Following the after-breakfast chat, he walked back to the hotel with his grandfather.
"By-the-way, I didn't lie to you any about Luke's girl, did I?" remarked the old man, casually, and as though the matter had occurred to him in default of better topic. "But she's too advanced in her ideas for a woman. She'll be suffragette-ing it next."
When Harlan began to defend the right of women to interest themselves in the larger affairs, only a twinkle in the Duke's eye betrayed his amusement. If Harlan, in his first quick suspicions, had secretly accused his grandfather of planning a matrimonial campaign in conjunction with his political one, he was now ashamed of those suspicions, for they concerned Madeleine Presson. Having met her, he realized that if he should dare to connect her in his thoughts with anything that his grandfather might be scheming he was making of himself a very presumptuous and silly ass. Now that he had seen her, now when he was spending days of waiting at the State capital and seeing her frequently, he found that Madeleine Presson's personality eliminated possible matchmakers. He felt very humble in her presence—and still ashamed. He had never taken stock of his own deficiencies very particularly. His environment had not prompted it. He had been superior to the men he had ruled. He realized now that the little amenities of life which make for poise and ease must be lived, not simply learned. In taking thought lest he err he found himself proceeding awkwardly. His training in the past had led him to set work and achievement ahead of all the rest. He understood now that those essentials in a life that is to yield the most appear better as superstructure. Mere achievement may attract respect. Erected on culture, it wins still more. Respect feeds only one appetite of ambition. True ambition is hungry for affection and friends, placing lovers ahead of sycophants. And the finer qualities, the softer virtues, attract more surely than mere fame.
These and similar reflections came to young Thornton rather incoherently. It was not that he desired the affection or the admiration of Madeleine Presson. But this young woman represented for him a new phase of the world he was meeting in its broader sense—and he was ambitious with the zest of youth. Often he was obliged to spur himself out of diffidence in her serene presence. At other times she put him at his ease with a tact which made him realize his own shortcomings. And under those circumstances ambition droops like a plant in a drought.
He had time to think during the two weeks he was at the State capital waiting for the big convention. His grandfather made no demands upon him.
Thelismer Thornton had quietly appointed himself the dominant figure in the back room at State headquarters. Under his big hand all the strings met. Even Luke Presson took subordinate post as a lieutenant.
The Duke of Fort Canibas knew that he was in control.
The Hon. David Everett believed that he was. Thornton blandly cultivated that belief in Everett. When Everett talked he listened. When Everett counselled he agreed. He invited all the confidence of that gentleman; he made sure that "the logical candidate" used him as repository of all his political secrets; he was careful to assure himself that Everett's strength was entirely in his hands and under his control—for he intended to shatter that strength so instantly, so thoroughly, that not one fragment would be left to hamper his own plans.
And yet day by day, word by word, hint by hint—his eye on the future loyalty of the Everett faction at the polls—he made the candidate understand that Arba Spinney was a man to be reckoned with—that the convention was not an open-and-shut certainty for the machine. Without realizing how it had come about, Everett found himself discussing "political exigencies." Without knowing that he had been selected as a martyr for his party, he committed himself in lofty sentiments regarding the duty of a man in a crisis. Not that he suspected that his chances were endangered. He felt that he was truly the man of destiny; he was urging other men to forget their slights and their disappointments and rally to him. But the fact remained that—thinking wholly of other men—he had committed himself, and in a way that he could be reminded of when the time came.
The Duke planted that kedge well out, to serve in the stress of weather at the polls in the fall, should Everett and his men be silly enough to confound "party exigency" with treachery.