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Show : j y FRANCES PARKINSON KEVES y's WNTT Servic. '. I CHAPTER XII , (si.; w;is very slow i -i rooovor-l'ij,..'hor rooovor-l'ij,..'hor sir.-n.utli. Ietor Hr- ',' ijuik friHiuontly of the ml- 'J,B'IT of getting to u more brnc-:' brnc-:' '.liniiito as soon ns she was well ,''!), 'to travel, l'.ut It wns Into ,'.i,or before she was able to ... I'), riHim; niul by tills time " - v's school had opened nnd Sol ' : 'jam hail returned to college. tn'iie woiiU not hear of going 'ii spend next summer In 1 Ins-!,'," Ins-!,'," she assured her long-surer-'..hyk'inii. "very quietly. The cll-j cll-j is bracing enough there, I as- Ings, Anne, and of course 1 know you don't luenn to be Indiscreet, but well . . . Lnsslter wns here a good deal last winter. It wns ru mored around that you -that he anyway when the baby was born there was a paragraph In City ChatterMiss Chat-terMiss Letts showed U to me not that I believe a word of the scurrilous stuff or that she did you know that, of course. You know that I love you and trust you, but I thought you ought to know. Keeling tlint he had perhaps said enough, Neal bent over the evening paper. It was half an hour before he looked up and when he did, he over her eyes. Slowly, surely her sanity seemed to return her balance bal-ance to be restored. Go back to Hlnsboro, humbled and humiliated, with Nenl's career involved 1 Never, never, never! Confess that a filthy periodical had the power to challenge chal-lenge her good name? Her dead baby seemed to rise from his grave forbidding her. She shook the tears from her eyes, threw back her head, and walked toward home. . . . "State Headquarters? Tes, Mrs. Conrad speaking for Senator Conradtwo Con-radtwo wards in Belford have gone to Fletcher by a large majority. major-ity. Thank you. Yes." Out In the hall again. Neal seized her arm and spoke before she could do so. "I heard you. The first two wards they have heard from I If I lose Belford I am lost I" "You haven't lost It I What do two wards amount to in a city? Nothing, nothing at all . . ." Back to the telephone. "Yes Mrs. Conrad speaking. Oh, the report from the Third ward two hundred eighty-six to ninety-five ninety-five in favor of my husband? Yes I will tell him Neal, did you hear that? You have carried the Third ward in Belford almost three to one." "Vell, until I hear from the north of the state, that won't reassure me ter what anyone else thought. But how would he feel toward her If he were not elected? She remembered the hard months after his campaign for the lieutenant governorship, when he had been defeated. Was It going to be like that again? . .. Would defeat in the long run be such a calamity? She saw herself living In Hinsboro again, in the house she loved so much and into the building of which her very soul had gone comfortable, happy, un-worried un-worried no more calls to make ; no more "appearances" to keep up; no more "admirers" to contend with; time for her children, her music, her real friends. How much simple satisfaction sat-isfaction how much real joy she was denied because she could never "find time" for these things. Would she not be happier, no longer deprived de-prived of these homely pleasures? And yet, even as she asked herself her-self the question, she knew that she would miss the insidious charm, the fascinating excitement of political life as much as Neal. She could bear that philosophically, but because be-cause of her own feeling, she could gauge his. He must, he must go on. She slipped to her knees. With the same simplicity, with the same ardor, that she had prayed on her wedding night, she prayed again now. For Neal for Neal for Neal. "If I Lose Belford I Am Lost." mucn . . "Headquarters calling. Figures from Chaselford, Summerdale, Mefl-field Mefl-field just about a wash-out, Mrs. Conrad. Would you care for the exact figtires?" 1 "Oh, no, thank you." This time Neal was standing above her, his weight heavy against her weary shoulder. f von." iiie climate may be nil right. In . I have no doubt that It Is, but I i Ml believe you will rest very your husband .onies up for Vm next fall, doesn't he? You to ilo everything you can to J ? him?" f if course." you had better begin by yourself in good physical :;!ion." rue finally promised that she ij talk to Neal about going :t; but Neal. like most men, and "iilly like most husbands, while . nj concerned over acute illness, i ntt regard convalescence as a ,his matter. Now that she was aud dressed, now that she went .. for a short ride In the motor I :j day, now that he saw her su-r. su-r. -,-ising Nancy's fall wardrobe with .Vjresl and shepherding her broth-. broth-. into the social field, now that he -i her discussing dinners with ;. :onsine, he assumed that she ' i -perfectly all right," and said a in the succeeding weeks he ::ched her with secret anxiety. :,:;was he was reluctantly forced -r-,:;mil to himself very thin, very - :':e and very listless. He tried s : inu satisfactory explanation for j: of course the loss of tha baby ic been a shock to her ; but she -4 :dd recover from that Of course e bad suffered a good deal of ia; but after all. her constitut: n good, she ought to have excel-I excel-I powers of recuperation. But sbe? It began to look as If she t- not. About the middle of Nobler, No-bler, quite as if it were his own :s i advanced for the first time, be I-1 a little gravely he thought it :!d be a good plan to have a age of air. It's nice and cool in Quebec," he i sr. It's nice and cool In Washington r" retorted Anne. Tell, you could have gone away er if you had wanted to, couldn't :" or asked almost grimly. "You yon didn't