Part 45 (1/2)

They conferred a little, leaving Jimmy Grayson alone in his chair, where he remained silent and with inexpressive face. Harley still stood by the window. He had never spoken, but nothing escaped his attention. More than once he was hot with anger, but none of the committeemen ever looked at him.

”If you insist, and as you say you will, we yield this little point,”

said Mr. Goodnight, ”but we only do so because Waterville is such a small place. Even then we are not sure that it is not an indiscretion, to call it by a mild name, and if anything should come of it you would have to bear the full responsibility, Mr. Grayson.”

”That is true,” said Jimmy Grayson, cheerfully, ”but as you have said, Waterville is a small, a very small place; one could hardly find a smaller on the map.”

”In that event it will doubtless do no harm,” said Mr. Goodnight, relaxing a little, and Mr. Crayon, stroking his smoothly shaven chin, said after him: ”No harm; no harm, perhaps, in so small a place!”

Harley had never moved from the window, and again he studied Jimmy Grayson's face with the keenest attention. Harley was a fine judge of character, but he could read nothing there, save gravity. As for himself, he felt often those hot thrills of anger at the words of these men; would nothing stir them from their complacency? He had, too, a sense of pain at Jimmy Grayson's lack of resentment. It was true that their support was a necessity, but after all they were a minority within the party, and one might remind them of the fact. Yet Jimmy Grayson probably knew best; he understood politics, and perhaps his course was the wiser. But Harley sighed.

After the victory, although it had not been a difficult one to win, the members of the committee were disposed to condescend a little. They sent to their private car for champagne and other luxuries which the candidate and Harley touched but lightly, and they treated even Harley, the newspaper-man, with graciousness.

Mr. Crayon felt the flame of humor sparkling in his veins, and he jested lightly on the little speech at Waterville. ”Just think of our candidate wasting sweetness on desert air,” he said, ”for Waterville is in desert, and, as I am reliably informed, has less than forty inhabitants.”

Jimmy Grayson showed no resentment, but smiled gravely.

”Of course Mr. Harley understands that all this is _sub rosa_,” said Mr.

Goodnight, looking severely at the correspondent.

”Mr. Harley knows it, and he is to be trusted entirely,” said Jimmy Grayson. ”Otherwise I should not have brought him with me. I vouch for the fact that he will say nothing of this meeting until we give him permission.”

Mr. Grayson presently excused himself, on the plea that he needed sleep, a plea which was admitted by everybody, and Harley also withdrew, while the members of the committee went to their private car pleased with the evening's work. Thus the Great Philipsburg Conference came to an end.

The candidate and Harley walked together to their rooms through a rather dim hall, but it was not too dim to hide from Harley a singular expression that pa.s.sed over the face of the candidate. It was gone like a flash, but it seemed to Harley to be a compound of anger and antic.i.p.ation. Wisely he kept silent, and Jimmy Grayson, stopping a moment at his own door, said, in the grave but otherwise expressionless tone that he had used throughout the discussion:

”Good-night, Harley; I don't think we shall forget this evening, shall we?”

”No,” replied Harley, and he tried to decipher a meaning in Jimmy Grayson's tone, but he could not.

When Harley turned away, he found Hobart, Blaisdell, Churchill, and all the other correspondents waiting for him at the end of the hall to get the news of the conference.

”There is nothing, not a line,” said Harley.

They looked at him incredulously.

”It is the truth, I a.s.sure you,” continued Harley. ”I am not sending a word to my own paper. I am going straight to my bed.”

”If you say so, Harley, I believe you,” said Churchill. ”Besides, it's past one o'clock now, and that's past four o'clock in New York and past three in Chicago; all the papers have gone to press, and we couldn't send anything if we wanted to do so.”

”There is nothing to tell you,” said Harley, ”except that Mr. Grayson will allude to the tariff in his speech to-morrow, or, rather, this morning, at Waterville. He has promised the committee not to do so again--they were not very willing to grant him even so little--but it is a sort of sop to Cerberus; later on, if any one twits him with avoiding the revision, he can say, and say truthfully, that he has spoken on it.”

”I see,” said Churchill.

And before they could ask him anything more Harley had entered his own room and was going to bed.

The morning dawned badly. The sun shone dimly through a ma.s.s of dirty brown clouds, and the mountains were hidden in mist. A slow and provoking cold rain was falling. It was also a start at the first daylight, and, forced to rise too early from their beds, all were in a bad humor. Even Sylvia was hid in a heavy cloak, and she did not smile.

Harley had told her that he could make nothing of the conference the night before.

They reached Waterville an hour later, and they found it even smaller and bleaker than they expected. Although the usual body of citizens was on hand to meet them at the train, the attendance was less than at any point hitherto. The shed under which Jimmy Grayson was to speak would easily hold them.

But the members of the committee, when they came from their private car, showed satisfaction. They had enjoyed a good breakfast, their _chef_, as Harley could testify, was one of the best, and they were not averse to hearing the candidate make his record good. Hence they were all comfortably arranged on the platform in their usual solid semicircle when Mr. Grayson appeared. The candidate himself was a bit later than usual, but he gave them a cheerful good-morning when he appeared, and then proceeded at once to the matter of the speech.