Chapter VI: The Test 258 (2)

“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.”

It is an excellent thing for a modest man of real merit to discover that he has unsuspected resources of steady courage. It was an excellent thing for George Helm. From that day he took on a new dignity and assurance--created about himself the atmosphere that inspires men to confidence in their leaders. He changed the liking of his followers into that passionate loyalty which is the great force in the world of action. For most men cannot reason and judge; they must choose a party and a leader by instinct and must trust themselves to that party and that leader implicitly. The story of history is the story of loyalty--and of loyalty betrayed. The mass has trusted and worshiped a class; the class has become infatuated with itself, has trampled on and betrayed the mass.

George Helm had won, the previous fall, because the mass of the people in that district had at last become more than suspicious of the honesty and fidelity of their chosen leaders. He had come at just the right time. And he now won again--an overwhelming victory that could not be reversed by election frauds, with Branagan no longer assenting and assisting--a victory that frightened Reichman not only for his damaged machine but also for his personal safety; for, a Democratic county prosecutor, a subtle henchman of Branagan’s, had been elected along with Helm, and Reichman knew that Judge Powers would desert him the instant it became to his interest so to do.

“No wonder,” replied Helm, with a smile. “I haven’t any place yet. I’m trying to find my place.... If the choice in, say, Lincoln’s day, had been what it is now--between serving a knave and serving a fool--between serving a knave that’s owned by its money and serving a fool that’s enslaved to the knave by its folly--if Abe Lincoln had had choice between those two rotten apples, I wonder which he would have chosen?”

“Lincoln was a practical man,” said Branagan. “He had all the cranks and romantic reformers down on him. Don’t you believe what the histories say. I _know_ because I lived then.”

“Yes--he was a practical man,” said Helm. “He must have been, for he won.”

“And I reckon you’ll win, too.”

“Yes,” said Helm, with a humorous drawl, “I reckon I will.”

The excitement of boss over campaign and victory is the same in kind as the excitement of humblest, most fatuous partisan--though it is vastly different in degree. Branagan had been hypnotized out of his sordidness--for the moment--by the issues and by Helm. But even as he arranged his mind for talking business with Reichman he returned to his normal state; and when he and the Republican boss got together for the grand pow-wow he was wondering at his own sentimentality of a few days before. The chief article of the treaty of peace was no more George Helm. Branagan agreed with a qualm and a genuine regret, but he agreed as one obeying the plain mandate of the instinct of self-preservation.

“I wish to God we could get him out of the Senate,” said Reichman. “Of course our boys in charge up at the capital will see that he don’t get a chance to say much or to do anything. Still, I wish he was back in the ranks--away back.”

“Well--he will be in two years,” said Branagan. “And what’s two years in politics?”

“That’s right,” assented Reichman. “Two years isn’t any time, anywhere.”

“Except in jail,” said Branagan, with a loud laugh.

Reichman conceded only the feeblest of smiles to this coarse jest, savoring of innuendo. “Those sort of chaps,” pursued he, “have to be caught young and put out of business. I’ve attended to a dozen of ’em in the last ten years.”

“I’d never ’a touched him,” said Branagan, “after that first campaign, if I hadn’t been put in a position where I was forced to do it.”

“That was my fault, Pat, I admit,” said Reichman. “But it won’t occur again.”

“I know it, Emil,” said Pat. “We’ve both had our lesson.... I won’t say nothin’ to Helm. I’ll keep him jollied along until his term’s about up.”

“Then--over he drops,” laughed Reichman.

Branagan did not laugh. He liked Helm. But he did nod--and Branagan’s nod was as good as his word, and his word he had never broken.

