Chapter 12

"You have brought the money out here for use in the convention," she went on with perfect calmness. "You have tried to make me a partner in that vile business. And--I refuse to play the part assigned me. I shall keep the money until the convention is over."

He looked round like a terror-stricken drowning man, about to sink for the last time.

"I'm ruined! I'm ruined!" he almost screamed.

"No," she said, still calm. "You will not be ruined, though you deserve to be. But I understand why you have become callous to the commonplace decencies of life, and I shall see to it that no harm comes to you."

"Mr. Dumont will--DESTROY me! You don't realize, Mrs. Dumont. Vast property interests are at stake on the result of this convention--that's our cause. And you are imperiling it!"

"Imperiling a cause that needs lies and bribes to save it?" she said ironically. "Please calm yourself, Mr. Culver. You certainly can't be blamed for putting your money in a safe place. I take the responsibility for the rest. And when you tell Mr. Dumont exactly what happened, you will not be blamed or injured in any way."

"I shall telegraph him at once," he warned her.

"Certainly," said Pauline. "He might blame you severely for failing to do that."

He paused in his pacing up and down the room. He flung his arms toward her, his eyes blazing.

"I WILL have it!" he exclaimed. "Do you hear me, I WILL! I'll bring men from down-town and have the safe blown open. The money is not yours--it is----"

She advanced to the bell.

"Another word, Mr. Culver, and I'll have the servants show you the door. Yours is a strange courage--to dare to speak thus to me when your head should be hanging in shame for trying to make such base use of me and my courtesy and friendliness."

His arms dropped, and he lowered his head.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly. "I'm not myself. I think I'm going insane. PITY me!"

Pauline looked at him sadly. "I wish I had the right to. But--I SYMPATHIZE, and I'm sorry--so sorry--to have to do this." A pause, then--"Good afternoon, Mr. Culver." And she moved toward the door. At the threshold she turned. "I must say one thing further--THE CONVENTION MUST NOT BE PUT OFF. If it is adjourned to-morrow without making nominations, I shall understand that you are getting the money elsewhere. And--I shall be compelled to put such facts as I know in the possession of--of those you came to injure." And she was gone.

Culver went to Merriweather's office and sent out for him and Larkin. When they arrived he shut the doors and told them what had happened--and in his manner there was not left a trace of the New Yorker and ambassador condescending to westerners and underlings. Larkin cursed; Merriweather gave no outward sign. Presently Merriweather said: "Larkin, you must adjourn the convention over to-morrow. Culver can go to Chicago and get back with the money by to-morrow night."

"No use," groaned Culver. And he told them the last part of his talk with Mrs. Dumont.

"She thought of that!" said Merriweather, and he looked the impartial admiration of the connoisseur of cleverness.

"But she'd never carry out her threat--never in the world!" persisted Larkin.

"If you had seen her when she said it, and if you'd known her as long as I have, you wouldn't say that," replied Culver. "We must try to get the money here, right away--at the banks."

"All shut," said Merriweather "I wonder how much cash there is at the Woolens and the Oil and Steel offices? We must get together as much as we can--quietly." And he rapidly outlined a program that put all three at work within fifteen minutes. They met again at seven. Culver had twenty-six hundred dollars, Larkin thirty-one hundred, Merriweather, who had kept for himself the most difficult task, had only twelve hundred.

"Sixty-nine hundred," said Merriweather, eying the heap, of paper in packages and silver in bags.

"Better than nothing," suggested Culver, with a pitiful attempt to be hopeful.

Merriweather shrugged his shoulders. "Let's get some supper," he said to Culver. Then to Larkin: "Well, Joe, you'll have to try promises. Will you keep this cash or shall I?"

"You might as well keep it," replied Larkin, with a string of oaths. "It'd be ruination to pay one without paying all. Perhaps you can use some of it between ballots to-morrow." Then, sharply to Culver: "You've telegraphed Mr. Dumont?"

