Part 3

“What do you know about good cigars, anyhow?” said Branagan, ruffled that this poor school teacher should presume to be critical.

Helm might have explained that he happened to be one of those people who are born with intensely acute senses--eyes that see, ears that hear, nerves of touch, taste and smell that respond where the ordinary nerve remains inert. But he contented himself with a good-natured laugh and a cheerful, “Where’s the cigar? And what do you want, Pat?”

Branagan drew the cigar from his well-filled waistcoat pocket. “How’d you like to go to the State Legislature next winter, as Senator from down yonder?” he said.

Helm lit the quarter cigar from his “five-center,” strode along in silence beside his shorter and stouter companion. He finally said:

“So you and Reichman have fallen out?”

“Personally, we’re friends,” replied the Democratic boss with an air of virtue earnest enough, but so grotesque that it did not even seem hypocritical. “But in politics we are and always have been enemies.”

Helm’s deep-set gray eyes gazed shrewdly at the heavy red face of the boss. “And,” he went on, as if Branagan had not spoken, “you want to use me as a club for bringing him to terms.”

“Who’s been handing you out that line of dope?” said Branagan noisily.

Helm ignored this blustering bluff as unworthy of reply. He said: “When do you want your answer?”

“I ain’t offered you no nomination,” protested Branagan angrily. “I just put out a suggestion.”

“Oh--you want to make terms?--want to pledge me?--want to see if you can control me?” Helm shook his head and smiled. “Nothing doing, Pat,” he said.

“Now, look here, George--why’re you so damn suspicious? I’m older’n you and I’ve been all through the game. Let me tell you, my boy, you’re trying to get in the wrong way. There’s nothing in that there end of the game. A fellow who works for the people works for somebody that’s got nothing, and is a fool, to boot. Get in right, George. Work for them as can and will do something for you.”

“Oh, I’m not thinking of working for the people,” replied Helm, amused. “I’m working for myself--for my own amusement. I’ve made up my mind to have a good time in my life--not what _you’d_ call a good time, perhaps, but the kind of a time that suits me. I don’t care for money--nor for the things money buys. I rather think the kind of woman I’d want wouldn’t want me--so I’m not going to have a wife and family to work for. I’ve decided to be my own boss--and to do as I damn please.”

“You’re a queer chap, for sure,” said Branagan. “But let me tell you one thing. A man that sets out to do as he pleases has got to have a lot of money--unless he pleases to be a hobo, or near it. You’d better wait till you’ve made your pile before you put your nose in the air.”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Helm. “Yes, I’ve got to have money. They can always do me up as long as I’m poor. But I’m going to make it in my own way.”

“_I_ can help you,” said Branagan.

“Yes--you could,” admitted Helm.

“You’d not have to touch a cent that wasn’t perfectly honest graft.”

Helm laughed.

“What’s the joke?” demanded Branagan.

“I was thinking how plainly you were showing me your hand. How you must need me to travel clear across the State to see me, and then to talk straight out like this.”

Branagan frowned--grinned. “I don’t need you any more than you need me,” retorted he. “Not as bad. How much does this job you’ve got pay?”

“Sixty-five a month.”

“And you an educated man. That was a pretty good hash house you’re livin’ in.”

“Fourth rate. But my bed’s clean and the food is good.”

“Sixty-five a month! I can put you in the way of makin’ that much a day--if you deliver the goods.”

“Meaning--”

“If you carry in my ticket next fall--and behave yourself like a sensible man after you get in.”

“What was my majority in the district last fall?” Helm suddenly asked.

“About twelve hundred,” replied Branagan.

“I thought so,” said Helm. “If I’d had five thousand dollars I’d have sent you and Reichman to the pen for the frauds. But you knew I’d be helpless.”

The Democratic boss gave him an amiable and sympathetic look. Said he: “A man without money is always helpless, George. And the further he goes the surer he is to fall--and fall hard.”

“I know. I’ve got to have enough to make me independent.”

“How’re you goin’ to get it, my boy?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” confessed Helm. “Thus far I’ve not found the answer.”

“You’ll never find it where you’re looking,” said Branagan. “The people--they ain’t goin’ to give it to you. And you ain’t goin’ to get no law cases unless you’re in right. If you did get a good law case, it’d be decided against you.”

Helm’s expression was admission that the boss was right.