III

“THERE GOES A MAN”

Mrs. Salfield and Mrs. Ramon, leaders in Cincinnati’s fashionable society, were disposed in a comfortable corner of Mrs. Salfield’s ballroom. They were sheltered from rheumatism-provoking draughts. They were at conversational range from the music. They commanded a full view of the beautiful ball, even of the supper room, where a dozen men were “mopping up the champagne instead of doing their dancing duty,” as Mrs. Ramon put it. Mrs. Ramon, posing as of the younger generation, went in--somewhat awkwardly--for the “picturesque” in language. Mrs. Salfield, frankly an old woman, tolerated slang as she tolerated rowdy modern manners and “disgraceful, not to say indecent exposure in ball dresses”; but in her own person she adhered to the old fashions of moderately low dresses and moderately incorrect English. Said Mrs. Ramon:

“There goes that charming grandniece of yours. How graceful she is. I thought you told me she was twenty-nine.”

“Eleanor Clearwater--twenty-nine!” exclaimed Mrs. Salfield. “She’s not yet twenty-four.”

“Oh, I remember, you said she _looked_ twenty-nine--so serious--dignified--reserved--really icy. But that was only two months ago. She looks eighteen now. She’s been away--hasn’t she?”

“Just returned,” said Mrs. Salfield.

“It did her a world of good--freshened her up--no, softened--no, I mean warmed.”

“She’s been visiting the Hollisters, down at Harrison.”

“A country town. I supposed she’d been to baths or springs or something. Really the change in her is quite miraculous. She has waked up.”

“Eleanor never was what one’d call sleepy,” said Mrs. Salfield, rather stiffly.

“Oh, she was always interested in _things_--books, serious subjects--too much so for my taste. But you know what I mean. She looks _human_--looks as if she had a human interest. It was the one thing lacking to make her entirely interesting and beautiful--to give her magnetism. You notice how the men flock about her. She’s having a triumph. Why, she looks round--looks at the men--in a positively flirtatious way. Really, Clara, it’s too wonderful. _What_ has happened to her?”

“What could happen to a girl in Harrison? Nothing but Bart Hollister.”

“It couldn’t be Bart,” said Mrs. Ramon.

“It isn’t anybody,” said Mrs. Salfield. “It’s simply a case of coming-to a little late. So many young people take life too solemnly at first. They feel responsible for it.”

The phenomenon thus noted by Mrs. Ramon had escaped no one’s eyes. Even Eleanor’s father, the absorbed George Clearwater, United States Senator and “lumber king,” had seen it. Eleanor Clearwater had gone to Harrison, a reserved, cool, not to say cold young woman, with an air that made her seem years older than she was, and with an interest in men so faint that it discouraged all but two dauntless fortune hunters--who were promptly sent to look further. She had come back, a lively, coquettish person, with a modern tendency to audacities in dress and speech. Every one wondered; no one could explain. She could have explained, but she would not have admitted the truth even to herself. Four men proposed within two weeks after her return. She refused them all--in a gay, mocking way, thus enabling them to feel that they had not humiliated themselves, that she had imagined they were proposing merely to make interesting conversation.

The cause she would not admit? A lank, homely, ill dressed country town lawyer, one George Helm. The year before he had been the joke of Harrison because of his absurd beard and his seedy suit with its flowing tails. The shaving of the beard, the changing of the “statesman’s frock” for an ill fitting sack suit, two campaigns in which he had developed power and originality as a speaker, an election to the State Senate by attacking “everything that was respectable and decent,” that is, by telling the truth about the upper-class grafters--these circumstances had combined to make him a considerable and serious figure in Harrison. But for such as the Hollisters and the Clearwaters he remained a bumpkin, a demagogue, an impossible lower-class person.

Yet he had wrought the wondrous, proposal-fraught change in Miss Clearwater. And he had done it by impudently pausing at her phaeton in Harrison’s main street and telling her, with exasperating indifference to her icy manner, that he could marry her if he wished but that he had no place in his life for such a person as she.

Why had this transformed her? For two reasons, both important to those men who would fain have influence over one--or more--of the female sex. The first is, that he had been able to impress upon her the fact that he was a worth-while person. The second is, that he, being serious and simple, had shown her that he, the man worth-while, meant it when he said she was not a girl a worth-while man would care to marry. With these two propositions firmly fixed in her head, Eleanor Clearwater could not fail to see that it was “up to” her to demonstrate her power over man.

