The Ramrodders Part 51

"I'm going to find her," he went on. "You understand me, don't you, Madeleine?"

"I understand. But you shall not go to find her"--she smiled into his startled eyes--"for she is hidden in my room, waiting to tell me more--waiting until I tell her something that will take the burden from her heart. I had been listening to her when my father came in with his story; I had not made my confession. It would have comforted her--it will comfort her, for I can tell her truthfully I have not yet met the man I can love, Harlan--you were not the one!" She left with him the consolation of a smile and hastened away. She did not even reproach him because of his affair with Linton.

He stood waiting at the door. He heard the steps on the stairs. He was ready to clasp her.

But Madeleine Presson came in alone. "The girl has gone, Harlan. The maid said she ran away after I left her. I was a fool. I dropped your card!"

He stood dumb and motionless.

"Gone, believing that!" he gasped.

She shook him. "But you can find her. Remember that she is young. She believed gossip too quickly. You must find her. Hurry! She will only have to see your eyes to know that they all lied."

He rushed to the door.

"Bring her to me," cried the girl. "I'll know how to help you."

At the railroad station he was told that the special trains had gone with the visitors who were not in town for the ball.

He did not even know the name of the school from which she had come.

At the State House he at last found some one who had seen and known the group--an attache of the State educational department. There was no train that way until midnight. He took it. How he pa.s.sed the time of waiting he never knew. He was at the doors of the inst.i.tution as early as decency permitted. He did not wish to compromise her.

He was a.s.sured in a manner that left no room for doubt that Miss Kavanagh had not returned with the others. They were much worried and had notified her father.

Harlan sent an appealing telegram to him, daring even to solicit that ogre of the North. But no word came to him.

He wired orders to his caretaker at "The Barracks" to investigate at that end, and returned to the State capital, distracted, baffled, not knowing what step to take next. The session had not closed for the day when he arrived at the State House.

Men in the lobby stared at him as he pa.s.sed. It was evident that tongues had been busy with his affairs. His grandfather, striding up and down, tried to intercept him, but he kept on to his seat. All the eyes of the House were on him. Word of the "Thornton Bill" had gone abroad. Now, in spite of his mental distress, he remembered his duty.

When he rose to ask the privilege of introducing a bill, interrupting the order of business, he antic.i.p.ated objection.

No objection was made.

The opposition did not propose to waste effort on pettifogging preliminaries.

The bill went in and on its way--and that night the capital buzzed with the discussion of it.

Harlan Thornton spent half the night at the telegraph-office, his mind intent on something far from prospective legislation.

But no word came to comfort him--no clew that he could pursue.

Days grew into weeks. He did not attempt search in person. It would have been vague wandering about the country. He remained to hold up the hands of Governor Waymouth, finding relish for fight in the rancor that settled within him.

He and Linton silently faced the gossip that beat about them in regard to their encounter--and kept away from each other. Theirs was a balanced account.

And Madeleine Presson somewhat ostentatiously permitted the attentions of the young Secretary of State!

CHAPTER XXVII

THE EVERLASTING PROBLEM

Day after day, during that session, an old man sat in the executive chamber of the State House. His face grew as white as his hair. There were deeper lines in his countenance than mere old age had tooled across the skin. One after the other the men of the two branches of the legislature came before him at his summons. He did not entreat of them.

There was no more of that suave political diplomacy in the executive chamber, after the fashion of the old days of easy rule. This Governor declared himself to be the mouthpiece of the people of his State. He showed to the legislators their path toward absolute honesty. He ordered them to follow it. One or two of the first ones who were called upon the carpet dared to refuse--attempted to evade. He promptly issued statements to the press, holding those men up to the people of their State as traders and tricksters. Voters had always understood that trades and tricks were in progress in the legislature, and had never bothered their heads much about the matter. But this incisive showing up of individuals was new and startling and effective. It afforded no opportunity for the specious reasoning along mere political lines which had excused dishonesty in the past.

Protests poured in on the would-be rebels. Their experience warned the others. The State was in a mood to try reform. The reform was promised on the usual broad lines. Individuals did not stop to reflect what effect the suggested legislation would have on their own interests.

