A LIGHT IN THE WEST GOES DOWN
The strenuousness of the fall campaign almost wiped these events from Dick’s mind. Day after day he spent in bringing home his points to the man on the street and in the workshop. Much of it was dreary and monotonous work, but he kept doggedly at it. It seemed his whole life, now. And night after night Mr. Preston, Dick and Ellery tried to put fire into some dingy little hall-full of men. To Percival’s surprise, Norris developed a plain common-sense variety of eloquence that appealed to his audiences quite as much as did Dick’s more fervid eloquence. Ellery invariably spoke straight to some well-known condition. But they hammered and pounded and reasoned and explained; they tried emotion, and logic and everything except bribes to win their ground, until their speeches began to sound automatic to themselves, their voices grew hoarse, and they moved like men in a dream.
“If there were one day more of this,” Dick said to Norris, as they tramped home late on the night before election, and felt a certain restfulness in the November starlight, “I should send down a wheezing nasal phonograph to grind out my speech. I am played out. Everything I say sounds like tommy-rot.”
“It does grow hollow. The worst of it is it robs me of my evenings with Madeline.”
“Um!” said Dick. “When are you to be married?”
“About Christmas. The death of Golden, poor fellow, shoves me up a peg on the editorial staff, and justifies me in facing matrimony. Mr. Elton is good enough to give us a little home. They are a family to hang to, Dick. I feel as though I had ‘belongings’ for the first time since I lost my own father and mother. Madeline and I shall make rather a small beginning, but, as you know, she has not set her heart on luxuries.”
“No,” said Dick slowly. “You are a lucky fellow, Ellery. You’re going to get away ahead of me in the long run. Preston said yesterday that the honors of this campaign were yours. He has been a fine figure-head, and I have hollered loud, but you’ve hollered deepest, and the public knows it. I guess that’s the real reason that you’ve been shoved ahead on the staff. Here’s your boarding-house. Good night, old fellow. To-morrow night our labors will be over.”
“I hope yours will have just begun, Mr. Alderman,” Norris retorted.
The polls closed in uncertainty and for three days speculation filled the papers, and election bets remained unpaid. Then the decks cleared. Mr. Preston was elected mayor by a narrow plurality; and out of the eighteen aldermen, the reform element had carried seven, Dick Percival among them, to victory. The Municipal Club counted its gains and was jubilant, for this meant that, if the city council passed any objectionable measure, their iniquity could be vetoed by the mayor, and the bad men of the city fathers lacked one of the two-thirds majority which they would need to carry their legislation over the executive’s veto.
Dick took Lena and went away for a fortnight’s rest, but came back looking old and dissatisfied.