13 The Vote



I was deeply disturbed by the appearance at Frankfort of Pauline Harmon, particularly Pauline Harmon in her new phase, a Pauline Harmon who was beautiful and attracted the eyes of men because she could not help it. This latest mood of hers might do great damage.

I was not wrong in my surmise, as I saw the next morning one of those silent dramas that are often more vivid and striking than others full of words.

I had gone down to breakfast rather early, and Jimmy Warfield and I were sitting at our usual small table in the semi-alcove formed by the window and the wall. We were not talking at all, each being preoccupied, and when we had been there about five minutes the Grey family entered all together, for the first time in days. Under the head “Grey family” I include Mrs. Warren, who in fact came in first, head erect as usual, her gaze turning neither to the right nor to the left, the very personification of cool insolence and calculation. After her followed Alicia, singularly girlish in her sweetness and pallor, but not without the quiet dignity of a woman who had suffered and who yet was strong.

Behind Alicia a full ten feet walked Grey, a man whom life at the capital had not improved at all, his cheeks redder than ever and folds of flesh showing under his heavy coarse jaw. I presume that the primeval man slew his rival for the love of a woman whenever he could, and I never looked at Grey without feeling this ancient, far-off instinct of murder rise within me, handed down perhaps from some ancestor a million years away. It was better a hundred times that she should belong to Harrison, who, bad as he was, had heart and soul enough to know Alicia and to value and guard her as a precious jewel.

Mrs. Warren did not look in our direction, but Alicia saw us and bowed. Grey’s heavy eyes roved toward us and then passed on; if we made any impact upon his vision he ignored it.

“Snubbed again,” murmured Jimmy Warfield, “and by the future Governor of Kentucky.”

I could not restrain a smile at his irony. As if Jimmy Warfield cared a particle whether a man like George Grey ever noticed him or not! Yet Grey must have been particularly sullen about something, as in his character of a rising statesman it was his policy to be polite to everybody if he could.

I did not wish to act the part of a spy in the remotest sense, but I could not sit in the same room with Alicia and not look at her often. I saw that she scarcely noticed her husband, and the sight gave me pleasure. Whenever she spoke her words were addressed to her mother, and Grey ate in a heavy and sullen silence.

It was a fine morning in late winter, so late that spring was elbowing the old boy hard, and there was a whisper in the air of mellow days to come. When I was not glancing toward Alicia I was looking out of the window at the houses and the far hills outlined like carving in the brilliant morning sunlight. It was the call of youth to me, and already in fancy I saw the same hills in deep green outlined against a horizon of silky, summer blue. I came back to reality, and as I turned my eyes I saw Pauline Harmon in the most becoming of morning dresses entering the room.

Mrs. Harmon was looking extremely well, fresh, rosy, graceful and entirely in command of herself. When I saw her I glanced instinctively at the Grey table, and I caught at once the vivid impression that was made upon the face of every one of the three. Alicia—I presumed that she had now learned what Pauline Harmon was and for what she stood in her life—flushed a deep angry red and then turned absolutely white. She gave Pauline Harmon a glance of aversion, contempt and disgust, another just like it to her husband, and then, white still and as cold as ice, she looked only at the table before her.

Mrs. Warren examined Pauline. Harmon with a cool, measuring eye. She, too, was angry, but in her anger was a certain calculation, as of one who weighed the chances. George Grey showed fright. His lips and heavy jaw trembled, and he glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Harmon, his wife and his mother-in-law, each time with the air of a whipped dog. I was sorry to see Alicia Grey and Pauline Harmon brought face to face, but I had ho sympathy for George Grey. He had made the net for himself, and, since he was caught in it, he might wriggle as he could.

Jimmy Warfield also saw and observed perhaps more than I, but he said nothing. He was truly my friend, but he had the innate delicacy that is the gift of the gods, and we went on with our breakfast, speaking only of topics that were far from the immediate minds of both of us. I could not keep my eyes from the Grey table, and I shared the painful strain that endured there, not that of the mercenary mother, nor that of the whipped dog of a husband, but that of Alicia, who deserved so much of the gods and who received so little. Grey kept his red face in his plate, and I wondered whether his apprehension was really due to a sense of shame or to a fear lest a scandal might injure his political campaign.