She invited proposals--proposals not too obviously incited chiefly by her charms as an heiress. She got the proposals. But still she was not satisfied. There was one man--a homely man, but a man with far and away the handsomest soul she had ever seen--simple, proud, honest and fearless--looking from eyes that were the more beautiful for the rugged homeliness of the rest of his face. This man whom her woman’s heart defiantly told her was supremely worth-while--this man had said _she_ was not worth-while. Therefore, there were worlds still defiantly unconquered--which meant that nothing was conquered. It irritated her--as her father had been irritated until all the lumber interests had been gathered in under his lordship. It irritated her yet more profoundly that such an absurdity as this gentle and friendly disdain of bucolic homeliness should irritate her. But she could not change her nature.

He had set her to thinking about him. He had her worried, as the saying is. And when a man gets a woman in that state, she will not emerge from it until something definite has occurred.

Woman has little to think about but men--thanks to a social system cunningly contrived by man for his own benefit. She thinks of man in general until she centers upon one man. She then thinks of him until she finds him out. When that comes to pass, she goes back to men in general, until a new personal interest develops. This, so long as any remnant of charm gives her hope. Man is woman’s career. Not so with men; not so with George Helm, State Senator-elect and desperately in earnest about making a career.

* * * * *

While Eleanor Clearwater was sleeping away the excitements of the Salfield ball in her attractive bedroom in the Clearwater palace, George Helm was at work several hundred miles away in his dingy back office in the Masonic Building at Harrison. When she should be awakened by her maid to dress for her first engagement of the day, she would soon be thinking of George Helm--thinking how ugly and obscure and ungainly he was--and what magnetic eyes he had. Thinking the more, the more she tried not to think. But George Helm was not thinking of her at all.

He was sitting beside the rickety old table in a wooden chair, a kitchen chair. It was tilted back and Helm’s long lank legs were tangled up with each other and with the rungs in amazing twists. Perhaps you have happened to know an occasional man--or woman--whose every act and trick of manner had an inexplicable fascination. When George Helm was self-conscious, he had no more magnetism than is inseparable from intelligent, sympathetic good nature sunning in a kindly keen sense of humor. But the instant he lost self-consciousness--as he always did on the platform, and as he was more and more doing in private life, now that he had begun to have success--that instant he became a magnet, one of those human magnets who interest you, no matter what they do, and in repose. Even in bed--that too short, sagging bed in the attic of Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house--even as he lay doubled up, there was the fascination of the unique, the perfectly natural and unassuming.

As he sat twisted in and upon the wobbly kitchen chair, his friend, lazy Bill Desbrough, from across the hall, looked in every few minutes, hoping George would encourage him to enter. It was curious about George Helm, how in spite of his lack of what passes for dignity, no one ever--even in the days when he was thought to be a joke--“the boy with that beard”--no one ever ventured to interrupt him without an encouraging look from those deep-set blue-gray eyes.

At last George looked up and smiled as Bill stood in the doorway. He said:

“Come in, you loafer.”

“How’s State Senator-elect Helm to-day?” inquired Bill, lounging in, his hands in his pockets, his pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. “How does it feel to be famous?”

“To be less obscure,” corrected George. He had a passion--and a genius--for accuracy.

“To be famous,” insisted Desbrough.

“Do you know who is State Senator for the district adjoining this--on either side?--or to the north or south?”

Bill Desbrough’s laugh was confession.

“There are fifty State Senators in this State alone,” continued George. “There are forty-eight States in the Union. Fifty times forty-eight----”

“Why are you trying to make yourself out so small?”

“Or--to look at it another way, I belong to the Democratic boss of Harrison--Pat Branagan, saloon-keeper. He belongs to the Republican boss, Al Reichman. Al belongs to Senator Harvey Sayler, the State boss. Sayler belongs to the big monopolistic combines that center in Wall Street. They belong to a dozen big plutocrats who belong to about three of their number. And those three belong to their money--do what it says, say and think what it tells ’em to.”