“And,” proceeded Branagan, “if you decided to make money by going into business--that’s slow, and anyhow you’ll have to graft or you won’t make nothin’. I tell you, George---- They call us politicians grafters. But the truth is we’re a damn sight honester than the business men or the lawyers--or any other class except them that ain’t got no chance to graft. The worst of us ain’t no worse than the best of them swell, big-figger grafters like Hollister and Powers. And the best of us is a hell of a sight honester. _We’ve_ got some friendship in us. And I’ve yet to see the respectable, tony, church-going grafter I’d trust unless I had him in writing. What’s the matter nowadays with Al Reichman? Why, as long as he was just a plain low-down politician he kept his word and played square. But now that he’s married among the swells and has taken up the respectable end of the game, he’s as crooked as--as Judge Powers.”

“I can’t make up my mind what to do about Reichman,” said Branagan to Helm.

“Haven’t you got your orders from the crowd that’s behind both of you?” inquired Helm.

“Yes--to let him alone--to let up on him.”

“Then--that’s what you’ll do.”

“I suppose so,” Branagan reluctantly admitted. “I wisht I was as young as you, George--and had my old-time nerve--and didn’t have an expensive family. I’d take a chance.”

“Of being able to stay in now that you’re in?”

“That’s it. Damn it, I sometimes believe we could.”

Helm shook his head. “The district is normally seven thousand Republicans out of a total vote of eighteen thousand. It’d take ten years of hard work--and _honest_ politics--to change that round to a small _steady_ Democratic plurality.”

“But the people are crazy about _you_.”

“They won’t reëlect me,” said Helm. “Next time they’ll be back in the harness.”

“For a youngster you take a mighty gloomy view of things.”

“I don’t delude myself. I don’t dare. I’ve been making my own living since I was ten and I’ve got to go on making it till I die.”

“Yes, the people are mutts,” said Branagan. “They were born to be trimmed..... So--if you was in my place you’d fix up a peace with Reichman?”

“No,” said Helm. “_I_ shouldn’t. But _you_ ought to do it. You don’t want to make a losing fight for ten years--do you? You don’t want to drop politics as a business, do you?”

“It’s a business or it’s nothing,” replied Branagan.

“For you,” corrected Helm.

“For all of them that’s in it--except here and there a crank.”

“Except here and there a crank,” assented Helm.

“Republicans and Democrats--they all belong one way or another to this interest or that. What’s the use of fighting the crowd that’s got the money? No use--not here in this town--not up to the State Capitol, where you’re going--not on to Washington where I reckon you calculate to go some day. Not nowhere, George!”

“Not nowhere,” said George. “It takes two negatives to give that affirmative its full strength.”

“Not nowhere on earth,” repeated Branagan. “Fight the money crowd, and sooner or later they’ll get you down. Bluff at fightin’ ’em. They don’t mind that. They understand you’ve got to keep in with the people, and they want you to, so as you’ll be useful. But don’t _do_ nothing. Look at any of the big politicians that the people think so well of. What have they _done_? Nothing. They’ve bluffed--and talked--and roared. Maybe they cut off a measly little grafter here or there. But when it came to a show-down, they gave the crowd with the cash what they wanted. Eh?”

Helm nodded.

“Well--what are _you_ going to do?”

“I’ll see when the time comes. Meantime, what’s my cue, Pat? To roar--isn’t it?”

Branagan laughed. “And you’re the boy that can do it,” he cried. “You almost make _me_ believe you’re in earnest.”

Helm gave his political sponsor a queer, quick look. “Almost,” he said, with a laugh. “That’s good.”

“For your age, Helm, you’ve got the best nut on you of any man I know or know about. I’ll back you to win. You’ll be the nominee for governor in two years.”

“I hope so,” said Helm.

“And as soon as I settle things with Reichman I’ll give you all the law business you can take care of--good, paying business--the kind that won’t hurt you with the people.”

“I’ll take all of that I can get,” said Helm. “I want to make money. I’ve _got_ to make money.”

“You’ve put me in the way of doing better than ever, my boy, and I’m not ungrateful.”

George winced. But he laughed and said: “And don’t forget, my usefulness has only begun.” He reflected, smiled a peculiar secret smile as he went on: “The people allow the crowd that’s robbing them to pay big wages to the politicians who make the robbery possible. Why shouldn’t an honest man take away from the robbers a big enough share to keep him going and to put him in a position to serve the people better?”

