The Dual Alliance Part 6

She outlined the situation and set the characters up before him. Her hero was to be a young ardent reform candidate for governor, visioning big things which he could do with his power of office. The party leaders let him talk--they winked and said the reform stuff was popular with the people just now, but when they got him to Albany they'd teach him a new song. The chief contributor to his campaign fund was to be a corporation which wanted the governor's veto to a bill infringing their absolutism.

They convinced the young enthusiast of their absolute sympathy with his aims, as well as their own integrity of purpose, and then he is elected and goes to Albany.

She was interrupted by the waiter with the lunch. She directed him to serve them.

"Never mind the lunch--go on with 'The Governor'!" commanded Trent.

"That's enough for this session. Come and eat your brief repast--time is nearly up."

"But what are you going to have him do when he finds out the corporation is rotten?"

While he ate his lunch he plied her with questions and objections. When he had finished, he hesitated at the door.

"Let's talk about the play to-night. I'll come after you. For this relief much thanks; it was both mental and physical."

This play, introduced as a soporific by Bob, proved a real bond. Trent became deeply interested in it, talked it, thought about it, contended fiercely over points. When Bob remarked that it was, after all, her play, and she would do with it as she saw fit, he always defended himself gravely.

He debated the necessity of the love story. It took time which might be used for preachment.

"Oh, you mere man," she exploded, "you can't go on disregarding women in this way. We're here, we've got to be admitted and considered."

"Well, but----"

"The governor's love affair will be of much more interest to an audience than the reform bills he puts through."

"Stupid cattle!"

"Of more interest to the governor, too," she added.

"Heretic! You don't believe that."

"Certainly I do."

"You think that his courting a woman and having a few children is as important as what he can do for the whole State of New York?"

She hesitated a moment, chin in hand.

"I think that in so far as a man is normal he understands the needs of the people. It's normal for a man to marry and have a family. My governor will be a bigger man, if he wins this girl in the play."

"But all that interrupts him, takes his mind off his bigger usefulness."

"The bigger the man, the bigger his usefulness. Don't you see, you've got to feed all a man's needs, or a woman's, to get the highest results?"

"Do you think everybody needs this, this food, as you call it?"

"Do I think every baby needs mother's milk?" she inquired.

"They don't all get it, and they live just the same."

"Yes, but you can never say how much stronger they would have been with it," she smiled.

"Irish sophistry," he remarked, but he found that talk recurring to him. She had phrased his own suspicion.

"I take your advice about my campaign," he said.

"So do I take yours about the play."

"But you fight every step of the way."

"That's the way the Irish show they're grateful," she laughed. But in her heart she was glad that at last her work began to interest him as much as his interested her. Of course this particular problem in the play was his own problem, so his interest was easily aroused. She saw how it rested him to forget entirely about his own work and take up this other man's difficulties.

As the hot weather came upon them they debated the wisdom of moving out of town. Bob's season was running very late, holding on from week to week, so long as the audiences held. Trent was rushed to death. They met only for brief visits at odd hours. Even week-ends were occupied; he caught up with his correspondence on that holiday.

"You look very pale these last few days, Barbara. Do go off to your bungalow, or to mine."

"Will you come, too?"

"Whenever I can. You see how my time is eaten up. But you could motor out at night, and spend your days out in the open. Don't think of me, you go--and be comfortable."

"Do I get on your nerves?"

He hesitated a moment.

"I wonder sometimes what my nerves would have done without you. You are the only tonic they have."

"Thanks. I'll stay until my season closes, then we can decide."

He breathed a sigh which she flattered herself was relief. Two weeks later the theatre closed. The days were hot and dry. Bob was tired, and determined not to be worried about Trent, who was working to the limit of his endurance. When he came into her room the Sunday morning after her closing, she was shocked by him.

"Well, Saint Francis, you look as if you had fasted forty days and forty nights."

"I feel it--I'm all in."

"I am going to leave you to-morrow."

"What?"

"I hate to think of you dying alone--better come along."

"Where?"

"I don't know. I'd like to go to some perfectly new place."

"So would I. Is there such a thing?"

"I'd like to rough it. Camp, skies for roof, all that kind of differentness."

"Where could we go?"