Part 63

"Do you mean, Doctor, that the election is to be stolen away from you?" inquired Jane.

"Was that what I meant, Mr. Hastings?" said Charlton.

"The side that loses always shouts thief at the side that wins," said the old man indifferently. "I don't take any interest in politics."

"Why should you?" said the Doctor audaciously. "You own both sides. So, it's heads you win, tails I lose."

Hastings laughed heartily. "Them political fellows are a lot of blackmailers," said he.

"That's ungrateful," said Charlton. "Still, I don't blame you for liking the Davy Hull crowd better. From them you can get what you want just the same, only you don't have to pay for it."

He rose and stretched his big frame, with a disregard of conventional good manners so unconscious that it was inoffensive.

But Charlton had a code of manners of his own, and somehow it seemed to suit him where the conventional code would have made him seem cheap. "I didn't mean to look after your political welfare, too," said he. "But I'll make no charge for that."

"Oh, I like to hear you young fellows talk," said Martin. "You'll sing a different song when you're as old as I am and have found out what a lot of damn fools the human race is."

"As I told you before," said Charlton, "it's conditions that make the human animal whatever it is. It's in the harness of conditions--the treadmill of conditions--the straight jacket of conditions. Change the conditions and you change the animal."

When he was swinging his big powerful form across the lawns toward the fringe of woods, Jane and her father looking after him, Jane said:

"He's wonderfully clever, isn't he?"

"A dreamer--a crank," replied the old man.

"But what he says sounds reasonable," suggested the daughter.

"It SOUNDS sensible," admitted the old man peevishly. "But it ain't what I was brought up to call sensible. Don't you get none of those fool ideas into your head. They're all very well for men that haven't got any property or any responsibilities--for flighty fellows like Charlton and that there Victor Dorn. But as soon as anybody gets property and has interests to look after, he drops that kind of talk."

"Do you mean that property makes a man too blind or too cowardly to speak the truth?" asked Jane with an air of great innocence.

The old man either did not hear or had no answer ready. He said:

"You heard him say that Davy Hull was going to win?"

"Why, he said Victor Dorn was going to win," said Jane, still simple and guileless.

Hastings frowned impatiently. "That was just loose talk. He admitted Davy was to be the next mayor. If he is--and I expect Charlton was about right--if Davy is elected, I shouldn't be surprised to see him nominated for governor next year. He's a sensible, knowing fellow. He'll make a good mayor, and he'll be elected governor on his record."

"And on what you and the other men who run things will do for him," suggested Jane slyly.

Her father grinned expressively. "I like to see a sensible, ambitious young fellow from my town get on," said he. "And I'd like to see my girl married to a fellow of that sort, and settled."

"I think more could be done with a man like Victor Dorn," said Jane. "It seems to me the Davy Hull sort of politics is--is about played out. Don't you think so?"

Jane felt that her remark was a piece of wild audacity. But she was desperate. To her amazement her father did not flare up but kept silent, wearing the look she knew meant profound reflection.

After a moment he said:

"Davy's a knowing boy. He showed that the other day when he jumped in and made himself a popular hero. He'd never 'a' been able to come anywheres near election but for that. Dorn'd 'a' won by a vote so big that Dick Kelly wouldn't 'a' dared even try to count him out.... Dorn's a better man than Davy. But Dorn's got a foolish streak in him. He believes the foolishness he talks, instead of simply talking it to gain his end. I've been looking him over and thinking him over. He won't do, Jinny."

Was her father discussing the matter abstractly, impersonally, as he seemed? Or, had he with that uncanny shrewdness of his somehow penetrated to her secret--or to a suspicion of it? Jane was so agitated that she sat silent and rigid, trying to look unconcerned.

"I had a strong notion to try to do something for him," continued the old man. "But it'd be no use. He'd not rise to a chance that was offered him. He's set on going his own way."