Part 52 (1/2)

There was no sign of gloom at the Grayson home. The candidate, refreshed, and with his half-dozen young children around him, was unfeignedly happy, while Mrs. Grayson, hovering near her husband, who had been practically lost to her for, lo! these many months, showed the same joy and relief. She received the group with genuine warmth--her husband's friends were hers--and bade them make the house their home until the fight was over. Sylvia greeted them as old comrades, which, in fact, they were. A room with tables for writing was already set apart for their use.

The children were in holiday attire and thrilled by excitement; they could not be suppressed. They were well aware what it was to be President of the United States, and they failed to understand how any one could vote against their father. ”If he is beaten,” thought Harley, ”it is not Mr. Grayson nor Mrs. Grayson who will feel the most disappointment, but these little children.”

Neither the candidate nor his wife alluded to the Presidential race, seeming to enjoy this short respite after the long strain and before the crucial trial yet to come. They talked of the small affairs of the home, and she gave the news of their neighbors, as if they would make the most of this brief hour; yet it was not wholly natural, there was in it a note of suspense, and Harley knew that, despite the joy of reunion, the shadow of the coming night was already over them. Jimmy Grayson must feel that while he idled about his own home the ballots were falling in the boxes off to the East and to the West by the hundred thousand, and his own fate was being decided.

Harley and Sylvia, after the greetings and the casual talk, slipped away from the others. There was a little gla.s.s-covered piazza at the back of the house, and there they sat.

”Now you must tell me all that you have been doing since I left you.”

”Nothing worth the telling. How could anything interesting happen after you had gone? But I've been doing some fine thinking.”

”Of what?”

”Of you!--always you! I've had to tear up the first page of many of my despatches.”

”Why?”

”Because I would address them to Sylvia instead of to the _Gazette_.”

”John, I didn't know that you had imagination.”

”It isn't imagination; I don't need imagination when I'm near you or thinking of you, which is all the time.”

”And you are going to marry a Western girl, after all?” irrelevantly.

”I wouldn't marry any other kind, and there is only one of them that I would marry.”

They did not speak again for a half-minute, but what they said was relevant.

But the best of times must come to an end, even if it is merely to give way to another good time, and Harley could not remain long at the candidate's house, but strolled with Blaisdell and two or three others through the city. He, too, had a sense of helplessness in regard to the campaign. Like Jimmy Grayson, he was now condemned to a period of inaction, and, strive as he might, he could not aid his friend a particle. They went to the local headquarters of the party--two parlors of the largest hotel in the city.

The rooms, which had been thrown together, were packed with men and thick with tobacco-smoke, making the air heavy and hot. News there was none, but clouds of rumor and gossip. The telegraph said bad weather, cold and raw, with gusts of rain, prevailed all over the United States, but that an enormous vote was being polled, nevertheless. In all the booths in all the great cities long lines of people were waiting, and reports of the same character were coming from the country districts.

But with the secret ballot there was nothing whatever to indicate which way this vote was being cast, nor would there be until the polls were closed and the official count was begun. It was said that in many of the precincts of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia more than half the vote was cast already, so eager were both sides for victory. These bulletins, more or less vague as they came from time to time, were posted on a blackboard, and their vagueness did not keep them from arousing the keenest interest.

Dexter, the chairman of the state committee, a thin-faced man who talked little, shook his head ominously.

”I don't like the enormous vote they are polling so early in the big cities,” he said. ”It shows that the band of traitors led by Goodnight, Crayon, and their kind are getting in their work.”

”But we don't know it to be a fact,” said Harley, resolved that the cloud should have its silver lining. ”For every man in that crowd eager to cast a vote against Jimmy Grayson, there may be one eager to cast a vote for him.”

Dexter shook his head again, and with increased gloom. Harley's argument might appeal to his hopes, but not to his judgment.

”I'm sorry that Jimmy Grayson made his attack upon that committee,” he said. ”It spoke well for his courage and honesty, but it was bad politics.”

”I think that courage and honesty are good politics,” said Harley, and he left Dexter to his pessimistic thoughts.

The rooms were growing too close, and there was an absence of definite news, so he went again into the open air. The character of the day was unchanged; it was still dark with ominous clouds trooping across the sky, and the wind had grown more bitter.

Harley now found himself under the strain of an extreme anxiety. He did not realize until this day how deeply his own feelings were interwoven with the fate of the campaign, and how bleak the night would look to him and Sylvia if Mr. Grayson were beaten--and he knew that the odds were against him; despite himself, he, a man of calm mind and strong will, was a prey to nerves. He began to shrink at the thought of the count of the votes, and to fear the first real bulletins.

He walked about the streets awhile to steady himself, and then looked at his watch. It was past noon there, but later in the East and earlier in the West; yet the bulk of the ballots were cast already. In three or four hours more the tabulated vote in the states farthest east would begin to arrive, and they would listen to the opening chapter of the story, a story which he feared to hear.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he had strolled unconsciously towards the country. There, at a turn of the road, he met two people in a light wagon, and they were the candidate and his wife Mrs. Grayson driving.