idea that the average 
 citizen who has no pull stands no chance to run for 
 office is a mistaken one, and no excuse at all for indiffer- 
 ence to elections. For it is true now as it was then, what 
 Abraham Lincoln said in one of his speeches, that ' it 
 is the glory of this great Republic that its highest 
 places are open to its humblest citizens ; that American 
 
 [364] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 institutions make it possible that to hold the highest 
 places in the State not glitter of wealth is needed, or 
 trickery, or demagogery; only honesty, hard thinking, 
 and fixed resolve ! ' [Tumultuous applause in response 
 to this quotation from " Old Abe."] 
 
 u But to return to my text," he smiled around him as 
 if he felt he had neared the end of what he had felt 
 pressing so upon him to say, " that the cooperation of 
 every voter in the country is necessary to gain and 
 maintain good government, — what I 'm trying to im- 
 press upon you to-night is that in order to get a thing 
 it is necessary to want it first. We must really want 
 good government before we can expect to get it; we 
 must be anxious to fight corruption before we can con- 
 quer it. In spite of the fact that a small minority of 
 empty heads laugh at reform and its promoters [he 
 glanced pleasantly but piercingly around at the various 
 fashionables present who largely represented the class 
 he referred to, and they squirmed uneasily in their 
 seats], we must wish for reform before we can expect 
 to improve the present condition of things. 
 
 " This fight against corruption has been going on 
 a long time, but it has never been so active as in the 
 past ten years. Previous to that time impurity in 
 political conditions, though present, has been unacknowl- 
 edged and glossed over, so that it was difficult to 
 deal with ; but now, owing to the tide of investigation 
 and reform that has been sweeping over the country, 
 it has been routed out into the light of day. Like 
 the measles, when the nature of the disease has been 
 
 [365] 
 
The Politician 
 
 discovered, the spots have appeared on the outside. 
 [Laughter.] And they will soon be gotten rid of. 
 For we 're all of us, when you come right down to it 
 — Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, — work- 
 ing together to one end, — to make this the greatest 
 country in the world! [Applause.] And whether 
 by means of direct nomination or by means of the con- 
 vention, by means of new-school reform or old-school 
 reform, by abolishing old institutions or introducing new 
 ones, we're going to succeed! 
 
 " The method of succeeding is n't so important. The 
 important thing is that if we care enough to wish for 
 reform, if we 're patriotic enough honestly to want hon- 
 est and efficient government and make up our minds to 
 have it — " he lowered his voice suddenly to a pitch 
 that thrilled, each word being distinctly audible, — " we 
 are going to get it! " 
 
 He sat down amidst a storm of applause so spon- 
 taneous, so genuine, and so prolonged, that it gave good 
 promise to the young man that he had succeeded in 
 making that difficult audience care if it was only for 
 that evening, and he felt that in spite of the fact that 
 he had not touched upon the various issues of the cam- 
 paign or boomed the Republican candidate for Gov- 
 ernor, or heaped personal abuse upon his rival, he had 
 accomplished something, and that it had not been time 
 wasted. 
 
 His friend Tommy Beekman, however, was not so 
 sure of that as Verney was. Advancing to congratulate 
 his friend on the success of his speech, which he could 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 not deny, he took occasion at the same time to reproach 
 him that he had been so general in his statements, and 
 had departed so from the style of his previous speeches. 
 
 " You did n't boost the grand old party once," he 
 complained, " or cheer for Oliver, or roast Billy the 
 snob ! " 
 
 Verney smiled deprecatingly. 
 
 " Well, you see," he said, " I had so many other 
 things on my mind to say. The minute I looked at that 
 damned audience, I knew most of them came for fun 
 or for curiosity, not because they were interested in 
 the elections, and it made me mad. I wanted to say 
 something that would stir them up and set them think- 
 ing. I 'd rather have them vote against us than not 
 at all, you know." 
 
 " You stirred them up, I should say," admitted Beek' 
 man. 
 
 " And then, you know, Tommy," Verney added con- 
 fidentially, " I never had a chance before to talk at so 
 many people that could n't get away from me ! I had 
 to make the most of it ! " He laughed outright. 
 
 " Well, never mind," said his friend magnanimously ; 
 " it does n't matter so much. Ordway is pretty solid 
 in New York, you know, anyway. I was only afraid 
 it would n't win as many votes for you personally as 
 your other speeches have." 
 
 But the event did not justify the little Albany man's 
 apprehensions in that respect. For the most part the 
 people were saying to themselves as they filed out of 
 the theatre to the strains of " Yankee Doodle " played 
 
 [367] 
 
The Politician 
 
 by the big band at the door, " I don't care what party 
 he belongs to ; I 'm going to vote for him not be- 
 cause he 's a Republican or because he is n't, but 
 because I 'd like a man like that, who is n't afraid to 
 speak his mind, who is in earnest, who really thinks, 
 and says what he thinks, too, — for Attorney-general. 
 It speaks well for his ability to defend the people's 
 interests." 
 
 The newspapers printed the speech the next morning, 
 and some of them said it was very good; and others 
 said that the doctrine of Patriotism — a sentiment that 
 knew no party and acknowledged no leader — as 
 preached by a party man and a member of the machine, 
 was political chicanery and nothing else; and that the 
 young man who made the speech was an experienced 
 politician and nothing else, who knew the vote-getting 
 value of the sentiment of patriotism properly appealed 
 to, and cared not at all for the sentiment itself. Thou- 
 sands of people read the speech, nevertheless, and without 
 paying any attention to what the newspapers said one 
 way or the other, a great number of them voted for 
 Verney on the strength of it. Genuine uprightness and 
 principle, even if it is found in a machine politician, is 
 not after all so very difficult to recognize. 
 
 In the lobby of the theatre Verney encountered Har- 
 riet. She was standing by a pillar, her sweet face and 
 large black eyes evidently searching the crowd for some 
 one as it passed her. Mrs. Cumloch was not to be seen, 
 but George Benton was at her elbow. 
 
 " Oh, there you are ! " she cried eagerly, catching 
 [368] 
 
' Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 sight of Ellis; and as he disengaged himself from the 
 men he was walking with and came up to her, " Aunt 
 Lydia did n't feel well and she 's gone home, but we 
 wanted, Mr. Benton and I," — she glanced at the young 
 man at her side, — "to wait and congratulate you on 
 your speech." 
 
 " It was a wonder," said Benton in something the 
 same phrase he had used in praising another speech of 
 Ellis's, the one he had made at the Republican National 
 Convention as long ago as the preceding June. " I tell 
 you it made me feel like a criminal, to think I ? ve paid 
 so little attention to elections and voting and things ! 
 I 'm always travelling around election times, or else 
 I 've been so busy on my farm I have n't voted, you 
 know." He ended in an apologetic tone that would 
 almost have made Verney laugh if the speaker had n't 
 been so evidently sincere. 
 
 Verney believed he had every reason to dislike Benton, 
 whom he barely remembered having met that time of the 
 Chicago Convention. Was he not openly devoting him- 
 self to Harriet Rand? and was not his devotion ap- 
 parently received with favor? But he could not help 
 feeling pleased by his enthusiasm and honest expression 
 of admiration for himself. 
 
 " It 's not too late to begin to pay attention now," 
 he said, with his quick, friendly smile. 
 
 The other man ceased polishing his glasses excitedly 
 and beamed back. 
 
 " No," he said, " and I mean to, the minute I get 
 home, but I wish you 'd talk some more about it to me." 
 24 [ 369 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 He turned to Harriet. " Can't we all go and have 
 supper somewhere? " he asked eagerly. " It 's only 
 twelve o'clock." 
 
 Harriet smiled indulgently. " We could n't do that 
 very well, George, but we might go home and get some- 
 thing to eat," she said. " Aunt Lydia was to send the 
 carriage back for us, you know." 
 
