The Long Lane's Turning

by Hallie Erminie Rives

Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now, first with bewilderment, then with passionate resentment, in a predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed, flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the night—which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation, make its leaders—men whom he had known and respected all his life—laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitiful flâneur and attitudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable defeat at the polls?

As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present. Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted fate far—might he not trust it further? Though the party that had called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign—long after the worst that could befall had come to him—would bring its principles success. He would have done his part!

So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick, insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk.

The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of conferences with the state leaders—for Brent's prophecy had been fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo, nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power, linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and dominated him.

There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot, craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming windows.

Presently he found himself passing a theatre-front and remembered that Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest.

The orchestra was playing—a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the airily-fantastic motif of Dvorak's Humoresque, and the pirouetting music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies embroidered in peacock-feathers—the breath of a life of laughter, of careless amusement, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which the mise en scene created, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats.

With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted irresolutely—its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over Echo's hand.

The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing. "Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't descend to such triviality."

Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act, Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of long-standing.