Alone among all the actors in this wordless little tragedy, Pauline Harmon was neither angry nor embarrassed; on the contrary, I had a secret belief that she was enjoying herself. Her demure rôle was preserved; she was not expansive, her gaze did not rove about the room, but when she had bowed to two or three acquaintances, myself among them, she turned her attention to the letters that lay beside her plate, and sat there quietly, a bright bit of life and femininity, apparently without a care.

I think about half an hour passed, and then Alicia was the first of those concerned to leave the room. She gazed straight before her as she went out and never once looked aside. After she was gone Mrs. Warren examined Pauline Harmon more at length, but that shy creature seemed to take no notice of the inspection, and still remained without a care. Then Mrs. Warren rose, and with a sweeping glance of command took her son-in-law in her train.

Harrison, who in his character of best friend to Grey quickly learned everything, gave me the next news. I was taking my favorite walk on the hills when I saw an athletic figure approaching. I strolled slowly on, but he soon overtook me.

“You were a witness of the Harmon’s debut at the Capitol,” he said, in a half friendly manner, “and I think it no more than right to tell you how affairs are going.”

He paused, as if waiting the word from me whether to continue or to stop. I wished to know, and yet it was deeply distasteful to me to hear him talk about Alicia or the things that concerned her. But his pause was only momentary, and he went on:

“Grey is in a state, hard to describe, because that state is composed of so many and such differing elements. He is in a rage at his wife, because she treats him as one whom she never saw before; he is in a blue funk lest he be compromised when he is in the public eye; he is chagrined because Pauline Harmon came here when he told her not to do so, and, above all, he is jealous on her account.”

“Jealous!” I exclaimed in surprise. “Of whom?”

“Me,” he replied, with a grimace.

“You!”

“Yes, it is I. I note your astonishment, and I take it as a compliment. He tried to hide it, but he really thinks I want to usurp his place with Pauline Harmon, merely because I have been polite to her once or twice since she came. What nonsense! He has far more cause to be jealous nearer home, the blind idiot! As if I could put Pauline Harmon in the same world with Alicia Grey, a woman who is as far above her as heaven above hell and who is also more beautiful.”

My heart had an unaccountable manner of warming toward Harrison at times, and this was such a time. He put Alicia upon the pedestal where he knew she belonged.

“I thank you for the comparison,” I said.

“Any fool should know it,” he added.

We walked on a little while longer in silence, and then I asked:

“Do you think that Mrs. Grey, knowing what she now knows, will go back to Louisville?”

“And abandon the field to an unlicensed rival? No! No woman would do it.”

“That was my opinion, but I wished to have yours, too. I leave you here. So long.”

I watched him striding away toward the town, trim, athletic, a fine specimen of a man mentally and physically, if only the moral equipment had been equal. I am the more confirmed in my opinion, as I grow older, that no one can be really great without moral stamina. Both morality and the praising of it often seem commonplace, but it counts; the greatest stakes are never won by cunning and chicane.

Beyond her chosen character of lobbyist Pauline Harmon’s conduct at the capital was eminently conventional. She said that wealthy men had paid her to come to Frankfort and talk against the Peden Bill, and she mentioned the name of Cobbett. I knew how easily a clever and beautiful woman could influence a man like the fat manufacturer, and I could well believe it possible that he had had a part in sending her. Moreover, a cousin, a thin, timid woman in the upper sixties, appeared, and was Pauline Harmon’s suitable chaperone at the hotel.

There was nothing on the surface with which one could find fault, and the beautiful young widow made rapid progress. She gathered about herself a court—in fact a little salon—and in less than a week she was a conspicuous figure in Frankfort, often shunned, it is true, by the women, but more often sought by the men. Harrison himself was one of those frequently in attendance, and I verily believe that he did it to annoy Grey. I gave him full credit for what he said to me on the hill, and I did not believe the charms of Pauline Harmon had any attraction for him.

