Chapter 5. The Candidate

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_ CHAPTER V. THE CANDIDATE

Leigh awoke the next morning with a sense that some profound change had come into his life. His mood was similar to that of a man on the verge of a trip to foreign lands, who, with all the humdrum existence that had earned it behind him, and all the delights of adventure before, waits only the turn of wind or tide to be away. The comparison is not inept, for he had lived laborious days, postponing deliberately or missing by chance, he scarcely knew which, the experience he now felt to be impending. His time of life was peculiarly favourable for the growth of a master passion, one which, as the old saying has it, might make or mar him. The feverish struggles of early youth had landed him in a position somewhat better than that attained by the majority of his contemporaries. He had reached a breathing-place, where he could pause with a sense of deeds accomplished and of possible rewards in the future.

A realisation of the fact that his circumstances and position fairly justified him in entertaining seriously the thought of love lessened in no way the ideality of that thought. It was not because Felicity Wycliffe was the first attractive woman to come into his life at the right moment that he had fallen in love with her. He told himself that he could have met any other woman in the world at that time with impunity; and, conversely, had he met her years before, when his suit must needs have been hopeless, he would have loved her no less, reckless of worldly considerations. As it was, he did not feel that the situation was conventional, but that the fates were kind. His desire, and the right to strive for its attainment, had synchronised by happy chance.

In the history of a passion, it is doubtful if any mood is more elysian than that which accompanies the waking moments on the morning after the great discovery. Leigh wandered for some time in this imaginary paradise, where everything seemed not only possible, but actually accomplished. His rising, however, shook some of these iridescent colours from his thoughts, until they gradually began to assume the more sober hue of fact, a change like that which he now discovered had come over the outside world.

The storm, which had promised to be wild and spectacular, had somehow miscarried in the night, and instead of pelting showers and tossing branches he saw a pale grey wall of mist against his windows. All excitement had gone from the atmosphere, leaving the dreary certainty that the mist would presently clear only to condense into a slow, persistent, autumn rain. It is conceivable that he would not have exchanged his waking dreams so quickly for more definite thoughts and speculations had his eyes rested upon the blue hills of the western skyline, for he was peculiarly susceptible to the moods of nature. There being now practically no outside world to lure his fancy on, he began to think of his actual situation, and to ask himself what he intended to do with regard to the man in whom Miss Wycliffe had taken such an interest. If her plan appeared quixotic to him now, he feared that on second thoughts it might seem no less so to her, and he resolved to do the thing she desired, and to gain thereby a common interest with her, before she might discourage the attempt. This resolve taken, he went to breakfast at the college commons, and thence to chapel.

Attendance at chapel, he had discovered, was obligatory upon the students and upon those clerical members of the faculty who conducted the services. Personally he was drawn thither by the peculiar flavour which the exercises gave his daily life. It was pleasant to sit alone in his pew against the wall above the tiers of students, to watch the morning sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows, and to listen to the antiphonal singing of a fine old Rouen meditation. Occasionally the services began with a Sapphic ode by Gregory the Great, whose opening line, Ecce iam noctis tenuatur umbra, set to music from the Salisbury Hymnal, resounded through the arches of the chapel like a call to the duties of the day. In the institution from which he had recently come, the jealousy of rival sects had resulted in the complete elimination of all outward forms of worship; and he found the change grateful. There was novelty and charm in a service attended wholly by men, and in the music, as mediaeval in character as the architecture of the Hall itself. Like most of his contemporaries, Leigh could by no means have formulated his religious beliefs, but in all the chaos of modern thought he still retained a certain piety, in the old Roman sense of the word, a loyalty to the traditions of his fathers which he would never have dignified by the name of faith.

He was happily unconscious of the fact that the eyes of many of the students were fixed upon him with keen observation. The self-contained young professor was as much an unknown quantity as any he asked them to find in the recitation-room. They were baffled by the impersonal attitude he had brought from the university, where the individual counted for little, and were inclined to attribute it to a disposition to be severe in his marking.

It chanced that this morning he was free from recitations, but though his time was his own, he had no definite plan with which to fill it. After lingering in his room for some minutes, he descended once more to the walk, finding relief in simulating a purpose by definiteness of action. Instead of following the line of the building northward, he struck out directly across the plateau, past the flagstaff and the great bronze statue of the bishop, and descended the slope along a path that marked the future grand approach.