"Of course," said Culver. "And it took some time as I had to put the whole story into cipher."

As Culver and Merriweather were seated, with the dinner before them which Culver did not touch, and which Merriweather ate placidly, Culver asked him whether there was "any hope at all."

"There's always hope," replied Merriweather. "Promises, especially from Joe Larkin, will go a long way, though they don't rouse the white hot enthusiasm that cold cash in the pocket does. We'll pull through all right." He ate for a while in silence. Then: "This Mrs. Dumont must be an uncommon woman." A few more mouthfuls and with his small, icy, mirthless laugh, he added: "I've got one something like her at home. I keep her there."

Culver decided to spend the night at the hotel. He hung round the hotel office until two in the morning, expecting and dreading Dumont's reply to his telegram. But nothing came either for him or for Merriweather. "Queer we don't get word of some sort, isn't it?" said he to Merriweather the next morning, as the latter was leaving for the convention.

Merriweather made no reply beyond a smile so faint that Culver barely saw it.

"She was right, after all," thought Culver, less despondent. "I'll get the money just before I leave and take it back. And I'll not open this subject with Dumont. Maybe he'll never speak of it to me."

And Dumont never did.

XX.

A MAN IN HIS MIGHT.

Olivia came to attend the convention as Fred was a delegate from Marion County. Pauline and Gladys accepted her invitation and shared her box--the convention was held in the Saint X Grand Opera House, the second largest auditorium in the state. Pauline, in the most retired corner, could not see the Marion County delegation into which Scarborough went by substitution. But she had had a glimpse of him as she came in--he was sitting beside Fred Pierson and was gazing straight ahead, as if lost in thought. He looked tired and worn, but not cast down.

"You should have been here, Polly, when Scarborough came in," said Olivia, who was just in front of her. "They almost tore the roof off. He's got the audience with him, even if the delegates aren't. A good many of the delegates applauded, too," she added--but in a significantly depressed tone.

"Why isn't he a candidate, Mrs. Pierson?" asked Gladys.

"They wanted him to be, of course," replied Olivia, "and I think it was a mistake that he didn't consent. But he wouldn't hear of it. He said it simply wouldn't do for him to make the fight to carry the convention for himself. He said that, even if he were nominated, the other side would use it against him."

"That seems reasonable," said Gladys.

"But it isn't," replied Olivia. "He may not know it but he can lead men where they wouldn't go for his merely sending them."

"I suppose it was his modesty," suggested Gladys.

"Modesty's a good deal of a vice, especially in a leader," replied Olivia.

There was an hour of dullness--routine business, reports of committees, wearisome speeches. But, like every one of those five thousand people, Pauline was in a fever of anticipation. For, while it was generally assumed that Scarborough and his friends had no chance and while Larkin was apparently carrying everything through according to program, still it was impossible to conceive of such a man as Scarborough accepting defeat on test votes tamely taken. He would surely challenge. Larkin watched him uneasily, wondering at what point in the proceedings the gage would be flung down. Even Merriweather could not keep still, but flitted about, his nervousness of body contrasting strangely with his calmness of face; himself the most unquiet man in the hall, he diffused quiet wherever he paused.

At last came the call for nominations. When the secretary of the convention read Cass from the roll of counties, a Larkin henchman rose and spoke floridly for twenty minutes on the virtues of John Frankfort, put up as the Larkin "draw-fire," the pretended candidate whose prearranged defeat was to be used on the stump as proof that Boss Larkin and his gang had been downed. At the call of Hancock County, another--a secret--Larkin henchman rose to eulogize "that stanch foe of corporate corruption and aggression, Hancock County's favorite son, the people's judge, Judge Edward Howel Graney!" Then the roll-call proceeded amid steadily rising excitement which abruptly died into silence as the clerk shouted, with impressive emphasis, "Wayne!" That was the home county of the Scarborough candidate. A Wayne delegate rose and in a single sentence put ex-Governor Bowen in nomination. There was a faint ripple of applause which was instantly checked. A silence of several seconds and--

