5 The Election

Bearing in mind Mr. Hargrove’s statement that the great banker did not approve of his course, Cathcart concluded the best thing to do was to go and see for himself, gratifying at the same time another and stronger motive that led him to the Howe house. The exigencies of the campaign had kept him away for some time now, and he reflected that it was more than a week since he had seen Lucy Howe. Why not go up in his automobile and take her in the park again? There was, at least, a chance that he might find her, and a chance, if he found her, that she would go. The day, with its clear cold, and sky of blue velvet certainly invited. He did not hesitate, but acted at once.

As he passed up the avenue in his machine Arthur felt a thrill. The new opposition in his district had aroused all his tenacious fighting spirit. He felt that he was confronted both by seen and unseen forces, but it was never in his mind to yield. Like other strong men he found in fierce conflict a certain acute pleasure that nothing else can give.

It was then about the middle of the afternoon, and in a few minutes he was before the heavy, brownstone house of James Howe. The stolid English butler received him with impassive face.

“Is Miss Howe in?” asked Arthur as he gave him his card.

“I don’t know, sir,” replied the butler as he showed Cathcart to the small reception room, “but I can inform you in a few moments.”

He turned away, and was going down the hall on his errand, but just at this moment Mr. Howe, himself, came toward the reception room and saw Arthur. Arthur saw him at the same time and smiled. Mr. Howe smiled back and nodded a welcome, but Arthur was conscious of a change, subtle, perhaps indefinable, but marked in its effect. The smile was chilly, the blue eyes were chilly, and the tall, slender, clerical figure had the effect of rigidity.

Cathcart rose and, as the younger man, went forward and offered his hand. Mr. Howe accepted it and gave it a pressure, but his fingers felt cold, like metal, to Cathcart’s touch.

“We’ve missed you, Mr. Cathcart,” said the great banker. “You’ve been neglecting us.”

Arthur pleaded the pressure of politics.

“I’ve come today,” he said, “to see if Miss Howe won’t take a ride with me in the machine. It’s a pity that any one should be indoors on a day like this.”

Mr. Howe’s thin lips were compressed, and a doubtful look came into his eyes. The thin figure seemed to stiffen more. Arthur felt, with all the sureness of instinct, that Mr. Hargrove was right; in some manner he had incurred the disapproval of the great banker, and Mr. Howe was not a man who condemned or praised lightly. It is not too much to say that Arthur had a slight sensation of fear, fear in the presence of a vague but formidable danger, but it was only for a moment, and then he resolutely pushed it aside.

“I think that Lucy and her aunt have gone out,” said Mr. Howe; “in fact, I’m quite sure of it. Mrs. Thornton, like so many women of her age, makes a fad of charities, and she has dragged Lucy into them, too. That and her social duties keep Lucy so busy that I myself am never sure of her.”

Arthur understood him. He was not such a welcome guest in that house as he had been, and he was embarrassed. He was not one to thrust himself anywhere, nor was he one to be turned aside by obstacles. But chance brought a solution of the moment’s puzzle. He heard a soft rustle of a skirt in the hall, a light footstep that he had already learned infallibly to know among a thousand others, and Lucy Howe came into the room. Perhaps she had expected to find only her father there, or no one at all, as she uttered a little cry of surprise when she saw Cathcart.

Arthur was keenly attentive, observant of her face and her manner. He had learned much about human nature in the last month, and he wished to draw his own inferences. He saw the blue eyes of Mr. Howe cloud slightly with displeasure at his daughter’s sudden entrance and he knew that the great banker had not been above telling a lie, white lie though it was. In Lucy’s face he thought he read a welcome, a pleased surprise at seeing him there. Mistaken, he knew he might be, but he resolved to cherish the optimistic belief.

“I thought that you and your aunt had gone out to a meeting of one of your charity societies, and I just told Mr. Cathcart so,” said the great banker composedly: nothing but the sudden little flash in his eye had shown his disappointment.

“And as charity is not calling, I want to know if Miss Howe will not go out with me for a little dash in the machine,” said Arthur quietly—but with defiance to Mr. Howe. “It’s such a beautiful afternoon that I don’t see how one can stay indoors.”

“Why, of course,” she said, not looking at all at her father, but evidently taking his consent for granted.

James Howe’s manner changed again. Arthur did not see it, but he felt it, the chilliness was gone, and a certain faint shade of warmth seemed to appear on the banker’s face.

