The Henchman | Page 9

pushed her Socratic pitfall a step farther.
"When you say run so-and-so, he runs, doesn't he?"
Bowers permitted himself a dry smile in the dark.
"Most generally."
"Then you're responsible," she argued triumphantly. "You got Ross
Shelby into politics; you've run him for this and that; he's your charge."
The Hon. Seneca Bowers turned his disgusted face to the wall.

"So you've the Sunday-school idea of politics," he threw over his
shoulder with heavy sarcasm. "I'm to teach a Bible class and pass out
dinkey little reward-of-merit cards to the prize pupils! Bah!"
His wife presently fetched her outdoor wraps and adjusted them before
a mirror in the dimly lit hall.
"I'm going to take a tumbler of jelly to poor lonely Mrs. Weatherwax,"
she announced from the door.
Bowers roused suddenly.
"I hope, Eliza, you don't intend raking them over the coals with her," he
protested, rummaging for his slippers; but his consort was beyond hail.
A literal transcript of the talk in progress over the way would have
confounded the evil thinking; to illustrate the blameless text with an
equally faithful record of Shelby's actions might salt the narrative. He
had a lawyer's perception of the values of words as words, and through
extended practice with Mrs. Hilliard excelled in that deft juggling of
pregnant trifles without which Platonic friendships must die of
inanition. He now thanked the lady for her successful coup at the club
without specifically naming it--to hint at prearrangement were too
fatuous; and Mrs. Hilliard admired his tact. Parenthetically she
reflected that Joe had no tact. Without specifically naming it, Shelby
contrived to suggest that she could do him yet greater service by
shepherding society at his ratification meeting.
"To be significant, that sort of thing should be broadly representative,"
said he.
His words were impersonal, but there was no misreading his look.
Mrs. Hilliard offered her aid with equal thrift of speech and prodigality
of glance. She rejoiced in transparent subtleties. Joe was never subtle.
"But I've no right to ask it of you--I don't ask it," Shelby deprecated
with his lips.

"You have every right, dear friend," she reassured. "Friend! We are
more than friends, you and I. We are spiritually akin. We fairly speak
without words."
"Exactly." His business despatched, Shelby prepared to go. "My time
isn't my own now," he explained. "It belongs to the party."
"Selfish party," she pouted. "I hate it."
CHAPTER V
By the night of the meeting it was clear that that bugaboo of politicians,
a general apathy, had blanketed the candidate's own community.
Shelby should have stirred local pride. Not for years, in fact not since
Bowers himself sat in Congress, had the nomination come to Tuscarora
County out of the several counties which the Demijohn District
comprised. Nor had the interval since the convention been a time for
folding of hands. Mrs. Hilliard rounded her social circle, rallying the
members of the Culture Club to stand by their own, and appealing to
such outside its membership as seemed desirable on the ground of local
pride. Shelby became all things to all men. To the club people he was
the Club Candidate; to the unclubbed townsfolk he was New Babylon's
Candidate; while among the quarry workers and other socially
impossible flotsam and jetsam of the voting public other agencies than
Mrs. Hilliard's heralded him as the People's Candidate. Yet the fog of
apathy refused to lift.
There can naturally be little of the herdlike crushing at the doors of a
political gathering in the country which marks the urban rally. The rural
citizen has elbow-room to take his politics sedately and order his going
with temperate pulse and judicial mind. Of such mettle normally were
the New Babylonians who took their leisured way beneath the fluted
columns of the court-house into Shelby's rally; but this audience felt
itself more than normally temperate and judicial. Despite Mrs. Hilliard,
despite the Hon. Seneca Bowers, despite Shelby's own striving, it had
come less to encourage than to try and weigh.
The high places were immutably fixed. The bench of the courtroom,

surmounted by a pitcher of ice-water and adorned by crayon portraits of
New Babylonians learned in the law, of course stood consecrate to the
speakers. The arm-chairs within the railed precinct set apart for
members of the bar were by unwritten canon the peculiar haunt of
citizens of light and leading, while the jury-box and its neighboring
benches by custom immemorial bloomed with the pick of feminine
good society. It was a privilege of the socially elect to enter such
meetings at the court-house by way of the court's own staircase behind
the bench, and so came Bernard Graves. Spying a vacant seat beside
Ruth Temple, the young man slipped into it as unobtrusively as Mrs.
Hilliard's acute sense of