"Mr. Chairman, and gentle--"

It was the voice Pauline knew so well. She could not see him, but that voice seemed to make him visible to her. She caught her breath and her heart beat wildly. He got no further into seconding Bowen's nomination than the middle of the fourth word. There may have been ears offended by the thunder-clap which burst in that theater, but those ears were not Pauline's, were not in Olivia Pierson's box. And then came tumbling and roaring, huge waves of adulation, with his name shouted in voices hoarse and voices shrill like hissing foam on the triumphant crests of billows. And Pauline felt as if she were lifted from her bodily self, were tossing in a delirium of ecstasy on a sea of sheer delight.

And now he was on the platform, borne there above the shoulders of a hundred men. He was standing pale and straight and mighty. He stretched out his hand, so large and strong, and somehow as honest as his eyes; the tempest stilled. He was speaking--what did he say? She hardly heard, though she knew that it was of and for right and justice--what else could that voice utter or the brain behind those proud features think? With her, and with all there, far more than his words it was his voice, like music, like magic, rising and falling in thrilling inflections as it wove its spell of gold and fire. Whenever he paused there would be an instant of applause--a huge, hoarse thunder, the call of that mysterious and awful and splendid soul of the mass--an instant full of that one great, deep, throbbing note, then silence to hear him again.

Scarborough had measured his task--to lift that convention from the slough of sordidness to which the wiles and bribes of Dumont and his clique had lured it; to set it in the highroad of what he believed with all his intensity to be the high-road of right. Usually he spoke with feeling strongly repressed; but he knew that if he was to win that day against such odds he must take those delegates by surprise and by storm, must win in a suddenly descended whirlwind of passion that would engulf calculation and craft, sordidness and cynicism. He made few gestures; he did not move from the position he had first taken. He staked all upon his voice; into it he poured all his energy, all his fire, all his white-hot passion for right and justice, all his scorn of the base and the low.

"Head above heart, when head is right," he had often said. "But when head is wrong, then heart above head." And he reached for hearts that day.

Five minutes, and delegates and spectators were his captives. Fifteen minutes, and he was riding a storm such as comes only when the fountains of the human deeps are broken up. Thirty minutes and he was riding it as its master, was guiding it where he willed.

In vain Larkin sought to rally delegates round the shamed but steadfast nucleus of the bribed and the bossed. In vain his orator moved an adjournment until "calmness and reason shall be restored." The answer made him shrink and sink into his seat. For it was an awful, deafening roll of the war-drums of that exalted passion which Scarborough had roused.

The call of counties began. The third on the list--Bartholomew--was the first to say what the people longed to hear. A giant farmer, fiery and freckled, rose and in a voice like a blast from a bass horn bellowed: "Bartholomew casts her solid vote for Hampden Scarborough!"

Pauline had thought she heard that multitude speak before. But she now knew she had heard hardly more than its awakening whisper. For, with the pronouncing of that name, the tempest really burst. She sprang to her feet, obeying the imperious inward command which made every one in that audience and most of the delegates leap up. And for ten long minutes, for six hundred cyclonic seconds, the people poured out their passionate adoration. At first Scarborough flung out his arms, and all could see that he was shouting some sort of protest. But they would not hear him now. He had told them WHAT to do. He must let them say HOW to do it.

Pauline looked out at those flaming thousands with the maddest emotions streaming like lightning from their faces. But she looked without fear. They--she--all were beside themselves; but it was no frenzy for blood or for the sordid things. It was the divine madness of the soldier of the right, battling for THE CAUSE, in utter forgetfulness of self and selfishness. "Beautiful! Beautiful!" she murmured, every nerve tingling. "I never knew before how beautiful human beings are!"

