Part 2

And it was scarcely more than that when he, clad in the frock suit and carrying the top hat in his hand, advanced toward the auto. “Now--what can I do for you?” inquired he.

“Do you know how to fit on a tire?” said the man--he was young, about George’s age--but a person of fashionable dress and manner.

“I don’t know a thing about automobiles,” replied Helm.

“But I do, Bart,” said one of the women--the one with the sweeter voice. “I can superintend.”

“Are we far from the main road?” said Bart to Helm.

“About a mile and a half.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Barton Hollister.”

The young man spoke the name as if he were certain of its being recognized. “Oh, yes, I know you, Mr. Hollister. We come from the same town--Harrison. I’m George Helm.”

“I’ve heard of you,” said young Hollister graciously. “I suppose we’ve never happened to meet because I’m at home so little. You’ve lost your way, too?”

“No, I’m making a campaign through the district.”

“Oh--yes. You were nominated by the Democrats for--for----”

Mr. Hollister hesitated awkwardly. “For Circuit Judge,” Helm supplied.

“Against my cousin, Judge Powers. These ladies are my sister Clara and Miss Clearwater.”

Helm bowed to the ladies, who smiled graciously at him. He could see their faces now--lovely, delicate faces with the look of the upper class--the sort of women he had seen only at a distance and had met only in novels and memoirs.

“The chauffeur was sick and I was ass enough to risk coming without him,” said Hollister. “Nell, you’ll have to tell us what to do.”

There followed about the most interesting and exciting hour of George Helm’s life up to that time. Within five minutes Barton Hollister had shown that he was worse than useless for the work in hand, had been swept aside by Helm and Miss Clearwater. He smoked and fussed about and quarreled with his sister, who was in no very good humor with him--“casting us away in the wilderness at three o’clock in the morning.” Helm and the girl who knew toiled at removing the tire and replacing it. She did not know very much; so in the end Helm became boss and, with her assistance, worked out the problem from its foundations.

It isn’t easy for an intelligent human being to say so much as three sentences without betraying his intelligence. And in an emergency the evidences of superior mind stand out clearly and brilliantly. Thus it came to pass that in the hour’s work George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater got a respect each for the other’s intelligence. His respect for her was so great that he all but forgot her loveliness and her remote removal from the sphere of his humble, toilsome life. He was tempted to prolong the task, in spite of the irritation of Clara Hollister’s railing, peevish voice. But he resisted the temptation and got his visitors into condition for departure with all the speed he could command.

They thanked him effusively. There was handshaking all round. Hollister and his sister urged him to call “soon”--a diplomatic invitation; it sounded cordial, yet--was safely vague. The automobile departed, and the candidate for judge was free to resume his repose in the airy chamber he had selected, to save time and hotel bills.

Two hours later he made a thorough toilet with the assistance of a convenient spring, hitched up his horse and drove out of the woods and into the by-road to search for a farm-house and breakfast. After about a mile, and just before he reached the main road, he saw ahead of him an auto--the auto. In his shyness he reined in his horse and looked round for some way to escape. He, the homely, the obscure, the wretchedly poor, the badly dressed, the grotesque straggler for a foothold in life--“as ridiculous as a turtle on its back and trying to get right side up”--what had he to do with those rich, grand, elegant people? When they saw him in the full light of day, needing a shave and none too tidy after his interrupted night out, they would humiliate him with their polite but not to be concealed disdain of him. Bart Hollister suddenly sprang from the auto and shouted and waved. There was nothing to do but go on.

Another tire had exploded, and Bart had not dared leave the two girls alone; besides, he would have been lost the instant he got beyond the range of the lights. “We’ve been dozing in the car and hoping you’d come along,” he ended. “I’ll bet you’re cursing the day you ever saw us. But--couldn’t you help put on another tire?”

