Loaded Dice Part 19

Gordon looked thoughtful. "So you really think," he said, "that I can afford to lose standing south of the park, and still hope to gain through the city at large."

"The city at large!" cried Doyle, his voice rising in his excitement.

"Why, Mr. Gordon, I don't think you've caught the idea of this yet.

With the way we're going to take hold of this thing, the things that you've done, the things that you'll be doing, the things that you'll be going to do, we'll sweep the country from one end to the other.

This little crowd south of the park you stand so much in awe of aren't even a pin p.r.i.c.k on the map, and that's the solemn truth. For one enemy you'll make among them, through the country, from east to west, from north to south, you'll make a hundred, no, a thousand friends."

Gordon laughed at the younger man's enthusiasm.

"That sounds fine," he a.s.sented good-humoredly, "but when we come right down to the details, just how are we going to make all these friends? What are some of these wonderful things we're going to do?"

Doyle did not give ground for an instant. His eyes, indeed, gleamed more eagerly than ever, with the ardor of a man fairly started on a favorite theme.

"Details," he cried; "don't you worry about them. I'll give them to you in a minute, but they aren't the things to worry over. Here's the big thing; the one we've got to hang up on the wall, and look at a hundred times a day. What are we going to do, what are we going to say, to make the average man the country through, believe in us?

That's the puzzle. We've got to be good enough judges of human nature and things in general to tell that, and the rest's easy. I've just told you my idea; the one big thing is, 'Honesty is the best policy;'

you've got either to be honest, or to have the people think you're honest, and you've got to show at least a fair measure of ability, and after that, you needn't be so careful. You can do lots of things; you can be too radical for a lot of people; you can be too conservative for a lot more; but, whether they agree with you or not, so long as they think you're honest and fairly capable, why, good men, and especially good leaders, are scarce, and they'll stick. You'll find that's so, every time."

Gordon nodded. "Well," he admitted, "I must say I think you're pretty nearly right. Let's a.s.sume that you are, anyway, and then you can go ahead and take up some of these details I want to know about. That's where, as I just said, my ideas are vague."

Doyle grinned cheerfully. "I'll clear 'em up for you," he observed, with confidence. "That part's easy compared with the rest. First off, you've got to have six or eight speeches on different topics. A man, to be in the public eye, has got to be a mighty versatile proposition these days. We go crazy over so many different things we've really got to be a nation of cranks, pretty near, and every crank has to be got at on his specialty, if it's a possible thing. You want a good up-to-date talk on financial questions, and work things to get a chance to spring it at Board of Trade dinners, and that sort of thing; you've been an athlete,--work up a talk on athletics, and you'll find that'll go great almost anywhere; your base-ball crank's a power in the land to-day; he has to be catered to, and written for, and everything else. And then you'll have to mix a little in the political game, too. Not too much, at first, anyway; but still politics is the big thing, after all, and you've got to have a good safe speech ready on the issues of the day; you never can tell,--a speech, a sentence from a speech, even, may make a man famous overnight. Versatility; broad-minded interest in everything; and always ready to see that the rights of the people are looked out for; pretty good, what?"

Gordon smiled. "Do I get time for anything else except speechmaking?"

he asked dryly.

Doyle laughed. "Of course you do," he cried. "The speechmaking part is only a necessary sort of evil. It's got to be done, for advertising, but it's the easiest thing in the world, if we're not careful, to overdo. It's a great thing to have your name in big head-lines about once in so often; shows people you're alive, and makes a lot of 'em jealous, too; but the minute you get the reputation of being willing to shoot off your face anywhere on any old subject at any time, then people begin to laugh at you. So we'll be careful on that end of it, for, after all, the things a man does count a hundred to one over the things he says he's going to do. And that's where I think we'll score."

Gordon gazed at him. "Young man," he said solemnly, "I begin to have a suspicion that by engaging you I'm going to take my life in my hands.

They told me you were a hustler, an enthusiast, and a man of resource, and I begin to believe they understated the case, at that."

Doyle, engrossed in his subject, scarcely seemed to heed Gordon's words. "Look," he continued, "these things we've got to have you do.

Here's the idea about them. We want to pull things off just the way they make a dramatic climax on the stage. You know the old gags; the hero says he wrote the letters, and s.h.i.+elds the wicked brother; the rich and beautiful heroine leaves her happy home to fly with the poor but honest workingman; and the gallery has a mild species of fit. Of course the fellow that writes the play has the advantage over us; he can arrange things to suit himself, and we can't. But we can work up some pretty neat little grandstand plays, just the same. Like this.