care " didn't and 1 don't unless yon -ii come too " j 'tost before the opening of con-'-3? My dear girl, you know that Still on her knees she reached for the telephone. "Headquarters calling again, Mrs. Conrad. We've heard from the last five wards In Belford ("Oh, God let him win let him win 1" you must get your husband to the telephone." tele-phone." She spoke to him. Her voice sounded strange and distant, like that of a foreign woman calling from some far shore. "You will have to answer, Neal, this time." ("Oh God let him win let him win!") She pressed the receiver into Neal's hand, threw her arm around him. From the wire she could hear the crackle of laughter the tumult of triumph ; and staccato sharp the words that were being spoken: "You old crepe hanger you! What the h l's the matter with you? You have the handsomest margin " "What do you call a 'handsome margin'?" Neal shouted through the receiver, clutching at Anne's shoulder. shoul-der. "Well, if fifty thousand doesn't look handsome to you Come on down here, you old son of a gun, and celebrate ... ! ! !" "Bad news again! I knew it!" "You're holding your own." "Holding my own 1 Good G d, I've got to do more than that !" "You will, darling, you will. Would you not like a cup of cocoa or something?" some-thing?" "No No don't leave that telephone. tele-phone. It may ring again at any moment." But it didn't. The silence, like the darkness, grew oppressively heavy Dora came in and suggested that it was past dinner time. Anne shook her head and Dora went out again. ... Roy Griffin, who knew so many lawyers ; George Hildreth, who was state master of the Grange ; Mr. Goldenburg, whose one small shop had grown into a great chain with links all over the state; Low, who had appointed Neal. to the senate, and who had political wires running run-ning in every direction from his gubernatorial gu-bernatorial seat; would they all do their share? And, if they did, would it counterbalance Stetson's strength with the labor vote, where Neal had no strength? The Wallacetown Bugle and the other weeklies a great many of them if they were all friendly to Neal, would that make up for those two big papers noticed that Anne had left the room. She must be helping So) and Sam with their French. She often did that astonishing how she had mastered mas-tered it. tie couldn't get n can of hot water himself if the steward who happened to wait on him didn't speak English clever, Anne was and better every year a great credit to him. He never would have got where he had without her. Com placently, he went to sleep. In the morning, when he woke, she lay, as usual, beside him. He never guessed that she had spent most of the night walking blindly beside the Potomac river, regarded with an anxious curiosity by an occasional oc-casional watchful policeman and with covetous misunderstanding by an occasional night prowler. But there was something about her that kept both from approaching her something almost unearthly something some-thing wholly tragic. The slimy serpent ser-pent of slander had crossed her path as it crosses the path of almost al-most every man and woman of destiny. des-tiny. And in the first hour of her agony it seemed to her that her feet would never touch clean earth again. CHAPTER XIII WITH Neal Conrad's senatorial career every reader of any daily paper is familiar. There is the tariff, which bears his name; there is his speech on the British debt funding plan, which is used as a model in "elocution" for every schoolboy; there is his unshakable stand on the League of Nations which sent him, at the head of a special senatorial committee, to Geneva. All this, and much more is so well known that it needs no further comment. Besides, this is not the story of Neal Conrad to which numerous famous biographers biog-raphers have already failed to do justice. It Is the story of his wife. And of his wife as the only hostess host-ess to achieve a real "salon" in Washington ; as the only American woman whose dress drew forth royal commendation at Buckingham palace; as the only this and that in various conspicuous capacities, capaci-ties, enough has also been said. Her dresses and her dinners have been described a thousand times. Why, therefore, attempt to describe them again? It is neither the Beauty nor the Belle with whom we are primarily pri-marily concerned it is the woman wom-an .. . The woman whom, on a certain hot afternoon In mid-June, boarded the congressional express with her husband, bound for the I great national convention in New j York. The lobby of the Waldorf Astoria, possible. I am so driven at this of the year I hardly know 'b way to turn. Besides . ." Besides, you feel that this year, ;ou went away at all, you ought J -'o to Hinsboro?" eal hesitated, then drew in his :Uu and spoke with the air of 1 who was preparing for a deep D .';ge. dTes," he said at 'ength, "I do. :ave dee'ded to run for the sen - 1 would never be satisfied if dn't and that means a real tight. Ui -tight to have got started at it i :er. Of course the man that's in certain advanta ges, but Fletch ;j ? who is almost certain to oppose s. has millions behind him where a?e thousands, and he owns the :;est newspaper in the state. 