A few minutes, and Helm and Eleanor Clearwater were at work again. But his fingers were much clumsier now, and he was wretchedly self-conscious. By daylight he saw her to be the loveliest woman--so he decided--that he had ever seen. About twenty years old, with thick hair of the darkish neutral shade that borrows each moment new colors and tints from the light; with very dark gray eyes, so dark that an observer less keen than Helm might have thought them brown. She was neither tall nor short, had one of those figures that make you forget inches, and think only of line and proportion. A good straight nose, a sweet yet rather haughty mouth. Her hands--he noted them especially as he and she worked--were delicate, had a singular softness that somehow contrived to combine with firmness. They were cool to the touch--and her voice was cool, even when talking intimately with Clara Hollister and her brother. Not the haughty reserve of caste, but the attractive human reserve of those to whom friendship and love are not mere words but deep and lasting emotions.

When he took off his coat to go to work Helm was so thoroughly flustered that he did not think of his linen--or rather, of his cotton and celluloid--or of the torn back of his waistcoat, or of the discolored lining of his coat. But when he was ready to resume the coat he suddenly saw and felt all these horrors of his now squalid poverty. She was apparently unaware; but he knew that she too had seen, had felt. Unconsciously he looked at her with a humble yet proud appeal--the effort the soul sometimes makes to face directly another soul, with no misleading veil of flesh and other externals between. Their eyes met; she colored faintly and glanced away.

Clara and Barton were for dashing straight on home to breakfast--a run of about three-quarters of an hour. But Miss Clearwater was not for the risk. “I’m starved,” said she. “I’ve worked hard, with these two tires. Mr. Helm will find us breakfast in this neighborhood.”

“I was going to ask them to give me something at Jake Hibbard’s, about half a mile further on,” said Helm. “It’ll be plain food, but pretty good.”

And it was pretty good--coffee, fresh milk, corn bread, fried chicken and potatoes, corn cakes and maple syrup. Barton and Clara ate sparingly. It made George Helm feel closer to the goddess to see that she ate as enthusiastically as did he. “I never saw you eat like this, Nell,” said Clara, not altogether admiring.

“You never saw me when I had things I really liked,” replied she.

“The way to get your food to be really tasty,” observed Mrs. Hibbard, “is to earn it.”

Miss Clearwater deigned to be interested in Mr. Helm’s campaign. “I know something about politics,” said she. “My father was United States Senator a few years ago.”

“Oh--you’re George Clearwater’s daughter?” said Helm. He knew all about Clearwater, the lumber “king” who had bought a seat in the Senate because his wife thought she’d like Washington socially.

“Yes,” said the girl. “I’m the only child. And you--are you going to be elected?”

“Judge Powers’s plurality was more than his opponent’s whole vote last time,” said Helm.

“Then you haven’t much hope?”

“I don’t hope--I work,” said Helm.

As they talked on, he saying nothing beyond what was necessary to answer the questions put to him, it was curious to see how he, the homely and the shabby, became the center of interest. His personality compelled them to think and to talk about him, to revolve round him--this, though he was shrinking in his shyness and could scarcely find words or utterance for them.

“What a queer man,” said Clara, when the auto was under way again. “He’s very dowdy and ugly, but somehow you sort of like him.”

“He’s not so ugly,” said Miss Clearwater.

“Perhaps not--for a man of his class,” said Clara. “I like to meet the lower-class people once in awhile. They’re very interesting.”

“I guess,” said Miss Clearwater, absently, “that father was a good deal that sort of a man when he was young.”

Clara laughed. “Oh, nonsense,” she cried. “Your father amounted to something.”

“He started as a pack peddler.”

Clara would not be outdone in generous candor. “Well--papa was a farm hand. Don’t all that sort of thing seem terribly far away, Nell? Just look at _us_. Think of _us_ marrying a man like this Helm.”

Miss Clearwater shivered. “He was pretty dreadful--wasn’t he?”

“I don’t suppose the poor fellow ever had a decent suit in his life--or ever before met ladies.”

“Yet,” said Miss Clearwater, absent and reflective, “there’s no telling what he’ll be, before he gets through.”

“Talking about your conquest, Nell?” called Bart from the front seat.

Miss Clearwater colored haughtily. Clara cried, “Don’t be rude, Bart.”

“Rude?” retorted Hollister. “Anyone could see with half an eye that he was overhead in love with Nell. Wait till he comes to call.”

“Call?” Clara laughed. “He’d never venture to appear at our front door.”