“I hope you’re happy now,” said Bill. “You’ve made yourself out to be about equal to a patch on the ragged pant-leg of some cotton-picking coon working for the sub-lessee of a mortgaged farm in a poor corner of Arkansas.”

“Or, to look at it another way,” continued Helm, untwisting his legs, immediately to re-knot them in an even more intricate tangle, “a State Senator gets six dollars a day while the Legislature’s in session. It meets for sixty days every two years. His term’s four years. So, my money value as the State sees it is one hundred and eighty dollars a year--about fifty cents a day.”

“Well, I hope you’ve shrunk yourself back to normal human size,” said his friend. “I suppose that’s what you’re doing this for.”

“No, Bill. To locate myself. I want to see just where I stand. The slave of a slave of a slave of a slave of a slave of a slave of a slave--I think that’s the right degree--and at fifty cents a day.”

“Branagan gives you some pretty good law cases,” suggested Bill.

Helm eyed him somberly.

“You know you don’t want to be too _damn_ independent, old man,” continued Bill.

“To locate myself,” pursued Helm, as if Bill had not spoken. “I want to see just how far I’ve got to go before----”

He paused here. Said Bill--not altogether in jest, “Before you’re President of the U. S. A.?”

“No,” said George gravely. “Before I’m a man. Before I belong to myself.” He laughed with his peculiar illumination of the whole face apparently from the light of the eyes. “You see, Bill, I’m aiming to go further than most Presidents--especially these latter-day chaps.”

“Further than most plutocrats,” said Desbrough. “As you said, _they_ belong to their boodle bags.... You haven’t broken with Branagan?”

“Not yet,” said Helm. “I’ll have to, soon after the Legislature opens. You see, we’re the minority, and nowadays the majority-boss always uses the minority votes to put through whatever dirty business a lot of his men have to be let off from voting for.”

“Well--don’t break with good old Pat till you have to.”

“I’ll get all I can first, you may be sure,” said Helm. “I’m a practical man--that is, I’m a practical politician, with a dangerous, incurable hankering for being a man--self-owned and self-bossed.”

“You give Branagan good legal service for what he pays you.”

“And he hasn’t yet asked me to do any law work that I’ve not been able to stand for.”

“Pat’s a little afraid of you,” declared Desbrough. “He knows how strong you are with the people.”

Helm slowly shook his head. “I don’t deceive myself. He’s saving me till he really needs me.” He straightened out his long figure deliberately, rose and began to pace up and down the office. “It’s all a question of money, Bill. In this day a man has got to have an independence--or do what some other man says.”

“If I could speak as you can--and hold the crowds--and draw in their votes---- You, a Democrat, elected from this district of shell-back Republicans who talk about the Civil War as if Morgan was still raiding the State.” Bill laughed. “Why don’t you drop politics, George? Why fool with the silly game? The people’ll never learn anything. They can always be buncoed--the asses! What did God make ’em for? To work like hell all day and then hand over most of what they’ve made to some clever chap--and thank him for taking it.”

“That used to be so,” replied Helm. “But they’re waking up, Bill. All they need is the right kind of leaders.”

“Meaning you?”

“Meaning me,” said Helm. And his expression far removed his statement from vanity or egotism.

Desbrough puffed at his pipe in silence. Presently he said:

“You can count me in, George--if there’s anything I can do.”

They did not shake hands. They exchanged no gushing remarks. They did not look at each other with exalted sentimentality. They simply looked--then George grinned and nodded--and said:

“All right, Bill. You’re in.”

A long silence. Then Desbrough:

“Not that I believe in the game, old man. I don’t. I despise the people. I’d go in with the wise boys who rob them if I didn’t happen to have inherited enough to slop along on.”

“How much have you got?” said George--a necessary question, as this was to be a partnership.

“Nineteen hundred and fifty a year--county bonds and a farm. My law practice--I made seventy-five dollars last year.”

“You won’t take anything but people too poor to pay--and then only when you think they’re being wronged by somebody with money. That’s why I asked you in.”