“That’s good sense,” said Branagan heartily.

“It’s practical,” said Helm, staring gloomily.

Branagan observed him with narrowed eyelids and cigar tilted to a high reflective angle. “You’re a queer one,” he said, at last. “I can’t exactly place you.”

From time to time Helm had been nodding a thoughtful assent. He now said:

“Last summer and fall I got a lot of experience, Branagan. Ever since, I’ve been turning it over in my mind. The time may come when a man can get where he wants to go by a smooth bee line through the air. But not now. Now he has to move along the ground, and the road isn’t as straight as it might be, or as smooth. I was all for the bee line through the air. I’ve found out better.” He looked pointedly at his hard-eyed companion. “I haven’t changed my _destination_, Pat. You understand?”

Branagan nodded.

“I’ve simply changed from the heavenly route to the human. And by human I don’t mean crooked.”

“I understand, Mr. Helm,” said Branagan, with the respect a shrewd man cannot but feel in presence of an intelligence that has shown itself the superior of his. “I understand perfectly, George.”

“You probably don’t understand,” said George. “But no matter. You can be boss of the machine, but you can’t be my boss. If you give me the nomination and I’m elected, I’ll not attack the--the shortcomings of my friends until I’ve settled with the crimes of my enemies. I’ll not forget that I owe you, and not the people, for the nomination. But neither will I forget that I owe the people, and not you, for the election.”

“That’s the talk, Helm!” said Branagan, with enthusiasm.

“I’ll accept your nomination _if_ you make up a good ticket throughout--one that ought to win.”

“I’ve got to do that, George,” said the boss. “The Republicans outnumber us three to one. Yes, I’ll give you A1 running mates.”

“After we’ve won--you’ll have to look out for yourself,” pursued Helm. “I’ll not stand _personally_ for any crookedness. I don’t like it, and I don’t think it’s good politics.”

“I’ll nominate you,” said Branagan. “And I’ll send you a list of the men I pick out to run with you. I’m not a fool, Mr. Helm. I know we can’t get in unless we make the people believe we’re sincere--and that we can’t make ’em believe it unless we put up clean men.”

Helm smiled. “Yes--we’ve got to make a good strong bluff at decency.”

Branagan inspected Helm’s face with a quick, eager glance--a hopeful glance. Helm laughed at him. Branagan colored.

“I knew you didn’t understand,” said Helm. “But, as I said before, it doesn’t matter. We’ll only win the one election. Then the people’ll go back to their Republican rut, and in will come Reichman and the old gang again. You calculate that you can make better terms with him after you’ve given him a beating. Now, don’t you see that it’s to your interest to keep me decent--to keep me a scarecrow for Reichman?”

Branagan nodded. “You and me’ll have no trouble, George. I’ll let you play your game to suit yourself.”

Two months later Helm reappeared at Harrison, resumed the lodging at Mrs. Beaver’s and the dark and dingy little back office in the Masonic Temple. He was dressed in new clothes--a plain, cheap business suit of dark blue, linen shirt, collars and cuffs, a straw hat. He thought himself a stylish, almost a foppish, person. In fact he seemed hardly less unkempt and ill fitted than he had in the black frock suit and top hat of the previous year. Perhaps--but only perhaps--in the days of the toga George Helm might have looked well in clothes; in modern dress he could not look well. The most he could do was to look clean and important and strong--and that he certainly did.

Reichman understood, the moment it became known that the young lawyer had as clients four contracting companies in which Pat Branagan was the silent--and sole--partner. Reichman was for making a fight at once. But Judge Powers and Hollister had no fancy for a shower of the shafts which would glance harmlessly from the tough hide of Reichman, but would penetrate their skins and fester in their vanity. “I’ll take care of Helm,” said Hollister. And he sent his son Bart to call.

“Glad to see you back,” said Barton, a dazzling but also an agreeable apparition in the dingy dimness of Helm’s office. “We were talking about you only yesterday--I and my sister and Miss Clearwater. You remember her?”

“Yes--I--I remember her,” said Helm, as painfully embarrassed as if Miss Eleanor Clearwater, the beautiful, the fashionable, had been there in her own exquisite person. Remember her! Not a day had passed that he had not lived again those hours when chances had thrown him into her company on terms of almost friendly intimacy.