“We’ll go to hear him when he strikes Harrison,” said Bart.

“Indeed we’ll not,” replied his sister. “He’d misunderstand and presume. Don’t you think so, Nell?”

“Yes,” replied Miss Clearwater promptly--too promptly.

But long before Helm and his campaign reached Harrison there were other reasons why the Hollisters, indeed all the “best people,” could not show themselves at a Helm meeting.

The ignorance of the mass of mankind has made government an arrangement whereunder the many labor for the prosperity of the few. The pretexts for this scheme and the devices for carrying it out have varied; but the scheme itself has not varied--and will not vary until the night of ignorance and the fog of prejudice shall have been rolled away. All things considered, it is most creditable to human nature and most significant of the moral power of enlightenment, that the intelligent few have dealt so moderately with their benighted fellows and have worked so industriously to end their own domination by teaching their servitors the way of emancipation; for let it not be forgotten that the light comes only from above, that the man who has emancipated himself could always, if he chose, be oppressor. Our modern American version of this ancient scheme of the few exploiting the many consists of two essential parts--laws cunningly designed to enable the few to establish their toll gates upon every road of labor; courts shrewdly officered so that the judges can, if they will, issue the licenses for the aforesaid toll gates, which are not as a rule established, but simply permitted, by the law. The treacherous legislator enacts the slyly worded authorization; the subservient judge--no, rather, the judge chosen from, and in sympathy with, the dominant class--reads the permissive statute as mandatory.

This primer lesson in politics, known to all men who have opportunity to learn and who see fit to seize the opportunity, was of course known to George Helm. But he did not content himself with a dry, tiresome, “courteous” statement of the fact. He brought it home to the people of those three counties by showing precisely what Judge Powers had done in his seven years as the people’s high officer of justice--by relating in detail the favors he had granted to the railways, both steam and trolley, to the monopolies in every necessity of life. He also gave an account of Judge Powers’s material prosperity, his rapid rise to riches in those seven years, and the flourishing condition of his relatives and intimate friends, the men owning stock in the railway and other monopolies. In a word, the young candidate made what is known as a “blatherskite” campaign. In his youth and simplicity he imagined that, as a candidate, it was his duty to tell the truth to the people. He did not know the difference between the two kinds of truth--decent and indecent--decent truth that gives everybody a comfortable sense of general depravity, and indecent truth that points out specific instances of depravity, giving names, dates and places.

“Let those who will benefit by Judge Powers’s notion of justice and law vote for him,” said Helm. “I ask those who will benefit by my notion of law and justice to vote for me.”

The Democratic machine hastened to disavow Helm’s plainness of speech. The newspapers, Democratic no less than Republican, ignored him. But the scandal would not down. The news of Helm’s charges--of his unparliamentary statements of fact--spread from village to village, from farm to farm. Within a week it was no longer necessary for him to distribute handbills and call at farm-houses to announce his meetings. Wherever he went he found a crowd waiting to hear his simple conversational appeal to common-sense--and, after hearing, bursting into cheers. In private, in handshaking and talking with the farmers and villagers, he was all humor, full of homely, witty stories and jests. But the moment he stood up as the candidate addressing the people, the face lost its humor lines, the eyes their twinkle, and he uttered one plain, serious sentence after another, each making a point against Judge Powers.

The strong homely face grew rapidly thinner. The deep-set gray eyes sank still deeper beneath the overhanging brows. As for the frock suit, it soon became a wretched exhibit from a rag bag. The “respectable” people--that is, those owning the stocks and bonds of Judge Powers’s protégé companies--laughed at the fantastic figure, roving about in the mud-stained buggy. But--“the common people heard him gladly.”

After six weeks of campaigning with farmers and villagers, Helm felt strong enough to attack the fortress--Harrison. There are those in Harrison who can still tell in minutest detail of the coming of Helm--driving slowly, toward mid-day, down the main street--the direct way to Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house. The top hat was furry and dusty. The black frock suit was streaked and stained, was wrinkled and mussed. The big shoulders drooped wearily. But the powerful head was calmly erect, and there was might in the great, toil-scarred hands that held the reins on the high bony knees.