“I know that you will have a pleasant hour,” he said benevolently.

But Cathcart was not deceived by the change, and he was still thinking of it when he took his seat in the automobile by the side of Lucy Howe. He would not, though all unconsciously, let the thought continue in his mind. She was in a gay mood that day, and she laughed and chattered in a manner that almost took his breath away. It seemed to him that all this lightness was a rebound, a reaction, after a strain, the unstringing of the bow after being bent too tightly, and presently he learned the reason.

They went through the park, down the loneliest roads, and then over to Riverside Drive, and Cathcart’s spirits rose so rapidly with hers that he tuned his machine to his own elation and he was twice warned for speeding.

The Hudson was all a vast blue sheet, dotted with shipping like a flock of fowl, and hemmed on the farther shore by the brown steep of the Palisades. Arthur turned northward, and then, though never intending, she told by degrees what was in her mind, or gave enough hint of it for him to guess the rest. He, Arthur Cathcart, had been spoken of with disfavor recently in the Howe family circle, not once but continually, and his intelligence and honesty were both discredited. Mr. Hargrove had been coming oftener and oftener, and Mr. Howe regarded him as one of the household, as a son almost, and the acrid aunt also gave him her approval. She could not escape the accounts of Mr. Hargrove’s wonderful progress in the world, his great and assured future and his supreme desirability.

She did not say the hundredth part of what has been written here. It was only by a word now and a word then—not intended by her as information but a mere unconscious escape for her feelings—that Cathcart gathered it all and he realized now how he stood in the Howe home. James Howe had even gone to the point of lying to keep him away from his daughter. William Hargrove was the chosen man, and he was being pushed forward by every influence that a father and aunt could command, influences that were always on the spot and that were exerted continually.

Cathcart felt again the thrill of battle. Here was a second and greater conflict, and he would be not less resolute in it than in the other.

They went far up the river with the blue of its waters nearly always in view. There was yet no sign of spring; the land was brown, brown everywhere, but the sky above was all blue velvet and shining gold and Arthur’s heart was full of courage and hope. Bye and bye he turned back reluctantly, and at the coming of the twilight reached the Howe door, resolved that he would leave neither aunt nor father any excuse for rebuking her.

“I shall come again soon if you say that I may,” he said at the door.

“Once, at least,” she replied flashing back a smile.

Then he went home, well pleased with the afternoon.

He returned the next day to his campaign and Radigan accompanied him on a tour of the district, but the leader was not cheerful. The grieved and pained mood characteristic of him at the time of the denunciation continued unbroken. He would do his best for Mr. Cathcart; he was fully aware of his duties as the Democratic leader in the district and he had never before worked so hard for a candidate, his personal as well as political sympathies being enlisted, but it was an uphill thing; if he had only let the East Side Rapid Transit Bill alone there would have been no trouble. But the people wanted that measure, they were convinced that it was all right, and so was he, he did not doubt Mr. Cathcart’s honesty, but the best of men are mistaken sometimes, and it was mighty hard to overcome such an obstacle. Arthur’s patience gave way at last.

“Mr. Radigan,” he exclaimed, “if you feel that you can’t endorse me don’t work for me. I’d rather go alone than have you fight against your convictions.”

The look of pain on Radigan’s face deepened. How could Mr. Cathcart, for whom he had formed so strong a personal friendship, misjudge him so? He was there to stand by him, and stand by him he would until a region that is warmer than this froze over. In this case inclination and duty went together, and it was not worthwhile to say anything more about it. Arthur took him at his word.

The day of the election came and the district was in a turmoil. Cathcart remained with Radigan through the evening at the office in the Palace Restaurant and the returns were sent in to them. Every figure he received with intense anxiety, though making little comment. Radigan was placid, but Arthur found the little office very hot, close, and stuffy. Every article in it was photographed on his mind and he always remembered the minutest incident of that evening.

The last return came in, and he was beaten by two hundred votes in a district always safely Democratic hitherto. He could scarcely believe it; despite all his depressions he had never really thought, until the fatal figures told it, that he could be beaten. Now, he was not only beaten, but disgraced. How it happened he could not understand, but that it had happened he knew.

“Never mind, Mr. Cathcart,” said Radigan in the fatherly manner that was now intensely disagreeable to him, “you’ve made a good race, all things considered. There was that mistake about the transit bill, but you fought a plucky fight.”