 "Will you, Ellis?" asked Benton, taking up the 
 invitation promptly. 
 
 Verney had planned some more work to do that night, 
 as it happened, but Benton's anxiety that he should be 
 of the party was so genuine, and the appeal in Har- 
 riet's eyes so sweet that he decided on the instant to 
 delay it. 
 
 " Of course, I will come," he agreed, and they went 
 and found the carriage. 
 
 Mrs. Cumloch had gone up to her room when they 
 reached the house, but she sent word that coffee and 
 sandwiches would be served to them in a few minutes, 
 if they would excuse her from coming down. 
 
 The three made themselves comfortable in the dining- 
 room, where the long dark table reflected the low-hung 
 Tiffany light and a leaping grate fire. 
 
 " I 'm much too excited to eat," said Harriet, seating 
 herself in the big leather chair at one end of the table ; 
 " you see, I 've never been at a political meeting before. 
 How about you two ? " 
 
 " My appetite," said Verney, as the two men sat 
 down one on each side of her, " is like old dog Tray, 
 
 [370] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 nothing can drive it away, not even having to make a 
 speech to a crowd of people who don't want to hear it." 
 
 " It seems to me a terrible reflection on the country 
 that you should be able to make that statement," re- 
 marked Benton. " I suppose it will all be changed, 
 Harriet, and there will be no more indifference when 
 women vote? " 
 
 " But they never will," affirmed Ellis quickly ; " this 
 woman's-suffrage business is only an agitation of the 
 moment." That there was any place for women in 
 politics was an inconceivable idea to him. 
 
 " I don't know," said Harriet, loyal to her sex, though 
 she hated to disagree with Verney, " I believe it 's here 
 to stay." 
 
 " And I believe," he replied, " that in a year or two 
 the whole thing will be as much an exploded theory as 
 the one that the earth is square instead of round, or the 
 theory of affinities." 
 
 " It 's making noise enough, certainly," said Harriet, 
 " as far as exploding is concerned ; but," she added, 
 " don't you believe in affinities ? Don't you believe that 
 there is just one woman in the world for every man? " 
 
 " Candidly, I don't," returned Verney, " and I '11 tell 
 you why." 
 
 " I confess I 'm interested." 
 
 " You see," he said smiling, " if you '11 look it up in 
 the encyclopaedia, you '11 find that there are, as a matter 
 of fact, more women in the world than there are men ! " 
 
 They all laughed, and the talk drifted on. 
 [371] 
 
The Politician 
 
 The two men were slow in starting their promised 
 discussion of politics, perhaps because they were con- 
 scious of a feeling of restraint in the presence of the 
 girl who, they were both aware, had played an im- 
 portant part in the life of each; and at first they ad- 
 dressed all their remarks to Miss Rand rather than to 
 each other. 
 
 But Harriet, while appreciating the situation per- 
 fectly, was nevertheless resolute in her determination 
 that these men whom she thought so much of should 
 also think a great deal of each other; and with tireless 
 activity and skill she returned the ball of conversation 
 which, they sent her in turns, so that it had to bound 
 between both men at least once before it was down and 
 out. 
 
 And before long under the unfluence of her im- 
 partial turning from one to the other, as if both were 
 equally her friends, and as if they knew it, Verney's feel- 
 ing of resentment against this man for the high place 
 he seemed to hold in Harriet's estimation, and Benton's 
 embarrassment in the presence of the man he had once 
 feared as a rival, vanished, and the two were soon hav- 
 ing the ball all to themselves, sending it back and forth 
 between them without once throwing it in Harriet's 
 direction. 
 
 But the girl did not mind. Clearly Verney was in- 
 terested in George, she could tell that by the attention 
 with which he listened to what he had to say, and by the 
 sparkle of eagerness, in his own eyes when he replied; 
 
 [372] 
 
Verney Loses His Temper 
 
 and George was of course thoroughly charmed by 
 Verney — that was to be expected. 
 
 The eyes of the young men met and flashed with 
 greater frequency, and their discussion became more 
 and more animated as the hour wore away, and Har- 
 riet, watching them, leaned back in her chair with the 
 contented air of one who sees a good work well done. 
 
 [373] 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 "not launcelot or another" 
 
 HARRIET was sitting at Mrs. Chittenden's 
 grand piano in the upstairs sitting-room, 
 not many mornings later, playing Mas- 
 senet's " Elegie." Her aunt had gone out to a dress- 
 maker's appointment, and she was alone. It was a 
 comfortable sunny room occupying the whole front 
 width of the long narrow house, and very pleasing to 
 the eye with its mushroom-colored walls, its yellow silk 
 curtains at the windows, and the gold-colored cushions 
 heaped on brown velvet divan and chair. A splendid 
 oil painting of the Bridge of Sighs hung over the piano 
 and under it on the glittering ebony of the instrument 
 a great sheaf of dark-red roses lay. 
 
 Harriet's eyes were fixed upon the flowers as she 
 played, although her thoughts were not with the sender, 
 Billy Vandewater, whose daily gift they were; they 
 dwelt rather upon love itself then upon any one man — ■ 
 upon its beauty, its mystery, its elusiveness, and its 
 pain. The subdued minor plaint of Massenet's music, 
 with its murmur of passion, its perpetual crying out 
 at the wonder of life, was sweet in her ears, perhaps 
 because she thought she had so recently parted with 
 
 [374] 
 
, "Not Launcelot or Another" 
 
 happiness, perhaps because happiness in reality was 
 flying toward her on outstretched wings. 
 
 She did not analyze the feeling; she only knew, as 
 she drew the beautiful melody from the willing keys and 
 gave it to the room, that it spoke to her, that it soothed 
 and comforted her as if it said, " All happiness is 
 relative ; the flower of love is not everlasting, and affec- 
 tion, comradeship, friendship, the nature of which is 
 more enduring, are things very much worth the having." 
 
 She stopped playing, clasped her hands with her 
 elbows on the keyboard, and sat musing. Presently a 
 maid came up and announced that Miss Rand had a 
 caller, a young man. There was no card, and he had 
 not given his name, and the maid, who was new, did not 
 know it. 
 
 " Bring him up here," said Harriet. 
 
 She knew it must be either George Benton or Billy 
 Vandewater. No one but a lover would expect her to 
 know his name without any help from him, by second 
 sight as it were, and no one but a lover would call at 
 eleven o'clock in the morning. Which was it, she 
 wondered. She had seen both men almost every day 
 since her return from Chicago, and it might as well be 
 one as the other. She grew quite excited trying to 
 guess which it could be before he came, even going so 
 far as to look in the tall mirror at the other end of the 
 room, though she was no coquette, to see if her plain 
 blue silk morning dress was as becoming as she hoped. 
 
 It was Vandewater, probably, she thought — she had 
 seen George Benton last. She looked at the roses lying 
 
 [375] 
 
The Politician 
 
 in their splendor on the top of the piano, and was con- 
 scious of a half regretful feeling that she was not made 
 happier by the thought. He was a very fascinating 
 man, Vandewater, and she was interested in him; he 
 aroused in her the woman's instinct to reform, for she 
 was not unfamiliar with his reputation for fast living; 
 but she knew, too, as she looked at his roses, that the 
 only feeling she could ever have for him, although she 
 was not at all positive he wanted her to have a different 
 one, was — 
 
 The maid appeared in the doorway and George Ben- 
 ton followed her into the room. 
 
 " Oh, it was you ! " cried Harriet, low but rather 
 joyously, because of her surprise. 
 
 " Of course ! " he said fondly. " Whom did you 
 think? But let 's sit down, I 've got a grand piece of 
 news for you." 
 
 " I thought it must be something unusual to bring 
 you at this hour." She sat down on the divan in the 
 window. 
 
