"I hope you're right," answered Bra.s.sfield, "but Edgington's no fool.

I wouldn't have him for my lawyer if he was."

"Of course he's no fool," was Alvord's reply, "but he's handicapped by the personality of his man. Edge's doing pretty well, considering. He probably is wise to the situation. He didn't expect anything like a contest, you know, owing to that confounded blunder one of you two made. Now he's doing the best he can; but his man's been too strong in the G.o.d-and-morality way in years gone by to wipe out the stain by one evening of free booze. On the other hand, your life has been perfect--always careful and sound in business, no isms or reform sentiments on any line, a free spender, a paying attendant of the richest church, but not a member, and no wife full of wild ideas for the uplifting of folks that don't want to be uplifted. Why, Mrs.

McCorkle's advanced ideas alone are enough to make him lose out."

"I don't know about that," said Bra.s.sfield. "McCorkle and his wife are not the same in these affairs."

"Well, don't you fall down and forget it," said Alvord, "that the fellows on the seamy side won't see it your way. They've got good imaginations, and they can see the colonel on one side of the table and his wife, the president of the Social Purity League, pouring tea on the other, and they can see the position it would put the mayor in to do the right thing along liberal lines--and he sort of strict in habits himself. No, sir, my boy, you go to bed and sleep sweetly. You are about to reap the reward of living the right kind of a life."

And sweetly Mr. Bra.s.sfield slept, with none of the anxiety felt by Judge Blodgett as to whether he would awake as Bra.s.sfield or Amidon.

XVIII

A GLORIOUS VICTORY

Narcissus saw his image, and fell in love with it, But jilted pretty Echo, who wailed and never quit.

This beauteous youth was far less kind than I, my friend, or you: For we adore our own good looks and love our echoes, too.

--_Adventures in Egoism_.

I really shrink from giving an account of the result of the Bellevale caucuses next evening, for fear of imparting to the general reader--who is, of course, a violent patriot--the idea that I am narrating facts showing an exceptionally bad condition in munic.i.p.al affairs, in the triumph of one or the other of two bad men. This impression I should be loath to give. Colonel McCorkle, whom we know by hearsay only, seems to be so good a citizen that his belated attempt to be "broad"

and "liberal" excites laughter in some quarters. As for Mr.

Bra.s.sfield, there are at least nine chances in ten that he is the man who would have received the support of the gentle reader had it been his own city's campaign.

In fact, Mr. Bra.s.sfield is psychologically incapable of deviating much from the course marked out by the average ethics of his surroundings.

This subconscious mind which--as Professor Blatherwick so clearly explained to us--normally operates below the plane of consciousness, happens, in his case, to be abnormally acting consciously; but it is still controlled by suggestion. The money-making mania being in all minds, he becomes a money-maker. The usual att.i.tude of society toward all things--including, let us say, women, poetry, politics and public duty--is the one into which the Bra.s.sfield mind inevitably fell. The men on whom any age bestows the accolade of greatness, are those who embody the qualities--virtues and vices--of that age. Your popular statesman and hero is merely the incarnate Now. Every president is to his supporters "fit to rank with Washington and Lincoln." Future ages may accord to him only respectable mediocrity; but the generation which sees itself reflected in him, sees beauty and greatness in the reflection. Bellevale was psychically reflected in Bra.s.sfield.

Therefore Bellevale raised him on the shield of popularity. One may see this reflected in the conversation of Major Pumphrey, one of Bellevale's solid citizens, with Mr. Smith, who owned the department store, on the morning after the caucuses.

"Rather lively times, I hear," said Major Pumphrey, catching step with Mr. Smith on their walk down town. "Rather lively times at the caucuses last evening."

"Really," answered Mr. Smith, "I don't know. I never attend caucuses.

Every one has his friends, you know, and by not taking sides one saves many enmities."

"I don't agree with you," said the major. "Every one should attend his party primaries, as a matter of duty."

"You were out last night?" said the merchant interrogatively.

"Why, no," said the major, "not last night. The fact is, Colonel McCorkle and I served in the same regiment, and belong to the post here, and he expected me to support him. At the same time, the nomination of Mr. Bra.s.sfield appeared to be the only right thing from the standpoint of party expediency or business wisdom. Bra.s.sfield can be elected. He is strong in business circles. His integrity is unquestioned, and there'll be no graft or shady deals under him. He stands well in society, too. I just saw Doctor Bulkon, who expressed himself as thoroughly delighted with the nomination of so good a man as Bra.s.sfield, and intends to preach next Sunday on 'The Christian's Vote,' handling the subject in such a way as to point to Bra.s.sfield as the right man. I couldn't consistently oppose Bra.s.sfield, and so I stayed at home."

"Oh, you're quite right!" exclaimed Mr. Smith. "My attendance would not have made any difference in the result. Colonel McCorkle is a good man, but after Mr. Bra.s.sfield made us a present of the money to pay off our church debt recently none of us could decently have gone out and worked against him even for the colonel. They say that McCorkle is a good deal chagrined by the small showing he made--claims that the saloons and the lower cla.s.ses ran the caucuses, and that the decent element stayed away altogether."

"Pooh!" scoffed Mr. Pumphrey. "A little sore is all--soon get over it.

I only hope Bra.s.sfield will be able to get us that trolley line he promises. That would bring Bellevale abreast of the times."

"That's certainly true," was Mr. Smith's answer. "Mr. Bra.s.sfield is an enterprising citizen, broad and liberal, safe and sane, and fully in touch with the great business interests of the country. His nomination will reflect credit on Bellevale."