As he recalled the bishop's elaborate description, he turned and gazed at the towers which loomed ghost-like beyond the ridge. He was now in the midst of the wide field from which he had heard the tinkle of cow-bells on the morning of his arrival. The place was deserted, save for his own presence. The grass was heavy with clinging globules of moisture, and every head of goldenrod seemed encrusted with glimmering pearls. Everywhere there was a curious and oppressive silence, as if the world were deprived not only of light, but also of life. The great towers appeared unsubstantial, carved from blocks of mist only a degree thicker than that which spread about him. He indulged the odd fancy that a rising wind might sweep the whole away, leaving only a bare hilltop beneath the clearing sky.

The clang of a gong from the car barn beyond came like a reminder of his purpose, a summons to make a tentative effort, at least, to achieve it. So he turned resolutely away, leaving academic dreams in the mist behind him.

The street-car barn was perhaps the dreariest spot in Warwick. Its proximity to the college grounds had caused the bishop to view it with disfavour, and already a fine ivy, planted at his suggestion, covered part of the bare brick walls. The bishop would fain have recalled the days that antedated electric roads, before the company had driven this peg at the corner of his academe and stretched therefrom another gleaming thread of its intricate web of trolley lines. Those were the golden days when one drove up to the Hall in a comfortable carriage, when the richer students went horseback riding along the country roads, when the chug, chug of the motor-car and its attendant smell of gasoline were unknown.

Though Leigh was far from sharing the bishop's whimsical indignation at this change, even he felt the chill unloveliness of the long reaches of the barn filled with lifeless cars, where an occasional electric bulb burned like an ignis fatuus in the misty gloom. How much more attractive a railroad roundhouse, with iron monsters on its converging tracks, each with his cyclopean eye of fire, each panting deeply with slow jets of steam!

The place was comparatively deserted. Far back in the barn dim figures moved, and from the workhouse in the rear came the clang of metal. One or two passengers were waiting for the next car, and Leigh spied a conductor coming to his work, finishing the last few puffs of his morning pipe. He was an elderly man, with a sweeping grey moustache and a gait that suggested the sea. Behind him two small boys came racing with a cart.

"Hello!" cried the conductor, stepping aside with agility. "What 's this? A Japanese torpedo boat?" He turned to Leigh genially. "I 'll have to spread a net before my bows. These youngsters take me for a Rooshyan battleship."

It occurred to Leigh that this man might know Emmet well, and when the car came in, he stood on the back platform for the purpose of engaging him in talk that might help him in his project. The heavy morning traffic was over, and as the conductor was comparatively unoccupied, he accepted his passenger's advances readily. In a few minutes Leigh became aware that the man knew who he was.

"That's nothing wonderful," he explained. "I've been on this line for years, and I know everybody that travels this way. I thought you were the new professor at the Hall, the minute I set eyes on you."

In spite of the trim uniform, the cap and buttons, he seemed cast in a larger mould than most men of his kind. He was garrulous without offence, and carried with him some of the atmosphere which only travel gives. He was more fit, Leigh reflected, to command a ship, or to crack the whip over six horses from the seat of a stage-coach, than to pull the bellrope on a Warwick street-car. It was easy enough to engage him in conversation about the coming election, but more difficult to arrive at the point he had in mind. He learned that Emmet had already resigned his place as a conductor to devote his whole time to the work of the campaign, and he began to appreciate the difficulty of meeting him naturally. If he went to his boarding-house, he would doubtless find him away, or not alone. On the whole, considering the shortness of the time and the different worlds in which they moved, he decided that he must make his opportunity, rather than wait for it to come.

"I believe you said that Mr. Emmet boards at your house," he ventured finally. "In that case, you might do me a little favour, if you will. The fact is, that I would like very much to make his acquaintance, but I hesitate to call upon him at random, knowing how busy he is. If he has a free hour some time, I 'd like to meet him."

"You 'd like to meet him?" the conductor asked shrewdly.

