The Candidate: A Political Romance

by Joseph A. Altsheler

In the evening everybody went to the opera-house to hear the candidate, but on the way Hobart said, casually, to Harley: "Old man, I don't think I'll sit in front to-night. I wish you would let me have your notes afterwards." "Of course," replied Harley, as he passed down the aisle and found his chair at the correspondents' table on the stage.

There Harley watched the fine Western audience come into the theatre and find seats, with some noise but no disorder, a noise merely of men calling each other by name, and commenting in advance on what Jimmy Grayson would say. The other correspondents entered one by one—all except Hobart, and took their seats on the stage. Sylvia and Mrs. Grayson were with some ladies in a box. Harley looked for Hobart, and two or three times he saw him near the main entrance of the building. Once he was talking with a brown and longish-haired youth, and Harley, by casual inquiry, learned that it was Metzger, the cowboy. A man not greatly different in appearance, to whom Hobart spoke occasionally, was Thorpe, the tramp miner, and yet another, a tall fellow with a bulging underlip, Harley learned, was Williams, the third witness.

Evidently the witnesses would attend Jimmy Grayson's meeting, which was natural, however, as every body in Grayville was sure to come, and Harley also surmised that Hobart had taken upon himself the task of instructing them as to the methods, the manner, and the greatness of the candidate. He had done such a thing himself, upon occasion, the Western interest in Jimmy Grayson being so great that often appeals were made to the correspondents for information about him more detailed than the newspapers gave.

Harley studied the faces of the three witnesses as attentively as the distance and the light would admit, but they remained near the door, evidently intending to stand there, back to the wall, a plan sometimes adopted by those who may wish to slip out quietly before a speech is finished. Harley, the trained observer, saw that Hobart, without their knowledge, was shepherding them as the shepherd gently makes his sheep converge upon a common spot.

The correspondent could draw no inference from the faces of the three men, which were all of usual Western types, without anything special to distinguish them, and his attention turned to the audience. He had received an intimation that Jimmy Grayson intended to deliver that evening a speech of unusual edge and weight. He would indict the other party in the most direct and forcible manner, pointing out that its sins were moral as well as political, but that a day of reckoning would come, when those who profited by such evil courses must pay the forfeit; it was a part of the law of nature, which was also the law of retribution.

The candidate was a little late, and the opera-house was filled to the last seat, with many people standing in the aisles and about the doors. Harley, glancing again at the rows and rows of faces, saw the three witnesses almost together, and just to the right of the main entrance, where they leaned against the wall, facing the stage. Hobart fluttered about them, holding them in occasional talk, and Harley was just about to look again, and with increasing attention, but at that instant the great audience, with a common impulse and a kind of rushing sound, like the slide of an avalanche, rose to its feet. The candidate, coming from the wings, had just appeared upon the stage, and the welcome was spontaneous and overwhelming. Jimmy Grayson was always a serious man, but Harley noticed that evening, when he first appeared before the footlights, that his face looked tense and eager, as if he felt that a great task which he must assume lay just before him.

He wasted no time, but went at once to the heart of his subject, the crime of a great party, the wicked ways by which it had attained its wicked ends, and from the opening sentence he had his big audience with him, heart and soul.

The indictment was terrible: in a masterly way he summed up the charges and the proof, as a general marshals his forces for battle, and the crowd, so clear were his words and so strong his statements, could see them all marching in unison, like the battalions and brigades, towards the common point, the exposed centre of the enemy. The faces of Sylvia and Mrs. Grayson, in the box, glowed with pride.

Again and again, at the pauses between sentences, the cheers of the audience rose and echoed, and then Harley would glance once more towards the door; there, always, he saw Hobart with the three witnesses, gathered under his wing, as it were, all looking raptly and intently at Jimmy Grayson.

The candidate, by-and-by, seemed to concentrate his attention upon the four men at the door, and spoke directly to them. Harley saw one of the group move as if about to leave, but the hand of Hobart fell upon his arm and he stayed. Harley, too, was conscious presently of an unusual effect having the quality of weirdness. The lights seemed to go down in the whole opera-house, except near the door. Jimmy Grayson and the correspondents were in a semi-darkness, but Hobart and his three new friends beside the door stood in a light that was almost dazzling through contrast. The three witnesses now seemed to be fixed in that spot, and their eyes never wandered from Jimmy Grayson's face.