After Gryson, muttering threats, had gone, the young campaign manager had an attack of moral nausea. It seemed such a prodigious waste of time and energy to traffic and chaffer with these petty scoundrels. Thus far, every phase of the actual political problem seemed to be meanly degrading, and he was beginning to long keenly for an opportunity to do some really worthy thing.

Notwithstanding, his ideals were still unshaken. He still clung to the belief that the corporation, which was created by the law and could exist only under the protection of the law, must, of necessity, be a law-abiding ent.i.ty. It was manifestly unfair to hold it responsible for the disreputable political methods of those whom it could never completely control--methods, too, which had been forced upon it by the necessity, or the fancied necessity, of meeting conditions as they were found.

As if in answer to the wish that he might find the worthier task, it was on this day of Gryson's visit that Blount was given his first opportunity of entering the wider field. A letter from a local party chairman in a distant mining town brought an invitation of the kind for which he had been waiting and hoping. He was asked to partic.i.p.ate in a joint debate at the campaign opening in the town in question, and he was so glad of the chance that he instantly wired his acceptance.

That evening, at the Inter-Mountain _cafe_ dinner hour, he found his father dining alone and joined him. In a burst of confidence he told of the invitation.

"That's good; that's the real thing this time, isn't it?" was the senator's even-toned comment. "Gives you a right nice little chance to shine the way you can shine best." Then: "That was one of the things McVickar wanted you for, wasn't it?--speech-making and the like?"

"Why, yes; he intimated that there might be some public speaking,"

admitted the younger man.

"Well, what-all are you going to tell these Ophir fellows when you get over there, son?" asked the veteran quizzically. "Going to offer 'em all free pa.s.ses anywhere they want to go if they'll promise to vote for the railroad candidates?"

"Not this year," was the laughing reply. "As I told you a while back, we've stopped all that."

"You have, eh? I reckon that will be mighty sorry news for a good many people in the old Sage-brush State--mighty sorry news. You really reckon you _have_ stopped it, do you, son?"

"I not only believe it; I am in a position to a.s.sert it definitely."

"McVickar has told you it was stopped?"

The newly fledged political manager tried to be strictly truthful.

"I have had but the one interview with Mr. McVickar, but in that talk he gave me to understand that my recommendations would be given due consideration. And I have said my say pretty emphatically."

The senator's smile was not derisive; it was merely lenient.

"Sat on 'em good and hard, did you? That's right, son; don't you ever be afraid to say what you mean, and to say it straight from the shoulder. That's the Blount way, and I reckon we've got to keep the family ball rolling--you and I. Don't forget that, when you're making your appeal to those h.o.r.n.y-handed sons of toil over yonder at Ophir.

Give 'em straight facts, and back up the facts with figures--if you happen to have the figures. When do you pull out for the mining-camp?"

"To-night, at nine-thirty. I can't get there in time if I wait for the morning train." Then, dismissing the political topic abruptly: "What do you hear from Professor Anners?"

"Oh, he's having the time of his life. I got him a State permit, and sc.r.a.ped him up a bunch of pick-and-shovel men, and he is digging out those fossil skeletons by the wagon-load."

"And Miss Anners?" pursued Patricia's lover.

"I shouldn't wonder if she was having the time of her life, too. I've given her the little four-seated car to call her own while she is out here, and she and Honoria go careering around the country--breaking the speed limit every minute in the day, I reckon."

"I'm glad you are giving her a good time," said Evan, and he looked glad. Then he added regretfully: "I wish I could get a chance to chase around a little with them. I have seen almost nothing of them since they came West. I should think Mrs. Blount might bring Patricia down to the city once in a while."

"Well, now! perhaps the young woman doesn't want to come," laughed the senator. "You told me you hadn't got her tag, son, and I'm beginning to believe it's the sure-enough truth. What has she got against you, anyway?"

"Nothing; nothing in the wide world, save that I don't fit into her scheme for her life-work."

The senator was eating calmly through his dessert. "If you hadn't made up your mind so pointedly to dislike Honoria, you might be getting a few tips on that 'career' business along about now, son," he remarked, and Evan was silent--had to be silent. For, you see, he had been charging Patricia's continued absence from the capital to nothing less than spiteful design on the part of his father's wife.

It was at the cigar smoking in the lobby, after the young man had made his preparations for the journey and was waiting for the train-caller's announcement, that the senator said quite casually: "It's too bad you're going out of town to-night, son. Honoria 'phoned me a little spell ago that she and Patricia would be driving down after their dinner to take in the Weatherford reception. You'll have to miss 'em, won't you?"