He ended his little speech by putting his hand on Cathcart’s shoulder which was the last straw. There was something in the touch that Arthur did not like. It gave him a creepy feeling of revulsion and he shook it off.

“I did not make a good race,” he exclaimed angrily. “I made a very bad one. A poorer was never made in this city, and I intend to find out the reason why. I’ve felt all along that I was fought by forces that I could not see or define, but I intend to hunt them down.”

“What do you mean?” asked Radigan.

“No more than I have said,” replied Arthur, resting his glance squarely upon him. The leader sustained it for a half minute, and then looked carelessly at the table of ballots.

“I want to thank you though, Mr. Radigan, for all that you’ve done for me,” said Arthur quietly.

“Oh that’s all right,” said Radigan in his old fashion, repeating his old saying: “That’s what I’m here for an’ I’ve done my best. You see, I suffer along with you.”

When Arthur went into the street he was met by the reporter, Collins, and he promptly answered all the questions that he asked. When the interview was over they walked on together, both silent and thoughtful, for a while. It was then past 11 o’clock. The snow was all gone. A faint breath of spring, the forerunner, was in the air. The tall buildings loomed mistily through a slight, bluish haze, a compound of the moonlight, the electric lights, and the dusk. Cathcart had a feeling of unreality, as if this beating, this terrible blow had not happened to him, but to someone else whom he knew, but it was not on that account less bitter. He brought himself back to his world with an effort of the will and saw Collins regarding him attentively. They had become good friends in the course of the canvass and Arthur turned upon him with the abrupt question.

“Mr. Collins, you’ve been about in the district a great deal, and I’ve no doubt you’ve seen a lot of things that I’ve missed. Tell me! Why have I been beaten so badly?”

Collins hesitated a moment or two and then met Cathcart’s look squarely.

“I’m a bit in the dark, too,” he said, “but I believe a few things. I think, Mr. Cathcart, that you were caught between the upper and the nether millstone, and this is almost literal. A powerful machine has been fighting you with every resource it has, and its power hasn’t been any less because it has worked wholly in the dark.”

“I think so, too,” said Cathcart.

The two men continued together for a little while, talking earnestly. Then Collins hastily exclaimed “I’ve got to reach the office P.D.Q., in time to get my story into the first edition.” He boarded a car and left him.

Arthur went slowly home. He had told the servants not to wait for him, and he unlocked the door and let himself in just as he had done on the night of the storm when he took his great resolution. Now, he thought savagely, that great resolution had ended in nothing.

Late as it was a light was burning in the library, and Arthur knew instinctively that his uncle was there waiting. This was the bitterest part of it all: the first meeting with Mr. Cathcart and the necessity to tell him of his failure in an enterprise that Mr. Cathcart had never considered worth winning. He decided to get it over at once; in his new life he was fast acquiring the habit of decision and rapid action.

He walked quickly into the library. Mr. Cathcart was sitting before the open fire, neither reading nor smoking, his hands lying listlessly on his lap. He looked up when he heard his nephew’s firm, quick step and his eyes were inquiring and eager. Arthur realized, with a sudden sinking of the heart, that perhaps Mr. Cathcart cared more than he pretended. He drew up a chair deliberately for himself and sat down. Then he turned his face toward Mr. Cathcart and said:

“I am beaten, uncle. Harker goes in by a fair majority.”

Mr. Cathcart showed keen disappointment, despite his previous sneers at his nephew’s campaign, and begged Arthur to quit it all and go to Europe with him. But Arthur refused firmly.

After that they sat for perhaps half an hour longer, and not a dozen words more were spoken. Then with a quiet “Good night,” Arthur went to his own room, and with his first great defeat fresh upon him he slept an untroubled sleep.

Arthur was not wrong in his belief that he would be treated largely as a joke by press, public, and his friends. While there might have been doubt during the campaign whether he was a joke the result left none at all. Clearly he was out of place, mistaken about his vocation, and not shrewd enough or strong enough to deal with the skilled and unscrupulous men who make politics the study and business of their lives. He was but a babe after all, and “It’s Cathcart to the woods now,” ran the headline in one slangy yellow journal.

Collins’ newspaper alone struck a somewhat different note. It contained a lucid account of Cathcart’s defeat, an intimation that he was opposed by forces that the paper was not yet in a position to name, a complimentary description of the manner in which Arthur received the bad news, an interview with him, and closed with a hint that Mr. Cathcart was not dead; it was altogether possible that he might be heard from again.