When Moriarty was going to run for district-attorney the second time, he paid a poor boy's fine practically out of his own pocket, and let the boy go home to mother. It was just around Christmas time, and that soft and mushy act, which he probably had no business to perform anyway, they claim was worth two or three thousand votes, at the very least. Take another one. You remember Lamson, that tried a good deal the sort of thing you want to do a few years back, and finally failed because he was partly crazy and partly crooked, too. Here's a thing he pulled off, that I heard of from an eye witness. He came driving down to the station at his summer home one fine morning to take the train for the city. There was an old wagon, belonging to a junk peddler that lived in the town, standing near the station, and harnessed to it the weariest, thinnest, most discouraged looking old white horse you ever saw. Lamson eyed the horse a minute; then he got his groom down off his own trap. 'William,' he said, 'unharness that horse at once.' The groom started to do it, and the peddler was going to interfere, when some one in the crowd--probably tipped off, I suppose--grabbed his arm and stopped him. By the time the horse was out of the shafts there was quite a little crowd collected; then Lamson turns to the peddler. 'My man,' he says, 'that horse is going to be taken up to my farm, and turned out to pasture for the rest of his natural life. My groom, in just half an hour, will come back here with a good, strong, bay horse of mine, and you're to harness him up and keep him as a present from me. But if I hear of your not keeping him in the very best of condition, if he isn't fed and watered and cared for in every way just as I've treated him, then, my man, you'll stand a fine chance of going to jail,' and with that, he swung on to the train, while the crowd cheered.

"Well, sir, in some mysterious way that got into the papers and was copied from one end of the country to the other. It had just enough of the dramatic about it to catch people right. The poor old horse going out to the green fields, the man being taught an object lesson. Lamson being so good and generous and kind--it helped him to float a big issue of wildcat mining stock that netted him a couple of millions, and ruined a dozen men outright when it collapsed. So that's the sort of thing we've got to pull off from time to time; you'll be very reticent about it all, when it's called to your attention; you'll be very much displeased that it's got into the papers; you'll have to beg the reporters to excuse you for being unwilling to discuss the matter at all, and it'll be the devil of a good boost for you and any schemes you may be at work on. And you can't deny it, Mr. Gordon, can you?"

Gordon, without at once replying, gazed quizzically at the younger man. "Doyle," he said at last, "I can't for the life of me make up my mind whether if I follow you I'm going to find I'm on the road to fame, or whether I'm only going to succeed in making a most outrageous fool of myself. But on the whole--" he paused deliberately and flicked the ash from his cigar--"on the whole, I believe in you, my boy, and I'm willing to take the chance."

Doyle leaned forward across the table. "Good," he cried, "you won't regret it, Mr. Gordon. With what I know about you, with what I know about myself, with what I know about the general public, the thing's a cinch. You'll be the best advertised man that's walked the earth since the day it was made."

CHAPTER X

ETHEL MASON DECIDES

"It ain't nothing to laugh about," said Harrison savagely, "you have changed, every way. You ain't the same girl you was a month ago. You dress different; you act different; you treat me different; and it's gettin' to be more'n I'm goin' to stand for."

Ethel Mason only laughed again in answer. A month had pa.s.sed since her father's death, an aunt from the lake coming up to the mountain to live with her; but, according to Seneca's gossip, and according to Seneca's general ideas of the fitness of things, this was but a temporary arrangement, to last merely until such time had elapsed as would suit the rough conventions of the county, when Ethel Mason would then become Mrs. Jack Harrison.

According to Jack's ideas, indeed, the proper period had fully elapsed, and on this special evening he had walked over from his cabin with a definite purpose in mind; only to find, as sometimes happens when man proposes, that the girl in the case was in mood capricious, even frivolous, always somehow evading, by turn and twist of the conversation, the subject uppermost in his thoughts. Gradually the little frown between his eyes had grown darker and darker, and finally the girl's failure to be serious had provoked him to open wrath.

"Dear me," mocked the girl, "more'n you're going to stand for. And I wonder what you're going to do about it. Are you boss over me? Haven't I a right to dress as I please, and act as I please, and treat you as I please? I guess I don't understand what you mean by not standing for it?"

The young miner winced. Certainly he was not making the headway he had expected, nor was the conversation coming any nearer the desired end.

Restlessly he fidgeted in his chair, uncrossed his legs, and immediately recrossed them again, swallowed desperately once or twice, and finally plunged headlong into the speech he had lately rehea.r.s.ed so many times to himself.

