I
IT was on that morning that Gage Flandon made his last appeal to his wife not to let herself be named as a candidate for Chicago at the State Convention. He had been somewhat grim since the district convention. As Margaret had realized would happen, certain men had approached him, thinking to please him by sounding the rumor about sending his wife to the National Convention. Many of them felt and Gage knew they felt that he had started, or arranged to have started, a rumor that his wife would be a candidate and that he meant to capitalize the entrance of women into politics by placing his own wife at the head of the woman’s group in the State. It was a natural enough conclusion and its very naturalness made Gage burn with a slow, violent anger that was becoming an obsession. It began of course with the revolt against that suspicion of baseness that he could capitalize the position of his wife—that he could use a relation, which was to him so sacred, to strengthen his own position. Yet, when these men came with their flattery he could not cry down Helen without seeming to insult her. There was only one way, he saw, and that was for Helen herself to withdraw. If she did not, it was clear that she would be sent.
So he had besought and seemed to always beseech her with the wrong arguments. He knew he had said trite things, things about women staying out of politics, the unsuitability of her nature for such things, but he had felt their triteness infused with such painful conviction in his own mind that it continually amazed him to see how little response he awoke in her.
She had said to him, “You exaggerate it so, Gage. Why make such a mountain out of a molehole? I’m not going to neglect you or the children. I’ll probably not be elected anyhow. But why not regard it as a privilege and an honor and let me try?”
“But why do you want to try?”
She looked as if she too were trying vainly to make him understand.
“I’d like to do something myself, Gage—something as myself.”
“You were content without politics two months ago.”
“I’ve changed—why begrudge me my enthusiasm?”
“Because I can’t bear to see you a waster like the rest of the women. Because you’re so different. Everything about you is true and sound, dear, and when you start deliberately using yourself for political effect, don’t you see how you become untrue? There’s nothing in it, I tell you. The whole thing’s cut and dried. There’s no big issue. If the women want to send some one, let them choose some other figurehead!”