Inasmuch as such citizens as Conlon, Pierson, Sheehan and Zalinsky were equally well contented, no one, it would seem, ought to have been dissatisfied. The fact that Mr. Bra.s.sfield's success meant the giving away of Bellevale's streets to Bra.s.sfield's interurban trolley line must be considered in connection with the fact that Bellevale seemed only too anxious to give them away.

One must look at such things from all sides, if one is to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Miss Waldron, having a keenly personal interest in the matter, and being a member of the cultured and leisure cla.s.s, endeavored to do this. Her conclusions, both personal and political, seem to be fully set forth in a letter which she wrote to her friend Estelle in New York.

"You know I always was a queer little beast," said this letter, after a few pages in which such words as "chiffon," "corsage," "lingerie,"

"full ritual," and similar expressions occur with some frequency, but the contents of which are quite obscure in their bearing on the course of this history--"and was ever finding happiness where others saw misery, and _vice versa_. Well, I am doing something of the same sort now in turning over and over in my mind the question as to whether I should ever marry any one or not. I know perfectly well that no one can ever be the One for me if Eugene is not--but is there a One? Don't say that I am a little--goose, but listen and ponder.

"You remember the sort of literary friendship I had with George L----?

Well, of course George was a veritable Miss Nancy, and perfectly absurd, but there was something basically likeable about him. Now, I always have thought that if one could grind George and Eugene to a pulp and mix them, the compromise would be my ideal. I like men who do things, and Eugene is the most forceful man I ever knew. Owing to your absence when he was in New York you missed seeing him, but his pictures must have shown you how handsome and strong and masterly he is. Well, this phase of a man must please any girl.

"Is it possible for such qualities to subsist in the same personality with those I loved (there's no use denying it--in a platonic sense) in George? In other words, can one reasonably expect to find a man who can win battles in the world's life of this twentieth century, who will not stare at one in utter lack of comprehension when he finds one dropping tears on the pages of _Charmides_, or _McAndrew's Prayer_, or Omar, and perhaps try to comfort one--at the moment when the divine despair wrought by poignant beauty fills one with divine happiness?

It's horribly clumsy as I put it; but you'll know.

"He's just as good and kind and considerate as a man can be, and as little spoiled by the fierce battles which he has fought--_and won!_--as could possibly be expected--in fact, not at all spoiled.

Even this suspicion of a lack of the gift of seeing that the violet 'neath a mossy stone is a good deal more than that--the chief good quality George had--around which I have been writing in these pages, seems to be more a suspicion than a reality; for recently he has once or twice ventured on discussions of such matters with a confidence and an insight which put me--me, who have plumed myself on my mental St.

Simeon's tower, like a detestable intellectual c.o.c.katoo (you must untwist the metaphors!)--at his feet in the att.i.tude of a humble learner. It took some of the conceit out of me; and yet, with true Elizabethan inconsistency I turned this new view of his character against him, and because he--well, it doesn't matter what--I gave him a pre-nuptial instalment of 'cruel and inhuman treatment.'

"Then he became timid and over-respectful, and not at all like himself, and I all the time just longing to make up to him all the arrears of kindness which were due. It seemed as if I had a new lover, one who needed encouragement, one who made a G.o.ddess of me, in the place of the almost too bold gallant who had been mine; and lo! when he suddenly comes on me with all his pristine a.s.surance and seeming contempt for the weepful things I mentioned above, I don't like it at all. I feel as if two men in the same mask are courting me, and I without discernment enough to tell one from the other.

"Now, if I am so shilly-shallying as this before marriage, what shall I be after? Can I go on with so much of doubt in my own mind?

"Oh, if I could only be sure of the Eugene I think I sometimes see, strong to do, tender to feel, and with the uplift of insight----

"To show how thoroughly insane my state of mind is, I have only to say to you that by the exercise of the most tremendous pressure on the part of our very best men, Eugene, much against his will, has been put in nomination for mayor. He will purify the civic life of our town, and, I am a.s.sured, will, if he will enter public life to that extent, be sent to Washington.

"I have always thought that I'd like Washington society----"

Here Elizabeth's letter came to an end. She read it over carefully, tore it up, threw the fragments in the grate, and wrote her friend another and maybe a wiser one. Then she wrote to Mr. Bra.s.sfield a note which Mr. Amidon found in his room when he returned to being.

One can easily see from that which has gone before, what happened to Colonel McCorkle. Edgington and Alvord and Bra.s.sfield talked it over in the Turkish room at Tony's after the caucuses.

"Of course you've made an a.s.s of yourself, Edgington," said Mr.

Bra.s.sfield, "but you've gone through with it consistently, and it's all right. I could have explained all that idiotic talk of mine about not running--but why go over that now? Fill your gla.s.ses, and let's forget it!"

"That's the talk!" said Alvord. "Forget it and all pull together in this campaign you've made me the manager of."

"Well, as for forgetting it and pulling together," said Edgington, "I, as the originator of the Bra.s.sfield idea, am not likely to hang back in the harness. So, here's to success! But----"

"There's no 'but' in this," said Alvord. "The 'buts' are postponed until after election."

"There's nothing to the election," said Edgington. "You have things lined up----"

"_We_ have things lined up----" suggested Alvord.

"Yes, that's right," acquiesced Edgington. "It's '_we_,' with all my heart since the decision. I was saying that the way you have the different interests working together is perfectly ideal, the wets and the drys, the wide-opens and the closed-lids, the saloons and the dives and the churches--all shouting for Bra.s.sfield; and each cla.s.s thinks he's for its policy. The other man has about as much show--well, the next is on me. Would you mind pressing the b.u.t.ton, Jim?"

The waiter came, bringing a penciled note to Mr. Bra.s.sfield.

"One of your const.i.tuents," it read, "would like a moment's conversation with you in the lobby."