 " Not at all," he reproached, seating himself beside 
 her ; " I 'd come at this time every day if you would let 
 
 me: 
 
 ! » 
 
 She laughed. " Well, go on, what 's your news ? " 
 He polished his glasses excitedly. " It 's the greatest 
 thing in the world ; you '11 never believe it." He paused, 
 looking at her eagerly. 
 
 " How irritating you are ! " she said with emphasis ; 
 " you 're worse than a girl for keeping people in sus- 
 pense! What is the greatest thing in the world? " 
 
 [376] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another' ' 
 
 " You know how good he 's been about letting me 
 help him with his campaign work this last week ? " he 
 asked seriously. 
 
 " Verney , you mean ? Yes, I know. He 's kept you 
 so busy, I 've hardly seen anything of you." 
 
 She had seen him once at least every day, but the 
 young man nevertheless seemed pleased by the state- 
 ment. He flushed to the roots of his negative light- 
 brown hair. 
 
 " Do you mean that? " he stammered; " do you mean, 
 I mean, you care how much you see me? " 
 
 His eagerness confused Harriet a little, but it did 
 not displease her. 
 
 " Of course," she answered stoutly, " but do go on 
 with your news." 
 
 " It 's the greatest thing in the world ; you '11 never 
 believe it ! " said Benton, who was not given to prolif- 
 icness in speech. If a phrase or a sentence said what he 
 wanted to say the first time he used it, he had no shame 
 about using it a second. 
 
 " If you say that again," she announced posi- 
 tively, " I '11 go right out of the room ; I will truly, 
 Georgie ! " 
 
 " No, wait ! Don't go ! I '11 tell you," he said, rising 
 as if he could conquer his emotion better on his feet. 
 " He 's such an awfully fine man, such a dead game 
 sport " — it was his favorite expression, — " works so 
 hard, you know, against such odds ! " He stopped, con- 
 fronting the girl. " He 's a king, Harriet ! that 's what 
 he is, a king." 
 
 [377] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " I know it," she assented, " and I 'm so glad to have 
 you know it, too." 
 
 " So am I ! Why, I would n't have missed knowing 
 him for all the money I 'm going to lose on my stock 
 farm this year ! It 's given me a new interest in life 
 just to come in contact with an enthusiast like him. 
 I 've always been such a lazy beggar, you know." He 
 sighed ruefully, but brightened as Harriet shook her 
 head. " It 's been a liberal education to see how that 
 fellow works, to meet anyone that cares about anything 
 as he cares about politics, to see how he goes at the 
 thing!" 
 
 " Is n't it wonderful ? Is n't it tremendous ? " said 
 Harriet. 
 
 Benton walked excitedly up and down. " I don't 
 know what it will all come to, I don't know that I '11 
 actually go in for politics myself at all; but if it was 
 only for the faith in myself it 's given me to see him 
 make life so much worth the living, I 'd feel indebted 
 to him." 
 
 " Dear George ! " said Harriet, " dear George ! " 
 There was genuine fondness in her eyes as she looked 
 at him. 
 
 " And that is n't all," he said, turning to her, his good, 
 honest face abeam. " Do you know what he 's done 
 now, Harriet? what he did last night? what I came to 
 tell you about ? " 
 
 " No," she said with mock despair, " and I don't be- 
 lieve I ever shall know ! " 
 
 " Yes," he said ; " I 'm going to tell you. You know 
 [378] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another* ' 
 
 how hard up he 's been, trying to meet the expenses of 
 this campaign ? They 've altogether exceeded the 
 amount the party appropriated for it, you know, 
 Vandewater has set such a pace." 
 
 "Yes? Yes?" 
 
 " Well," he lowered his voice as if what he had to 
 say were too wonderful for any other method of com- 
 munication, " last night he told me — I made him 
 promise — that he 'd let me give him enough to cover 
 all costs in excess of what he could raise to spend, and 
 enough to finish up the campaign with gloriously ! 
 What do you think of that? " 
 
 His face was radiant. 
 
 " Oh, George, no ! " she said. 
 
 " Yes," he asseverated triumphantly, " it was only a 
 few thousands." Then he grew graver. " It made so 
 much difference to him, it made me ashamed to have it 
 make so little difference to me. It does n't seem right, 
 somehow, that a man like that should be handicapped 
 because he has n't money enough to do things, when 
 I 've got it to throw away — does it? " 
 
 Harriet came close up to him and looked up into his 
 kindly face glowing with generosity, with tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Perhaps not," she said, " but all the same I think 
 you 're the finest man in the world for giving it to him." 
 
 And of her own accord she put both arms about his 
 neck and kissed him. 
 
 Harriet went into Mrs. Cumloch's room late that 
 night, as she always did before going to bed, and told 
 
 [379] 
 
The Politician 
 
 her aunt with a calm, tranquil smile that she was engaged 
 to George Benton. 
 
 The older lady's immediate reply to this astonishing 
 communication — for that sort of announcement, no 
 matter how much it is expected, is nevertheless always a 
 surprise when it comes — was a silent embrace. 
 
 They discussed the important happening later, of 
 course, at length ; but at the moment of its impartment, 
 Mrs. Cumloch, aware as she was of the other hope her 
 niece had cherished, could find no words with which to 
 congratulate her on the fulfilment of the opposite one 
 so long entertained by herself. Harriet was grateful 
 for this quiet acceptance of her announcement, suspect- 
 ing as she did that her attachment for Verney Ellis had 
 not been unremarked by her aunt. She did not at- 
 tempt to enlarge upon the subject herself, but after a 
 word or two on other matters turned to leave the room. 
 But she was not permitted to escape. Curiosity had 
 conquered Mrs. Cumloch's first impulse to be silent, and 
 the fear, inspired by Harriet's controlled manner and 
 her indifferent method of telling her piece of news, that 
 her niece was not altogether happy, impelled her to 
 make a parting comment on it. 
 
 " I 'm so glad about it all, Harriet dear," she said 
 rather timidly. " I was so afraid it was going to be 
 that good-for-nothing Verney Ellis ! " This last almost 
 spitefully. 
 
 " Why do you say that — * good-for-nothing ' ? " in 
 chilling tones from the door. 
 
 Mrs. Cumloch could not say as she thought in her 
 [380] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another" 
 
 heart, " Because he has treated my darling niece so 
 badly ! " so she did n't say anything. 
 
 " I 'd rather you did n't speak of him like that," con- 
 tinued Harriet; "it isn't just; and then, he is my 
 friend " ; but she added more sweetly, as if in concession 
 to her aunt's feeling that she had suffered at the young 
 man's hands, which though unspoken was yet perfectly 
 apparent to the girl, " don't worry about that, Aunt 
 Lydia, I 'm quite, quite happy." And she said it as if 
 she meant it, too. There are all kinds of happiness. 
 
 " I 'm so glad," murmured her aunt. 
 
 "Yes. And do you know something?" — with a 
 serious air of making a discovery — " I don't think any 
 girl ever marries the man she thinks she wants to marry, 
 as far as that goes 1 " 
 
 When she had gone, the older lady leaned back in her 
 chair fairly weak with the emotion the news of Harriet's 
 engagement aroused in her. 
 
 " What character ! what character ! " she exclaimed, 
 as the door closed upon her niece, " not to sit down 
 under the blow, not to let disappointment prostrate her ! 
 To see that life after all offers more than one chance of 
 happiness ! That 's my niece, my more than daughter, 
 my Harriet!" And she fell to thanking God for his 
 goodness in letting the cloud that had threatened the 
 clear sky of the girl's peace of mind pass over her head 
 and leave her unharmed. 
 