I saw now the power of beauty, intelligence and quiet conduct. I had known before that Pauline Harmon was not lacking in mind, and when she showed in Frankfort a modest manner and indulged in a conversation that often tended to the serious people began to speak differently of her. A reputation, rather full blown, had preceded her, but many now believed it to have been a mistake, and the revulsion, as it usually does, went to a similar extreme in the other direction. Her life at the capital was quite unimpeachable, and Mrs. Crossfield, the thin, elderly cousin, who had little to say, was always present in her apartments when she gave her receptions

Winter receded a little more and spring crowded forward. A glimmer of green appeared here and there in the grass, and tender young buds were forming on the trees. I felt its sparkle in my blood, and I was in a lighter mood than usual when I walked down the Capitol steps at the close of a short session and turned toward the hills. Harrison was standing on the walk, and he nodded to me in a friendly way.

“Let me join you,” he said. “I’ve some questions of interest to ask you.”

“Come along,” I replied.

He said nothing until we passed beyond the houses and were on the slopes, then he turned to me with rather more of gesture than he was in the habit of using.

“I want to know, and I want to know finally, if you are ever going to use your knowledge against Grey to secure the release of his wife?”

“No,” I replied shortly.

“Then all I’ve got to say is that you’re an infernal fool with your scruples. As I told you before, I’d do it myself but I don’t want to free her merely for you. I can’t afford to appear as the agent in the matter. Things are coming to such a pass that there may be an explosion here.”

He seemed to speak more in sorrow than in anger, and I asked him what he meant by a possible explosion.

“Grey is insanely jealous,” he replied. “The man is a thorough Mormon, or he has the makings of one. He is jealous on Pauline Harmon’s account and his wife’s, of you, of me, of everybody who comes near either. I can’t give him cause in one quarter, but, by George, why not? I——”

He stopped suddenly and laughed—the laugh was a mixture of satire, amusement and unholy glee, and I guessed his meaning.

“Why not?” he said.

I shook my head and walked on in silence, Harrison still by my side. I knew that he was thinking over his plan, and I was sure that the idea appealed strongly to his strange humor. He was Grey’s lieutenant, that is in a political sense, but he could never care for Grey himself. At the crest of the second hill he left me, turning back toward the town and from the heights. I saw his figure far down in the valley, clearly outlined in the bright sunshine.

The next day Pauline Harmon appeared again in the lobby of the house, duly escorted by the elderly aunt, Mrs. Crossfield, and took a seat quietly in a rather remote corner. She was fully maintaining her new reputation, which was now practically her only Frankfort name, and many of the members were glad enough to go into the lobby and talk to .one so handsome and so attractive. Nor was I surprised to see Harrison rise from his desk, walk deliberately down the aisle and make his way to Pauline Harmon, where he took a seat beside her and was soon in animated conversation. Harrison was a man of fine face and figure, with the addition of the intellectual quality that is generally known as personal magnetism, and I knew that his attentions would please Pauline Harmon. From my seat I could see her eyes sparkling and a gratified smile on her face.

The next afternoon, a beautiful one, Harrison took Pauline Harmon driving. As I have said, in a small place like Frankfort everything is known, and two or three people told me of it. There was no reason why he should not take her, she was a widow and he an unmarried man, while both had reached the years of discretion, yet I felt sure that it would cause much talk. I was not mistaken. In a few days the whole town was discussing Harrison’s infatuation, and I was forced to smile at the use of the word “infatuation” in this instance. It was Jimmy Warfield who told me a tale of progress two or three days later. He came into my room and threw himself into my easy chair by the window and said:

“Well, Harry, it’s on, and it’s in full blast.”

“What’s on, and what’s in full blast?”

“The flirtation between Harrison and Pauline Harmon. He is in constant attendance upon her, and I understand George Grey is in a state that cannot be described. He is furious and at the same time helpless. Harrison is his campaign manager, and Grey believes that Harrison is infallible. He still cherishes the foolish idea that he can be made Governor, but that nobody except Harrison can do it; therefore he is afraid to quarrel, and also he is afraid to stir up a row because he has a wife here in Frankfort, such a woman that it makes me a decided believer in the fallibility of Providence when it gave her to George Grey.”

I did not answer him. I found no amusement in the situation.

“I think,” continued Warfield, “that it is all malicious mischief on the part of Harrison. I don’t believe he really cares for Pauline Harmon.”