1 t! think, Anne, you sometimes over-k over-k the' importance ol keeping in (:i ;ch with state affairs in yonr de-;i de-;i 'enot to miss anything 'iere. .You ii kind to every one who comes Washington, but you're not at 2 me a great deal. Now if you Jld get to Hinsboro early this "Yes, this is Mrs. Conrad speaking speak-ing No, Senator Conrad cannot come to the telephone. Oh, thank you, Mr. Baker, I'll take the figures yes, I have it right, I think Conrad Con-rad thirty-two, Fletcher seventeen." Anne hung up the receiver and went swiftly from the library to the shadowy hall. In the dimness she could barely see Neal standing near the door, his white face strained and tense. "Mr. Baker has just telephoned from Bakerfield," she said gently. "The vote is thirty-two for you and seventeen for Fletcher." A harsh sound something like a smothered .growl arose from Neal's throat. As he had foreseen, the campaign cam-paign had been a bitterly hard one. He had borne the brunt of it bravely brave-ly almost buoyantly, but on election ni'-ht he had suddenly collapsed and, leaving his headquarters, had come home, refusing to see anyone or even to speak with anyone but Anne. If the telephone had been a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike at him, he could not have manifested a -renter horror at the suggestion of of Fletcher's, which were hurling denunciatory editorials at Neal's head? ... Spring came, glad and golden, magnolia-scented, to Washington, and Anne, asking herself these troubled questions, shook the beauty that was all about her impatiently from her consciousness, and strained with eagerness to reach Hinsboro, raw and windswept, and bleak as it was. But this was the year of the "Long Session," and Neal would not be at liberty to go home early in March. It was actually mid-July before be-fore adjournment came, at two o'clock one torrid morning when ugly feelings had been unleashed by fatigue and ugly words spoken by lips which were merely the mouthpieces mouth-pieces for overwrought nerves. Neal, who had been steering a filibuster, lost his temper that night and said unforgivable things to men who had been his friends for years. These unforgivable things were printed in the Record, and circulated through the country. Were they unforget-able, unforget-able, too? Neal's enemies had been at work all the time he was chained to his 1 "I can. I will." 1 "And make up your mind for a I y summer exert yourself. Don't Hike a high-brow. A little of that 't you tried to hush up teach- ;! school, living in a tenement and il :ig your own washing has its its. And in one of the sensa II ;'al sheets you are pictured as :; Impudent,' aggressive, ignorant 4 climber. The stories are ter-n ter-n distorted. I know, but there is V'jraln of truth in them, and they I;( not doing me any good." r, Anne sat very still. ''An ignorant. spudent, aggressive little climb f" So that was the way she ap im tn her enelnIes and Neal's A perseverance, the patience, the ""sacrifice, which had enabled hei ft' grow from a raw Utile country '.!lr into a well-developed, self-i.s-""ed woman were ignoble rath ! " lian admirable qualities when 1 !lf'ed with unfriendly eyes. She f f as If something cold and sharp it M Penetrated her heart and coiled V ''!m,i ll- But Neal, unconscious I she was stricken, went on talk- '1 don't want to hurt your feel touching it. SO lading u beside it, Anne sat waiting for the tidings which sooner or later would come Tidings of victory, tidings of defeat. She had no way of guessing guess-ing which they were to be. She only knew that she must be there Sn they came. That until then she must comfort, cheer, cajole, iTthe gathering dusk, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, she reviewed re-viewed the months that had passed sinTe , that night of desperation when, bruised and tleedmg she had walked slowly along the Speedway Speed-way confessing herself beaten, vow-C vow-C that since she had tried so hard and Sed she would never try any tore- and then suddenly, miracu-Tousty' miracu-Tousty' finding the strength to vow hat she had only just begun to peace there-peac S TJaspea her hands chair in the senate. And now oniy August, September and October were left in which to tear down what they had built. Of course the children must do their share, even though it was a tiny one. Anne must make them see must never let them forget how much that share might mean to their father. And she must do her share, too. Must shield Neal, spare him, save him. But HOW? She went everywhere that she was asked, even when she was faint with fatigue. She picked up the threads of her old association, with the church, her historical societies, her pupils; she wore clothes that were spotlessly fresh, delusively simple sim-ple She was gracious, cordial, democratic, digniOed, tireless, decorative deco-rative What did it all amount to? How much "influence." after all, did a wife have in this frantic, powerful power-ful hideous struggle of politics? probably very little. Perhaps none at all Still, she had done her best, and if only Neal did not feel she had failed him, it would not mat- as they entered it, weary alter tneir warm and dusty Journey, was so jammed that they could hardly wedge their way through It to register. reg-ister. With every step that they advanced, ad-vanced, some acquaintance stopped and seized them, shouting at them excitedly. With every turn they took, placards and posters of rival candidates most of whom had their headquarters In the hotel crackled above their heads. Scurrying bellboys, bell-boys, distracted room clerks, helpless help-less assistant managers, strove in vain to perform their normal functions. Laden elevators sank and rose in the hopeless, endless endeavor' to convey the mass of humanity which bounded Into them like a phalanx from one floor to another. an-other. It was nearly an hour before they reached their suite; and NeaL mopping his brow and snatching up a glass of ice water, muttered as he drank, that he was "infernally late for the cursed committee meeting" meet-ing" and that he must be off at once. (TO EE CONTINUED.) |