The announcer was chanting the call for the night train west, and the joint-debater got up and thrust his hand-bag savagely into the hand of the nearest porter.

"Isn't that just my infernal luck!" he lamented. Then: "Give them my love, and tell them I hope they will stay until I get back."

The senator rose and shook hands with the departing debater. "Shall I say that to both of 'em?" he asked, with the quizzical smile which Evan was learning to expect.

"Yes; to both of them, if you like--only I suppose Mrs. Blount will hold it against me. Good-night and good-by. I'll be back day after to-morrow, if the Ophir miners don't mob me."

It was only a few minutes after Evan Blount's train had steamed Ophir-ward out of the Sierra Avenue station that a dust-covered touring-car drew up at the curb in front of the Inter-Mountain, and the same porter who had put Blount's hand-bag into the taxicab opened the tonneau door for two ladies in m.u.f.fling motor-coats and heavy veils.

The senator met the two late travellers in the vestibule, and while the three were waiting for an elevator a rapid fire of low-toned question and answer pa.s.sed between husband and wife.

"You got Evan out of the way?" whispered the wife.

The husband nodded. "That was easy. I pa.s.sed the word to Steuchfield, and he helped out on that--invited Evan to come to Ophir to speak in a joint debate. He left on the night train."

"And Hathaway? Will he be here?"

"He is here. Gantry has turned him down, according to instructions, and he is clawing about in the air, trying to get a fresh hold. I bluffed him; told him he'd have to make his peace with you for something, I didn't know what, before I could talk to him."

Miss Anners was watching the elevator signal glow as the car descended, and the wife's voice sank to a still lower whisper.

"He will be at the Weatherfords'?" she inquired eagerly.

"He is right sure to be; I told him you would be there."

The small plotter nodded approval.

"Give us half an hour to dress, and have the car ready," she directed; and then the senator put the two into the elevator and turned away to finish his cigar.

X

IN THE HERBARIUM

The Weatherfords, multimillionaire mine-people, and so newly rich that the crisp bank-notes fairly crackled when Mrs. Weatherford spent them, kept their lackeyed and liveried state in a castle-like mansion in Mesa Circle, the most expensive, if not the most aristocratic, no-thoroughfare of the capital city. Weatherford, the father, egged on by Mrs. Weatherford, had political aspirations pointing toward a United States senatorship, the election to which would fall within the province of the next legislature. The mine-owner himself, a pudgy little man with a bald spot on top of his head and a corner-grocery point of view carefully tucked away inside of it--an outlook upon life which was a survival from his hard-working past--would willingly have dodged, but Mrs. Weatherford was inexorable. There were two grown daughters and a growing son, and it was for these that she was socially ambitious.

The reception for which the senator's wife and her guest had driven thirty miles through the dust of the sage-brush hills was one of the many moves in Mrs. Weatherford's private campaign. For the opening-gun occasion the great house in Mesa Circle was lighted from bas.e.m.e.nt to turret--to all of the numerous turrets; an awning fringed with electric bulbs sheltered the carpeted walk from the street to the grand entrance, an army of lackeys paraded in the vestibule, and the wives and daughters of the bravest and best in the capital city's political contingent stood with Mrs. Weatherford in the long receiving-line.

From room to room in the vast house a curiously a.s.sorted throng of the bidden ones worked its way as the jam and crush permitted. A firm believer in the maxim that in numbers there is strength, the hostess had made her invitation-list long and catholic. For the gossips there were the crowded drawing-rooms, for the hungry there were Lucullian tables, and for the sentimentalists there was the conservatory.

It was a mark of the unashamed newness of the Weatherford riches that the conservatory, a gla.s.s-and-iron greenhouse, built out as an extension of one of the drawing-rooms, was called "the herbarium." It was a reproduction, on a generous scale, of a tropical garden. Half-grown palms and banana-trees made a well-ordered jungle of the softly lighted interior; and if, in the gathering of her floral treasures, Mrs.

Weatherford had omitted any precious bit of greenery whose cost would have shed additional l.u.s.tre upon the Weatherford resources, it was because no one had remembered to mention the name of it to her.

Ex-Senator Blount's party of three was fashionably late at the function in Mesa Circle, but in the crush filling the s.p.a.cious drawing-rooms the hostess and her long line of receiving a.s.sistants were still on duty.

Having successfully pa.s.sed the line with her husband and Patricia, little Mrs. Blount looked about her, saw Mr. Richard Gantry, signalled to him with her eyes, and, with the traffic manager for her centre-rush to wedge a way through the crowded rooms, was presently lost to sight--at least from Miss Anners's point of view.