He had made a shrewd guess, but I was still silent.

“I believe Mrs. Grey does not object to Harrison’s venture,” he said presently.

I could well believe it. It would be a relief to Alicia to see these energies turned elsewhere. But of Alicia herself I saw but little, though I met her once at the house of Judge Wharton.

My attention was absorbed now for the time being by the Apportionment Bill, which was fast coming to an issue. Harrison led the opposition, speaking often with great eloquence, satire and point, and showing himself a consummate parliamentary leader, when he cared.

In this contest, in which, through no choice of my own, I was pitted against him, I studied his methods closely, and I felt that I was learning much from him. But I did not borrow from Harrison when it came to the use of personal irony. As I have said already, anybody can be a wit of the kind that generally passes for such if he has no regard for the feelings of others.

The night before the taking of the vote I was so uneasy that I put on my overcoat and walked two or three hours in the darkness, strolling far out on the hills.

Then I came back slowly, down the hills through the town and to the hotel. At the ladies’ entrance a man sprang from a carriage that had just stopped and helped out a lady. The man was Harrison. I saw his face distinctly in the electric light, and I should have known his figure in the darkness. The lady wrapped in a heavy cloak looked up at Harrison, and I saw Pauline Harmon. But it was the look on her face, not the woman herself or the fact that she was there, that surprised me. There is a certain look which a woman gives only to one man, and one who has seen much of people always knows it.

I turned away toward the main entrance, but Pauline Harmon quickly entered the hotel, and Harrison, dismissing the carriage, followed me. When he stopped me with some ordinary remark, I felt that I could take a liberty that he had often taken with me, and I said:

“What is begun in jest or for a passing fancy may be carried too far?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, with a quick uplifting of his head.

“A woman can never be played with,” I replied. “Either she or the man must suffer.”

He seemed surprised at first, but became thoughtful and said no more.

I was in the House early the next morning, and, assuming an indifference that I did not feel, I read my letters while the Members assembled.

I looked now and then at the lobbies, which were rapidly filling up, and I wondered when Alicia would come —that she would come I never doubted—and presently I saw her enter with her mother. There was just a little touch of color in her dress, but her face was white like snow, not the white of illness, but the white of long sadness and sorrow. She and Mrs. Warren sat down together, and she looked slowly around the House, bowing slightly to those whom she knew. Grey came in later, and took a seat about a dozen feet away. Pauline Harmon was on the other side of the lobby, quietly dressed and saying but little. I noticed that she watched Harrison attentively.

As the Clerk began to call the roll my confidence rose, I believed that fair play would triumph over partisanship. The C’s were reached, and my name was called. I voted for the passage of the Peden Bill, and as the Clerk went on down the line I began to feel sure that we should win. I glanced first at Harrison, and I believe that he read the verdict as I had read it. His face fell, a little, not much, but in a moment he was composed, and began to whisper something amusing to his neighbors.

The calling of the roll was finished and the Peden Bill was passed by a majority of eight. That it would pass subsequently in the Senate was known already, and it was now as good as a law. The House and the lobbies, despite the Speaker’s gavel, broke into cheering, and Peden, leaning over, grasped me by the hand.

“Clarke,” he said, “it’s you who have passed the bill that bears my name.”

“Nonsense!” I replied. “It was the great merits of the bill you drew that did it.”

“No,” he said. “It was you who led the fight and who did most of the fighting. The result means much to me, but more to you, Clarke.”

I did not then pay much attention to his words, but the meaning of them came to me later. I was occupied for the present with my friends, with the exchange of congratulations, and with comments on the contest that had ended so happily for us. Harrison came over to me, and so far as I could see there was no sign of depression on his face; for all that his manner disclosed he might have won the victory.

“You’ve beaten us in a fair fight, Mr. Clarke,” he said, “and I offer you my congratulations.”

He held out his hand, and I could not do anything then but take it. I felt sure that he must feel the sting of defeat, but I admired the skill with which he hid it. I glanced again at the lobby, and meeting Alicia’s calm smile, that told me so much, I felt more than repaid for all the long struggle and its heartburnings. Harrison’s eyes followed mine, and he frowned, but he said nothing, quickly recovering his equanimity. A few minutes later I saw him leaving the house just behind Pauline Harmon.

