diff options
Diffstat (limited to '20449-8.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 20449-8.txt | 8346 |
1 files changed, 8346 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/20449-8.txt b/20449-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c46220e --- /dev/null +++ b/20449-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8346 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Plum Tree, by David Graham Phillips + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Plum Tree + +Author: David Graham Phillips + +Illustrator: E. M. Ashe + +Release Date: January 25, 2007 [EBook #20449] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLUM TREE *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: SHE WAS AT THE STATION IN HER PHAETON TO MEET ME] + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +THE PLUM TREE + +By +DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS + +Author of +The Cost, Golden Fleece, Etc. + +Illustrated By +E. M. ASHE + +NEW YORK +GROSSET & DUNLAP +PUBLISHERS + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +Copyright 1905 +The Bobbs-Merrill Company + +March + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. HOW IT ALL BEGAN 1 + II. AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN 17 + III. SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" 33 + IV. THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS 44 + V. A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES 68 + VI. MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS 78 + VII. BYGONES 96 + VIII. A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" 107 + IX. TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY 123 + X. THE FACE IN THE CROWD 136 + XI. BURBANK 144 + XII. BURBANK FIRES THE POPULAR HEART 163 + XIII. ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE 168 + XIV. A "BOOM-FACTORY" 177 + XV. MUTINY 193 + XVI. A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE 199 + XVII. SCARBOROUGH 209 + XVIII. A DANGEROUS PAUSE 221 + XIX. DAVID SENT OUT AGAINST GOLIATH 224 + XX. PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 234 + XXI. AN INTERLUDE 249 + XXII. MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 261 + XXIII. IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 271 + XXIV. GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 282 + XXV. AN HOUR OF EMOTION 292 + XXVI. "ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 296 + XXVII. A DOMESTIC DISCORD 306 + XXVIII. UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 314 + XXIX. A LETTER FROM THE DEAD 327 + XXX. A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED 333 + XXXI. HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 345 + XXXII. A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR 365 + XXXIII. A "SPASM OF VIRTUE" 380 + XXXIV. "LET US HELP EACH OTHER" 387 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + + + + +THE PLUM TREE + +I + +HOW IT ALL BEGAN + + +"We can hold out six months longer,--at least six months." My mother's +tone made the six months stretch encouragingly into six long years. + +I see her now, vividly as if it were only yesterday. We were at our +scant breakfast, I as blue as was ever even twenty-five, she brave and +confident. And hers was no mere pretense to reassure me, no cheerless +optimism of ignorance, but the through-and-through courage and strength +of those who flinch for no bogey that life or death can conjure. Her +tone lifted me; I glanced at her, and what shone from her eyes set me on +my feet, face to the foe. The table-cloth was darned in many places, but +so skilfully that you could have looked closely without detecting it. +Not a lump of sugar, not a slice of bread, went to waste in that house; +yet even I had to think twice to realize that we were poor, desperately +poor. She did not hide our poverty; she beautified it, she dignified it +into Spartan simplicity. I know it is not the glamour over the past that +makes me believe there are no women now like those of the race to which +she belonged. The world, to-day, yields comfort too easily to the +capable; hardship is the only mould for such character, and in those +days, in this middle-western country, even the capable were not +strangers to hardship. + +"When I was young," she went on, "and things looked black, as they have +a habit of looking to the young and inexperienced,"--that put in with a +teasing smile for me,--"I used to say to myself, 'Well, anyhow, they +can't _kill_ me.' And the thought used to cheer me up wonderfully. In +fact, it still does." + +I no longer felt hopeless. I began to gnaw my troubles again--despair is +still. + +"Judge Granby is a dog," said I; "yes, a dog." + +"Why 'dog'?" objected my mother. "Why not simply 'mean man'? I've never +known a dog that could equal a man who set out to be 'ornery.'" + +"When I think of all the work I've done for him in these three years--" + +"For yourself," she interrupted. "Work you do for others doesn't amount +to much unless it's been first and best for yourself." + +"But he was benefited by it, too," I urged, "and has taken life easy, +and has had more clients and bigger fees than he ever had before. I'd +like to give him a jolt. I'd stop nagging him to put my name in a +miserable corner of the glass in his door. I'd hang out a big sign of my +own over my own office door." + +My mother burst into a radiant smile. "I've been waiting a year to hear +that," she said. + +Thereupon I had a shock of fright--inside, for I'd never have dared to +show fear before my mother. There's nothing else that makes you so brave +as living with some one before whom you haven't the courage to let your +cowardice show its feather. If we didn't keep each other up to the mark, +what a spectacle of fright and flight this world-drama would be! +Vanity, the greatest of vices, is also the greatest of virtues, or the +source of the greatest virtues--which comes to the same thing. + +"When will you do it?" she went on, and then I knew I was in for it, and +how well-founded was the suspicion that had been keeping my lips +tight-shut upon my dream of independence. + +"I'll--I'll think about it," was my answer, in a tone which I hoped she +would see was not hesitating, but reflective; "I mustn't go too far,--or +too fast." + +"Better go too far and too fast than not go at all," retorted my wise +mother. "Once a tortoise beat a hare,--_once_. It never happened again, +yet the whole timid world has been talking about it ever since." And she +fell into a study from which she roused herself to say, "You'd better +let _me_ bargain for the office and the furniture,--and the big sign." +She knew--but could not or would not teach me--how to get a dollar's +worth for a dollar; would not, I suspect, for she despised parsimony, +declaring it to be another virtue which is becoming only in a woman. + +"Of course,--when--" I began. + +"We've got to do something in the next six months," she warned. And now +she made the six months seem six minutes. + +I had at my tongue's end something about the danger of dragging her down +into misfortune; but before speaking I looked at her, and, looking, +refrained. To say it to _her_ would have been too absurd,--to her who +had been left a widow with nothing at all, who had educated me for +college, and who had helped me through my first year there,--helped me +with money, I mean. But for what she gave besides, more, immeasurably +more,--but for her courage in me and round me and under me,--I'd never +have got my degree or anything else, I fear. To call that courage help +would be like saying the mainspring helps the watch to go. I looked at +her. "They can't kill me, can they?" said I, with a laugh which sounded +so brave that it straightway made me brave. + +So it was settled. + +But that was the first step in a fight I can't remember even now without +a sinking at the heart. The farmers of Jackson County, of which Pulaski +was the county seat, found in litigation their chief distraction from +the stupefying dullness of farm life in those days of pause, after the +Indian and nature had been conquered and before the big world's arteries +of thought and action had penetrated. The farmers took eagerly to +litigation to save themselves from stagnation. Still, a new lawyer, +especially if he was young, had an agonizing time of it convincing their +slow, stiff, suspicious natures that he could be trusted in such a +crisis as "going to law." + +To make matters worse I fell in love. + + * * * * * + +Once--it was years afterward, though not many years ago--Burbank, at the +time governor, was with me, and we were going over the main points for +his annual message. One of my suggestions--my orders to all my agents, +high and low, have always been sugar-coated as "suggestions"--started a +new train of thought in him, and he took pen and paper to fix it before +it had a chance to escape. As he wrote, my glance wandered along the +shelves of the book-cases. It paused on the farthest and lowest shelf. I +rose and went there, and found my old school-books, those I used when I +was in Public School Number Three, too near thirty years ago! + +In the shelf one book stood higher than the others--tall and thin and +ragged, its covers torn, its pages scribbled, stained and dog-eared. +Looking through that old physical geography was like a first talk with a +long-lost friend. It had, indeed, been my old friend. Behind its broad +back I had eaten forbidden apples, I had aimed and discharged the +blow-gun, I had reveled in blood-and-thunder tales that made the drowsy +schoolroom fade before the vast wilderness, the scene of breathless +struggles between Indian and settler, or open into the high seas where +pirate, or worse-than-pirate Britisher, struck flag to American +privateer or man-o'-war. + +On an impulse shot up from the dustiest depths of memory, I turned the +old geography sidewise and examined the edges of the cover. Yes, there +was the _cache_ I had made by splitting the pasteboard with my +jack-knife. I thrust in my fingernail; out came a slip of paper. I +glanced at Burbank--he was still busy. I, somewhat stealthily, you may +imagine, opened the paper and--well, my heart beat much more rapidly as +I saw in a school-girl scrawl: + +[Illustration: (handwriting)] + +[Transcriber's Note: the image is approximately this: + + Harvey Sayler hait + Elizabeth Crosby love + +with the letters "H", "a", "r", "e", "y", "S", "l", "e" in the first +line and "E", "l", "a", "e", "h", "r", "s", "y" in the second line, in +that order, struck out, as marked by the game mentioned in the +following paragraph.] + +I was no longer master of a state; I was a boy in school again. I could +see her laboring over this game of "friendship, love, indifference, +hate." I could see "Redney" Griggs, who sat between her and me, in the +row of desks between and parallel to my row and hers,--could see him +swoop and snatch the paper from her, look at it, grin maliciously, and +toss it over to me. I was in grade A, was sixteen, and was beginning to +take myself seriously. She was in grade D, was little more than half my +age, but looked older,--and how sweet and pretty she was! She had black +hair, thick and wavy, with little tresses escaping from plaits and +ribbons to float about her forehead, ears, and neck. Her skin was darker +then, I think, than it is now, but it had the same smoothness and +glow,--certainly, it could not have had more. + + * * * * * + +I think the dart must have struck that day,--why else did I keep the bit +of paper? But it did not trouble me until the first winter of my +launching forth as "Harvey Sayler, Attorney and Counselor at Law." She +was the daughter of the Episcopal preacher; and, as every one thought +well of the prospects of my mother's son, our courtship was undisturbed. +Then, in the spring, when fortune was at its coldest and love at its +most feverish, her father accepted a call to a church in Boston, eight +hundred miles away. + +To go to see her was impossible; how could the money be spared,--fifty +dollars, at the least? Once--when they had been gone about four +months--my mother insisted that I must. But I