"This is n't politics," Leigh explained, aware of the other's guess, "and for that reason I want Mr. Emmet to consult his own convenience. If you 'll give him my card and tell him that we have a common friend who wishes us to know each other, he may think it worth while to drop me a postcard and make an appointment. I 'll come to see him any time he's at liberty."

The conductor stowed the card away in his clothes with a peculiar lurch of his figure that reminded Leigh once more of his first impression.

"Am I right," he asked, "in guessing that you once followed the sea?"

"Twenty years," the man answered; "and though I 've been ashore as many, they still call me captain--Captain Tucker. The salt water puts its stamp on a man for life, don't it? I was reminded of it this morning when I see in the paper that the Rooshyans had fired on the Hull fishermen off the Dogger Banks. What a shame that was, wa'n't it? Why, those fishermen are the most inoffensive fellows in the world. Many a time when I passed through that sea they 'd throw up a fish on our deck by way of a present."

Leigh found the conversation which this reminiscence suggested so full of interest, that he made the complete circuit of the line to pursue it at such intervals as his new acquaintance could spare from his duties. Then, as the steaming rain had begun to fall heavily, he returned to the college. Upon a mental review of his trip, he was inclined to doubt that he would hear from Emmet, but in so doing he forgot to reckon with one of the most powerful of human motives, curiosity. He also failed to consider that his position as a professor at St. George's Hall would give his advances peculiar importance. His only fear was that the captain might not report the message correctly, and he wished he had been able to write a note. A remembrance of the man's geniality reassured him, and he reflected that such men were the most approachable and companionable in the world, always ready for a new acquaintance, and imbued with a certain fundamental humanity which is too often winnowed out from more artificial or more cultivated natures.

He went to his work that evening without much thought of the probable outcome of his morning's effort. Like most college professors, he had a number of unfinished problems on hand, any one of which might require years for its solution. The scholar's work, like the housekeeper's, is never done, and like the housekeeper, too, he can cover up his postponements and neglect for a measurable time without censure. He can fail to set the house of his mind in order; he can sweep the dust of unfinished investigation into obscure nooks and corners; he can make fair the outside of the cup and the platter for cursory inspection. Herein lies his peculiar temptation. The public is prone to take his scientific spirit for granted, and is a long time in opening its eyes. Meanwhile he lives a life of delightful leisure, teaching as many hours a week as a business man labours in a day. Not one man in a hundred is proof against the seduction of those idle hours, during which literature and art and a cultivated society plead for some share of his attention and filch away his will. And, after all, why not? he begins to ask himself. In a commercial age and a country that thinks upon the surface, his profession receives no adequate recognition. Life is short; he had better reap the reward of his laborious and expensive preparation by enjoying those diversions which he of all men is peculiarly fitted to appreciate.

Leigh honestly meant to be the hundredth man, and to make a name for himself. He had found what might be called an easy place in contrast with the drudgery of the large classes he had previously taught. Here was the time, here the problem. The lamp was trimmed, the white sheets of paper were spread out invitingly on his desk. A few logs burned brightly in the fireplace, dispelling the penetrating chill, and the rain beat heavily against the windows, intensifying the distance of the world and his own seclusion.

But now a face hovered between his eyes and the paper on his desk; then the complete figure of the woman he loved came into view, pointing with her small ivory cimeter another and more alluring road. As one may lie and doze awhile in the morning, with a resentful realisation of the impending duties of the day, so now he allowed himself ten minutes of respite, only to discover presently that his allowance had lengthened imperceptibly to an hour.

A knock at the door aroused him, and he shouted an invitation to enter, thinking that Cardington had stepped across the hallway for a chat. His surprise therefore was great when the door swung open and showed an unknown man placing his dripping umbrella in the corner.

"I got your message, professor," the visitor began. Leigh was instantly aware, above everything else, of the extraordinarily alert glance which he flung into the room ahead of him as he entered. This summed up his total first impression.

"Mr. Emmet!" he cried. "Come in. This is really too bad. I 'm afraid Captain Tucker did n't give you the message correctly. I meant to call upon you. He must have represented that I had some urgent business--but I need n't say how I appreciate your coming, especially on such a night."

"All kinds of weather are alike to me," Emmet answered heartily. "I was up in this part of town, and thought I might better drop in and see you than send a postal."