“You didn’t----” Desbrough stopped and laughed. “Yes, you did, come to think of it. I’d never have offered if you hadn’t made me feel that you wanted me. I’d not have done it even then, if you hadn’t compelled me. How do you compel people to do things without even asking ’em, George?”

For reply Helm laughed. Said he:

“Nineteen hundred and fifty a year. That’s enough for you. I must have more--about five thousand a year.”

“You can make it at the law.”

“If the gang didn’t shut me out of the courts, when I broke with them. And if I’d take crooked cases. I’ve thought that all out. It can’t be done any more. Lincoln and the big fellows of the past could. But that was a different day. Now all the law cases worth-while--all the good fees--come from the very chaps I’ve got to attack. A lawyer who has done any business as a lawyer can go into politics in only one way--and that’s a more or less crooked way. I’ve thought it all out, Bill. I can’t afford to make an independence, and then wash up and go in on the level. I hoped I could see my way clear to do it. But--I can’t.”

“But you won’t get money any other way,” said Desbrough. “And if you haven’t got the money to live on and to carry on your campaigns, why, you’re beaten in advance.”

“I haven’t forgotten my campaign for judge,” said Helm. “Bill, I’ve learned a thing or two about practical politics. I’m going to play cards--not play the fool.”

“Why not marry Clara Hollister?” cried Desbrough, suddenly inspired.

“Would she have you?” asked Helm.

“_Me?_ Good Lord, what’d _I_ do with another wife? I had _one_, and am paying alimony. No, I mean _you_ marry Clara.”

Helm laughed uproariously. “Take another look at me, Bill,” said he. “You’ve forgotten.”

“Women don’t know anything about handsome and ugly in men,” said Bill. “Besides, you’re not what _women’d_ call plain. Don’t laugh, George. I’d back you to win any woman you took after. A man that can catch crowds can catch a woman. With a woman, it isn’t what a man _looks_. It’s what he _says_--and does.”

“I’ve got no woman-talk,” said Helm.

“You can grab off Clara Hollister if you want her--and she has twenty thousand a year in her own right. And she’ll let you do what you please with it.”

“Her father’s the head devil in these parts of the gang I’m after.”

“The twenty thousand’s hers. She’s a good deal of a snob, but she’d be what you wanted her to be, if you married her. That’s the way it is with women.”

“Was that your experience?”

“I spoke from experience,” replied Desbrough, undaunted. “I made my wife over when I married her--and then didn’t like the job. I’d rather pay alimony than be constantly reminded of my failure.”

“No--I can’t marry for independence,” said Helm. “She wouldn’t have me and--I don’t want her.”

“Then--why not that friend of hers--that Miss Clearwater? I saw you talking to her down the street one day before the election. She’d be less easy to manage than Clara. But no woman’s difficult--for a firm man who’s patient and can keep his temper--and isn’t in love.”

Helm had become acutely self-conscious and so awkward that a chair which was apparently not near his path became involved with his big feet and fell on its side with a crash. As Helm straightened from picking it up, he was extraordinarily red for the amount of exertion. Said he:

“Leave the women out of it. I’m not a marrying man.”

Desbrough laughed mockingly. “You’ll find out you’re mistaken--as soon as you’ve got money enough to make it worth a needy woman’s while to take after you. _I_ thought _I_ wasn’t a marrying man. Three months and four days after my uncle died and left me that money I was waiting at the altar.”

“I’m not a marrying man,” repeated Helm awkwardly.

“In some ways Miss Clearwater would be just the girl for you. She’d take an interest in your career. She has ideals--and they’re about as far removed from her father’s as a church from a speak-easy. I think she’s got money of her own. Yes, I’m sure she has. Her mother left her what the old man had settled on her.”

“If I did marry,” said Helm, abruptly self-possessed, “it’d be a woman that suited _me_--one I felt at home with. I want no grand rich ladies, Bill. Anyhow, I’ve thought of another way--one that’s practical.”