refused, and I do not know +whether it is to my credit or not, for my refusal gave her only pain, +whereas the sacrifices she would have had to make, had I gone, would +have given her only pleasure. I had no fear that Betty would change in +our separation. There are some people you hope are stanch, and some +people you think will be stanch, if--, and then there are those, many +women and a few men, whom it is impossible to think of as false or even +faltering. I did not fully appreciate that quality then, for my memory +was not then dotted with the graves of false friendships and littered +with the rubbish of broken promises; but I did appreciate it enough to +build securely upon it. + +Build? No, that is not the word. There may be those who are stimulated +to achievement by being in love, though I doubt it. At any rate, I was +not one of them. My love for her absorbed my thoughts, and paralyzed my +courage. Of the qualities that have contributed to what success I may +have had, I put in the first rank a disposition to see the gloomiest +side of the future. But it has not helped to make my life happier, +invaluable though it has been in preventing misadventure from catching +me napping. + +So another year passed. Then came hard times,--_real_ hard times. I had +some clients--enough to insure mother and myself a living, with the +interest on mortgage and note kept down. But my clients were poor, and +poor pay, and slow pay. Nobody was doing well but the note-shavers. +I--How mother fought to keep the front brave and bright!--not her front, +for that was bright by nature, like the sky beyond the clouds; but our +front, my front,--the front of our affairs. No one must see that we were +pinching,--so I must be the most obviously prosperous young lawyer in +Pulaski. What that struggle cost her I did not then realize; no, could +not realize until I looked at her face for the last time, looked and +turned away and thought on the meaning of the lines and the hollows over +which Death had spread his proclamation of eternal peace. I have heard +it said of those markings in human faces, "How ugly!" But it seems to me +that, to any one with eyes and imagination, line and wrinkle and hollow +always have the somber grandeur of tragedy. I remember my mother when +her face was smooth and had the shallow beauty that the shallow dote on. +But her face whereon was written the story of fearlessness, sacrifice, +and love,--that is the face beautiful of my mother for me. + +In the midst of those times of trial, when she had ceased to smile,--for +she had none of that hypocritical cheerfulness which depresses and is a +mere vanity to make silly onlookers cry "Brave!" when there is no true +bravery,--just when we were at our lowest ebb, came an offer from Bill +Dominick to put me into politics. + +I had been interested in politics ever since I was seven years old. I +recall distinctly the beginning:-- + +On a November afternoon,--it must have been November, though I remember +that it was summer-warm, with all the windows open and many men in the +streets in shirt-sleeves,--at any rate, I was on my way home from +school. As I neared the court-house I saw a crowd in the yard and was +reminded that it was election day, and that my father was running for +reëlection to the state senate; so, I bolted for his law office in the +second story of the Masonic Temple, across the street from the +court-house. + +He was at the window and was looking at the polling place so intently +that he took no notice of me as I stood beside him. I know now why he +was absorbed and why his face was stern and sad. I can shut my eyes and +see that court-house yard, the long line of men going up to vote, single +file, each man calling out his name as he handed in his ballot, and Tom +Weedon--who shot an escaping prisoner when he was deputy +sheriff--repeating the name in a loud voice. Each oncoming voter in that +curiously regular and compact file was holding out his right arm stiff +so that the hand was about a foot clear of the thigh; and in every one +of those thus conspicuous hands was a conspicuous bit of white paper--a +ballot. As each man reached the polling window and gave in his name, he +swung that hand round with a stiff-armed, circular motion that kept it +clear of the body and in full view until the bit of paper disappeared in +the slit in the ballot box. + +I wished to ask my father what this strange spectacle meant; but, as I +glanced up at him to begin my question, I knew I must not, for I felt +that I was seeing something which shocked him so profoundly that he +would take me away if I reminded him of my presence. I know now that I +was witnessing the crude beginnings of the money-machine in +politics,--the beginnings of the downfall of parties,--the beginnings of +the overthrow of the people as the political power. Those stiff-armed +men were the "floating voters" of that ward of Pulaski. They had been +bought up by a rich candidate of the opposition party, which was less +scrupulous than our party, then in the flush of devotion to "principles" +and led by such old-fashioned men as my father with old-fashioned +notions of honor and honesty. Those "floaters" had to keep the ballot in +full view from the time they got it of the agent of their purchaser +until they had deposited it beyond the possibility of substitution--he +must see them "deliver the goods." + +My father was defeated. He saw that, in politics, the day of the public +servant of public interests was over, and that the night of the private +servant of private interests had begun. He resigned the leadership into +the dexterous hands of a politician. Soon afterward he died, muttering: +"Prosperity has ruined my country!" + +From that election day my interest in politics grew, and but for my +mother's bitter prejudice I should have been an active politician, +perhaps before I was out of college. + +Pulaski, indeed all that section of my state, was strongly of my party. +Therefore Dominick, its local boss, was absolute. At the last county +election, four years before the time of which I am