THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT
When the news went forth to the dwellers in the sage-brush hills that Boss David's son had been appointed to fill an important office as a member of the railroad company's legal staff, the first wave of astoundment was swiftly followed by many speculations as to what young Blount's début as a railroad placeman really meant.
The Plainsman, the capital city's principal daily, and the outspoken organ of the people's party, was quick to discover an ulterior motive in Evan Blount's appointment and its acceptance. Blenkinsop, the leader-writer on The Plainsman, took a half-column in which to point out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus and the machine.
The Lost River Miner, on the contrary, was unwilling to believe that the younger Blount was acting in the interest of machine politics in taking an employee's place on the railroad pay-roll. In this editor's comment there were veiled hints of a disagreement between father and son; of differences of opinion which might, later on, lead to a pitched battle. The Capital Daily, however—the stock in which was said to be owned or controlled by local railroad officials—took a different ground, covertly insinuating that nothing for nothing was the accepted rule in politics; that if the railroad company had made a place for the son, it was only a justifiable deduction that the father was not as fiercely inimical to the railroad interests as the opposition press was willing to have a too credulous public believe.
Elsewhere in the State press comment was divided, as the moulders of public opinion happened to read party loss or gain in the appointment of the new legal department head. Some were fair enough to say that young Blount had merely shown good sense in taking the first job that was offered him, following the commendation with the very obvious conclusion that the railroad company's pay check would buy just as much bread in the open market as anybody's else. On the whole, the senator's son was given the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove up.
Of the interview between the father and the son, in which Evan announced his intention of accepting a place under McVickar, nothing was said in the newspapers, for the very good reason that no reporter was present. If the young man who had so summarily taken his future into his own hands was anticipating a storm of disapproval and opposition, he was disappointed. He had seen Mr. McVickar's private car coupled to the east-bound Fast
Mail, and had dined with Patricia and her father, the fourth seat at the table of reunion being vacant because the senator was dining elsewhere. Later in the evening he faced the music in the sitting-room of the private suite, waylaying his father on the Honorable David's return to the hotel.
Planning it out beforehand, Blount had meant to give the ethical reasons which had constrained him to put a conclusive end to the attorney-generalship scheme. But when the crux came, the carefully planned argument side-stepped and he was reduced to the necessity of declaring his purpose baldly. The railroad people had offered him a place, and he had accepted it.
"So McVickar talked you over to his side, did he?" was the boss's gentle comment. "It's all right, son; you're a man grown, and I reckon you know best what you want to do. If it puts us on opposite sides of the political creek, we won't let that roil the water any more than it has to, will we?"
To such a mild-mannered surrender, or apparent surrender, the stirring filial emotions could do no less than to respond heartily.
"We mustn't let it," was the quick reply; but after this the younger man added: "I feel that I ought to make some explanations—they're due to you. I've been knocking about here in the city with my eyes and ears open, and I must confess that the political field has been made to appear decidedly unattractive to me. From all I can learn, the political situation in the State is handled as a purely business proposition; it is a matter of bargain and sale. I couldn't go into anything like that and keep my self-respect."
"No, of course you couldn't, son. So you just took a job where you could earn good, clean money in your profession. I don't blame you a particle."
Blount was vaguely perturbed, and he showed it by absently laying aside the cigar which he had lately lighted and taking a fresh one from the open box on the table. He could not help the feeling that he ought to be reading between the lines in the paternal surrender.
"You think there will be more or less political work in my job with the railroad?" he suggested, determined to get at the submerged facts, if there were any.
"Oh, I don't know; you say McVickar has hired you to do a lawyer's work, and I reckon that is what he will expect you to do, isn't it?"
Blount laid the second cigar aside and crossed the room to readjust a half-opened ventilating transom. Mr. McVickar had not defined the duties of the new counselship very clearly, but there had been a strong inference running through the private-car conference to the effect that the headship of the local legal department would carry with it some political responsibilities. At the moment the newly appointed placeman had been rather glad that such was the case. The vice-president had convinced him of the justice of the railroad company's contention—namely, that the present laws of the
State, if rigidly administered, amounted to a practical confiscation of the company's property. While Mr. McVickar was talking, Blount had hoped that the new office which the vice-president was apparently creating for him would give him a free hand to place the company's point of view fairly before the people of the State, and to do this he knew he would have to enter the campaign in some sort as a political worker. Surely, his father must know this; and he went boldly upon the assumption that his father did know it.
"As I have said, I am to be chief of the legal department on this division, and as such it will be necessary for me to defend my client both in court and out of court," he said finally. "Since I am fairly committed, I shall try to stay on the job."
"Of course you will. You've got to be honest with yourself—and with McVickar. I don't mind telling you, son, that I'm flat-footed on the other side this time, and I had hoped you were going to be. But if you're not, why, that's the end of it. We won't quarrel about it."
Now this was not at all the paternal attitude as the young man had been prefiguring it. He had looked for opposition; finding it, he would have found it possible to say some of the things which were crying to be said and which still remained unsaid. But there was absolutely no loophole through which he could force the attack. If his late decision had been of no more importance than the breaking of a dinner engagement, his father could scarcely have dismissed it with less apparent concern. Balked and practically talked to a standstill in the business matter, Blount switched to other things.
"I missed you to-night at dinner," he said, beginning on the new tack. "Two of my Cambridge friends are here, and I wanted you to meet them."
The Honorable David looked up quickly.
"The fossil-digging professor and his daughter?" he queried shrewdly.
"Yes; how did you know? They came in on the Overland, and I find that the professor has made the long journey on the strength of what I once told him about the megatheriums and things. I guess it's up to me to make good in some way."
"Don't you worry a minute about that, Evan, boy," was the instant rejoinder. "Honoria's coming in from Wartrace to-morrow, and if you'll put us next, we'll take care of your friends—mighty good care of 'em." Then, almost wistfully Blount thought: "You won't mind letting Honoria do that much for you, will you, son?"
"I'd be a cad if I did. And you've taken a load off of my shoulders, I can assure you. If you can persuade Mrs. Blount into it, I'll arrange for a little dinner of five to-morrow evening in the café where we can all get together. You'll like the professor, I know; and I hope you're going to like Patricia. She's New England, and at first you may think she's a bit chilly. But really she isn't anything of the kind."
The Honorable Senator got up and strolled to the window.
"You'd better go to bed, son," he advised. "It's getting to be mighty late, and you'll want to be surging around some with these friends of yours to-morrow. And, before I forget it, the big car is in Heffelfinger's garage. Order it out after breakfast and show the Cambridge folks a good time."
It was late the following evening, several hours after the informal little dinner for five in the Inter-Mountain café, when the senator had himself lifted from the lobby to the private-suite floor and made his way to the door of his own apartments. As was her custom when they were together, his wife was waiting up for him.
"Did you find out anything more?" she asked, without looking up from the tiny embroidery frame which was her leisure-filling companion at home or elsewhere.
"Not enough to hurt anything. McVickar has fixed things to suit himself. The boy's law-office job is to be pretty largely nominal; a sort of go-as-you-please and do-as-you-like proposition on the side, with Ackerton to do all the sure-enough court work and legal drudgery. Since Ackerton is a pretty clean fellow, and Evan stands up so straight that he leans over backward, this lay-out means that the bribing isn't going to be done by the legal department in the coming campaign."
"Is that all?"
"All but one little thing. Evan's job is to be more or less associated with the traffic department, and the word has been passed to Gantry and his crowd to see to it that the boy doesn't get to know too much."
"But they can't keep him from finding out about the underground work!" protested the small one.
"If it's an order from headquarters, they're going to try mighty hard. Evan wants to believe that everything is on the high moral plane, and when a man wants to believe a thing it isn't so awfully hard to fool him. It'll be a winning card for them if they can send the boy out to talk convincingly about the cleanness of the company's campaign. That sort of talk, handed out as Evan can hand it, if he is convinced of the truth of what he is saying, will capture the honest voter every time. I tell you, little woman, there's a thing we politicians are constantly losing sight of: that down at the bedrock bottom the American voter—'the man in the street,' as the newspapers call him—is a fair man and an honest man. Speaking broadly, you couldn't buy him with a clear title to a quarter-section in Paradise."
This little eulogy upon the American voter appeared to be wasted upon the small person in the wicker rocking-chair. "We must get him back," she remarked, referring, not to the American voter, but to the senator's son. "Have you thought of any plan?"
"No."
She smiled up at him sweetly. "You are like the good doctor who cannot prescribe for the members of his own family. If he were anybody else's son, you would know exactly what to do."
"Perhaps I should."
"I have a plan," she went on quietly, bending again over her embroidery. "He may have to take a regular course of treatment, and it may make him very ill; would you mind that?"
David Blount leaned back in his chair and regarded her through half-closed eyelids. "You're a wonder, little woman," he said; and then: "I don't want to see the boy suffer any more than he has to."
"Neither do I," was the swift agreement. Then, with no apparent relevance: "What do you think of Miss Anners?"
The senator sat up at the question, with the slow smile wrinkling humorously at the corners of his eyes.
"I haven't thought much about her yet. She's the kind that won't let you get near enough in a single sitting to think much about her, isn't she?"
"She is a young woman with an exceedingly bright mind and a very high purpose," was the little lady's summing-up of Patricia. "But she isn't altogether a Boston iceberg. She thinks she is irrevocably in love with her chosen career; but, really, I believe she is very much in love with Evan. If we could manage to win her over to our side as an active ally—"
This time the senator's smile broadened into a laugh.
"You are away yonder out of my depth now," he chuckled. "Does your course of treatment for the boy include large doses of the young woman, administered frequently?"
"Oh, no," was the instant reply. "I was only wondering if it wouldn't be well to enroll her—enlist her sympathies, you know."
"Why not?—if you think best? You're the fine-haired little wire-puller, and it's all in your hands."
"Will you give me carte-blanche to do as I please?" asked the small plotter.
"Sure!" said the Honorable David heartily, adding: "You can always outfigure me, two to one, when it comes to the real thing. You've made a fine art of it, Honoria, and I'll turn the steering-wheel over to you any day in the week."
When she looked up she was smiling in the way which had made Evan Blount wonder, in that midnight meeting at Wartrace Hall, how she could look so young and yet be so wise.
"You deal with people in the mass, David, and no one living can do it better. I am like most women, I think: I deal with the individual. That is all the difference. When do the Annerses go out to the fossil-beds?"
"I don't know; any time when you will invite them to make Wartrace their headquarters, I reckon."
"Then I think it will be to-morrow," decided the confident mistress of policies. "It won't do to let Evan see too much of Patricia until after his course of treatment is well under way. Shall we make it to-morrow? And will you telephone Dawkins to bring down the biggest car? I have a notion wandering around in my head somewhere that Miss Patricia Anners will stand a little judicious impressing. She is exceedingly democratic, you know—in theory."