It was a long story and it gave Cathcart pleasure.

Later in the day, while he was at a club, Mr. Hargrove came in, easy, smiling, wonderfully pleased with himself, and Arthur did not go far to guess why. He had noticed in one of the papers that day an announcement that Mr. Hargrove had been placed on the directorate of three more powerful corporations, another bank, a trust company, and a world-famous insurance company. The announcement carried with it the flattering statement that Mr. Hargrove, despite his comparative youth, had achieved a place in the small group of able financial minds that so wisely controlled the business destiny of the United States.

“Sorry to hear of your bad luck, Cathcart, sorry indeed,” he said to Arthur in a tone that grew more patronizing as Arthur marched to failure and he marched to success.

“Thanks, Mr. Hargrove,” replied Arthur, “Yes, I’m beaten.”

Mr. Hargrove shook his head wisely.

“You were wrong about that East Side Rapid Transit Bill,” he said. “You should not have denounced it. The people of your district wanted it, and they wanted it badly,”

“Indeed! I did not know that you ever came into the district, Mr. Hargrove. I thought that you always kept out of such localities.”

Arthur looked at the banker with a sudden keen attention, and despite himself, despite their tint a flush crept into the swarthy cheeks of Mr. Hargrove. As he spoke and as he saw, a new thought came into Arthur’s mind.

“I do not go there,” replied the banker, “but I have heard; there is all the gossip, the newspaper reports, one must believe.”

“So I see,” said Cathcart, and he did not pursue the subject, but he watched Mr. Hargrove and saw that he was restless and uneasy. Presently the banker left the club and Arthur himself stayed only a few minutes longer.

Cathcart’s first resolution was to go straight to Mrs. Throckmorton’s, where he had been asked to a tea and where he expected and hoped to find Lucy Howe. One of his reasons for wishing to see her now was part of his policy of facing all comment at once. But it was a fact, which he did not attempt to explain to himself, that he dreaded her verdict less than that of any of the others. He felt, throughout the campaign, whenever he saw her that, in some way, he had her sympathy. Whether it was for his personal self, for his course as distinguished from that of others, or was given on the general principle that he was the underdog in the fight he could not say, but it was none the less welcome. It seemed to him on occasion that she, like himself, wished to turn back to the soil and deal with actualities.

Mrs. Throckmorton, in the dim light of shaded lamps received him. She was all curves and smoothness, youthful in the softened glow, and she spoke the pleasing language of pleasant comment and flattery. She was sorry, so sorry that Arthur was beaten, on his account merely, because he was too good for the little place out of which she was sure they had cheated him. But she was glad to see him present so brave a face to show that he did not care for the loss of that which was not worth having. She said all these things rapidly in low, soothing tones, and although Arthur knew that it was only partly real and partly pretense it was grateful to him. She was a good woman within her limited range; she wished him well, and she would give herself a certain amount of trouble to help him, if she could; of that he never felt a doubt.

Lucy Howe was there, as he had hoped, and she gave him the sympathy that he wished; the real deep sympathy that he had received from none other. She said nothing as long as others were with them, but when they were left alone for a few minutes in a little cove formed by the angle of a window and a sofa, she came directly to the heart of the matter.

“I don’t know anything about the Rapid Transit Bill, Mr. Cathcart,” she said, “but it is better to be beaten on that issue than to win by omitting it.”

His face flushed with pleasure.

“I need not deny that the loss of the election is a bitter thing to me,” he said, “I am not philosopher enough to find as much reward in failure as in success, and I hope never to be.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully, “I do not think you ever will. It does not seem to be your temperament.”

Again Cathcart was gratified. Within the last year such a horror of weakness and dilettantism had grown up within him that resignation, which perhaps implied loss of courage, did not seem to him to be much of a virtue. He was encouraged, too, by her manner, and it brought him to the verge of confidence, although he yet could not tell whether or not it was merely the fellow feeling, the companionable feeling that the young have for the young. But her manner was confidential and it lured him to speech.

“You’ll pardon me, I know, for talking a little of myself,” he said earnestly, “but I’m not going to stop with this present defeat. I’ve made up my mind to represent that district in the General Assembly, no matter how long it takes me to get there, and I shall be a candidate again at the general election in the autumn.”