writing, there had +been a spasmodic attempt to oust him. He had grown so insolent, and had +put his prices for political and political-commercial "favors" to our +leading citizens so high, that the "best element" in our party +reluctantly broke from its allegiance. To save himself he had been +forced to order flagrant cheating on the tally sheets; his ally and +fellow conspirator, M'Coskrey, the opposition boss, was caught and was +indicted by the grand jury. The Reformers made such a stir that Ben +Cass, the county prosecutor, though a Dominick man, disobeyed his master +and tried and convicted M'Coskrey. Of course, following the custom in +cases of yielding to pressure from public sentiment, he made the +trial-errors necessary to insure reversal in the higher court; and he +finally gave Dominick's judge the opportunity to quash the indictment. +But the boss was relentless,--Cass had been disobedient, and had put +upon "my friend M'Coskrey" the disgrace of making a sorry figure in +court. "Ben can look to his swell reform friends for a renomination," +said he; "he'll not get it from me." + +Thus it came to pass that Dominick's lieutenant, Buck Fessenden, +appeared in my office one afternoon in July, and, after a brief parley, +asked me how I'd like to be prosecuting attorney of Jackson County. Four +thousand a year for four years, and a reëlection if I should give +satisfaction; and afterward, the bench or a seat in Congress! I could +pay off everything; I could marry! + +It was my first distinct vision of the plum tree. To how many thousands +of our brightest, most promising young Americans it is shown each year +in just such circumstances! + + + + +II + +AT THE COURT OF A SOVEREIGN + + +That evening after supper I went to see Dominick. + +In the lower end of Pulaski there was a large beer-garden, known as +Dominick's headquarters. He received half the profits in return for +making it his loafing-place, the seat of the source of all political +honor, preferment and privilege in the third, sixth and seventh +congressional districts. I found him enthroned at the end of a long +table in the farthest corner of the garden. On one side of him sat James +Spencer, judge of the circuit court,--"Dominick's judge"; on the other +side Henry De Forest, principal owner of the Pulaski Gas and Street +Railway Company. There were several minor celebrities in politics, the +law, and business down either side of the table, then Fessenden, talking +with Cowley, our lieutenant governor. As soon as I appeared Fessenden +nodded to me, rose, and said to the others generally: "Come on, boys, +let's adjourn to the next table. Mr. Dominick wants to talk to this +young fellow." + +I knew something of politics, but I was not prepared to see that +distinguished company rise and, with not a shadow of resentment on any +man's face, with only a respectful, envious glance at me, who was to +deprive them of sunshine for a few minutes, remove themselves and their +glasses to another table. When I knew Dominick better, and other bosses +in this republic of ours, I knew that the boss is never above the +weaknesses of the monarch class for a rigid and servile court etiquette. +My own lack of this weakness has been a mistake which might have been +serious had my political power been based upon men. It is a blunder to +treat men without self-respect as if they were your equals. They expect +to cringe; if they are not compelled to do so, they are very likely to +forget their place. At the court of a boss are seen only those who have +lost self-respect and those who never had it. The first are the lower +though they rank themselves, and are ranked, above the "just naturally +low." + +But--Dominick was alone, his eternal glass of sarsaparilla before him. +He used the left corner of his mouth both for his cigar and for speech. +To bid me draw near and seat myself, he had to shift his cigar. When the +few words necessary were half-spoken, half-grunted, he rolled his cigar +back to the corner which it rarely left. He nodded condescendingly, and, +as I took the indicated chair at his right, gave me a hand that was fat +and firm, not unlike the flabby yet tenacious sucker of a moist +sea-creature. + +He was a huge, tall man, enormously muscular, with a high head like a +block, straight in front, behind and on either side; keen, shifty, pig +eyes, pompous cheeks, a raw, wide mouth; slovenly dress, with a big +diamond as a collar button and another on his puffy little finger. He +was about forty years old, had graduated from blacksmith too lazy to +work into prize-fighter, thence into saloon-keeper. It was as a +saloon-keeper that he founded and built his power, made himself the +local middleman between our two great political factors, those who buy +and break laws and those who aid and abet the lawlessness by selling +themselves as voters or as office-holders. + +Dominick had fixed his eyes upon his sarsaparilla. He frowned savagely +into its pale brown foam when he realized that I purposed to force him +to speak first. His voice was ominously surly as he shifted his cigar to +say: "Well, young fellow, what can I do for you?" + +"Mr. Fessenden told me you wanted to see me," said I. + +"He didn't say nothing of the sort," growled Dominick. "I've knowed Buck +seventeen years, and he ain't no liar." + +I flushed and glanced at the distinguished company silently waiting to +return to the royal presence. Surely, if these eminent fellow citizens +of mine endured this insulting monarch, I could,--I, the youthful, the +obscure, the despondent. Said I: "Perhaps I did not express myself quite +accurately. Fessenden told me you were considering making me your +candidate for county prosecutor, and suggested that I call and see +you." + +[Illustration: HE SHIFTED HIS CIGAR TO SAY: "WELL, YOUNG FELLOW, WHAT +CAN I DO FOR YOU?" p. 20] + +Dominick gave a gleam and a grunt like a hog that has been flattered +with a rough scratching of its hide. But he answered: "I don't give no +nominations. That's the province of the party, young man." + +"But _you_ are the party," was