The respect with which he was treated by other men—men of consequence! The serious attention the papers gave his utterances! The huge piles of letters praising his courage, his logic, his freedom from crude abuse, his clearness of statement—letters from all parts of the State, from all parts of the Union! Those letters made his heart burn with new energy and high hope. He had indeed guessed right. The people—his people—the long-suffering masses were certainly on the alert for a leader. Yes, he was in the way to accomplish something of what he had resolved when he left the farm, because he was intelligent enough to discover that the big monopolies headed by the railway trusts had reduced the nominally independent farmer to the slavery of the poorly paid wage-earner of the cities and towns. He was in the way to be of use in the gigantic task of restoring democracy and opportunity to the republic.
This man, planted upon this rock-founded confidence, could not but show in his exterior the external change. But where the small fellow reveals his fleeting or trivial success in an access of swagger, the large, simple nature reveals it in the deeper absorption in the career, the lessened consciousness of self. And as George Helm’s self-consciousness had been the sole cause of his awkwardness and the chief cause of his extreme plainness, the change was most striking. He was no longer awkward. His long, spare figure revealed—as it always had on the platform after the first embarrassed moment—the innate grace that is in every natural, self-conscious creature. As for the homeliness—how can a strong face be homely when in place of the unattractive expression of shy greenness there come the dignity and beauty of a large intelligence fittingly occupied? “There goes a man who amounts to something,” they now said about Helm. And when you hear that said of a man, you may be sure he will not turn to you a homely face.
Senator Sayler had come on from Washington and had taken a house in the suburbs for the session because of the importance of the curious program he was putting through. He went to hear Helm speak against one of the grab bills his refractory clients were insisting upon. Sayler, as you knew, was a cynic; and when you find cynicism in a man, you may be sure you are at the cover for a lively and annoying secret self-contempt. He listened with his most cynical smile to the simple, sensible eloquence of the young farmer-looking lawyer. But, as he listened, he was saying to himself, “We must attack this fellow, but it will not be easy.” Afterward he had Hazelrigg bring Helm to the Lieutenant Governor’s private room and talked with him for an hour. He would have talked much longer, had there not been a gentle knock at the door.
He disregarded it. The door opened and in came his wife—and Eleanor Clearwater. Mrs. Sayler—the trained wife of the public man—smiled engagingly at Helm and said to her husband:
“We simply can’t wait any longer, Harvey. We were wondering how you dared keep us waiting. But if we had known whom you had with you——” She put out her hand to Helm. “That was a splendid speech, Mr. Helm. I don’t know you, but it made me feel as if I did. I detest politics but not the kind you talk.”
Helm lapsed toward, but not into, his former awkwardness. He might have done better had not Eleanor been standing there, not all dignity and ice, but all merry smiles and impatience to speak.
“How do you do, Mr. Helm?” said she, as soon as Mrs. Sayler finished. “Father and I came to stop with Mrs. Sayler only this morning—and here you are. Really, it’s—it’s—what shall I call it—our always running across each other?”
Helm had no woman-talk. He stood—not too awkwardly—and silently gazed at the lovely and radiant young lady so unaccountably transformed from her former cold reserve. And, as the astute Sayler did not fail to note, he looked at her hungrily. Even Carlotta Sayler, the self-absorbed, saw in Helm’s tell-tale face that there was “something or other between those two—though how could it possibly be!”
“I was about to ask Mr. Helm to dine with us to-morrow night,” said Sayler.
“Yes, do,” cried Carlotta, who never missed a cue. “It’s to be early and most informal—no evening clothes or such nonsense. Won’t it be delightful, Eleanor? Your father will be so pleased to meet one of our coming men.”