Now that he was seated, Leigh had a better opportunity for observation, and his fuller impression was decidedly favourable. Emmet was apparently about his own age, of medium height, with the shoulders and bearing of an athlete. He possessed no strikingly fine feature, and yet the whole man was handsome. One took no notice of the shape of his nose or the line of his chin, for these points were neither excellent nor the reverse. What gave him a claim to distinction above his fellows was the splendidly abundant vitality that appeared unmistakably in the rich colour of his cheeks, in his very posture, and in the brightness of his reddish-brown eyes. It remained to be seen whether this brightness might indicate intellect as well as health. For the rest, for the quality that betrayed the man, his expression was not to be read at a glance. Its major message seemed to be goodfellowship, but the seeming failed to strengthen into certainty on closer inspection. Here was a man who could think hiddenly, speak guardedly, wait for others to show their cards, and do all this with a disarming appearance of ingenuous friendliness. The atmosphere he radiated as he sat waiting for his host to explain himself was one of tension without nervousness.

Leigh began as most men would have begun under the circumstances. He fostered the subject of the weather for a few minutes longer, and produced a box of cigars.

"I never smoke, or drink either, for that matter," Emmet remarked simply. "A politician is like a barkeeper; he can do his business better if he lets drink alone. As for cigars, try one of mine. They 're part of my stock in trade. I guess this one won't explode and set fire to the place."

Leigh smiled as he lighted the cigar, which he found to be a good one. There was something that made for freedom in the unintentional officiousness with which his guest had thrust aside his hospitality and substituted his own.

"Possibly," he ventured, "you might imagine that I have some plan in mind to hand over to you the vote of the college."

"A deal like that would please the bishop," Emmet returned, with unexpected irony.

"It would please his daughter, at any rate, as I believe you know."

"Yes," Emmet assented, with a nod. "I know what a good friend of mine Miss Wycliffe is."

"We were talking last night," Leigh continued, "about political conditions here in Warwick; and I became very much interested, for municipal reform is one of my hobbies. Wherever I 've lived, I 've always been against the machine, at least to the extent of my vote. Miss Wycliffe told me that you were trying to break up the clique that has ruled Warwick since the war; and when she saw how much she had enlisted my sympathy, she proposed that we become acquainted. That's how I happened to send a message to you by the captain. I did n't know when you were likely to be most at liberty." He paused, and flicked the ashes from his cigar. "I feel guilty to think that I have stolen some of your time, when I have nothing to give you in return but good wishes."

It was impossible to guess whether Emmet were surprised or disappointed at this disclosure of the comparative futility of his visit.

"Good wishes," he said, "are always worth having, and especially from this college, for I tell you there are mighty few men connected with this place that wish me well."

Leigh, remembering the bishop and Cardington, did not doubt the truth of this declaration. He wondered what his colleague would surmise should he come in at that moment. The situation would be complicated, and would no doubt gain in interest, but it was an interest he was content to forego. He was impressed by a hint of passion and resentment in his guest's voice, restrained as by one not entirely sure of his hearer.

In Leigh's attitude there was no affectation. He was genuinely interested in the situation, and he brought to it all a Westerner's lack of class prejudice, all his appreciation of a man for his intrinsic worth, irrespective of college degrees and family and fortune. It was some time before Emmet, feeling his way by little and little, realised the anomaly of a professor in St. George's Hall with Democratic sympathies. Miss Wycliffe's judgment of the two men, her belief that they would get on well together, was entirely justified by the result, which became undoubted before an hour had passed. Emmet was by no means lacking in shrewdness, and, having once become convinced that caution was needless, he talked more freely, until, to his listener's interested observation, he appeared quite another man. He began to show some of that eloquence of which Cardington had spoken, an eloquence that derived its effect not from the artifices of rhetoric, but from a deep conviction and a personal grievance. He spoke in adequate language, that left no doubt of his meaning, and the meaning itself was sufficiently striking to rivet attention. Leigh began to realise why it was that the bishop had thought him dangerous. He forgot to wonder at Emmet's gift of speech in the new point of view that was gradually presented to his mind. He was struck particularly by the fact that St. George's Hall, which seemed to him comparatively insignificant in the educational world, should loom so large in this man's horizon that the towers which stood to him for star-gazing and cloistered study and old tradition should appear to Emmet merely the bulwarks of class privilege and social tyranny.