Not in the worst days of the whiskers had George Helm been so ludicrous to look at. But no one laughed. The crowds along the sidewalks gazed in silence and awe. A _man_ had come to town.

That afternoon he spoke in Court House square--that afternoon, and again after supper, and twice every day for a week. Never had there been such crowds at political meetings--and, toward the last, never such enthusiasm. The suddenness, the strangeness of the attack paralyzed the opposition. It accepted Judge Powers’s dignified suggestion--“the fellow is beneath contempt, is unworthy of notice.”

At the end of the week, off went George to the sparser regions again, repeating the queer triumph of his first tour. And every one was asking every one else, What are the people going to do? Reichman, the Republican boss, put this question to Democratic boss Branagan when they met a few evenings before the election on the neutral ground of Tom Duffy’s saloon and oyster parlor.

“What do you think the people are going to do?” asked Reichman.

“Dun’ no,” said Branagan. “But I know what _I’m_ goin’ to do.”

This, with a wicked grin and a wink. Said Reichman, “Me, too, Pat.”

And they did it. Not a difficult thing to do at any election, for the people know little about election machinery, and do not watch--indeed, what would the poor blind, ignorant creatures find out if they did watch? Yes, Reichman and his Democratic partner did it. The easiest thing in the world, when the machinery of both parties is in the same hands.

The country went strongly for Helm. But Harrison and the three other towns of the district more than “saved the day for the sanctity of the ermine and the politics of gentlemen.” Judge Powers was reëlected by an only slightly reduced plurality. Helm had polled three times as many votes as any Democratic candidate ever had. But the famous “silent, stay-at-home voter” had come forth and had saved the republic. That famous retiring patriot!--so retiring that the census men cannot find him and the undertaker never buries him. But no matter. He is our greatest patriot. He always appears when his country needs him.

No one saw Helm on election night. At Mrs. Beaver’s it was said that he had gone to bed at the usual time. Next day he appeared, looking much as usual. The gray eyes were twinkling; the humorous lines round the mouth were ready for action. He went to see Branagan at the saloon. They sat down to a friendly glass of beer.

“Well, Mr. Helm,” said Branagan, “you lost.”

“The election--yes,” said Helm.

“Everything,” said Branagan.

“Oh, no,” replied George softly. “Next time I may win.”

Branagan’s hard blue eyes looked straight into Helm’s. Said he: “There ain’t goin’ to be no next time--fur you.”

Helm returned the gaze. “Yes, there is, Pat,” said he.

“Goin’ to make a livin’, practicin’ before Judge Powers--eh?”

“No. I’m going up the State to teach school. But I’m coming back.”

“Oh--hell,” said Pat Branagan--a jeer, but an ill-tempered one.

On his way uptown again George Helm almost walked into Eleanor Clearwater and Clara Hollister. He lifted his hat and bowed, blushing deeply. The two girls looked past him. Clara seemed unconscious that he was there; Eleanor slightly inclined her head--a cold, polite acknowledgment of the salute of a mistaken stranger.

Helm put on the frayed and frowzled top hat. His embarrassment left him. With a sweet and simple smile of apology that made the strong homely face superbly proud, he strode erectly on.

II

THE CAT’S-PAW

Pat Branagan, Democratic boss of Harrison, had said to George Helm, his defeated nominee for circuit judge: “There ain’t goin’ to be no next time--fur you.” He had said this in circumstances of extreme provocation. The young candidate, nominated as a joke, nominated to help the Republican machine roll up a “monumental majority” for Judge Powers, judicial agent of the interests owning both party machines--the young candidate had made a house to house, stump to stump campaign, had exposed Judge Powers, had forced both machines to commit wholesale election frauds to prevent his defeat. But Mr. Branagan’s anger had not been the real cause of his serving notice on the big, homely young lawyer that he would never get another nomination from the Democratic party of the city of Harrison. Mr. Branagan did not conduct his life with his temper. If he had done so, he would not have become boss, but would have remained a crumb-fed private. He had reasons--reasons of sound business sense--for “double crossing” George Helm. The Helm sort of Democrat, attacking corruption, smashing at the Republican machine, rousing the people to suspect and to reflect and to revolt, was a dangerous menace to the Branagan income.