“We want you to come to dinner,” continued Barton, pretending not to notice the simple, uncouth, homely Helm’s woeful confusion. “To-morrow night--very informal--dressed as you are--really a home supper.”

“Sorry, but I can’t,” George blurted out--curt, rude, uncouth.

“Oh--nonsense!” cried young Hollister. “You’ll get along all right.”

“I can’t come, Mr. Hollister,” said George, suddenly recovering his self-possession. Perhaps the fashionable young man’s misunderstanding of his diffidence may have helped. Helm went on with the natural dignity and grace that makes the acquired sort look what it is, “It’s very kind of your father and Judge Powers to ask me. But I can’t.”

“_I’m_ asking you,” weakly blustered Barton. “My father’s got nothing to do with it. As for Judge Powers, I can’t see why you drag _him_ in.”

The calm, honest look of George Helm’s deep-set eyes was not easy to bear, as he explained without a trace of anger:

“I met your sister and her friend on the street the day after the election last fall. They made it plain that they had ceased to know me----”

“But,” interrupted Bart, “that was the day after the election, when everybody was hot in the collar. We’ve all cooled down.”

“I’ve come back here to go into politics again,” said George. “And I’ve got to say and do things that’ll make you and your relatives madder than ever----”

“What for?” cried Bart. “I say, Helm, what’s the use of being so devilish personal and unpleasant? Why stir things up and make trouble for yourself? Why not join our party and jog along quietly and comfortably?”

Helm laughed good-humoredly. “Let’s say it’s because I was born a contentious cuss and can’t change my nature. No, Hollister--you don’t want me at your house.”

Hollister was convinced. But his father’s orders had been positive, had made no provision for failure. He persisted as best he could: “You can’t think we’re trying to buy you with a dinner?”

“I think I’m too good-natured not to sell out for a dinner--and that sort of thing--if I put myself in the way of temptation.”

“What rot! You’ll come? Nell Clearwater will be terribly disappointed. She took quite a shine to you.”

George Helm laughed. “I shave myself, Hollister. I see myself every morning. I’m not for the ladies, nor they for me.”

“Oh, hell! A woman doesn’t care what a man looks like. They’d rather a man wouldn’t be handsome, so he’ll think about them instead of about himself. The way to please a woman is to help her to think of nothing but herself.”

“I’m not a ladies’ man,” said Helm.

Hollister argued--not unskillfully, because he liked Helm. But George was not to be moved. He had not set out from the depth of the valleys for the heights without so obvious a precaution as taking the measure of his weaknesses. He knew that the one bribe he could not resist was the social bribe--that his one chance for success in the career he had mapped out for himself lay in having no friends among those he must fight. And in the nearest rank of them were Hollister, the railway giant of the State, and Judge Powers, his brother-in-law and closest judicial agent. A day or so later, when he, walking up Main Street, saw Clara Hollister and Eleanor Clearwater driving toward him in a phaeton, he abruptly turned to inspect a window display. He shivered and jumped ridiculously when he heard Clara’s voice at his elbow.

“_You_ interested in _millinery_!” Miss Hollister was saying laughingly.

He noted with a wild glance that he had stopped before a show window full of women’s hats. “How d’ye do, Miss Powers,” he stammered.

“Hollister,” she corrected. “Judge Powers is my _uncle_.”

Helm’s confusion became a rout. “I--I beg--your pardon,” he said, dropping his hat and a law book he was carrying. In picking them up he slipped, and with difficulty saved his long, loose frame from sprawling upon the sidewalk. But as he straightened up, by one of those sudden inward revolutions, he became cool and self-possessed. He burst out laughing at himself--and when he laughed his fine eyes and his really splendid teeth made him handsome--for a homely man.

“Please talk to Nell Clearwater while I’m in here,” said Clara, leaving him with a nod and a smile to flit in at the open door of the shop.

Helm advanced to the curb where the phaeton was drawn up. One glance at Miss Clearwater’s cold and reserved face was enough to convince him that she was an unwilling party to Clara Hollister’s plot. He said, with a simple, direct frankness:

“It isn’t quite fair--is it?--to blame me. I certainly tried to avoid you.”

