The Candidate: A Political Romance. Altsheler Joseph Alexander
a girl who seemed to him so strange, but he was not able to confine her to certain channels of narrative. She was flippant and vague, full of allusions to wild things like Indians or buffaloes or grizzly bears, but with no detailed statement, and Harley gathered that her childhood had been in complete touch with these primitive facts. Only such early associations could account for the absence of so many conventions.
The correspondents who travelled with Harley were mostly men of experience, readily adaptable, and the addition of a new member to Mr. Grayson's party could not escape their attention. Harley was surprised and shocked to find that all of them were well acquainted with Miss Morgan inside of six hours, and that they seemed to be much better comrades with her than he had been. Hobart, the most frivolous of the lot, and the most careless of speech, returning from the Grayson car, informed him that she was a "great girl, as fine as silk."
"That's a queer expression to apply to a lady," said Harley. "It smacks of the Bowery."
"And what if it does?" replied Hobart, coolly. "I often find the Bowery both terse and truthful. And in this case the expression fits Miss Morgan. She's the real article—no fuss and frills, just a daughter of the West, never pretending that she is what she isn't. I heard her speak of you, Harley, and I don't think she likes you, old man. What have you been doing?"
"I hope I have been behaving as a gentleman should," replied Harley, with some asperity; "and if I have been unlucky enough to incur her dislike, I shall endure it as best I can."
He spoke in an indifferent tone, as if his endurance would not be severely tested.
"But you are missing a good time," said Hobart. "There are not less than a dozen of us at her feet, and the Grayson car is full of jollity. I'm going back."
He returned to the car, and Harley was left alone just then, as he wished to be, and with an effort he dismissed Miss Morgan from his thoughts. Mr. Grayson would speak that night in Chicago, and an audience of twenty thousand people was assured; this fact and the other one, that it would be his initial address, making the event of the first importance.
Harley as a correspondent was able not only to chronicle facts, which is no great feat, but also to tell why, to state the connection between them, and to re-create the atmosphere in which those facts occurred and which made them possible. He was well aware that a fact was dependent for its quality—that is, for its degree of good or evil—upon its surrounding atmosphere, just as a man is influenced by the air that he breathes, and for this reason he wished to send in advance a despatch about Mr. Grayson and his personality as created by his birth and associations.
He rested his pad on the car-seat and began to write, but Miss Morgan intruded herself in the first line. This question of character, created by environment, would apply to her as well as to her uncle; but Harley, angrily refusing to consider it, tore off the sheet of paper and, throwing it on the floor, began again. The second trial was more successful, and he soon became absorbed in the effort to describe Mr. Grayson and his remarkable personality, which might be either deep and complex or of the simplest Western type.
As he wrote Harley became more and more absorbed in his subject, and with the absorption came spontaneity. He did not know how well he was writing, nor what a vivid picture he was presenting to the vast Eastern population to whom Jimmy Grayson was as yet but a name. It was a despatch that became famous, reprinted all over the Union, and quoted as the first description of the candidate as he really was—that is, of the man. And yet Harley, reading it days later, recognized in it something that nobody else saw. It was a blend. In every fourth line Sylvia Morgan again, and despite his efforts, had obtruded herself. He had borrowed something from her to add to Jimmy Grayson, and he felt that he had been seeking excuses for her manner.
But this fact did not impinge upon Harley now, when he read the despatch preparatory to filing it at Chicago. He merely felt that he had made an attempt to solve Jimmy Grayson, and in doing so had fulfilled his duty.
As he folded up the article the loud voice of Hobart hailed him from the other end of the car, and he beheld that irresponsible man entering with the candidate's niece.
"You see what he has been about all this time, Miss Morgan?" said Hobart. "He has been at work. Harley, you know, is the only conscientious man among us."
"I have remarked already his devotion to duty," she said, sedately; "but do you think, Mr. Hobart, we should disturb him now? We do not know that he has finished his task."
Harley flushed. He did not wish to be thought a prig or one who made a pretence of great industry, and, although Miss Morgan's voice was without expression, he believed that irony lay hidden somewhere in it.
"You are mistaken," he said; "my work is over, for the time, at least. It was something that had to be done, or I should not have stolen off here alone."
Then he went back with them to the Grayson car, where a joyous group had gathered. Mr. and Mrs. Grayson were in the drawing-room, with the door shut, working upon the candidate's speech at Chicago, Harley surmised, and hence there was no restraint. Of this group the girl from Idaho was the centre and the sun. She seemed to be on good terms with them all, to the great surprise of Harley, who had known her longer than they, and who had not been able to get on with her at all, and he sat rather on the fringe of the throng, saying but little.
Again she inspired him with hostility; she seemed, as before, too bold, too boisterous, too much the mountain maid, although he could not analyze any particular incident as wrong in itself. And clearly she had won the liking, even the admiration, of his associates, all of whom were men of wide experience. Tremaine, the dean of the corps, a ruddy, white-haired old fellow, who had written despatches from the Russo-Turkish war, which was ancient history to Harley, warmed visibly to Miss Morgan. "It is always the way with those old gallants," was Harley's silent comment. But he had never before characterized Tremaine in such a manner.
He was afraid of her sharp tongue, knowing that a woman in such respects is never averse to taking an unfair advantage of a man; but she paid no heed to him, talking with the others and passing over him as if he had not been present; and, while this was what he wanted in the first place, yet, now that he had it, he resented it as something undeserved. But if she would not speak to him, he, too, would keep silence, a silence which he was convinced had in it a disdainful quality; hence it was not without a certain comfort and satisfaction.
But Harley was forced to admit that if she was of the bold and boisterous type, she was a favorable specimen within those unfavorable limits. While she was familiar, in a measure, with these men, yet she was able to keep them at the proper distance, and no one presumed, in any respect. She radiated purity and innocence, and it was to ignorance only that Harley now charged her faults.
They reached Chicago the next morning, and at noon Hobart knocked at the door of Harley's room at the hotel.
"There is some idle time this afternoon," said Hobart, "and Tremaine and I have asked Miss Morgan to go driving. She has accepted, but it takes four to make a party, and you are the lucky fourth."
He allowed no protestations, and, after all, Harley, who had been under much strain for some time, was not averse to an hour or two in the fresh air.
"Miss Morgan has never been in Chicago before," said Hobart, "and it is our duty to show it to her."
Hobart, who drove, put Miss Morgan upon the seat beside him, and Tremaine and Harley, who sat behind, occupied what was to some extent the post of disadvantage; but Tremaine, safe in his years, would not permit the rear seat to be neglected. He talked constantly, and her face, of necessity, was often turned to them, giving Harley opportunity to see that it had a most becoming flush.
She had an eager interest in everything—the tall buildings, the wind-swept streets, and the glimpses of the wide, green lake. Harley saw that Chicago bulked much more largely in her imagination than in his, and he began to fear that he had been neglectful; it was the most concrete expression of the West, and, as the greatest achievement of a new people in city building, it deserved attention for qualities peculiarly its own, and there could be no doubt either of Miss Morgan's admiration or pleasure. She was seeking neither for the old nor the picturesque, which are not always synonymous, but was in full sympathy with the fresh, active, and, on the whole, joyous life around her. It was sufficient