The fact that Leigh was a stranger in Warwick must have given his guest a peculiar sense of freedom. One has only to recall the confidences which men that meet casually on the train will sometimes repose in each other, to realise how this can be. Under such circumstances, each tells his story to unprejudiced ears, without fear that it will one day be turned to his disadvantage. Nor was this the first time in Leigh's life when he had been surprised to find himself the recipient of another's secrets. The conversation finally became almost a monologue, or, more specifically, a statement of grievances.

"I would n't mind, if the campaign were being conducted on the square," said Emmet, now thoroughly aroused; "but it is n't. It's hard work to talk against money, and they 've got barrels of it. They 're putting it now where it will do the most good. A thousand dollars to this saloon-keeper and another thousand to that, to keep their heelers away from the polls on election day, may do the trick for them, no matter what I say or do or am. And it's college-bred men, professional men, who are doing it. The whole of the wealthy and educated element of Warwick is leagued against me, and bound to beat me by fair means or foul."

"Corruption in politics is common enough everywhere, I 'm afraid," Leigh remarked.

"It's worse here," Emmet declared bitterly; "and here it's a question of class against class as well. Warwick is said to be the wealthiest city of its size in the country, and the offices have been handed around in a certain set ever since the Declaration of Independence. The labour unions are uncommonly strong, too, and if they would only hang together, they could have things their own way. I can depend upon the support of my own crowd, but there are always mutual jealousies to be reckoned with between the various unions. Besides, the labouring man will talk boldly enough at times about equality, but he still has a sneaking admiration for the fellow that lives in a big house, and a corresponding distrust of one of his own kind. Let me give you an illustration of it. The other day, Judge Swigart's manager, Anthony Cobbens, was swaggering around the barn down here, talking with some of the men about his horses and dogs, and poking a little fun at me on the side. Such things have their effect. I heard one of the men say afterward that Cobbens was as friendly with them as if he were n't rich at all. It's a fact that he was flattered by the fellow, even when he saw through him."

There was something rather magnificent in the scorn that blazed in the speaker's eyes as he told this incident, and Leigh felt that, no matter what his faults might be, sycophancy never was and never could be one of them.

"It's all the more pitiful," he remarked, "because he gets nothing for it but the contempt he deserves. But I 've heard of this Cobbens. It seems to me that Miss Wycliffe compared him to a weasel."

Emmet laughed, but almost immediately the intensity of his mood returned. "Cobbens is one of your own graduates," he went on, almost as if he held his listener responsible for that fact. "I knew him as a boy, and played with him on the streets. Perhaps that's the reason he 's my worst enemy to-day. His mother was a dressmaker and a widow, but somehow, by hook and by crook, he managed to work his way through St. George's Hall. Then he became a lawyer and married one of the richest girls in town. What she saw in him, nobody knows, but he's a hypnotist, and no mistake. Now she's dead, and so are her parents, and Cobbens and his mother live in her great house and ride in her carriages. He 's a high roller, right in with the judge and his crew, and there is n't a more corrupt politician in this town. There 's a fine specimen of your college graduate!"

"I hope you don't regard him as a typical college graduate," Leigh protested good-naturedly.

Had he been familiar with the alumni of the Hall, he could have made his argument strong by personal examples unlike Anthony Cobbens, but he made his defence of the college graduate general, answering the well-known objections to him in the well-known way. It was evident that Emmet regarded colleges and universities as identified with entrenched privilege everywhere, and with corruption in local politics particularly. It was inevitable that he should have been influenced in this view by his own concrete experiences. The iron had entered into his soul, and its scar was not to be effaced by an evening's conversation. Not infrequently life will be interpreted to a passionate nature by one or two persons, be they friends or enemies. To Emmet, Cobbens and the bishop loomed much larger in the general scheme of things than their intrinsic importance warranted. It was interesting, having heard the bishop's opinion of Emmet, to get Emmet's view of the bishop, a view that was by no means without a certain reluctant respect and admiration. Leigh felt that his prejudice was impassioned, rather than intellectual, and would yield gradually to a change of circumstances, whereas the bishop would never revise his judgment. He was impressed also by the fact that Miss Wycliffe could never fully appreciate the conditions that had produced the man whose cause she had chosen to champion, or see that he must needs be a radical, if he thought at all, at least in the present stage of his development. Leigh's own experience in life enabled him to look into both camps with comprehension, for he belonged to the comparatively small class of the cultivated poor, and his struggles had been no less intense than those of the man before him, though for different ends. The effect of what he said was conciliatory, but his visitor was merely convinced that this particular college graduate was an exception to the rule.

