“All right,” he said. “I don’t take any stock in this awakening of conscience business. You think Bicknell can serve you better than I can. Very well. We will see.”
Suddenly, and apparently without volition, Crane’s right arm shot out and his open palm struck Sanders’s check. The Governor, as quick as thought, hit back. He was a brute, but not a coward. Then both men came to their senses, and, hating each other worse than ever, each was ashamed of his violence.
The Governor, taking out his handkerchief, coolly wiped the blood from his nose, and said:
“I don’t care to engage in a fist fight with you. We can settle all our quarrels when the Legislature meets. You will need all your courage then.”
When Crane returned to Washington, he went straight to Senator Bicknell and told him all.
“All right,” replied the Senator, as Governor Sanders had said. “This is my fight now,” and straightway the Senator took the midnight train for the State capital to pull off his coat and do yeoman’s work for Crane, and incidentally for himself.
The month of December was bright and beautiful all the way through, and the sunshine lasted into January. Thorndyke thought he had not been so nearly happy for a long time. He saw Constance often, and she was beautifully kind to him. He scarcely went into society at all, and had the hardihood to decline an invitation to one of the Secretary of State’s small dinners on the comprehensive excuse of “a previous engagement,” which Mrs. Hill-Smith, who had invited him, did not believe in the least; and when she had plaintively mentioned the names of various English, French, Russian, Austrian, and German diplomats who were to be present, Thorndyke had replied in a manner which mightily discomposed Mrs. Hill-Smith:
“Oh, then, you won’t miss a stray American or two!”
If Mrs. Hill-Smith had had her way, she would have missed every American invited.
Thorndyke saw much of the Cranes and of the children, who showered their favour upon him. He could not but be struck by the new note in Crane—something subdued, yet full of hope—and he had quite lost that look of harassment and dejection which, on first meeting him, had struck Thorndyke. Crane was normally a lover of fighting, and, although Senator Bicknell, for strategic reasons, chose to keep him in Washington while the preliminaries to the senatorial fight were raging, yet he delivered some good shots at long range, and it began to look as if he might be elected for the short term in spite of Governor Sanders. The National Committee was not indifferent to this fight, and Senator Bicknell went into it with all his old-time vigour. He worked, ate and drank, waked and slept, with members of the Legislature for three weeks before the election came off. It was a stupendous battle, and neither side got any odds in the betting.