“He’s one of them there damned agitators that’s bad for business,” said Mr. Branagan to his friend and partner, the Republican boss. “Everything’s running quiet and smooth here, and the people’s satisfied. If that fellow had his way, they’d be attendin’ to politics instead of to their jobs.”

“That’s right,” said Reichman. “My people”--meaning the corporations whose political agent he was--“my people understand you didn’t intend to do it. They look to you to get rid of him.” Reichman said “my people” rather than “your people,” because Republican partisans being overwhelmingly in the majority in that district, the interests had him for chief political manager, and dealt with the Democratic boss only through him. If Reichman had been strictly accurate he would not have said “my people,” but “_the_ people”; for the interests are the only people who have not power in politics.

“Helm’s leaving, all right,” said Branagan. “That there campaign of his used up his money. He never had no law business, and he’s smart enough to know he’ll never get none hereabouts, so long as Powers is on the bench. So he’s gone up the State to teach school.”

“Well, that’s the last of _him_,” said Reichman. “I’m kind of sorry for him, Pat. He’s a damn nice young fellow.”

“Yes--and a mighty good stumper, too.” With a grin, “He landed on your friend the Judge--jaw, solar plexus, kidneys--had him groggy.”

The two bosses laughed uproariously. Then Branagan said: “Yes, George Helm’s a nice boy. But I don’t like him. If he’d a won out, he’d a made it hot for me--and for you, too.”

“But he didn’t,” said Reichman. “And he’s all in. I can think well of the dead.”

“I don’t like him,” growled Branagan. “He fooled me with those crazy red whiskers of his. I knew what he was the first time I saw him after he cut ’em off--that was the day after I put him on the ticket. When a man fools me, he makes me mad.”

“He fooled everybody,” said Reichman soothingly. “And as it has turned out there’s no harm done. The way we made him walk the plank’ll be a warning to any other young smart Alecks there are in these parts, thinking of upsetting things.”

It certainly looked as if George Helm were dead and done for in that community. But Patrick Branagan was a sensible man. Vain men concern themselves about likes and dislikes; sensible men, about advantages and disadvantages. It came to pass in that winter, while George Helm was teaching school up the State, and saving money for another attempt as a lawyer, Branagan and Reichman fell out about the division of the graft. Branagan was a slow thinker, but it gradually penetrated to him that in George Helm he had a threat wherewith he could, or, rather, should, extort for himself a larger share of the spoils. Helm, making a single-handed campaign against both machines--for the Branagan machine had repudiated him--had carried the district, had been kept out of office only by the most barefaced frauds in Harrison and the three large towns. So Branagan told Reichman that unless his share--in the vice money, in the “campaign contributions” and in the contracts--were raised to an equality with Reichman’s own share, he would bring Helm back. Reichman laughed, Branagan insisted. Reichman grew insulting. Branagan presented an ultimatum. Reichman answered by cutting Branagan’s third to a fourth.

In May Branagan went up to Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house. Yes, Mr. Helm had left his address. “And,” said Mrs. Beaver, “he sends me regular his rent for the room he had.”

“What does he do that for?” said Branagan.

“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Beaver. “He was mighty queer in lots of ways. No, I can’t nohow work it out why he sends me the two dollars a week--and him so poor he had to do his own washing and mending--and wore celluloid.”

But Branagan knew, on second thought. So the young damn fool did intend to come back--had kept his legal residence in Harrison. Though this news was altogether satisfactory to Branagan’s plans, it gave him a qualm. What a stubborn, _dangerous_ chap this boy was! However--his fear of Helm was vague and remote, his need of him clear and near. He took the midnight express for the north and was at George Helm’s boarding-house on the lake front at Saskaween as George, with breakfast finished and his cigar lighted, was starting out for a stroll.

“I’ll go along,” said Pat. “Throw away that cigar and let me give you a good one.”

“If it’s like the one you’re smoking,” said George, “it’s not good. But it’s better than my five-center.”

“I pay a quarter apiece for my cigars,” said Branagan. “And I think I know a good cigar.”

“You think it’s good because Len Melcher charges you a quarter for it,” replied Helm.