"And now you believe you can't?--that it is impossible?"

"Not wholly impossible, I suppose. But the 'great game' seems to be everything in this benighted commonwealth, and everybody plays it--my father, his wife, the railroad officials, and the politicians. Surely you wouldn't say that I should have let father put me on the State ticket as a candidate, knowing--as I could not help knowing--that I would be expected to carry out the designs of the machine regardless of right and wrong?"

"Certainly not," was the quick reply, "not if you were convinced that the motive--your father's motive--was unworthy. But if you have been telling me the truth, and all the truth, I should say that you didn't stop to inquire what his motive was."

"What was the use of inquiring?" he demanded moodily. "He is the boss, and he would have used the machine to put me into office as attorney-general. In other words, I should have owed my election, not to the will and selection of the people, but to the will of one man, and that man my nearest kinsman; a man who is, beyond all question of doubt, working hand in glove with all the trickery and double-dealing practised by the corporations. Under such conditions, would it have been possible for me to accept and to administer the office without fear or favor?"

"I don't know why not," she returned. "Notwithstanding your charge--which merely shows how angry you are--your 'nearest kinsman,' as you call him, would have been the last man in the world to interfere.

Wasn't that the very reason he gave you for wanting to put you on the ticket?"

"I know," said Blount, whose mind was beginning to cloud again. "But there are so many other mysteries. We'll say that my father honestly wanted me to stand for the candidacy. But right in the midst of things he conspires with Mr. McVickar to put me into my present unspeakable dilemma."

Her smile was gently reproachful.

"It is my poor opinion, Evan, that you don't half appreciate your father. Worse than that, you don't know him. But that is beside the present mark. What are you going to do?"

"I have already done it. I have wired my resignation to Mr. McVickar, and he will doubtless accept it."

She was looking him fairly in the eyes. "That is the second unwise thing you have done," she remarked. And then: "Evan, there are times when you are sadly in need of a balance-wheel. Don't you know that?"

"I knew it a good while ago. I applied for one once, and it was refused when you said 'No'."

For one who was supposed to be far above and beyond such emotional signallings, she blushed very prettily. Which merely proves that one may be a diplomaed sociologist with a burning zeal for alleviating the miseries of a sodden world, without having parted with the primitive s.e.x impulse.

"I am willing to try to help you now," she said, half hesitating; "if only you won't try to drag me over into the field of sentiment. It was just a bit of boyish rage--fine enough in its way, but foolish--your sending that telegram to Mr. McVickar. Can't you recall it?"

"No; not now."

"Then you must do the next best thing: tell him you have reconsidered."

"But I haven't reconsidered; I can't and won't stand in with the corruption and bribery that is going on all around me!" he objected indignantly.

"Of course you can't; and you mustn't. But the true reformer doesn't drop things and run away. You must stay in and fight--fight harder than you ever have before, Evan. If you can't do it for the sake of the larger right, then you must do it for your own sake. Can't you see the open door before you?"

"I can see and hear and feel when the door is slammed in my face," was the qualifying rejoinder. "How can I go on preaching the gospel of cleanness and fair dealing, when I know that all this crooked work is going on behind my back? What will the people of this State say to me and about me when the crookedness comes to light?"

"Ah!" she said; "that is just where you begin to grow one-sided. You must go on preaching the gospel, but that is only half of the battle.

The other half is to be big enough and strong enough and insistent enough to make the thing itself agree with the gospel. I fully believe you lost your best helper when you refused to join hands with your father. You don't believe that, so we'll let it go. You have gone your own way, choosing what seemed to you to be the better opportunity. Evan, you can't turn back; you've simply _got_ to go on and wring success out of apparent failure!"

Blount drew a deep breath and sat up in his chair. There was no mistaking the light in Patricia's eyes now; the pure flame of which it was the visible radiance is the torch which has kindled the beacon fires on all the heights since the world began.

"If I had only my own people--the railroad people--to knock down and drag out," he was beginning, but she broke in warmly:

"You think you have your father against you, too; I don't believe it, but you do. Very well; then you must compel him, as well as the others.

Be a big man, Evan; be the biggest man in the State until you have proved that one man with a righteous cause is better than ten thousand without it."

Blount got up and stood with his back to the dying embers of the tiny fire, and if he put his hands behind him it was because the pa.s.sionate impulse to break down all the barriers was twitching in every fibre of him.

"Patricia, girl, I wonder if you know what you have done to me? I drove out here this evening utterly discouraged and disheartened; bitter and angry, and ready to throw the whole thing up and go away. You've changed all that--you, you know; just you. Oh, girl, girl! if I could only have you beside me to give me my battle-word!"