my reply. At the time I was not conscious +that I had thus easily dropped down among the hide-scratchers. I assured +myself that I was simply stating the truth, and ignored the fact that +telling the truth can be the most degrading sycophancy, and the subtlest +and for that reason the most shameless, lying. + +"Well, I guess I've got a little something to say about the party," he +conceded. "Us young fellows that are active in politics like to see +young fellows pushed to the front. A good many of the boys ain't stuck +on Ben Cass,--he's too stuck on himself. He's getting out of touch with +the common people, and is boot-licking in with the swells up town. So, +when I heard you wanted the nomination for prosecutor, I told Buck to +trot you round and let us look you over. Good party man?" + +"Yes--and my father and grandfather before me." + +"No reform germs in your system?" + +I laughed--I was really amused, such a relief was it to see a gleam of +pleasantry in that menacing mass. "I'm no better than my party," said I, +"and I don't desert it just because it doesn't happen to do everything +according to my notions." + +"That's right," approved Dominick, falling naturally into the role of +political schoolmaster. "There ain't no government without +responsibility, and there ain't no responsibility without organization, +and there ain't no organization without men willing to sink their +differences." He paused. + +I looked my admiration,--I was most grateful to him for this chance to +think him an intellect. Who likes to admit that he bows before a mere +brute? The compulsory courtiers of a despot may possibly and in part +tell the truth about him, after they are safe; but was there ever a +voluntary courtier whose opinion of his monarch could be believed? The +more distinguished the courtier the greater his necessity to exaggerate +his royal master--or mistress--to others and to himself. + +Dominick forged on: "Somebody's got to lead, and the leader's got to be +obeyed. Otherwise what becomes of the party? Why, it goes to hell, and +we've got anarchy." + +This was terse, pointed, plausible--the stereotyped "machine" argument. +I nodded emphatically. + +"Ben Cass," he proceeded, "believes in discipline and organization and +leadership only when they're to elect him to a fat job. He wants to use +the party, but when the party wants service in return, up goes Mr. Cass' +snout and tail, and off he lopes. He's what I call a cast iron--" I +shall omit the vigorous phrase wherein he summarized Cass. His +vocabulary was not large; he therefore frequently resorted to the +garbage barrel and the muck heap for missiles. + +I showed in my face my scorn for the Cass sort of selfishness and +insubordination. "The leader has all the strings in his hand," said I. +"He's the only one who can judge what must be done. He must be trusted +and obeyed." + +"I see you've got the right stuff in you, young man," said Dominick +heartily. "So you want the job?" + +I hesitated,--I was thinking of him, of his bestial tyranny, and of my +self-respect, unsullied, but also untempted, theretofore. + +He scowled. "Do you, or don't you?" + +"Yes," said I,--I was thinking of the debts and mother and Betty. "Yes, +indeed; I'd esteem it a great honor, and I'd be grateful to you." If I +had thrust myself over-head into a sewer I should have felt less vile +than I did as my fears and longings uttered those degrading words. + +He grunted. "Well, we'll see. Tell the boys at the other table to come +back." He nodded a dismissal and gave me that moist, strong grip again. + +As I went toward the other table each man there had a hand round his +glass in readiness for the message of recall. I mentally called the +roll--wealth, respectability, honor, all on their knees before Dominick, +each with his eye upon the branch of the plum tree that bore the kind of +fruit he fancied. And I wondered how they felt inside,--for I was then +ignorant of the great foundation truth of practical ethics, that a man's +conscience is not the producer but the product of his career. + +Fessenden accompanied me to the door. "The old man's in a hell of a +humor to-night," said he. "His wife's caught on to a little game he's +been up to, and she's the only human being he's afraid of. She came in +here, one night, and led him out by the ear. What a fool a man is to +marry when there's a chance of running into a mess like that! But--you +made a hit with him. Besides, he needs you. Your family--" Buck checked +himself, feeling that drink was making him voluble. + +"He's a strong man, isn't he?" said I; "a born leader." + +"Middle-weight champion in his day," replied Fessenden. "He can still +knock out anybody in the organization in one round." + +"Good night and thank you," said I. So I went my way, not elated but +utterly depressed,--more depressed than when I won the first case in +which I knew my client's opponent was in the right and had lost only +because I outgeneraled his stupid lawyer. I was, like most of the sons +and daughters of the vigorous families of the earnest, deeply religious +early-West, an idealist by inheritance and by training; but I suppose +any young man, however practical, must feel a shock when he begins those +compromises between theoretical and practical right which are part of +the daily routine of active life, and without which active life is +impossible. + +I had said nothing to my mother, because I did not wish to raise her +hopes--or her objections. I now decided to be silent until the matter +should be settled. The next day but one Fessenden came, bad news in his +face. "The old man liked you," he began, "but--" + +I had not then learned to control my expression. I could not help +showing what ruins of lofty castles that ominous "but" dropped upon my +head. + +"You'll soon be used to getting it in the neck if you stay in politics," +said Fessenden. "There's not much else. But you ain't so bad off as you +think. The old man has decided that he can afford to run one of his +reliable hacks for the place. He's suddenly found a way of sinking his +hooks