Finally the roll-call could proceed. Long before it was ended the necessary votes had been cast for Scarborough, and Larkin rose to move that the nomination be made unanimous--Larkin, beaten down in the open, was not the man to die there; he hastened to cover where he could resume the fight in the manner most to his liking. Again Scarborough was borne to the platform; again she saw him standing there--straight and mighty, but deathly pale, and sad--well he might be bowed by the responsibility of that mandate, given by the god-in-man, but to be executed by and through plain men. A few broken, hesitating words, and he went into the wings and left the theater, applause sweeping and swirling after him like a tidal wave.

Pauline, coming out into the open, looked round her, dazed. Why, it was the same work-a-day world as before, with its actions so commonplace and selfish, with only its impulses fine and high. If these moments of exaltation could but last, could but become the fixed order and routine of life! If high ideal and courage ruled, instead of low calculation and fear! She sighed, then her eyes shone.

"At least I have seen!" she thought. "At least I have lived one of those moments when the dreams come true. And 'human being' has a new meaning for me."

Two men, just behind her in the crowd, were talking of Scarborough. "A demagogue!" sneered one.

"A demi-god," retorted the other. And Pauline turned suddenly and gave him a look that astonished and dazzled him.

XXI.

A COYOTE AT BAY.

Six weeks later, on the morning after the general election, Dumont awoke bubbling over with good humor--as always, when the world went well with him and so set the strong, red currents of his body to flowing in unobstructed channels.

He had not gone to bed the previous night until he had definite news from Indiana, Illinois and New York, the three states in which his industrial-political stakes were heaviest. They had gone as he wished, as he and his friends had spent large sums of money to assist them to go. And now a glance at the morning papers confirmed his midnight bulletins. Indiana, where he had made the strongest efforts because the control of its statute book was vital to him, had gone his way barely but, apparently, securely; Scarborough was beaten for governor by twenty-five hundred. Presently he had Culver in to begin the day's business. The first paper Culver handed him was a cipher telegram announcing the closing of an agreement which made the National Woolens Company absolute in the Northwest; the second item in Culver's budget was also a cipher telegram--from Merriweather. It had been filed at four o'clock--several hours later than the newspaper despatches. It said that Scarborough's friends conceded his defeat, that the Legislature was safely Dumont's way in both houses. Culver always sorted out to present first the agreeable part of the morning's budget; never had he been more successful.

At the office Dumont found another cipher telegram from Merriweather: "Later returns show Scarborough elected by a narrow majority. But he will be powerless as Legislature and all other state offices are with us."

Dumont crushed the telegram in his hand. "Powerless--hell!" he muttered. "Does he think I'm a fool?" He had spent three hundred thousand dollars to "protect" his monopoly in its home; for it was under Indiana laws, as interpreted by Dumont's agents in public office, that the main or holding corporation of his group was organized. And he knew that, in spite of his judges and his attorney-general and his legislative lobby and his resourceful lawyers and his subsidized newspapers, a governor of Scarborough's courage and sagacity could harass him, could force his tools in public office to activity against him, might drive him from the state. Heretofore he had felt, and had been, secure in the might of his millions. But now-- He had a feeling of dread, close kin to fear, as he measured this peril, this man strong with a strength against which money and intrigue were as futile as bow and arrow against rifle.

He opened the door into the room where his twenty personal clerks were at work. They glanced at his face, winced, bent to their tasks. They knew that expression: it meant "J. D. will take the hide off every one who goes near him to-day."

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him," he snapped, lifting the head of the nearest clerk with a glance like an electric shock.

The clerk rose, tiptoed away to the office of the first vice-president of the Woolens Trust. He came tiptoeing back to say in a faint, deprecating voice: "Mr. Giddings isn't down yet, sir."

Dumont rolled out a volley of violent language about Giddings. In his tantrums he had no more regard for the dignity of his chief lieutenants, themselves rich men and middle-aged or old, than he had for his office boys. To the Ineffable Grand Turk what noteworthy distinction is there between vizier and sandal-strapper?