 The next person whom Harriet wanted to tell about 
 her engagement was Verney; she was happy and she 
 knew it would make him happy to know it; but two 
 
 [381] 
 
The Politician 
 
 weeks passed without giving her an opportunity. In 
 all that time she had not seen him, though Benton, who 
 was doing devoted service, helping him with the business 
 that was incident to the wind-up of the campaign, 
 brought her news of him constantly, and she had heard 
 from him once. Verney had dashed her off a hurried 
 scrawl one day on paper with the heading " Regular 
 Republican Organization " for proof of how hard he 
 was pressed for time, just to say that they were going 
 to elect their candidate for President by a large maj ority 
 and carry the State for Ordway easily, although he 
 didn't feel sure about the Attorney-generalship; and 
 to assure her with evident satisfaction that his District 
 was O. K., and everybody hard at work. 
 
 Although he could n't go to see her as he used to do, 
 Verney took a melancholy satisfaction in the pleasures 
 of friendship, now that their recent understanding had 
 unequivocally established their relations on that founda- 
 tion, and in telling her of his work, in which he knew her 
 to be interested for its own sake. 
 
 It was not to be wondered at, however, that Harriet 
 was unable to get speech with Ellis, so engrossed he was 
 with the closing days of the campaign. As a candidate 
 on the Republican ticket and executive member of his 
 District, his time had been filled to overflowing. That 
 he was not actually deprived of all sleep was due to 
 the able assistance of his self-constituted lieutenants, 
 Tommy Beekman and George Benton, who shoulder to 
 shoulder fought his fight with him every step of the way, 
 and by taking the responsibility of minor details upon 
 
 [382] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another* ' 
 
 them, forced Verney to take a few hours' rest each night. 
 Verney was very grateful to them, especially to Benton, 
 who had been his faithful shadow — ready to run any 
 errand, no matter how trifling, that would save his friend 
 — ever since Harriet's supper party following Verney's 
 great speech, and who was not a member of the 
 organization as Beekman was, and had no interest in 
 the outcome of the campaign except for Ellis's sake. 
 
 October the thirty-first found the last speech made 
 and the campaign practically over. Sunday the first 
 of November and the days before election were inactive 
 ones for most people, devoted to bands and bets. For 
 Verney, however, although it was only one of wait- 
 ing to his friend Ordway, the day before election was 
 the busiest of the whole campaign. When he was not 
 with his District captains, his presence was required at 
 Republican headquarters, which kept him moving about 
 a great deal; and then, too, there was much detail to 
 the business of distributing election-day literature, a 
 large part of which work fell on his shoulders. 
 
 An enormous parade had been going by the windows 
 of the Times Square Republican Club all the afternoon, 
 where he was busy sending out thousands of little white 
 ballot cards, blue slips with " Vote early " on them, and 
 pink ones with instructions how to vote. This tremen- 
 dous amount of work, which he had had to get through 
 in the past week, had kept him for the last three or 
 four nights from returning to his home to sleep, which 
 accounted for the fact that he did not get a note Har- 
 riet had sent him some days ago, until Tuesday, elec- 
 
 [383] 
 
The Politician 
 
 tion-day itself. He had come in very late the night 
 before and did not look at his accumulated mail until 
 next morning, when Wilson, who had been told to call 
 him early, brought it up to his room. 
 
 It was just a line in her pretty handwriting to say 
 that she had something she wanted very much to talk 
 to him about and would he come in and see her as soon 
 as he could? She knew it would be hard for him to 
 get away, but she would n't keep him long, and any time 
 would suit her. If he would let her know what hour and 
 what day he could come she would be in. 
 
 Verney's brain was too full of the election and the 
 possibility of defeat or victory even to guess what it 
 was that Harriet wanted to talk to him about; but it 
 was enough, so much did he think of her, that she 
 wanted to see him at all. 
 
 He was very sorry that he had received the note so 
 late and he told himself as he stuffed it in his pocket 
 and hurried to headquarters that he would go that very 
 day, election-day or not. 
 
 At five that afternoon the voting was over and he 
 found time to telephone Harriet that he would be up at 
 eight o'clock. 
 
 That would give him time, he thought, to see that the 
 count was proceeding legally in all the polling-places 
 of his District and that everything was being properly 
 watched ; and as the returns would only be beginning 
 to come in at eight, he felt sure that he would have 
 half an hour to spend with Miss Rand before they 
 became really exciting. 
 
 [384] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another" 
 
 Harriet was therefore very much surprised when that 
 hour came to have the Democratic candidate for 
 Attorney-general shown into the upstairs sitting-room 
 where she was awaiting Verney. 
 
 She surveyed Vandewater's form and dark face in 
 amazement. 
 
 " Have n't you anything to do election night except 
 to come and call on a girl ? " she said, smiling and hold- 
 ing out her hand. 
 
 " Nothing so important," said the young man, sitting 
 down beside her on the divan in the window. But he 
 looked at the clock almost involuntarily as if the time 
 were indeed precious to him. 
 
 " Then you must either feel sure of winning or cer- 
 tain you 're going to lose, one or the other. Those are 
 the only reasons that could possibly account for your 
 lack of interest in the returns ! " 
 
 " Yes, except one other ! " 
 
 He looked at her quickly, the color dark in his face, 
 the blue veins near his temples swelling, and with an 
 intensity that frightened her. 
 
 " And what is that ? " she asked coolly, edging a 
 little farther away. 
 
 " A greater interest in a girl," declared Vandewater. 
 
 Harriet drew a long breath. She wondered whether 
 he was going to ask her to marry him. He had sent 
 her flowers, of course, and been more or less devoted, 
 but other men had done that before, and the result had 
 not always been the same. Some had ended by asking 
 her, and some had not. She sighed. She should know 
 25 [ 385 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 the signs of a proposal by this time, she felt, if ex- 
 perience was the teacher it purported to be ; but for all 
 that she was quite in the dark as to whether the young 
 man before her was really on the verge of one or not. 
 She could only hope not. She hated to refuse people; 
 and then, of course, it would be a particularly un- 
 pleasant task since she would be obliged to tell him that 
 she not only did not care for him but that she did 
 care for some one else, — for George Benton, as the 
 case happened to be. A throb at her heart as she made 
 this reflection told her how glad she was that this was 
 true, that she did care for George Benton. It was such 
 a safe, comfortable feeling! 
 
 " No, it 's because you think that you 're going to 
 win that you were able to tear yourself away from hear- 
 ing the returns long enough to come and see me to- 
 night," she began, striving by the lightness of her tone 
 to bring the conversation back to less serious ground. 
 " And it was nice of you, too ! You knew, of course, 
 that I was interested in your success ! " 
 
 In her anxiety to accomplish her object she was say- 
 ing more than she meant or felt, for, of course, she was 
 not interested in his success as long as it meant Verney's 
 defeat. 
 
 " Yes, I do think I 'm going to win ! " agreed Billy 
 Vandewater, rising and walking up and down agitatedly. 
 " I think we 've got 'em easy ! But that is n't why I 
 came to-night, — because there was nothing more impor- 
 tant to keep me ; I came " — he stopped and turned 
 toward her suddenly — " to ask you to marry me ! " 
 
 [386] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another' ' 
 
 And then Harriet understood. She saw that this 
 young man — for whatever reason, whether from 
 enmity toward Verney, from ambition, or some other 
 motive — wanted to win the election more than any- 
 thing else in the world, although he thought he wanted 
 more to marry her; and that he was at that moment 
 convinced he would win; under which circumstances his 
 vanity, of which he had more than the usual share of 
 man, had demanded that he should win the girl too. A 
 moderate success was not success at all to Vandewater. 
 He must succeed overwhelmingly, or not at all. 
 
 It was evident to Harriet that although he might 
 really care for her in his own fashion, it was more his 
 desire to be all-conquering that had inspired him to ask 
 her to marry him, and it was this ambition to be vic- 
 torious over Verney in every field, both in politics and 
 love, that had brought him to her that night. She was 
 to be his crown of crowns, the topmost feather in his 
 cap, gild his fine gold for him. And while she did him 
 the justice to believe he was sincere according to his 
 lights in his wish to marry her, this knowledge made 
 it easier for her to wake him from his dream. 
 
