The Daughter of a Republican Part 15

Dr. Sammie was obliging enough to favor his guest with another hearty laugh. Then he blew two clouds of smoke over his head and watched it curl itself away around the chandelier, for notwithstanding the fact that he knew, or should have known, the effects of nicotine on the human system, this aspiring young member of the medical profession wasted money and nerve force in his slavery to a habit.

"I tell you, my friend," he said, with an air of confidence, "there are a set of people in the world--mind you, I do not say that they are wise--who would tell you that by casting a single vote in a certain way you would stamp yourself as the vile opponent of the Trade's interests 'forevermore, amen!'"

Gilbert Allison paused in his walk and looked into his friend's face a second. A sigh of relief escaped his lips, and immediately he found himself in the midst of a ringing laugh peculiar to one who has broken through the meshes of a dilemma and finds himself free.

"The best speech of your life, Sammie! Thank you!" and hastily donning his hat he left the room without further comment.

Dr. Sammie smiled when the door closed behind his friend. He had an idea whither his way tended.

CHAPTER XI.

AN AWAKENING.

Judge Thorn sat looking over the evening paper.

Lost in her own thoughts, Jean sat in the shadow of a palm idly thrumming a guitar, the soft pliant strains corresponding well with the expression of her face.

A sudden exclamation from her father caused her to look up.

His profile alone was visible to her, but there is an expression in outlines when one understands the subject, and she knew that something of an unusually puzzling or distressing nature engaged him.

Eagerly watching, she played on softly.

Presently the judge crushed the paper into a ball and with another exclamation of disgust threw it across the room where it rolled behind a sc.r.a.p basket under a desk. At sight of so uncommon a procedure Jean went to her father's side.

"What news, father mine? What news?" she asked.

Judge Thorn pointed in the direction of the wadded paper.

"Jean," said he, solemnly, "you remember how proudly I boasted to you when Congress prohibited that blackest disgrace of our army, the liquor-selling canteen. You know how deeply I felt the shame and disgrace upon the whole legal profession when an officer of the cabinet perpetrated the outrage that thwarted the will of the sovereign people.

Jean, girl, in a long life of close contact with the nation's politics I have never met anything that has so deeply tried my loyalty to the party in which I have helped to work out the political problems of almost half a century as did that act that, as a life-long student of law, I recognized as a fraud.

"But I have bolstered my shattered faith in the party with my absolute confidence in the President. I have refused to believe--to this very hour I have refused to believe that the man whose magnificent career I have watched with such interest and of whose stainless honor I have been so proud, would consent to be a party to such an act of anarchy. I have insisted, as you well know, stoutly holding my position though the long delay has made me sick at heart, that when the long routine of official red tape had at length unrolled itself and the case should finally come to the President, justice would be done and the nation's honor vindicated.

"Now, look there!"

And with hands that trembled with suppressed anger the old jurist unfolded the crumpled paper, which Jean had recovered, and pointed out the telegraphic report that told how another high official of the President's official family had disgraced himself, his profession and the administration by the formal declaration that he accepted the historic Griggs infamy as a correct interpretation of law.

"Jean, my child, spare me. Say nothing now, child. I can not bear it.

The faith of a lifetime is shattered. On that page I read, plainly as if it were printed there, that the President is a party to the infamy. The party of my lifelong loyalty stands committed by the act of its chosen leaders to the foulest anarchy that ever disgraced a civilized people.

Had I no thought for temperance, as a citizen and as a lawyer, I could not otherwise than see in this the forerunner of the gravest national disaster."

The young woman listened with an expression in which deepest scorn for the treason done was mingled with tender pity for the stricken man at her side. Sharp, cutting words crowded to her lips for a final argument, but her love for her father checked them.

Just then, in the silence, a step was heard approaching the house. In a twinkling the canteen outrage slipped from the mind of the girl, for the step was one whose echo had made indelible prints on her heart and whose owner she had been many times heartsick to see.

She had hardly time to wonder what brought him at an hour long past the usual time for making calls before he was with them.

When he had been informed by the judge of the latest chapter in the history of the canteen outrage, Mr. Allison laughed heartily.

"What have you been voting for the last ten years, Judge," he asked.

"Not for the canteen," the older man answered warmly.

"I have, and for every other measure conducive to the best interests of the trade--and we have voted the same ticket to a dot."

Finding the judge rather indisposed to talk just then the young man turned to his hostess.

"I am on a quest," he said. "Tell me of some one possessed of enough knowledge of human nature to recommend a course that will square me with an unruly conscience and--a woman."

"My father is a legal light, ask him. He needs diversion now, I think,"

and Jean smiled at sight of his perplexed face.

"His specialty has not been 'man atoms of a great iniquity,'" said Allison with a smile that hardly concealed his anxiety. "Tell me, what would you do if you had been a 'man-atom,' had grown disgusted with the mother ma.s.s and wished to completely sever your connection with it before G.o.d and man?"

"You mean if I were a man? Well, first I would ask the Lord to forgive me for ever having been a 'man-atom.'"

"I have been duly penitent," a.s.sented the questioner.

"Then I would buy some paper--a quant.i.ty of it--and I would write yards and yards of resolutions stating that 'it can never be legalized without sin.'"

"And then?"

"Then I should pray a whole lot--and pursue the even tenor of my way; and if my conscience should a.s.sert itself in the face of all this, I should think it too cranky a conscience to be humored."

"What about the woman?"

Jean smiled.

"Woman? Women," she said, "have notions. To save their lives they cannot see the use in wasting paper and prayers. They would DO something.

Women--some women--believe in standing right with G.o.d and conscience though the heavens fall."

"So do some men," said Allison, gravely.

Jean started slightly. The tone of his voice, the look of his eye, conveyed to her the knowledge that somewhere, somehow, since she had seen him last he had been awakened.

Involuntarily she clasped her hands and in the pa.s.sing glance she gave him Gilbert Allison caught a glimpse of the heaven that orthodox people say follows the resurrection of the just.

Judge Thorn roused himself from the spell that had been cast over him by the news in the crumpled paper.

A second time he took it in his hands and slowly, solemnly crushed it.

"The rank and file, the men whose honesty and virtue have made the party great," he said, "have been defrauded, outraged. My support of the administration and of the party of my political life is forever ended unless it reclaim the right to a decent man's support."