in the head devil of the Reformers and Ben Cass' chief backer, +Singer,--you know him,--the lawyer." + +Singer was one of the leaders of the state bar and superintendent of our +Sunday-school. + +"Dominick has made De Forest give Singer the law business of the Gas and +Street Railway Company, so Singer is coming over to us." Buck grinned. +"He has found that 'local interests must be subordinated to the broader +interests of the party in state and nation.'" + +I had been reading in our party's morning paper what a wise and +patriotic move Singer had made in advising the putting off of a Reform +campaign,--and I had believed in the sincerity of his motive! + +Fessenden echoed my sneer, and went on: "He's a rotten hypocrite; but +then, we can always pull the bung out of these Reform movements that +way." + +"You said it isn't as bad for me as it seems," I interrupted. + +"Oh, yes. You're to be on the ticket. The old man's going to send you +to the legislature,--lower house, of course." + +I did not cheer up. An assemblyman got only a thousand a year. + +"The pay ain't much," confessed Buck, "but there ain't nothing to do +except vote according to order. Then there's a great deal to be picked +up on the side,--the old man understands that others have got to live +besides him. Salaries in politics don't cut no figure nowadays, anyhow. +It's the chance the place gives for pick-ups." + +At first I flatly refused, but Buck pointed out that I was foolish to +throw away the benefits sure to come through the "old man's" liking for +me. "He'll take care of you," he assured me. "He's got you booked for a +quick rise." My poverty was so pressing that I had not the courage to +refuse,--the year and a half of ferocious struggle and the longing to +marry Betty Crosby had combined to break my spirit. I believe it is +Johnson who says the worst feature of genteel poverty is its power to +make one ridiculous. I don't think so. No; its worst feature is its +power to make one afraid. + +That night I told my mother of my impending "honors." We were in the +dark on our little front porch. She was silent, and presently I thought +I heard her suppressing a sigh. "You don't like it, mother?" said I. + +"No, Harvey, but--I see no light ahead in any other direction, and I +guess one should always steer toward what light there is." She stood +behind my chair, put her hands on my shoulders, and rested her chin +lightly on the top of my head. "Besides, I can trust you. Whatever +direction you take, you're sure to win in the end." + +I was glad it was dark. An hour after I went to bed I heard some one +stirring in the house,--it seemed to me there was a voice, too. I rose +and went into the hall, and so, softly to my mother's room. Her door was +ajar. She was near the window, kneeling there in the moonlight, +praying--for me. + + * * * * * + +I had not been long in the legislature before I saw that my position was +even more contemptible than I anticipated. So contemptible, indeed, was +it that, had I not been away from home and among those as basely +situated as myself, it would have been intolerable,--a convict +infinitely prefers the penitentiary to the chain gang. Then, too, there +was consolation in the fact that the people, my fellow citizens, in +their stupidity and ignorance about political conditions, did not +realize what public office had come to mean. At home they believed what +the machine-controlled newspapers said of me--that I was a "manly, +independent young man," that I was "making a vigorous stand for what was +honest in public affairs," that I was the "honorable and distinguished +son of an honorable and distinguished father." How often I read those +and similar eulogies of young men just starting in public life! And is +it not really amazing that the people believe, that they never say to +themselves: "But, if he were actually what he so loudly professes to be, +how could he have got public office from a boss and a machine?" + +I soon gave up trying to fool myself into imagining I was the servant of +the people by introducing or speaking for petty little popular +measures. I saw clearly that graft was the backbone, the whole skeleton +of legislative business, and that its fleshly cover of pretended public +service could be seen only by the blind. I saw, also, that no one in the +machine of either party had any real power. The state boss of our party, +United States Senator Dunkirk, was a creature and servant of +corporations. Silliman, the state boss of the opposition party, was the +same, but got less for his services because his party was hopelessly in +the minority and its machine could be useful only as a sort of +supplement and scapegoat. + +With the men at the top, Dunkirk and Silliman, mere lackeys, I saw my +own future plainly enough. I saw myself crawling on year after +year,--crawling one of two roads. Either I should become a political +scullion, a wretched party hack, despising myself and despised by those +who used me, or I should develop into a lackey's lackey or a plain +lackey, lieutenant of a boss or a boss, so-called--a derisive name, +really, when the only kind of boss-ship open was head political procurer +to one or more rich corporations or groups of corporations. I felt I +should probably become a scullion, as I thought I had no taste or +instinct for business, and as I was developing some talent for "mixing," +and for dispensing "hot air" from the stump. + +I turned these things over and over in my mind with an energy that +sprang from shame, from the knowledge of what my mother would think if +she knew the truth about her son, and from a realization that I was no +nearer marrying Betty Crosby than before. At last I wrought myself into +a sullen fury beneath a calm surface. The lessons in self-restraint and +self-hiding I learned in that first of my two years as assemblyman have +been invaluable. + +When I entered upon my second and last winter, I was outwardly as serene +as--as a volcano on the verge of eruption. + + + + +III + +SAYLER "DRAWS THE LINE" + + +In February the railways traversing