Every man was after "the other fellow."

"I'll keep you here until you pa.s.s these laws," stated the grim old man in the executive chamber, "even if you stay here till snow flies again."

Legislators are paid by the session, not by the week. The prospect of spending the summer fighting an obstinate old man, with the people behind him, was not alluring when personal expenses were considered.

Even lobbyists and corporations and political considerations fail to hold sway under such conditions.

The Governor's bills went through.

"They've abolished fees," drawled Thelismer Thornton, one day in the lobby, "to get square with Constable Emerson Pike up my way. Em went down to replevin some hens, and after he'd chased each hen a dozen times around the barn he sat down and charged up mileage to the county. The rest of this legislation is on the same basis. Here's a legislature that's like Dave Darrington's hogs. After old Dave lost his voice and couldn't holler to the hogs, he used to rap on the trough with his cane at feeding-time. Then a woodp.e.c.k.e.r made his home in the pig-pen and the hogs went crazy. Vard Waymouth is all bill! I'd reckoned I'd go home.

But I guess I'll stay and see just how far dam foolishness can go!"

So he patrolled the lobby, puffing everlastingly at his cigar, watching the activity of Harlan with a disgust that he did not try to conceal and occasionally flinging a sour remark at that devoted young man.

"A calf leaving the cow to chase a steer," he growled. "He'll know better when it comes supper-time!"

One day a man halted him. "You may be interested in what's going on in the House, just now, Mr. Thornton. Your grandson is making a speech."

"Then he _has_ lost his mind!" snapped the Duke. "I'd only suspected it up to now!"

But when he edged in at the door he discovered that his grandson was not making the usual spectacle which the untried orator affords. The zeal which had driven him into the fight was supporting him as he faced the men who were his a.s.sociates. He stood at his desk, pale--but unfaltering. He was talking to them, man to man.

"It has met me to my face, it has followed at my back through all these weeks," he was saying. "I'm accused of helping to wreck my party. You know better than that, gentlemen. You know who did the wrecking. It has been going on for years. And we have been asked to hide the retreat of the wreckers. I refuse to allow those men who have wrecked our party to call themselves the true prophets and summon us to follow them. Our party is not simply the men who hold office for their personal gain. If making them honest or putting them out is destroying the party, then let's destroy and rebuild.

"We need to rebuild.

"Up in our woods it's dangerous to leave slash on the ground after a winter's cutting. The politicians have left a lot of slash in this State. The fire has got into it. It is burning up the old dead branches and tops, but it is hurting the standing timber, too--I understand that.

Why not see to it after this that the men who leave political slash shall not be allowed to operate!

"It's a bad litter, gentlemen, that has been left around the roots of our prohibitory law. I have introduced the bill that's now under consideration. It has nothing to do with the principle of prohibition--the theory of that was threshed out in these chambers before I was born. But isn't it time, gentlemen, to have a test of the _practice_ of prohibition?

"I know little about politics. I am merely one of the hundreds of young men in this State who stand on the outside of politics and want the opportunity to be honest when we vote. We appeal to the older men of this State to drop the game for a little while and give us a chance to start fair. The biggest corporation in this State is the State itself, and I like to think that all of us, young or old, are partners or stockholders. I've been brought up in business. We know what we'd all do in straight business. Why can't we do it in State affairs? Too many influences surround a legislature to make its work really deliberative.

After the heat and arguments of this session have died away we ought to have a meeting on a real business basis.

"Let the churches, the grange, the radicals, the liberals, the hotel men, the liquor men, all send their delegates. Let that a.s.semblage take thought on a plan which will lift out of politics a question that doesn't belong there. Let's end civil war on this question. Give the young men some other picture as their eyes open on the politics of this State."

It was the earnest, ingenuous appeal of one crying out of the wilderness of human uncertainty--of one who saw the evils in those attempts of men to curb greed and appet.i.te--of one earnestly seeking a remedy, but not clearly understanding that so long as the world shall endure, with men and women weak and human, some problems must remain unsettled.