Alicia and her mother departed the next day for Louisville, and, knowing the time of their departure, I appeared at the railroad station, as if by chance. Grey was there, too, although he intended to come back the following morning to Frankfort, but I approached them boldly—any casual acquaintance had the right—and wished the ladies a pleasant journey to Louisville, with a speedy return to Frankfort if they found it possible. Mrs. Warren replied formally, but Alicia put her small gloved hand in mine for a moment. Grey made a surly acknowledgment with a word or two, and then the train went away with them.

I watched the cloud of white smoke following the train long after the train itself was out of sight, and, although I was glad Alicia was gone, I knew that her presence in Frankfort had been a support and inspiration to me. But it was a bitter pain to see her go away with that man Grey, his by right, while I who would have protected and defended her, who would have made her a queen if I could, was left behind, and alone.

As I walked away I met Jimmy Warfield. He knew what had happened, and I think he knew my feelings, too, as he said nothing, but with the silent and instinctive sympathy that is so precious went on by my side. He did not speak for a full five minutes, and then he said: “The newspapers that have come in to-day, Harry, are full of you. Your name has spread throughout the State.”

His news would have gratified me greatly at another time, but at present my thoughts were elsewhere, and I thanked him, somewhat absently I fear. Yet he told only the truth, as I found later, when my mind returned to the subject. I received a credit from the press far beyond anything that I deserved, and, in private, I often blushed for myself when I read those flattering accounts. Yet I found myself forced into a certain conspicuous position from which I could not escape, and which seemed to endure.

But the Legislature was now quickly approaching adjournment. We separated at last with mingled pleasure and regrets, and on a glorious day in early May I left the train at Carlton just as I had left it two or three years before, but now under circumstances so different.

When I alighted from the train Aunt Jane walked straight up to me, kissed me—which was much for her—and said, “Harry, we are glad to have our boy back again, and to know that he is a great man now.” A member of the Legislature was a great man to Aunt Jane. Uncle Paul merely shook my hand, but what a shake it was! Uncle Paul’s hands are made of a sort of tempered iron, not flesh and bone, and his muscle is renowned throughout the country.

I rambled about the estate and the neighborhood for nearly a week, usually going to bed just after dark and rising at the earliest dawn. I scorned work, I did not look at a book, I did not unfold a newspaper, but I trod all the ancient haunts of my childhood. Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul did not disturb me; they were too happy to have me with them, and I think they would have been content to have me go on in that way indefinitely.

One evening as the three of us sat in the dusk on the porch, Uncle Paul and I smoking, he asked me:

“What are your plans for the summer, Harry?”

“I haven’t any,” I replied, “except that next month I shall go down to the convention at Lexington to see the Democrats nominate a candidate for the Governorship.”

It had been decided that the convention should be held at Lexington early in June, and I expected to be chosen a delegate.

Uncle Paul smoked thoughtfully and looked out at the line of the forest on the far side of the fields. I could just see his grave, meditative face in the dusk. Aunt Jane was knitting, and the click of her needles was regular music.

“Who’ll be the man, Harry?” asked Uncle Paul, after a long pause.

“I haven’t the least idea,” I replied.

“Grey’s after it hot and hard.”

“Maybe so, but he’ll never touch it.”

“I should hope not,” said Uncle Paul, with deep emphasis.

“There’s Judge Wharton,” I said. “He’d make a fine Governor, but I don’t believe we could get him to leave the Court of Appeals.”

“No, I don’t believe you could.”

Uncle Paul relapsed into silence and the bowl of his pipe glowed in the dusk. I was silent, too. He had set my thoughts travelling on a road they had often trod before., The question of a nominee bothered me. I had spoken of it two or three times to Jimmy Warfield before I left him at Louisville, but in his light way he had been either evasive or careless. Judge Wharton, in good truth, would make an admirable Governor, but he was wedded to the Court of Appeals. Surveying the field, I could not see any available material. Was it possible that Grey might secure the nomination by default? It was the first time such a thought had come to me, and I shuddered at it.