 " I 'm sorry, Mr. Vandewater," she said rising, " very 
 sorry to hear you say that, for I can't possibly marry 
 you ; and if I have in any way given you reason to think 
 I would, I must ask you to forgive me. I 've been 
 stupid enough not to realize that you wanted me to." 
 
 She let him have it by degrees, the truth, allowing 
 him to grasp the idea that she did not care for him 
 before she broke the news that she did care for some- 
 
 [387] 
 
The Politician 
 
 one else. It would be a blow to him, she knew, whether 
 he cared deeply for her or not, for he was a proud, 
 imperious man, whose great fortune enabled him to 
 gratify every wish, and to whom the word " refusal " 
 was a stranger. 
 
 The color died out of his face now. He fixed her 
 with a long stare much more eloquent of anger and 
 disappointment than words could have been. 
 
 " You can't marry me ? " he repeated with an inflec- 
 tion almost of astonishment, as if he could hardly be- 
 lieve that such a thing could be happening to him. 
 
 " I 'm afraid not," she said pityingly, his surprise 
 was so ingenuous. 
 
 His dark, red- veined eyes roved over her, and he saw 
 all at once how sweet and lovely she was, how desirable. 
 He forgot all about the election and his hope of triumph- 
 ing over his enemy in respect to this girl as well as in 
 respect to the campaign. 
 
 " Why not ? " he said, his voice shaken with real feel- 
 ing. He was a man deeply in earnest now. 
 
 Harriet saw that she had not done him justice, com- 
 plete justice, after all. He was capable of caring more 
 than she had thought he could. Genuine compassion 
 welled up into her Madonna eyes. 
 
 " Because I 'm going to marry some one else," she 
 said very gently. 
 
 The color rushed on a sudden back into Vandewater's 
 face, the veins on his forehead stood out more alarm- 
 ingly than ever. 
 
 [388] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another" 
 
 " Not — not — Ellis ? " he said, the words coming 
 with difficulty through his shut teeth. 
 
 " No, not Ellis," Harriet said, and smiled faintly to 
 see the instant relief that spread over his face ; " I 'm 
 engaged to Mr. Benton." 
 
 The blow was a severe one, but if it had to be, the 
 young man was thankful that at least that mercy had 
 been vouchsafed him, that he had been spared the intol- 
 erable sting of losing to the one man he hated to lose to, 
 more than to any one else in the world. The thought 
 enabled to take his leave almost with a light heart. 
 
 " My motor is waiting," he said. " I had planned 
 to bring you back to my office to hear the returns, — 
 my mother and a lot of people are there ; I 've got a 
 special wire, you know. If things had gone as I hoped, 
 that is — " He regarded her gravely. 
 
 " It 's very kind of you," faltered Harriet, more dis- 
 tressed for having upset his plan than for having refused 
 to be his wife, and very thankful that he was going 
 before Verney arrived. 
 
 She did not fancy the prospect of entertaining both 
 the candidates for Attorney-general at the same time. 
 
 " It does n't matter," said the young man pleasantly 
 and a little proudly. " Good-night." 
 
 In the hall below as he was going out he encountered 
 another man coming in, and recognized Verney, as the 
 Politician, half an hour later than he had expected to 
 be, breathlessly asked the butler for Miss Rand. 
 
 The two having been brought face to face in that way 
 [389] 
 
The Politician 
 
 could hardly avoid speaking, and as they did so each sur- 
 veyed the other with a hostility that was perfectly appar- 
 ent even in the one word they gave each other, " Even- 
 ing." There was also astonishment in both their faces, 
 for each had believed the other to be at the headquarters 
 of his party getting the returns, and it showed the 
 unusual powers of attraction of the girl upstairs that 
 both young candidates should have called upon her on 
 election night. 
 
 As they stood eyeing each other a moment, a smile 
 of exultation spread suddenly over Vandewater's face 
 born of his knowledge that if Verney was on the same 
 errand, which he could only believe to be the case, since 
 he was not aware of the true inwardness of the situa- 
 tion between his rival and Harriet, and since no other 
 errand seemed important enough to take a candidate for 
 election from the scene of battle at that hour, it would 
 be as fruitless as his own had been. And as he thought 
 of that, Vandewater could almost have loved George Ben- 
 ton for being the man Miss Rand was going to marry. 
 
 The smile puzzled Ellis a little ; and as he ran up the 
 stairs to the sitting-room, glad in his heart that Harriet 
 had not chosen to receive him in the library, which he 
 had such good reason to remember unpleasantly, he 
 wondered why it was such a triumphant one ; but he at 
 once forgot it when he found himself in the girl's pres- 
 ence. 
 
 " What can I do for you ? " he asked, clasping her 
 hand eagerly. 
 
 " Nothing," she said, as they sat down. " Did you 
 [390] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another' ' 
 
 think I sent for you only because I wanted something 
 of you?" 
 
 " I hoped so," he said simply ; " I like to do things 
 for you." 
 
 " I know it, or you would n't have come to-day when 
 it was such a very important time. You were very 
 good." 
 
 " Tell me what you wanted to talk to me about," he 
 said, with a quick, direct look. 
 
 She gazed at him a moment with a tenderness that, if 
 it could be said of so young and distinctly girlish- 
 looking a girl, was almost motherly. 
 
 " I 'm going to get married, Verney," she said. 
 
 An exclamation that she did not exactly catch, but 
 the nature of which she guessed was profane, escaped 
 the young man, who started violently. 
 
 " Not Vandewater? " he said, remembering on the in- 
 stant the look of triumph in his rival's face when they 
 me-t in the hall. His teeth closed fiercely on his lower 
 
 up. 
 
 " No," she answered quickly, remembering for her 
 part how the other man had said, " Not Ellis ? " when 
 he had heard the news of her engagement. She smiled a 
 little to see how much alike men were after all, even the 
 most unlike. " It 's George Benton," she added. 
 
 " Ah ! " Verney said, turning his face away ; and then 
 after a moment, " That 's good, that 's fine. He 's one 
 of the best. I think the world of him." 
 
 There was another pause. Harriet did n't know why 
 she found it difficult to speak, but so it undeniably was. 
 
 [391] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " I was afraid," Vernej continued, " it was the other. 
 I 'm awfully glad it is n't." 
 
 " So am I. But you know," she shook her head, 
 " there was never any chance of that from the begin- 
 ning." 
 
 They said very little more on the subject until in a 
 few minutes Verney rose to go ; then he took her hand, 
 pressed it warmly, and the color rose to his high cheek 
 bones and the bright blue of his eye dimmed. 
 
 " I am very poor at expressing myself," he said 
 rather huskily, " but I want to say, what I want to tell 
 you is that I wish you every happiness in life, and that 
 I am gladder than I could possibly tell you that you 're 
 going to marry so fine a fellow as George Benton." 
 
 That was all he said, but Harriet knew what was in 
 his heart — that while he was sincerely glad she was 
 going to be married, he yet felt a little lonely, a little 
 as if he had lost something himself. 
 
 " Will you promise me something," she said, " before 
 you go? " 
 
 " Anything ; what is it ? " 
 
 She backed away from him, her hands behind her like 
 a child afraid of its own audacity. 
 
 " You won't like it, it 's a piece of advice," she warned. 
 
 " Go ahead, I would take anything from you ! " 
 
 She came nearer and just touched his sleeve with one 
 finger. 
 
 " Then here it is," said she solemnly : " Don't — let 
 — women — spoil — you ! " And as he started a little, 
 " You know they do. They run after you and make 
 
 [392] 
 
"Not Launcelot or Another" 
 
 up to you all the time, and if you don't look out they '11 
 spoil you. Oh, Verney, do be careful ! " — her voice 
 grew more anxious — " I'm so afraid if you 're not, it 
 will interfere some day with your work, with your suc- 
 cess in politics." 
 