"Send him in--quick,--you, as soon as he comes," he shouted in conclusion. If he had not paid generously, if his lieutenants had not been coining huge dividends out of his brains and commercial audacity, if his magnetic, confidence-inspiring personality had not created in the minds of all about him visions of golden rivers widening into golden oceans, he would have been deserted and execrated. As it was, his service was eagerly sought; and his servants endured its mental and moral hardships as the prospector endures the physical cruelties of the mountain fastnesses.

He was closing his private door when the door-boy from the outermost of that maze of handsome offices came up to him with a card.

"Not here," he growled, and shut himself in.

Half an hour later the sounds of an angry tumult in the clerks' room made him fling his door open. "What the--" he began, his heavy face purple, then stopped amazed.

The outside doorkeeper, the watchman and several clerks were engaged in a struggle with Fanshaw. His hat was off, his hair wild, his necktie, shirt and coat awry.

"There you are now--I knew you were in," he shouted, as he caught sight of Dumont. "Call these curs off, Jack!"

"Let him alone," snarled Dumont.

Fanshaw was released. He advanced into Dumont's office, straightening his clothing and panting with exertion, excitement and anger. Dumont closed the door. "Well," he said surlily. "What d' you want?"

"I'll have to go to the wall at half-past ten if you don't help me out," said Fanshaw. "The Montana election went against my crowd--I'm in the copper deal. There's a slump, but the stock's dead sure to go up within a week."

"In trouble again?" sneered Dumont. "It's been only three months since I pulled you through."

"You didn't lose anything by it, did you?" retorted Fanshaw--he had recovered himself and was eying Dumont with the cool, steady, significant stare of one rascal at another whom he thinks he has in his power.

Before that look Dumont flushed an angrier red. "I won't do it again!" and he brought his fist down with a bang.

"All I want is five hundred thousand to carry my copper for a week at the outside. If I get it I'll clear a million. If I don't"--Fanshaw shrugged his shoulders--"I'll be cleaned out." He looked with narrowed, shifting eyes at Dumont. "My wife has all she's got in this," he went on, "even her jewels."

Dumont's look shot straight into Fanshaw's.

"Not a cent!" he said with vicious emphasis. "Not a red!"

Fanshaw paled and pinched in his lips. "I'm a desperate man. I'm ruined. Leonora--"

Dumont shook his head, the veins swelling in his forehead and neck. The last strand of his self-restraint snapped. "Leave her out of this! She has no claim on me NOW--and YOU never had."

Fanshaw stared at him, then sprang to his feet, all in a blaze. "You scoundrel!" he shouted, shaking his fist under Dumont's nose.

"If you don't clear out instantly I'll have you thrown out," said Dumont. He was cool and watchful now.

Fanshaw folded his arms and looked down at him with the dignified fury of the betrayed and outraged. "So!" he exclaimed. "I see it all!"

Dumont pressed an electric button, then leaned back in his revolving chair and surveyed Fanshaw tranquilly. "Not a cent!" he repeated, a cruel smile in his eyes and round his mouth. The boy came and Dumont said to him: "Send the watchman."

Fanshaw drew himself up. "I shall punish you," he said. "Your wealth will not save you." And he stalked past the gaping office boy.

He stood in front of the Edison Building, looking aimlessly up and down the street as he pulled his long, narrow, brown-gray mustache. Gloom was in his face and hate in his heart--not hate for Dumont alone but hate for all who were what he longed to be, all rich and "successful" men. And the towering steel and stone palaces of prosperity sneered down on him with crushing mockery.

"Damn them all!" he muttered. "The cold-hearted thieves!"

From his entry into that district he had played a gambling game, had played it dishonestly in a small way. Again and again he had sneakingly violated Wall Street's code of morality--that curious code with its quaint, unexpected incorporations of parts of the decalogue and its quainter, though not so unexpected, infringements thereof and amendments thereto. Now by "pull," now by trickery, he had evaded punishment. But apparently at last he was to be brought to bar, branded and banished.

"Damn them all!" he repeated. "They're a pack of wolves. They've got me down and they're going to eat me."