Her look was grave and sweet.

“You do not tell me anything that surprises me,” she said. “I had guessed it already, and I like to see a man fight his battle to the end. If I were a man I should want to do it myself.”

For the third time in that brief talk Arthur felt the glow of pleasure, but he only said briefly, “I thank you.”

“I imagine also that you do not want me to speak of this until you give me leave to do so.”

“Keep it a secret, won’t you,” he said, “if so little a thing is worth keeping. I have told nobody else except my uncle.”

She promised readily, and he knew that it was a promise which would not be broken. Then Mr. Hargrove drifted up, and the talk went into other channels. The banker’s patronizing manner toward Cathcart was now accentuated somewhat, and Arthur knew in his heart that Mr. Hargrove no longer regarded him as formidable. It was a bitter thing to take, but Arthur ignored it, and gave no indication that he considered himself smaller than he had been the day before.

He was one of the first of the guests to leave, making good excuses, and Lucy Howe, who had become thoughtful, followed him with her eyes until he was gone from the room. Mr. Hargrove was beside her then, and his glance noticed the direction of hers. He was about to say something of Cathcart, something that would depreciate, but he remembered himself in time. His walks were not usually in fields where delicacy of speech is highly regarded, but instinct warned him not to attack Cathcart before Lucy Howe, if he did not wish to create sympathy for him. But she asked him a sudden question that embarrassed him.

“Will you tell me why Mr. Cathcart was beaten in this election?” she asked. “How was it that a heavy Democratic majority was suddenly lost?”

“Why how should I know?” he replied in a startled tone.

“But tell me.” she persisted, “was it really that East Side Rapid Transit Bill?”

“I hear so. I suppose it was. Cathcart, it seems, went directly against the advice of the district leader, who knows about these things, and he has had to pay the price. But I shouldn’t bother about such matters, if I were you.”

There was a note of impatience in Mr. Hargrove’s voice that she might have resented, but her mind traveled elsewhere after he spoke, and she scarcely noticed him. Her preoccupation continued and she, too, left early, driving directly home.

Lucy Howe had a keen and unusual mind, and it generated that day a thought that she strove to repress, but which she could not, strive as she might, and she strove hard, because it was a most unpleasant thought. Mr. Hargrove had been coming much to her father’s house in the last few weeks, presumably on business, and he and Mr. Howe now and then had dropped little scraps of talk before her, which then had no meaning for her, but which now suddenly appeared to her as a connected whole with a meaning direct and painful.

The days were growing longer, and the twilight had not yet come when she reached her own home. She looked up at the massive building, looming like a great stone fortress, and she sighed because she could not get rid of this new and persistent thought. When she entered and passed up the great staircase on the way to her own room she met her father in the hall. He came forward affectionately to meet her.

James Howe loved his young daughter with a pure and unselfish love. He loved his other children, but they had married and gone away from his household, and she alone was left: the youngest, the fairest, and the brightest. His face and manner then expressed only benevolence and tender feeling. The blue eyes were warm, and the thin ascetic face was illuminated with a smile. Fatherly he looked and fatherly he felt. He kissed her and asked her if her time had passed pleasantly at Mrs. Throckmorton’s and after her affirmative he asked her who was there. She ran rapidly over a number of names, including Cathcart’s.

“I suppose that Mr. Cathcart is crushed,” said Mr. Howe, smiling lightly.

“I do not think so,” she replied. “I have got an impression somehow, father, that he is not a man who is easily put down. I’m sure that the East Side Rapid Transit Bill will yet have him to fight.”

She was watching her father’s face closely as she spoke, and a little shiver passed over her when she saw the smile in his eyes suddenly replaced by a look of chill resolution, so ruthless that she was terrified. But the change lasted only a moment.

“Mr. Cathcart is very young,” said Mr. Howe mildly, “and it is a saying, as old as the world, that the young always have much to learn. It’s a true one, too.”

She went to her room, where she remained a while, thoughtful and unhappy, and she was late and silent at dinner. On the excuse of a headache she went hack to her room, where she said that she intended to read herself to sleep with a new novel, and the announcement seemed to suit Mr. Howe very well,

“Mr. Hargrove will be here in a half hour,” he said genially, “but you need not think, daughter, that he is coming to see you this time. He and I have some very important business that we cannot transact at the bank, and we’ll look after it here. He’s coming at once to my room.”