"You 're not much like the bishop," he remarked. "I don't say that he is n't the real thing in the way of a gentleman, but he 's as proud as the Old Boy himself."

"I don't know how proud the Old Boy may be," Leigh answered, laughing, "or what he has to be proud of, but I 've discovered that Bishop Wycliffe, underneath his apparent frigidity, has one of the kindest hearts in the world."

"We all know that," Emmet assented. "He's one of the most charitable men in town. I 'm bound to say, too, that he does n't know anything about the inside workings of that political ring, but it's because he does n't want to know. He just naturally ranges himself with his own class on such a question."

He had progressed from an alertness that was not free from suspicion to a fervid statement of the political situation, into which the element of his personal feelings had risen more and more to the surface. So naturally did he appear to take the mention of Miss Wycliffe that Leigh had not realised how deeply flattered he must have been by her interest. Now, at last, his very posture showed a sense of being at home, and into the brightness of his steady eyes an expression entered which could best be described as confidential.

"I meant to ask you," he said, "who it was that began to talk about me at the bishop's."

Leigh considered a moment. "We were all discussing politics--I really don't remember."

"And did Miss Wycliffe take my part against the old man?"

The question arrested Leigh's attention, and traversed his consciousness with a positive shock. It was he who was now on guard. He would have repudiated the insinuation that he was jealous, and yet, when a man is in love, jealousy in some sort may extend even to those who cannot possibly be his rivals. As he divined that Emmet was inclined to put too personal an interpretation upon Miss Wycliffe's generosity of feeling, he was concerned to think that she might have misplaced it, that this man might have the presumption to misunderstand her. He became singularly forgetful of what had occurred at the bishop's house, and seemed not to hear a further intimation from Emmet, to the effect that he believed Miss Wycliffe was more than a match for her father. It was now that Emmet discovered a greater possibility of likeness between the bishop and his host than he had suspected so short a time before. His evident curiosity in regard to Miss Wycliffe's real purpose in sending the professor to him remained ungratified, and the necessity which now faced him of retreating from a position in which he had not been met caused him to take his actual departure presently with something of his earlier restraint of manner. They separated, like Glaucus and Diomedes, representatives of different camps, who entertained for each other personally the greatest good-will and respect. It may be, however, that each gave this assurance with mental reservations more or less subconscious.

When Leigh was once more alone, he walked up and down his room restlessly for some time. His first sensation was one of exasperation with Miss Wycliffe for her ill-advised championship of a man who actually seemed to have the assurance to think of her otherwise than as his patroness and good friend from afar. If she suffered embarrassment from it in the future, he reflected, that was only what she might have anticipated. It would be a delicate matter to let her know her mistake. More than that--it would be impossible. Her own instinct and good sense would come to her rescue in time. Meanwhile, there was Emmet. It was delightful to think how she had failed to see his point of view, while sure that she saw it so well. He could not wonder that the man's head was slightly turned, and now that he was gone, Leigh felt no personal resentment on that score. As he reviewed the conversation of the evening, he wondered which were really the more dangerous to the state, Emmet, full of personal grievances and undigested theories, or his opponent, Judge Swigart, the cynical and aristocratic politician. If Emmet desired at present to turn the existing order of things topsy-turvy, it was because such a revolution would place him at the top. The judge, already nearer the top, was naturally a champion of things as they were, which included his position as it was. Though Leigh mused in this sophisticated vein, he nevertheless felt considerable confidence that the younger man, when he became a finished product, would be a better citizen than his political rival. _

Read next: Chapter 6. Lena Harpster

Read previous: Chapter 4. The Bishop's Daughter

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