 He knew what she meant, and that it was true. Too 
 great and too many intimacies with women had been the 
 ruin politically of more than one man before now, and 
 he nodded gravely in acquiescence. 
 
 Then astonishment overcame him. " But how did 
 you know," he asked surprisedly, " that they — that 
 they—" 
 
 " That they spoiled you ? " she finished for him, and 
 laughed deliciously. " Why, how could I help know- 
 ing? You're so nice to look at!" But she had in 
 reality told by subtler signs than that. He would have 
 been surprised, perhaps, if he had known that so long 
 ago as their talk together after Mrs. Cumloch's dinner 
 in Lake Forest, at the very beginning of their acquaint- 
 ance, the girl had discovered that the women he knew 
 and liked, were very many, and the women who knew 
 and liked him as many as the sands of the sea. 
 
 " Take care," he advised, and laughing, too, " or you 
 will be doing that yourself." 
 
 " Ah, but I 'm an old friend, a privileged friend. 
 Isn't that different?" 
 
 He said it was. Her sweetness was beginning to be 
 hard to bear. 
 
 " I must go," he added ; " it 's after nine. The re- 
 turns will be coming in fast now." 
 
 [393] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " How selfish I am," she cried, " to keep you ! And 
 oh, I do hope, I do hope you will win ! " 
 
 She said it with all her heart, and Verney smiled 
 radiantly. 
 
 " I think we will," he answered, his thoughts with the 
 whole Republican party rather than upon the result of 
 his own campaign for Attorney-general. 
 
 " And if you do, you know you will have no friend 
 who will be gladder than I, don't you? " 
 
 He nodded, and then said consideringly, — 
 
 " Will it be that way, do you think, Harrie — after 
 — after you are married?" 
 
 She looked at him with the greatest surprise. 
 
 " Why, yes ! " she cried ; " the only difference will be 
 that then you will have two to be glad for you instead 
 of one. George worships you now, you know, as it is. 
 And we '11 always, all three of us, be the best friends in 
 the world!" 
 
 He smiled gratefully at her. " The best in the 
 world ! " he repeated, as if the words were a sort of talis- 
 man. 
 
 [394] 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 "i ALWAYS WANT MOST WHAT I CANNOT HAVE" 
 
 ONCE in the street again, Ellis stood hesitating, 
 and then, in spite of the fact that he should 
 have been at headquarters and that all the 
 myriad and varied noises and excitements of election 
 night in New York beckoned him, he gave the chauffeur 
 of his taxicab Mr. Vernor's address and sped uptown. 
 
 He knew that his uncle, who had been laid up for a 
 week with a sprained ankle, would be at home, and an 
 overpowering need of sympathy compelled him to go, 
 for he knew, too, that his uncle was the one person in 
 the world whose sympathy would be welcome. Did he 
 not care for Harriet too? That alone was reason 
 enough, his nephew thought, for seeking the older man's 
 society that night; although he could not have said 
 himself in so many words what it was that he wanted 
 sympathy for. 
 
 Mr. Vernor — who was sitting by a table loaded with 
 books and magazines and election extras, with his 
 bandaged foot on a chair, trying to read himself into 
 forgetfulness of the irritating accident which had pre- 
 vented him from going down to his club to get the re- 
 turns — was very glad, indeed, to see his nephew, 
 though not a little surprised. 
 
 [395] 
 
The Politician 
 
 " Hello ! " he said, " if it is n't the young candidate 
 himself ! What in time, James, has brought you so far 
 uptown to-night ? " 
 
 " Don't do that ! " said Verney, who hated to be 
 called " James." He then subsided into a big chair as 
 suddenly as if his legs had given way beneath him. 
 
 The older man stared at him rather curiously. 
 " How 's the election going? " he asked next. " So 
 far," and he indicated the paper he held in his hand 
 as his source of information, " I should say it was all 
 going our way." 
 
 " Yes ? " said Verney. " Well, for me, I 'm only glad 
 it 's over. I don't care much how it comes out." 
 
 " You don't care ? " broke in his uncle in an amaze- 
 ment that was half indignant ; " are you out of your 
 head?" 
 
 Then, as if he really feared the truth of his accusa- 
 tion, he poured out some whiskey from the decanter on 
 a little stand by his elbow. 
 
 " Here," he said, handing his nephew a little glass ; 
 " take that ! It 's pretty stiff, but you need it." 
 
 " I '11 take it, if you say," returned Verney, " but 
 why do I need it ? " 
 
 * When a man who pretends to be a politician — who 
 is running for office — gets as far away from the bul- 
 letin boards as you are, on election night, and says he 
 does n't care, I feel reasonably sure he needs some- 
 thing," answered his uncle satirically, " and the chances 
 are it 's a drink." 
 
 [396] 
 
"What I Cannot Have" 
 
 Verney pushed his glass away from him unfinished, a 
 phenomenon which still further alarmed the other man. 
 
 " I 'm lonely," said he ; " lonely, Uncle Ritchie." 
 
 " You 're all in, you mean," contradicted Mr. Vernor ; 
 " done up with all this campaign business. And I don't 
 wonder. You 've been doing the work of twenty men 
 and as many horses." 
 
 ■ Perhaps that 's it," said Verney ; but although he 
 spoke without conviction, his uncle's diagnosis of the 
 case was partly correct. 
 
 The strain of the past six weeks had been indeed 
 so great as to render the young man physically unfit 
 to wrestle with a mental or moral crisis of any kind. 
 And the realization of the profound loneliness of the 
 career he had elected, did partake of the nature of a 
 crisis in his life. The news of Harriet's engagement, 
 while it cannot be said to have made him in any sense re- 
 pent his choice, had brought that realization sharply and 
 definitely home to him. Although he was perfectly satis- 
 fied with his existence as he had arranged to have it, and 
 would not have it otherwise, he could not at the same 
 time be free from a feeling of loss, a sense of grief. 
 It would not endure too long and would in all prob- 
 ability presently pass into the limbo of things that have 
 been, but it was giving Ellis a bad time while it lasted. 
 So the scourge and the hair shirt wound the flesh even 
 while the spirit soars. 
 
 They sat and smoked, Verney wrestling with his in- 
 subordinate feelings, and his uncle watching the process 
 
 [397] 
 
The Politician 
 
 with open sympathy and covert curiosity. He guessed 
 it had something to do with Harriet, but he did not 
 know precisely what it was that was troubling the 
 younger man. 
 
 " Sometimes I wonder why I care so much about 
 politics,*' said the latter ; " sometimes I think it 's be- 
 cause of the good I hope to do, and then again," he 
 lowered his voice in a worried way, " I fear it 's only 
 because I love the excitement of the game. After all, 
 you know, Uncle Ritchie, I am not sure it is possession 
 so much a man wants, as the fighting for it. I am not 
 sure," his forehead grew puckered with the effort to 
 express clearly what he wanted to say, " that any- 
 thing in life is worth having for its own sake; I think 
 it 's only the trying to get it that counts." 
 
 He shook his head sorrowfully as if he feared this 
 view of life might be the right one, and as if it dis- 
 appointed him. 
 
 " Oh, pshaw, no ! " said his uncle briskly, " that 's not 
 it at all. Life 's got a great deal more to it than that 
 — it 's a great deal more satisfactory. Anyway," he 
 added, " you don't really think that, you know, Verney. 
 You think you do, but you don't; so have another 
 drink!" 
 
 He pressed a glass on the young man. It was the 
 only way he could think of to offer consolation for this 
 trouble, which had not been fully explained to him, but 
 which he concluded at length he understood. He 
 could n't see how any man could help regretting that he 
 had given up his chance with a girl like Harriet Rand, 
 
 [398] 
 
"What I Cannot Have" 
 
 and this he knew his nephew had done. That his regret 
 should come over him more particularly on election 
 night than at any other time, seemed also natural to 
 Mr. Vernor. Did not election night mean to the young 
 man the things for which he had given up love ? 
 