"Look here, Ethel," he began, his voice sounding strangely in his own ears, "this ain't no way for you to live, up here alone by yourself, an' you ought to make a change mighty quick. If things had broke different, and Jim hadn't gone so sudden, I'd have had plenty to say before this, but of course that went and changed everything. You're owner of the mine now, and whatever Jim might have meant to do for me, as it is, I'm nothin' but your hired man; foreman of your mine, workin' under you."

He paused uncertainly for a moment; then, as the girl made no effort to break the silence, he continued, "You know what I think of you, Ethel; you know I've loved you from the day you first set foot in Seneca; you know I've always meant to ask you to marry me the minute I felt I was well enough fixed to have the right to ask; and now--well, everything's changed; you're rich and I'm poor, but, by G.o.d, Ethel--" and his voice rang vibrant with a strong man's pride--"I'm a man, and when the papers go through I'll be foreman of the mine for the company at the salary they meant to give Jim, and if you'll have me, I swear I'll never touch a cent of your money; I'll work my hands to the bone for you; and I'll look out for you every way I can, as true and faithful as a man could. I mean it, Ethel, every word; I love you, and if you'll marry me, that's all in the world I ask."

Abruptly he stopped speaking. To the last few words the girl had seemed scarcely to be listening, as the faint sound of wheels, the sound she had been expecting, came to her ears. She leaned forward, speaking low and rapidly.

"Jack," she said, "you know how fond I am of you, but we can't have to-night to ourselves. Mr. Gordon's coming over to talk some business about the mine, and I can't very well put him off, for he's going East to-morrow. Come over to-morrow night, Jack, and we'll be all by ourselves then."

The tone, fully as much as the words themselves, seemed entirely to satisfy Harrison. Without objection he rose.

"All right," he answered, "I'll be over to-morrow night, and I'll be looking to hear good news, too."

The girl made no answer. For a moment, Harrison paused at the door, then turned and came swiftly toward her. "Just one kiss, Ethel," he said, "just to show everything's all right between us."

With a little laugh the girl rose and yielded herself to his embrace, nor did Harrison, consumed with pa.s.sion, note that her lips met his without response. Once, twice, thrice, he kissed her upturned lips; then without a word half threw her from him and burst blindly from the room.

Scarcely five minutes later, and Gordon sat in the self-same chair which Harrison had occupied, gazing with approval at the slender figure opposite. Beyond question, the strain of the past few weeks had changed her, and not for the worse. The girl's face was thinner and more thoughtful, and yet far more attractive even than before; the soft, petulant prettiness of the child giving place to the real beauty of the woman.

"You wanted to see me about the mine?" she queried.

Gordon shook his head. "That," he answered, "was only a somewhat clumsy excuse. But I did want to see you very much, and I wanted to see you alone, so I thought the mine would serve."

The girl nodded. "And now?" she asked.

Gordon noted the little smile that played about her lips. In some things, he acknowledged on the instant to himself, no man could ever hope to cope successfully with a woman. And he smiled in answer.

"Yes," he said slowly, "that's it. I want you to marry me to-morrow morning, and start East with me on the express to-morrow afternoon."

Ethel Mason laughed outright. "You're more business-like than the others," she said mockingly, "and yet haven't you forgotten something else? Sometimes, you know, just a word or so, about--love."

Gordon shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't forget it," he said, "I'd have put it in if I'd thought you expected it; glad to, really, because I do it rather well. But what's the use? You know I've got all the feeling for you that s.e.x has for s.e.x; that goes without saying; you've seen it in a hundred ways; and in addition I know that together we can go a hundred times as far as we'll ever get separately. But beyond that--the dying for you, and shedding my heart's blood, and all that--why, these days, that's a little bit out of date."

The girl gazed at him with an expression hard to fathom. "It's not very flattering," she suggested.

Gordon made a little impatient gesture. "Oh, come," he said, "I'm perfectly frank. Why can't you be so, too? Does the woman marry just for love? Doesn't the woman want to feel pa.s.sion first? Or, if she isn't that kind, doesn't she figure what she's getting in return for herself? Dollars and cents, these days. I say again, story-book love's gone by."

The girl shook her head. "You're talking for the city woman," she said, "who's got so civilized she's lost the instinct every woman once had. With a woman, unless she stifles it till it's dead, there's one thing comes ahead of everything else, and that's to be protected, cared for, guarded, to be safe. Perhaps it isn't quite love, but it's pretty nearly the same thing. Somebody stronger to lean on, some one in time of danger who won't fail her. That's what comes first."

Gordon gazed at her with real surprise. Then, without hesitation, he nodded. "You're right," he said, "and that I can give you, too. Will you marry me, Ethel?"

The girl did not answer; the long silence seeming in no way to embarra.s.s her. At last, with a little sigh, she looked up at him.