And he seated himself and proceeded to unfold the scheme upon which he had been seriously at work ever since the election. It was a simple scheme, wisely devoid of untried originality, but effective. His two campaigns, despite the silence of the plutocracy-controlled press, had got him a considerable reputation throughout the State. The press is not so necessary to the spread of intelligence as is latterly imagined. Long before there was a press, long before there was any written means of communication, news and knowledge of all kinds spread rapidly throughout the world, pausing only at the great desert stretches between peoples--and not often halted there for long. The old ways of communication have not been closed up. To this day the real and great reputations of the world are not press-made or press-sustained or even materially press-assisted. They are the work of mouth-to-mouth communication. And those reputations, by the way, are they against which the calumny and the innuendo of the press strive in vain.

It had spread from man to man throughout the State that there had arisen in Harrison a strange, plain youth of great sincerity as a man and of great power as a speaker. The Jews of ancient days are not the only people who have dreamed of a Messiah. The Messiah-dream, the Messiah-longing has been the dream and the longing of the whole human race, toiling away in obscurity, oppressed, exploited, fooled, despised. Hence, news of leaders springing up spreads fast and far among the people. The news about Helm was hardly more than a rumor. A hundred miles from Harrison, and they had his name wrong. A little further, and they hadn’t yet heard his name. But far and wide there was the rumor of a light in the direction of Harrison. Would it be a little star or a big? a fixed star or a mere comet?--would it prove to be nothing but a meteorite, flashing and fading out? Would it be a sun? These questions not definite, but simply the vague, faint suggestion of question.

The people!--how little we understand them--how much and how often we misunderstand them. The people, so ignorant, yet so quaintly wise--as they toil in the obscurity, building patiently, working and hoping--and waiting always for leaders. Deceived a thousand times, they wait on and hope on--since leaders they must have, and since leaders will surely come.

Helm did not exaggerate the public interest in himself. If anything he, the most cautiously Caledonian of career-builders, estimated his reputation at less than it was. But he had the true man of the people’s instinct for the feeling of the people. His crusading spirit was not either academic or fanatic. It was the sensible indignation of the man who discovers that a certain evil has gone far enough and must be put down. He felt that, if he could manage his career sensibly, he could make it all he wished. The pressing problem was how to increase this reputation into fame of the kind useful to his purposes as a public man, and how to transform that increased reputation into a cleanly-acquired independence.

“And it seems to me, Bill,” said he, “that the best available plan is a lecture tour--through the towns, villages, crossroads hamlets of the whole State.”

“Talking politics? Nobody’ll listen to politics except round election time. That’s why robbing the people’s the easiest and the favorite way to make money.”

“Everything’s politics,” said Helm. “Religion’s politics, and education’s politics, and farming and mining and factories and doctors and storekeeping--everything! What’s politics but settling how the proceeds of everybody’s labor are to be distributed--whether the man who works is to get what he works for or somebody else is to get it? And that question means everything that affects any human being, morally, mentally, physically. I’m going to talk politics, but they’ll not know it.”

“Where do _I_ come in?”

“You’re to be my manager--arrange the dates and so on. It’s got to be arranged while I’m busy in the Legislature, in January and February. I’ll do what I can there to make myself talked about. You’ll correspond with culture clubs and literary circles and churches that want debts raised and public schools and trade schools with lecture courses.”

Desbrough looked willing but helpless. “Is there much chance to lecture in this State?” said he. “I thought that sort of thing had died out.”

“If it had, we’d raise it from the dead,” said Helm. “But it hasn’t.”

He took from the drawer of his table a bundle of papers. He waved them triumphantly at his friend, saying:

“Here it is, Bill--all down in black and white. A hundred and eighty-six chances to lecture--if it’s worked right.”

Desbrough, the lazy man, groaned. “Why didn’t you pick out somebody else, damn you!” he cried.

“You offered,” said Helm.

“You hypnotized me,” retorted Desbrough. “Lord, what a pile of work!”