Their glances met. She could not resist the kindly humorous twinkle in his eyes. “I’m glad to see you again,” said she, polite, if not cordial. Her hand hesitated, moved to extend, settled itself again beside the hand holding the reins. “You’re back to stay?”

“Yes.” His hand rose toward his hat for the leave-taking.

“In politics?”

“Yes.”

Her look was coldly disdainful. “I can’t wish you success,” she said, with a slight nod of dismissal.

“That is not to your credit,” replied he, with quiet dignity.

She flushed. “You know that you yourself are ashamed of what you are doing,” said she.

“Why do you say that?”

“You were ashamed to come to Mr. Hollister’s house.”

“I had two reasons for not going there,” said Helm. “Neither of them was shame--or anything like it. Mr. Hollister may be ashamed. He certainly is afraid. But I am not. They wished to bribe me to silence by flattering me with their friendship. I refused to be bribed. That was one of my reasons.”

As he said it in that way of simple sincerity which made him convincing, both in private life and on the platform, she accepted his statement as the truth. “I don’t know much about business and politics.”

“But you know enough to suspect I may be right,” replied he.

“My sympathies are with my own class,” said she, rather coldly.

“And mine are, naturally, with my class,” said he.

There was no ostentation in his reply. But somehow Nell Clearwater felt not quite so well content with her “class”--or with her claim to it. That personal claim now seemed distinctly vulgar in contrast with his dignity. She said:

“What was your other reason for not coming?”

He gazed directly at her. “Why should I tell it when you know already?”

Again she colored. “You are impertinent,” said she haughtily. Then the color flamed, for she instantly realized how she had trapped herself.

He laughed with engaging gentleness. “Not impertinent,” he urged. “Not presuming, even.... I don’t want you, Miss Clearwater. I stay away simply because I don’t intend to allow myself to want you.” Into his gray eyes came a look that no woman could fail to understand. “If I did want you----” He smiled, and she drew back sharply--“If I did want you, I’d act very differently.”

She forced a scornful laugh. “Do you think _you_ could possibly have any hope with me?”

“I do,” was his firm reply. “I didn’t until to-day. Now I--know it.”

“What vanity!”

“No. Not vanity. Intuition. The fact that you brought the subject up and insisted on discussing it proves that you have thought about it seriously.”

“Really!” exclaimed she, with angry irony.

“Really,” replied he--and she refused to meet his gaze. “Not as much as I have, because you have more of that sort of things in your life than I have in mine. No, not nearly as much. But seriously. And because you are truthful you will not deny it.”

She repeated the slight derisive laugh. She accompanied it with a derisive glance that swept down and up his baggy clothing, his homely exterior--but avoided his kind, gently smiling gray eyes. He was not deceived. It set his blood to tingling to feel that he could weave about one person, this one person, the same spell with which he could bind the multitude. He went on:

“Working together at that broken automobile we got unusually well acquainted, very quickly--you and I--the real you and the real I.... I had never before met a woman of your kind--of your class, I suppose you’d say. And neither had you ever met a man of my kind.”

“Yes--that was it,” she said unsteadily.

“But, as I said before, I do not want you,” he went on and, hearing, you would have realized why he had such power as an orator. “Even if I could get you, I should not know what to do with you. So--if we ever talk together again, it will not be through my seeking.”

He bowed with dignity and grace--for, whenever he was unconscious of himself--on the platform or when absorbed in earnest conversation--his awkwardness dropped from him, revealing his homeliness as attractive. He went on uptown, dazed, wondering at himself, doubting whether he was awake. Had he indeed seen Eleanor Clearwater? Had they said to each other the things he was amazedly recalling? Awe of male externals of ornamentation and pretense he had never felt. But his awe for fashion and manner in women had been deep and painful--and reverent. What had become of this? Certainly no other woman he had known, or for that matter seen, possessed the awe-inspiring qualities to such a degree as this woman. Ever since that night of toil with the automobile he had been idealizing and worshiping her as the embodiment of woman, the paradise from which he was forever barred. Yet, alone with her for the first time, and in circumstances which ought to have made him speechless, he had disregarded her disdain, had smiled at her scorn, had spoken his heart to her as he had never ventured to speak it to himself in the privacy and the ecstasy of his secret dreams! “I guess I _am_ a queer chap,” he said to himself. “I’m always giving myself surprises. I never know what I’ll do next.”