Mr. Howe had a small office in his residence which he usually called his “room,” and Lucy was quite content that Mr. Hargrove should go there “at once.”

But she was restless in her own room, and came down the hall to a small parlor overlooking the avenue. There she sat without light, save that which came from the lamps in the street, looking without seeing, at the stream of carriages and people as they passed. It was so still and dark there that no one disturbed her or noticed her, but she heard bye and bye a footfall in the hall, and through the open door she saw Mr. Hargrove on his way to Mr. Howe’s office. The light did not arouse any great interest in her, but she followed vaguely the line of his figure until he disappeared. It was merely the lack of any desire to move that kept her now with her face turned in the same direction, and presently she saw another come down the hall and disappear in the path of Mr. Hargrove.

The figure at first seemed strange, but then she noticed something familiar about it, and, although it was only a view of back and shoulders she was sure that she could not be mistaken. She had seen that man before, and she knew him. She sat up stiffly, and in the dark a flush of pain came to her brow. The thought that had assailed her in the day became more acute and painful, and in her mind now it was an assured truth.

She rose, and went down the hall toward her father’s office. The door was closed, but she did not knock. Instead she went back to her own room, where she waited with the door open, and sitting so that she might see any one who passed in the hall.

It was a long time before any one passed. Nine o’clock came, then ten, then eleven, but the three men were still talking earnestly in the little office. Lucy, however, had many of her father’s qualities. and among them were courage and endurance. She still waited. Midnight struck, and then the man who had come last passed out of the office. She watched him, and she saw that he left the house, not by the front door, but obscurely in the rear, like a thief in the night, like one who would hide his face, and her own face burned red again. She surmised, with the certainty of truth, that he had entered in the same way.

Then Mr. Hargrove departed, but his departure was according to the custom prevalent in polite society, that is by the front door. Then Lucy Howe, with a heart full of courage and high resolution, went straight to her father’s office and opened the door.

Mr. Howe was sitting at his flat-topped desk, intently studying a paper which was one of a small bundle that lay before him. He looked up in surprise at the sound of his daughter’s footsteps.

“Why, Lucy!” he exclaimed. “You are up too late, and you did not knock.”

His tone was mildly reproachful.

“No,” she said, “I did not knock, and I am up very late as you say, but I want a talk with you, father.”

She sat down opposite him and her color was high. Perhaps, if she had been five years older she would not have done what she was going to do. Mr. Howe noticed that his daughter’s appearance and manner were unusual, and his brows contracted suddenly. The chill blue eyes looked straight at her with the gaze that few could endure, but she was of his own blood and she met it without wavering.

“Well,” he said shortly.

“I saw Mr. Radigan, after being here with you and Mr. Hargrove all the evening, leave the house.”

“Well and what of that?”

The sharp voice grew sharper, and his gaze was colder than he had ever before given to his daughter. But she did not flinch.

“He went out by the back way,” she said, “like one whose presence here had been dishonest.”

A livid flush passed over the thin cheeks of James Howe, and passing left them a dead white.

“Go to your room at once,” he said, “you are an impertinent child.”

She did not stir.

“Father,” she said in a tone full of reproach, “I saw Mr. Radigan come here and I saw him go. I am not a spy. It was only by chance that I saw him come, but I know why he came. It was he who defeated Mr. Cathcart, and you and Mr. Hargrove paid him to do it. You are the East Side Rapid Transit Company.”

She spoke with the absolute certainty of conviction, and James Howe, taken off his guard by her spontaneous emphasis, did not think to deny what she said. He stirred uneasily in his chair, frowned once or twice, and then became quite calm.

“Don’t you think you are outside your sphere?” he asked with chilling irony. “What is this Cathcart to you?”

“Nothing,” she replied firmly, “but you are very much.”

She spoke impulsively, with much emotion, but James Howe’s thin face was now impassive.

“Oh, don’t you see, father,” she continued, “that Mr. Cathcart’s success or defeat is a small thing, but it is you, ourselves, of whom I am thinking? You bought the election of his opponent in order that he might not defeat a measure of yours intended to make money! A week ago, a day ago, I could not have believed it!”

Here the impulse, the courage that had carried her on failed, and putting her face in her hands she cried. She was only a young girl. A thin, bitter smile twisted the lips of James Howe. She had spoken hard things to him, her father, but he loved her. Despite his present anger toward her, she had never seemed dearer to him than now, when he looked down upon her yellow head in her hands and heard her crying softly. Even at that moment he thought, with a kind of pride, that she had shown more knowledge and perception than he had put to her credit and he credited her with much.