“Yes,” said Helm. “You’ll have to begin right away. I calculate to make twenty-five hundred dollars by the first of June. I want to build this thing up in a couple of years into a steady income of five to ten thousand--an income nobody can touch so long as people’ll come out to hear me.” The handsome blue-gray eyes looked anxiously from the homely face. “Bill, am I deceiving myself? Do you think they’ll _pay_ to hear _me_?”

“You can’t expect ’em to pay much--at first.”

“I was thinking it’d be about right to ask ten dollars for the little places, and fifteen to thirty for the bigger ones.”

“I’ll have to feel that out,” said Bill. “Leave something for the manager to do.”

“Put the prices low, Bill,” said George. “It’s safer. Also, we want to reach _all_ the people. And I’m going to write some lectures that’ll educate ’em in what’s going on under their noses. About these lectures--they’re to be a mixture of humorous and serious. I’ve got a lot of good stories I can work in. The first lecture’s pretty nearly ready.”

“What’s it about?”

“The American Home--as it was--as it is--as it should be.”

“Wit, wisdom and weeps?”

Helm nodded.

“That sounds good. I begin to feel that there’s something in it.... Look here, Helm--that tour’s going to be a frightful strain on your health.”

George looked down at his long lean figure in the baggy blue suit. “There isn’t anything about me to get sick, Bill,” said he. “Back where I come from they dry ’em out like an oak board before they send ’em away from home. All the germs get when they tackle us folks is broken teeth.”

* * * * *

Why does the world insist on believing that luck is the deciding factor in human affairs? Why is the successful man forced to pretend that he is “fortune’s favorite,” under penalty of being despised as a plodding or scheming fellow, if he does not? Because most men either cannot or will not plan. They “trust to luck”--and lose, except in romances and equally fictitious biographies. Without exception, all success is the result of plan. If a man has success thrust into his hands, it is immediately snatched away unless he plans wisely to keep it. If a successful man is wholly or partly ruined by chance, his habit of successful planning soon restores all that has been lost. Luck is an element for which every wise man makes allowance in his planning--for the good luck that will enable him to shorten his journey along the road he would have traveled in any event, for the bad luck that may lengthen the journey. Good and bad luck affect rate, not direction--among the men who attain to and persist in the triumphant class, from the successful grocer to the successful poet or composer.

That winter luck favored George Helm. He did not have to break with the machine.

Senator Sayler, the representative of the plutocracy, quarreled with some of his largest clients--his bosses, they fancied themselves, until he, as astute as he was bold and cynical, showed them that he had made himself indispensable to them. He, the rich man as well as the expert and most intelligent politician; they, merely rich men, crudely buying of politicians the coveted robbers’ licenses. The quarrel grew out of the idiotic greediness of his clients. They wished to rob to the point where the goose begins to squawk--and forthwith changes from goose into a creature of a wholly different kind, fighting with ferocity for life. Sayler proceeded to teach them a lesson. He, ostensibly head of the Republican machine and hostile to everything connected with the Democratic party, ordered his faithful ally-lieutenant, the Democratic State boss, Hazelrigg, to make a vigorous unsparing campaign against the plutocracy.

“Give ’em hell,” said Sayler. “Don’t turn loose a lot of long-eared cranks. They frighten sensible people and make the plutocracy stronger. Dig up some earnest, conscientious young fellows--if there are any such that haven’t been brought up for these stupid brutes we’re going to teach a lesson.”

Hazelrigg had heard of Helm. Pat Branagan had given Helm a letter to him, but Helm had not presented it and had been keeping out of sight until he should have spied out the new land of the State capital. He sent for Helm to look him over. Hazelrigg was a college man who had made up his mind to be rich. Discovering, after a few years of effort by honest ways, that if he succeeded at all it would be when he was too old to enjoy, he had taken the short cut--with notable success. Being the minority boss, he could maintain a pose of virtue that deceived all but shrewd eyes. He understood Helm in the main at a glance--asked him to speak against a rotten bill then pending. Helm spoke.

Hazelrigg listened with mingled feelings of joy and fear. “We must keep him poor,” he said to himself. “Then he can’t make trouble for us.”