 " I think I won't have any more, thanks," Verney 
 said to him, rejecting the glass. " I must be going now. 
 I must get back to headquarters. It will soon be time 
 to find out who 's who." 
 
 He was at the door and had almost gone when Mr. 
 Vernor found his crutches and hobbled hurriedly toward 
 him. 
 
 " Good-night," he said ; and then wistfully, almost 
 fondly, " I wish I could help you, Verney." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said he, " there 's nothing really anyone 
 can help about. There 's nothing the matter, you 
 know, Uncle Ritchie, it 's only " — he broke off and 
 looked suddenly up at Mr. Vernor — " that I always 
 want most what I cannot have." 
 
 Mr. Vernor laid his hand tenderly on the young man's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " I know," he said ; " that 's what we all want, boy." 
 
 And nodding understandingly at each other, they 
 parted. 
 
 It was ten by the time Verney found himself down- 
 town. All the way down he had kept watch with a 
 kind of subconscious eagerness (for his mind still dwelt 
 on his conversation with Mr. Vernor and the occasion 
 of it) for " The Herald's " monster searchlight which 
 was to announce the identity of the next President of 
 
 [399] 
 
The Politician 
 
 the United States and the next Governor of New York, 
 from the top of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Build- 
 ing. 
 
 If the Republican Presidential candidate were elected, 
 it was arranged that the light should be flashed to the 
 north; if the Democratic candidate, to the south; and 
 if the Republican candidate for Governor were elected, 
 it was to be flashed to the west; if the Democratic, to 
 the east. 
 
 Verney left the automobile within a block or two of 
 Herald Square, for the difficulty of getting through the 
 crowd was great and he thought he should do better 
 on foot. At State headquarters he knew he should find 
 Tommy Beekman, Oliver Ordway, and other loyal Re- 
 publicans engrossed in the business of getting the totals 
 of missing Districts, which was more important to them 
 than blowing tin horns and otherwise taking part in the 
 merrymaking of the city, but it was so late he felt 
 obliged to abandon his original plan of joining them. 
 Instead, he thought it wisest to make for the nearest 
 bulletin board, as former experience had taught him that 
 the struggle was usually over by eleven o'clock and the 
 result of the election might be announced at any moment. 
 Once on his feet he found himself suddenly engulfed in 
 the inferno of noise and light that is Broadway on 
 election night. That night the great thoroughfare 
 makes peculiarly its own, taking unto itself the various 
 dissimilar and component parts of carnival, noise, color, 
 and confusion; and though always brilliant, adds to 
 its brilliance by more electric light signs than there are 
 
 [400] 
 
"What I Cannot Have" 
 
 stars in the Milky Way. Verney, gasping like a man 
 who has just gotten his head above water after a plunge 
 into the sea, turned up the street toward Herald Square 
 only to find that at that moment the street itself seemed 
 to be coming down. A solid wave of horn-blowing, bell- 
 ringing, rattle-shaking humanity composed of laugh- 
 ing women and shouting men, met him, where he 
 struggled for space to proceed, with the force of a blow. 
 
 Escaping with difficulty the efforts of a line of men 
 in lock-step who seemed determined to sweep him before 
 them in their path, he fought his way on through a 
 crowd so great that it filled the sidewalks from curb to 
 wall, and made passage for motors and cabs in the road- 
 way impossible. He soon saw that if he were to get 
 anywhere that night he must follow the example of some 
 enterprising men who had evidently set themselves to the 
 task of realizing that ambition, and were walking on 
 the car tracks in the wake of a bumping, gong-ringing 
 street car, and proceeding slowly but surely. With his 
 coat collar turned up against the shower of confetti 
 which the people hurled at each other from all sides, with 
 vendors of rattles, bells, and horns importuning him at 
 every step, and obliged to duck his head in order to 
 avoid the attentions of sundry light-hearted merrymakers 
 who seemed intent upon smashing his hat for him, the 
 young man at last gained the car tracks and in this 
 fashion made his way up Broadway to the Square. 
 
 There as he gained the sidewalk he stopped and 
 bought a paper of a little girl standing on the corner. 
 He didn't really want the paper, for the latest news 
 Jj 401 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 was being blazoned on the glowing rectangles in front 
 of the Herald Building on the other side of the Square, 
 and he was on his way to read it; but he bought it be- 
 cause it struck him even in the midst of his busy 
 thoughts, his preoccupation with other matters, that it 
 was a piteous thing to find a little girl, a child not ten 
 years old, selling papers at that hour in that danger- 
 ously hilarious throng, the press of which was so 
 tremendous that even grown men found it difficult to 
 withstand. 
 
 " Thank you ! " he said with his charming smile, as 
 the little thing handed him up an extra with a look of 
 wonder on her shawl-enveloped face that he had taken 
 time for the courtesy. And then he saw that her hands 
 were bare and blue with the cold, for a bitter November 
 wind was blowing. Half mechanically and without 
 hesitation, Verney stripped the warm heavy gloves from 
 his own hands and thrust them toward her. 
 
 " Here," he said ; " put these on. You can't sell 
 papers all night with nothing on your hands, you know. 
 It 's too cold." 
 
 And he helped her to put them on. They were large, 
 of course, but the patent fasteners at the wrist kept them 
 from slipping off. The child was delighted and shrilled 
 a grateful acknowledgment of his kindness as the young 
 man turned away. 
 
 Just at that moment, as he again faced the Herald 
 
 Building, the bell-ringers on the cornice announced the 
 
 hour of eleven o'clock in metallic consonance of sound ; 
 
 and as if it had only been waiting for that hour to ar- 
 
 [ 402 ] 
 
"What I Cannot Have" 
 
 rive, as if the bells had been the cue for its entrance 
 upon the vast arena of the sky, " The Herald's " 
 gigantic searchlight from the lofty altitude of the 
 Metropolitan Building blocks away, shot its great beams 
 across the clear, dark heavens. In the wide plaza be- 
 fore the Sun, World, and Tribune Buildings far down- 
 town, in Herald Square and Times Square, in upper 
 Broadway and lower Broadway, in the residence district 
 uptown as far out as the Bronx and Harlem, the great 
 light signalled to waiting thousands. Within a radius 
 of fifty miles about the city, from Morristown to Ron- 
 konkoma, from Newburg to Sea Girt, and even beyond, 
 its message flashed. 
 
 Verney felt his heart constrict as a tremendous roar 
 went up from the crowd about him in answer to that 
 great beam of light shooting to the north which an- 
 nounced the election of the Republican candidate for 
 President. Would the Republican party be as victori- 
 ous in the State election? Would his friend Ordway be 
 elected Governor of New York? That was after all his 
 chief concern, the most vital question of the night to 
 him. It meant, he was convinced, the beginning of a 
 new era in politics, a better and purer era, if the young 
 Speaker of the House at Albany should be established 
 in the executive mansion there. He had hardly time to 
 frame these thoughts before the great light signalled 
 the waiting throng again. 
 
 The result of the State elections had been determined 
 beyond the possibility of change, and while the massed 
 thousands around him cheered with only a little less en- 
 [ 403 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 thusiasm than they had displayed over the result of the 
 Presidential election, the white beacon of the search- 
 light flashed directly to the west. 
 
 Ordway had won. 
 
 There were only two more things that Verney wanted 
 to find out that night, — how his District had done, and 
 what was the name of the man who had been elected 
 Attorney-general of New York. He couldn't help 
 being interested in the latter, he owed it to his party 
 to hope that he had won ; and then, he had worked very 
 hard, very conscientiously, over the campaign. He 
 rather expected to find, nevertheless, that Vandewater was 
 victor in that contest, and it was in anticipation of that 
 discovery, with a great pang like despair, that he looked 
 up at the bulletin boards before the Herald Building 
 when he had fought his way around the square to the 
 front of the big crowd that faced them. 
 