“Lucy,” he said dryly, “listen to me, and remember at the same time, that I am showing you more consideration than most fathers would show to their daughters in such a case. Suppose, for the sake of argument, I should grant what you say to be true. You do not know the world. You do not know how a man must fight for his own. And when he fights he is compelled to use whatever tools best fit his hands. The bill that Mr. Cathcart meant to defeat is a good one. It is in the interest of the people. He put himself in the way and he was run down. Perhaps his opponents would rather have defeated him by other methods, had it been possible, but the situation being what it was they had to do what they did.”

She raised her head and flashed at him a look wonderfully like his own when he awed men with whom he dealt in the street.

“But it is not a good bill!” she exclaimed. “It is a very bad one!”

The great banker’s smile became pitying and kind.

“I see that you have been listening to Mr. Cathcart,” he said, “and you prefer his judgment to mine. This is indeed a perplexing situation.”

She flushed. She felt herself caught in the mazes of sophistry and satire, but the Howe spirit was strong within her, and she did not mean to withdraw from the attack.

“Father,” she said, “I still think it is wrong—you must pardon me for saying so. I should still think it was wrong, even if the bill were a good one, and I am confident that it is not. You will let it go, you will not have anything more to do with this man Radigan, who is a traitor, who has betrayed his chief? If he betrayed Mr. Cathcart he will not hesitate, when it pays him to betray you.”

She spoke with energy and passion, and Mr. Howe’s smile remained pitying and kind. She seemed to appeal and he to consider whether he should grant, yet he felt to the very core of his strong heart the desire to justify himself to his daughter. It may be, too, that James Howe, in the course of a life of strenuous action had come to believe, or nearly to believe—which is perhaps as serviceable—in all that he said.

“Lucy,” he said, “you are a child and you speak as a child. I have told you that life is a great battle and you are, so far, only a spectator in the seats. It is easy enough for the one who is not in action to philosophize and have theories, but the man who is on the field must fight, and fight all the time with the best weapons that he can get.”

He continued to defend himself and justify himself to her. He told her that a great and necessary measure had to be put through, and those in charge of it were compelled to crush opposition for the sake of the public good. He was sorry for Cathcart, who seemed to be likable, but he had invited his own fate, where a wiser man would not have put himself in the way.

Mr. Howe often spoke at banquets and before restricted societies, and he had an eloquence of his own of the dry, incisive, unadorned kind. But he never talked better than on this evening with his own daughter, nearly fifty years younger than himself, as sole audience. He had such a keen and cunning mind—trained so long to go in a certain way; he was master of so many unconscious sophistries, and he was so desperately bent upon justifying himself to Lucy that his eloquence acquired warmth and passion, an unusual thing in James Howe. Lucy felt herself unable to answer, doubting, but not convinced, and when her father kissed her good night she went to her own room, feeling that she had failed.

The day brought to Mr. Howe his usual cold resolution, and when he arrived at the bank at the usual hour his eye was as keen and critical as ever. Every man at his desk felt that both blue eyes were bent straight upon himself, and he plunged into his work with renewed vigor. Mr. Howe went quietly to his inner office—he was always a man who walked lightly and who never wasted words—and remained there alone for almost an hour. Then he sent for his vice-president, the brilliant banker, Mr. Hargrove.

The two were a long time in deep and earnest converse, and it was not about money. That mighty subject was left behind, and these two great men talked more than two hours about so trivial and unimportant a thing as the fate of a young girl. Mr. Howe had taken alarm. It had been his wish, formed at least a year since, that Mr. Hargrove should be his son-in-law. It would be a marriage that seemed fitting in every respect

Mr. Howe, however wary he might be with Lucy, felt no scruples about talking directly to Mr. Hargrove, and they arranged that Mr. Howe and Miss Howe should go abroad suddenly in May—Mr. Howe had long felt the need of rest—and Mr. Hargrove should be called to London in June in the matter of the new Russian loan. Mr. Corey, the second vice-president, was quite able to manage the bank, with the assistance of the cable, during the dull summer months. When this matter was decided and put aside, they made arrangements also to push the East Side Rapid Transit Bill with every resource at their command, and those were many and powerful.

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