She had her slender fingers locked over one knee and her eyes were downcast.

"Now you are tempting me," she said slowly; "and--and it isn't fair. You know my weakness and pa.s.sion to help. You _mustn't_ tempt me, Evan."

What he would have said, with what eager pleadings he would have pressed the advantage gained by his appeal for the larger help, is not to be here set down. For at that moment the bamboo door curtains parted to admit the small house-mistress.

"You two!" she scolded with light-hearted austerity. And then to Evan: "Don't you know that we are keeping country hours here at Wartrace now?

The professor will be up and calling for the car at six o'clock, and it's past midnight. Shame on you! Run away and get your beauty sleep--both of you!"

XIII

THE LIEGEMAN

Evan Blount drove himself back to the capital in the swift roadster the following morning, and there was no opportunity for further confidential speech with Patricia before he left. But with the new day had arisen, full-grown, the determination born in the moment of midnight heart-warming and inspiration. To the best of his ability he would live up to the high standard set for him by the woman he loved, not only preaching the gospel of fair dealing, but doing his utmost to make it effective.

With this high purpose singing its song of exaltation in his veins, he drove on past the garage and made an early call at the office of the traffic manager. Gantry was in the midst of his morning mail-opening, but he pushed the desk-load of papers aside when the door swung inward to admit the early visitor.

"h.e.l.lo, old man! Come back to jar me some more about that telegram?" was his greeting.

Blount shook his head. "No; if you've sent it, well and good. If you haven't, you may pitch it into the waste-basket. I came to talk about something else."

"Good, sound, sensible second thought!" Gantry commented, laughing. Then he took out his pocket-book and pa.s.sed the suppressed telegram across to Blount. "Here it is; you can do the waste-basket act yourself. I couldn't let you commit _hara-kiri_ without at least trying to get the cutting tool out of your hands. What is the other thing you've got on your mind this early in the morning? It must be a nightmare of some sort, by the look in your eyes."

"It may figure as a nightmare to you, d.i.c.k, before we're through with it. I'll make it short. You know what I have been doing--what I supposed I was hired to do--a.s.suring everybody right and left that we were going into this campaign with clean hands?"

"I know," admitted the traffic manager, developing a sudden interest in the figures of the rug at his feet.

"I have been doing this in a business way at my office up-town, in season and out of season, and night before last, at Ophir, I did it publicly. As the campaign progresses, I shall doubtless put myself on record many times to the same effect."

"Good man!" applauded Gantry, striving to drag the talk down to some less portentous alt.i.tude. "I'm sure we need all the whitewashing anybody can give us."

"That is just the point I have come to make," Blount went on gravely.

"It mustn't be merely a coat of whitewash, d.i.c.k; it has got to be the real thing, this time. I began by firing the 'little brothers,' as you called them, but I sha'n't stop at that; I mean to go higher up if I am compelled to. I am here this morning to ask you to give me your word as a gentleman and my friend that you will not, directly or indirectly, do or cause to be done anything that will make me stand forth as a self-convicted liar before the people of this State. I want you to promise me that you will cut out all the deals, all the briberies, all the bargainings, all the--"

"Oh, say; see here!" protested the man under fire; "you've got the wrong pig by the ear, Evan. I'm not the Transcontinental Railway Company!"

"I know you are not. But, to a greater degree than any other official in the local management, you have Mr. McVickar's confidence. If you don't feel competent to handle the thing on your own responsibility, of course it's your privilege to pa.s.s it up to those who have the authority. In that case, I wish to make one point clear: you're the man I'm going to hold up to the rack. I can't afford to spread myself over the entire management, and I don't mean to try. I'm going to look to you, d.i.c.k, for the backing of the clean sheet, and I warn you in all soberness that there must be no blots on it; no compromises; no whipping of the devil around the stump."

"Great Scott!" murmured Gantry. "And you're on the pay-rolls, the same as the rest of us! But candidly, as man to man, Evan, the thing can't be done, you know. We've got to play the game; they'll eat us alive if we don't. You needn't figure in it at all; it was a mistake letting Sim Hathaway get to you, and I said so at the time. But your--er--the powers that be said it had to be that way, and I had to let him go and ball you all up. It sha'n't happen again; I can promise you that much, anyway."

Blount caught quickly at the hesitant pause.

"Who were 'the powers that be' in Hathaway's case, d.i.c.k?" he inquired.