 Fully prepared to find the name of his rival inscribed 
 after the words, " For Attorney-general," he was there- 
 fore greatly astonished to find instead the name, " James 
 Vernor Ellis." The surprise of it fairly staggered 
 him, and for a moment he was unable to read the figures 
 that told the total of votes and by what majority he 
 had won. For a brief and dazzling space of time the 
 moment meant all it should have meant to Verney. He 
 knew then, as he stared up at those astonishing figures 
 on the bulletin board that proved he had won the cam- 
 paign for Attorney-general, that he had never really 
 expected to win, and that to find he had was the greatest 
 joy a human being could experience. 
 [ 404 ] 
 
"What I Cannot Have*' 
 
 In his most buoyant moments he had never succeeded 
 in imagining what it would be like to taste the cup of 
 success he was tasting then. But now as he stood on 
 the edge of that great concourse of people that filled 
 the air with din of every description, the most wonder- 
 ful feeling of content came over him. He felt as if 
 life, after keeping one hand behind its back a long 
 while, had suddenly held out the other hand to him; 
 as if while withholding something from him it had 
 given him something else which, if not so precious as 
 love (and as to that question Verney was yet uncertain), 
 was at least his heart's desire. 
 
 He was terribly tired. He closed his eyes, standing 
 just where he was with the multitude pressing on all 
 sides of him, and saw as in a vision a great army of 
 soldiers riding by as if returning from a victorious bat- 
 tle field, and on the banners in their midst he saw " Politi- 
 cal Purity " and " Reformed Party " inscribed. And 
 he saw, too (for he was very human and normal, his 
 mood when he talked with his uncle and told him he 
 didn't care about the elections, being the only thing 
 about him that was abnormal), himself and his friend 
 Oliver Ordway riding at the head of it. Then close on 
 that wave of exaltation or exultation, he did n't know 
 which it was, came one of reaction, and he was conscious 
 again of that feeling of loss that had overwhelmed him 
 immediately upon learning of Harriet's engagement to 
 George Benton. 
 
 There were plenty of places where he could have gone 
 that night and found friends to rejoice with him on 
 [ 405 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 his election. Some men he knew were giving a party 
 for the purpose of getting the returns, in the Century 
 Club, where a special wire had been run in; and in a 
 certain broker's office from the windows of which the 
 bulletins in front of the Times Building were visible, 
 Mrs. Ordway was acting as chaperon for a large gather- 
 ing of girls and young men. In still another office with 
 other friends, he knew he should find his sister Carol; 
 and Beekman and the Governor-elect were assuredly to 
 be found at State headquarters. But Verney eschewed 
 them all. He went instead first to his District head- 
 quarters and then directly home, and arrived at the house 
 in Twelfth Street before midnight, although the vast 
 crowds downtown did not cease celebrating the result 
 of the elections for another three hours. 
 
 As he passed the door of Mr. Ellis's room, his father's 
 anxious voice hailed him to ask if he had won ; and 
 though Verney knew that it meant to his father more 
 than the mere winning, that it meant Verney's freedom 
 from financial difficulties, he found that the glow of 
 victory had departed, and that there was no great satis- 
 faction after all in answering that he had. 
 
 In his own room, on his table, when he had lit the gas, 
 he found on top of a pile of letters a telegram from 
 his brother-in-law Lawrence Presbey in Chicago, wish- 
 ing him the best of luck in the outcome of the elections ; 
 and near it on a tray he discovered a little luncheon of 
 sandwiches and cake with a note from his mother saying 
 she thought he might be hungry when he came in and 
 she had brought it up for him herself. Verney was 
 [ 406 ] 
 
"What I Cannot Have" 
 
 touched. Nanna had been used to perform that little 
 service for him; it was very kind of his mother to do 
 it now, and he knew she was thinking of his old nurse 
 when she did it. Everybody was very kind indeed, and 
 he only wondered a little that their kindness seemed to 
 make him feel so little the happier. 
 
 He took up his letters next, and perceiving that one 
 was from Chicago in his sister Cornelia's handwriting, 
 opened it half mechanically. He supposed it was to 
 wish him " good luck " as her husband's telegram had 
 been ; and it was, at least in part. 
 
 He smiled as he read the would-be enthusiastic expres- 
 sions of interest in the possibility of his election which 
 Mrs. Presbey had tried so hard not to make perfunctory. 
 Cornelia was not and never had been interested in his 
 political career, he knew, had quite disapproved of it 
 in fact, though he thought too that it was good of her 
 to pretend an interest she could not feel. The close of 
 the letter was what caught Verney's attention. 
 
 " What on earth made you treat Harriet Rand as 
 you have? " the lady wanted to know. " She was crazy 
 about you when she went to New York; and when she 
 came home that time and stayed in Lake Forest, a few 
 weeks ago, I saw her, and I could tell then that it was 
 all over. Something had happened to change her mind ; 
 and I can only surmise it was something you had done, 
 the way you had behaved. 
 
 " Now what a little idiot you are, Verney " — Cornelia 
 was some six years older than her brother — " to throw 
 away a chance like that to marry a rich girl as nice as 
 [ 407 ] 
 
The Politician 
 
 Harriet ! I 'd like to know what you did it for. On ac- 
 count of your silly old politics, I suppose. [This one 
 remark made him feel he was justified in doubting the 
 sincerity of her interest in the outcome of his cam- 
 paign.] But of course I couldn't expect a brother 
 of mine to have sense enough to fall in love with an 
 heiress ! " 
 
 The Politician laid down the letter with a sigh. Sis- 
 ters were an awful bother sometimes, awful busybodies. 
 But, thank goodness, he did n't have to order his life 
 to suit Cornelia! He smiled with grim enjoyment to 
 think how angry she would be if she knew that at that 
 very moment the heiress in question was engaged to 
 George Benton. Then he passed his hand wearily over 
 his forehead. It was getting too much for him, this 
 trouble and doubt in his heart. He supposed he must 
 presently go to bed and sleep, but at the moment he felt 
 impelled to go over and stand under the portrait of 
 Abraham Lincoln on the east wall, passing as he did 
 so and without so much as a look at it, that other por- 
 trait on the opposite wall of the great Emperor of the 
 French. 
 
 Into the presence of the great Emancipator — of that 
 supreme patriot who knew before all men what self-sacri- 
 fice meant, whose very life had not been considered too 
 big a price to pay for the privilege of serving his fel- 
 low men — the young man came, fresh from having 
 made offering on that same altar of self-sacrifice, fresh 
 from the renunciation of his sweetest hope of earthly hap- 
 piness, to ask of the one man who knew, if he had done 
 [ 408 ] 
 
"What I Cannot Have" 
 
 well. For a moment he gazed earnestly up into the 
 rugged features of the face above him upon which the 
 bereavement of a nation had forever chiselled itself, and 
 then — his youth the more apparent for his worn look 
 and tired eyes — he bent his head and bowed his shoulders 
 as if himself bereaved. 
 
 And Lincoln gazed kindly down upon the sorrowful, 
 drooping figure beneath him, as if he understood the 
 magnitude of the sacrifice which his disciple had made 
 for the hope of realizing an unselfish ideal, and as if 
 in this young man who was a professed politician he 
 recognized a patriot. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [ 409 I 
 
e last date stamped below. 
 
 73»* 
 
 5Dec'50Hi 
 REC'D LD 
 
 OCT 9 1361 
 
 EC'D LD 
 
 t,D21 - 100 »-9.'«(BS9 9 ,li ) 
 
 476 
 
IB 33380 
 
 M255525 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY