CHAPTER XXXVII
THE CALL
In the big living-room, now flooded with the mountain sunshine that streamed in through the open door, Richard Brent leaned to knock the ashes from his pipe against the end of the hewn bench on which he sat. Then he looked up at Sevier standing in front of the empty fire-place.
"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it? How's that for a chance, eh?"
Sevier nodded. One hand was tugging at his dark beard, the other was clasping and unclasping nervously behind him. "The new organisation can't win, of course," he answered quietly. "Politically speaking it's too young, and it lacks leaders. But it can make a strong showing, I should think."
Brent laughed as he explored his capacious tobacco-pouch. "Especially if the platform is built wide enough." He pointed to a newspaper he had brought with him, that lay beside him. "That editorial of mine hits the nail squarely on the head. There is one issue and only one which will draw in all the elements opposed to the party that now rules—that is the liquor issue. That must go in!"
A quick gleam crossed Harry's face. None but he knew what liquor had done for him, no eye but his might see the pitiful trail it had dragged across his burnished life!
Brent laughed again. "It's strange that they don't see it!" he said. "Can't they deduce anything. Look at the growth of similar movements in other states. Do they really believe that any genuine good-government party can sit in the same saddle with John Barleycorn? That's why the thing has always failed in the past—compromise, temporise, fusion. Fiddlesticks! why can't they take the bull by the horns? They would, too, if there was some one who would crystallise the thing in their minds." He shot a keen side-glance at Harry. "When you made that Civic Club speech last year," he said shrewdly, "I picked you for the Peter the Hermit of the new Gospel. And then, confound it! you bury yourself in the wilds up here, while every one thinks you've gone abroad, and I have to pack my rheumatic bones twenty miles on an infernal burro, to dig you out of your shell!"
Harry's eyes had been absently fixed on the spread-out newspaper. Something in the other's words, in his manner, caught him. A colour came to his cheeks. "Dig me out of my shell?" he repeated. "What do you mean by that?"
Brent looked at him intently for a long second. During the past year he, like others, had wondered at his friend's long absence. At first he had put it down to natural need of vacation and the other's failure to communicate with his friends had seemed significant of no more than the mild eccentricity which had always flavoured his actions. Only later the thought had come to him that Harry's absence might be due to an affair of the heart. This to him had pointed unerringly to Echo Allen, and conviction had leaped to a certainty on the day when he had seen her reception of Jubilee Jim's news of Harry's whereabouts. Had it been a lovers' quarrel? he had wondered. If so, and she had sent him away, she had repented of it, that was manifest. The news of Harry's whereabouts, in his mind, had dovetailed with his knowledge of the political situation and its need of leadership, and the second day thereafter had found him on horseback, following the difficult trail to Harry's mountain eyrie. He had come to grips now with his errand. He sat suddenly upright.
"Sevier," he said, "you've got to do it. You are the only one who can. You've got to speak at that convention on the seventeenth and nail that plank into the platform hard and fast!"
Harry made a quick gesture, then left the fireplace and began to stride up and down the room. During that silent, insistent gaze it had come to him with a strange glow of excitement what Brent intended to say. His heart was beating quickly, and a host of conflicting emotions were rioting in his mind. The allusion to his speech of a year ago had brought a throb of the old ecstasy of power—that power which he knew was his now, and in greater degree. If he only might use it for this good purpose!
Brent, looking at him, uncrossed his long legs with a smile. "I agree," he said, "that we may not be able to win this time, but it will start it off right, and it will be a good fight. I'll bet you what you like that within a week—if that plank is rightly hammered in—the Good-Government Clubs all over the State will be wiring allegiance!"
He got up, his lank, nervous figure braced with interest.
"And what if we do lose this Governorship? It will be the first real nail in John Barleycorn's coffin in this State!"
Sevier had sat down on the blanketed couch. His gaze went past the eager face before him and lingered on the sweet, warm world outside, with all its suggestions of new growth and virile strength. But what he really saw was very far away. Was he a poor coward then, to shrink from a woman's smile, a woman's eyes? He put his face in his hands. Possibilities were beckoning to him, dead things springing up alive, old longings, ambitions, appetences plucking at him.
For a time Brent did not speak. He had turned away and stood in the sunny doorway, looking down the trail. At length he faced about.
"Sevier," he said quickly. "What do you say? Will you do it?"
Harry looked up. The colour had faded from his face, but it was alight with a new energy and resolution. The call had found him, and at that moment the harrowing dread—the problem itself, which had shown so imminent—seemed to have grown dim, to have drawn into the far distance.
"Yes," he answered slowly, "yes, Brent. I will come."