Part 40 (1/2)
Hobart glanced up the car, and noticed that Harley was not within hearing. Then he replied, gravely:
”Churchill, I don't believe that Miss Morgan has broken her engagement with the 'King'--she'll marry him yet if he says so--but I do believe that she has some connection with this affair. What it is, I don't know, and I'm mighty glad that I don't have to speak of it in my despatches; it's too intangible.”
But Churchill was not so scrupulous. Without giving any names, he wove into his four-thousand-word despatch a very beautiful and touching romance, in which Jimmy Grayson figured rather badly--in fact, somewhat as an evil genius--and the _Monitor_, dealing in the fine vein of irony which it considered its strongest card, wrote scornfully of a campaign into which personal issues were obtruding to such an extent that they were shattering it. The _Monitor_ still affected to see some good in Mr.
Grayson, but put the bad in such high relief that the good merely set it off, like those little patches that ladies wear on their faces. And the mystery of the Plummer bolt, involving a young and beautiful woman, just hinted at in the despatches, heightened the effect of the story. ”King”
Plummer himself appeared to the reading public as a martyr, and even to many old partisans party rebellion seemed in this case honorable and heroic.
For a day or so Harley scarcely spoke to any one, and, as far as was possible within the limited confines of a train, he avoided Sylvia. He did not wish to see her, because he was strengthening himself to carry out a great resolution which he meant to take. In this crisis he turned to only one person, and that was Mr. Heathcote, who he felt would give him advice that was right and true.
When Harley told Mr. Heathcote of his purpose, the committeeman's face became grave, but he said, ”It is the hard thing for you to do, although it is the best thing.” An hour later, Harley sent to his editor in New York a despatch, asking to be recalled; he said there had arisen personal reasons which would make him valueless for the rest of the campaign, and he felt that the _Gazette_ would be the gainer if he were transferred to another field of activity.
Harley felt a deep pang, and he did not attempt to disguise it from himself, when he sent this telegram, but after it was gone his conscience came to his relief, although he still avoided the presence of Sylvia with great care. But the pang was repeated many times, as he sat silent among his companions and calculated how he could leave them that night and get a train for New York in the morning.
He was still sitting among them about the twilight hour when the conductor handed him a telegraphic despatch, and Harley knew that it was from his editor, who had a high appreciation of his merits, both personal and professional. The message was brief and pointed. It said: ”Can't understand your request for a transfer. Your despatches from the campaign best work you have ever done; not only have all news, but write from the inside; you present the candidate as he is. Have telegraphed Mr. Grayson asking if there is any quarrel, and in reply he makes special request that you represent _Gazette_ with him to the end. Stay till you are sent for, and don't bother me again.”
Harley read it over a second time. Despite himself he smiled, and he smiled because he felt a throb of pleasure. ”Good old chief,” he said, and he understood now that a refusal of his request was a hope that he had dared not utter to himself. But he knew that he should have taken the great risk.
He showed the despatch to Mr. Heathcote, and the committeeman was sincerely glad.
”Your editor has done his duty,” he said.
Mr. Grayson did not allude to the subject, and Harley respected his silence, although devoutly grateful for the reply that he had made.
Other telegrams caused by the threatened revolt in the mountains were also pa.s.sing; some of them stopped at the house of Mr. Plummer, in Boise, and upon the trail of one of these telegrams, a forcible one, came a thin-faced and quiet but alert man, Mr. Henry Crayon, who in his way was a power in both the financial and political worlds. Mr. Crayon was perhaps the most trusted of the lieutenants of the Honorable Clinton Goodnight, and the two had held a long conference before his departure for the West, agreeing at the end of it that ”it was time to make a move, and after that move to spring a live issue.”
Mr. Crayon was fairly well informed of the causes that agitated the soul of ”King” Plummer, and as he shot westward on a Limited Continental Express he considered the best way of approach, inclining as always to delicate but incisive methods. Long before he reached Boise his mind was well made up, and he felt content because he antic.i.p.ated no difficulty in handling the crude mountaineer, who was unused to the ways of diplomacy.
He found the ”King” in Boise, still hot and sulky. Mr. Plummer had not heard anything in person from the Graysons, nor had he sent any message to them, and the mountains were full of talk about his bolt, which was now spoken of as an accepted fact.
Mr. Crayon's first meeting with Mr. Plummer came about in quite an accidental and easy way--Mr. Crayon saw to that--and the Easterner was deferential, as became one who had so little experience of the West, who, in case he was presumptuous, was likely to be reminded that Idaho was nearly twenty times as large as Connecticut and twice as large as the state of New York itself. After making himself pleasant by humility and requests for advice, Mr. Crayon glided warily into the subject of politics. He disclosed to Mr. Plummer how much a powerful faction in the party was displeased with Mr. Grayson, and the equally important fact that this faction felt the necessity of speedy action of some kind.
They were at that moment in a secluded corner of the reading-room of the chief hotel in Boise, and Mr. Crayon had ordered a pleasant and powerful Western concoction which he and Mr. Plummer sipped as they talked. The ”King's” face was red, partly with the sun and partly with the anger that still burned him. Mr. Crayon's words fell soothingly upon his ear--Mr. Crayon had a quiet, mellow voice--and his sense of injury at the hands of Jimmy Grayson deepened. What right had Jimmy Grayson or Jimmy Grayson's wife, which was the same thing, to interfere in his private affairs? And it was only a step from one's private life to one's public life. Wrong in one, wrong in the other. Mr. Crayon, watching him keenly though covertly, was pleased with the varying expressions that pa.s.sed over the unbearded portions of the ”King's” face. He read there anger, jealousy, and revenge, and he said to himself that he would bend this man, big and strong as he was, to his will.
Mr. Crayon now grew bolder. He said that the minority within the party, which, for the present, he represented, was resolved to come to an issue with Mr. Grayson; the destinies of a great party, and possibly the country, could not be put in the hands of a man who had neither the proper dignity nor the proper sense of responsibility. Thus far he went, and then the wily Mr. Crayon stopped to notice the effect.
It seemed to him to be favorable, and Mr. Crayon was an acute man. The ”King” drank a little of his liquor and nodded his head. Yes, he had been fooled in Jimmy Grayson, he had thought that he was as true as steel, but there was a flaw in the steel; Jimmy Grayson had done him a great injury, and he was not a man who turned one cheek when the other was smitten; he smote back with all his might, and his own hand was pretty heavy.
Mr. Crayon smiled--all things were certainly going well; he had caught Mr. Plummer at the right moment, and there was no doubt of the impression that he was making. Then he went a little further; he suggested that a certain important issue not hitherto discussed in the campaign was going to be brought up, even now they were proposing to present it in the West, and Mr. Grayson would have to declare himself either for or against it--there was no middle ground. Mr. Crayon again stopped and observed the ”King” with the same covert but careful glance. The face of Mr. Plummer obviously bore the stamp of approval; moreover, he nodded, and, thus encouraged, Mr. Crayon went further and further, telling why the issue was so great, and why it must be presented to the public without delay.
Mr. Plummer asked him to name the issue, and when Mr. Crayon did so, without reserve, the ”King's” face once more bore the stamp of approval, and he nodded his head again.
”If Mr. Grayson accepts the law as we lay it down,” said Mr. Crayon, with satisfaction, ”he places himself in our hands and we control him.
Our policies prevail, and, if he becomes President of the United States, we remain the power that rules him, and that, therefore, rules the country. If he resists us, well, that is the end of him!”
Mr. Crayon had lighted a cigar, and as he said ”that is the end of him”
he flicked off the ash with a quick gesture that had in it the touch of finality.