She tried to make a joke of it but Langley did not help her.
“Miss Grant is over-conscientious,” he said, half to Wentworth, and then wholly to her, “I am sorry you hurried away from your party.”
“It wasn’t a party,” said Horatia. “I was at my sister’s house for dinner. And please put me to work at something. I know I look silly but I’ll keep my coat on.”
Her self-consciousness had gone and the situation was easy and real again. But the two men who were talking to her looked at each other for the space of a second measuringly. Then with a few casual inquiries as to the progress of the election Wentworth went out.
“You can take the ’phone in my room,” said Langley. “Tell people who call that returns are only beginning to come in but that Johnson runs second on a count of nine precincts. Emphasize Johnson. I’ll get the news on the other wire and pass it on to you.”
She nodded understandingly and holding her cloak over her shoulders passed through the crowded room with her perfectly friendly disarming smile. It was significant that no one said anything about her or even exchanged a glance or smile after she had passed. Langley, looking on the alert to check any such demonstration, seemed satisfied.
The smoke thickened and the telephone was incessant. Horatia answered innumerable inquiries—of men who gave their names as if it gave them a first right to information—of women who seemed to try to make their anxious voices anonymous. It was amazing how many people cared. And didn’t care! She remembered the nonchalance of the people at Maud’s dinner party—the perfect courtesy of the young ex-aviator towards the triviality of the local election. What did he know or care about the future of The Journal or Jim Langley? What did she know—why did she care? She mechanically kept on, answering questions—listening to the voices of the men in the other room, now excited, now indifferent, now voicing an analysis of this or that chance. The smoke was even thicker. It hung like a cloud over the desks and tables—it created an atmosphere of masculinity. Women can not smoke in such a way. It seemed as if the smoke were a cloud of hopes and chances and ideals in which these men were floating.
Things went well—then badly. Horatia’s philosophy melted away. Nothing mattered except success, Johnson’s success. She felt a strange exhilaration at the fact that they didn’t know—couldn’t know yet—and that there might be whole precincts which would go exclusively for Johnson. The men at the tables labelling the 39th as Catholic—“nothing there”—“maybe 40 in the 27th,” irritated her. Why did they frighten themselves with all these calculations?
She looked up at Langley, who had come in with a report.
“He’s got to win—he’s gone so far. Things couldn’t be so contrary as to let him lose now.”