our state sent to the capitol a bill +that had been drawn by our ablest lawyers and reviewed by the craftiest +of the great corporation lawyers of New York City. Its purpose, most +shrewdly and slyly concealed, was to exempt the railways from +practically all taxation. It was so subtly worded that this would be +disclosed only when the companies should be brought to court for +refusing to pay their usual share of the taxes. Such measures are +usually "straddled" through a legislature,--that is, neither party takes +the responsibility, but the boss of each machine assigns to vote for +them all the men whose seats are secure beyond any ordinary assault of +public indignation. In this case, of the ninety-one members of the lower +house, thirty-two were assigned by Dunkirk and seventeen by Silliman to +make up a majority with three to spare. + +My boss, Dominick, got wind that Dunkirk and Silliman were cutting an +extra melon of uncommon size. He descended upon the capitol and served +notice on Dunkirk that the eleven Dominick men assigned to vote for the +bill would vote against it unless he got seven thousand dollars apiece +for them,--seventy-seven thousand dollars. Dunkirk needed every one of +Dominick's men to make up his portion of the majority; he yielded after +trying in vain to reduce the price. All Dominick would say to him on +that point, so I heard afterward, was: + +"Every day you put me off, I go up a thousand dollars a head." + +We who were to be voted so profitably for Dunkirk, Silliman, Dominick, +and the railroads, learned what was going on,--Silliman went on a "tear" +and talked too much. Nine of us, _not_ including myself, got together +and sent Cassidy, member from the second Jackson County district, to +Dominick to plead for a share. I happened to be with him in the Capital +City Hotel bar when Cassidy came up, and, hemming and hawing, explained +how he and his fellow insurgents felt. + +Dominick's veins seemed cords straining to bind down a demon struggling +to escape. "It's back to the bench you go, Pat Cassidy,--back to the +bench where I found you," he snarled, with a volley of profanity and +sewage. "I don't know nothing about this here bill except that it's for +the good of the party. Go back to that gang of damned wharf rats, and +tell 'em, if I hear another squeak, I'll put 'em where I got 'em." + +Cassidy shrank away with a furtive glance of envy and hate at me, whom +Dominick treated with peculiar consideration,--I think it was because I +was the only man of education and of any pretensions to "family" in +official position in his machine. He used to like to class himself and +me together as "us gentlemen," in contrast to "them muckers," meaning my +colleagues. + +Next day, just before the voting began, Dominick seated himself at the +front of the governor's gallery,--the only person in it. I see him now +as he looked that day,--black and heavy-jawed and scowling, leaning +forward with both forearms on the railing, and his big, flat chin +resting on his upturned, stubby thumbs. He was there to see that each +of us, his creatures, dependent absolutely upon him for our political +lives, should vote as he had sold us in block. There was no chance to +shirk or even to squirm. As the roll-call proceeded, one after another, +seven of us, obeyed that will frowning from the gallery,--jumped through +the hoop of fire under the quivering lash. I was eighth on the roll. + +"Sayler!" How my name echoed through that horrible silence! + +I could not answer. Gradually every face turned toward me,--I could see +them, could feel them, and, to make bad enough worse, I yielded to an +imperious fascination, the fascination of that incarnation of +brute-power,--power of muscle and power of will. I turned my eyes upon +the amazed, furious eyes of my master. It seemed to me that his lips +must give passage to the oaths and filth swelling beneath his chest, and +seething behind his eyes. + +"Sayler!" repeated the clerk in a voice that exploded within me. + +"No!" I shouted,--not in answer to the clerk, but in denial of that +insolent master-to-dog command from the beast in the gallery. + +The look in his eyes changed to relief and contemptuous approval. There +was a murmur of derision from my fellow members. Then I remembered that +a negative was, at that stage of the bill, a vote for it,--I had done +just the reverse of what I intended. The roll-call went on, and I sat +debating with myself. Prudence, inclination, the natural timidity of +youth, the utter futility of opposition, fear, above all else, +fear,--these joined in bidding me let my vote stand as cast. On the +other side stood my notion of self-respect. I felt I must then and there +and for ever decide whether I was a thing or a man. Yet, again and again +I had voted for measures just as corrupt,--had voted for them with no +protest beyond a cynical shrug and a wry look. Every man, even the +laxest, if he is to continue to "count as one," must have a point where +he draws the line beyond which he will not go. The liar must have things +he will not lie about, the thief things he will not steal, the +compromiser things he will not compromise, the practical man in the +pulpit, in politics, in business, in the professor's chair, or +editorial tribune, things he will not sacrifice, whatever the cost. That +is "practical honor." I had reached my line of practical honor, my line +between possible compromise and certain demoralization. And I realized +it. + +When the roll-call ended I rose, and, in a voice that I knew was firm +and clear, said: "Mr. Speaker, I voted in the negative by mistake. I +wish my vote recorded in the affirmative. I am against the bill." + +Amid a fearful silence I took my seat. With a suddenness that made me +leap, a wild and crazy assemblyman, noted as the crank of that session, +emitted a fantastic yell of enthusiastic approval. Again there was that +silence; then the tension of the assembly, floor and crowded galleries, +burst in a storm of hysterical laughter. + +I wish I could boast how brave I felt as I reversed my vote, how +indifferent to that tempest of mockery, and how strong as I went forth +to meet my master and hear my death-warrant. But I can't, in +honesty,--I'm only a human being, not a hero, and these are my +_con_fessions, not my _pro_fessions. So I must relate that, though the +voice that requested the change of vote was calm and courageous, the man +behind it was agitated and sick with dread. There may be those who have +the absolute courage some men boast,--if not directly, then by +implication in despising him who shows that he has it not. For myself, I +must say that I never made a venture,--and my life has been a succession +of ventures, often with my whole stake upon the table,--I never made a +venture that I did not have a sickening sensation at the heart. My +courage, if it can be called by so sounding a name, has been in daring +to make the throw when every atom of me was shrieking, "You'll lose! +You'll be ruined!" + +I did not see Dominick until after supper. I had nerved myself for a +scene,--indeed, I had been hoping he would insult me. When one lacks the +courage boldly to advance along the perilous course his intelligence +counsels, he is lucky if he can and will goad some one into kicking him +along it past the point where retreat is possible. Such methods of +advance are not dignified, but then, is life dignified? To my surprise +and alarm, Dominick refused to kick me into manhood. He had been paid, +and the seventy-seven thousand dollars, in bills of large denomination, +were warming his heart from the inner pocket of his waistcoat. So he +came up to me, scowling, but friendly. + +"Why didn't you tell me you wanted to be let off, Harvey?" he said +reproachfully. "I'd 'a' done it. Now, damn you, you've put me in a place +where I've got to give you the whip." + +To flush at this expression from Dominick was a hypocritical refinement +of sensitiveness. To draw myself up haughtily, to turn on my heel and +walk away,--that was the silliness of a boy. Still, I am glad I did both +those absurd things. When I told my mother how I had ruined myself in +politics she began to cry,--and tears were not her habit. Then she got +my father's picture and kissed it and talked to it about me, just as if +he were there with us; and for a time I felt that I was of heroic +stature. + +But, as the days passed, with no laurels in the form of cases and fees, +and as clients left me through fear of Dominick's power, I shriveled +back to human size, and descended from my pedestal. From the +ground-level I began again to look about the matter-of-fact world. + +I saw I was making only a first small payment on the heavy price for the +right to say, no, for the right to be free to break with any man or any +enterprise that menaced my self-ownership. That right I felt I must +keep, whatever its cost. Some men can, or think they can, lend their +self-ownership and take it back at convenience; I knew I was not of +them--and let none of them judge me. Especially let none judge me who +only deludes himself that he owns himself, who has sold himself all his +life long for salaries and positions or for wealth, or for the empty +reputation of power he wields only on another's sufferance. + +A glance about me was enough to disclose the chief reason why so many +men had surrendered the inner citadel of self-respect. In the crucial +hour, when they had had to choose between subservience and a hard battle +with adversity, forth from their hearts had issued a traitor weakness, +the feeling of responsibility to wife and children, and this traitor +had easily delivered them captive to some master or masters. More, or +less, than human, it seemed to me, was the courage that could make +successful resistance to this traitor, and could strike down and drag +down wife and children. "I must give up Elizabeth," I said to myself, +"for her own sake as well as for mine. Marry her I must not until I am +established securely in freedom. And when will that be?" In my mood of +darkness and despair, the answer to that question was a relentless, +"Never, especially if you are weighted with the sense of obligation to +her, of her wasting her youth in waiting for you." + +I wrote her all that was in my mind. "You must forget me," I said, "and +I shall forget you--for I see that you are not for me." + +The answer came by telegraph--"Please don't ever again hurt me in that +way." And of the letter which came two days later I remember clearly +this sentence: "If you will not let me go on with you, I will make the +journey alone." + +This shook me, but I knew only too well how the bright and beautiful +legions of the romantic and the ideal could be put to flight, could be +hurled headlong into the abyss of oblivion by the phalanxes of fact. + +"I see what I must do," was my answer to her letter. "And I shall do it. +Be merciful to me, Elizabeth. Do not tempt me to a worse cowardice than +giving you up. I shall not write again." + +And I did not. Every one of her letters was answered--sometimes, I +remember, I wrote to her the whole night through, shading my window so +that mother could not from her window see the reflection of my lamp's +light on the ground and become anxious. But I destroyed those long and +often agonized answers. And I can not say whether my heart was the +heavier in the months when I was getting her letters, to which I dared +not reply, or in those succeeding months when her small, clear +handwriting first ceased to greet me from the mail. + + + + +IV + +THE SCHOOL OF LIFE-AS-IT-IS + + +A day or so after I lost the only case of consequence I had had in more +than a year, Buck Fessenden came into my office, and, after dosing me +liberally with those friendly protestations and assurances which please +even when they do not convince, said: "I know you won't give me away, +Sayler, and I can't stand it any longer to watch you going on this way. +Don't you see the old man's after you hammer and tongs? He'll never let +up. You won't get no clients, and, if you do, _you won't win no cases_." + +Those last five words, spoken in Buck's most significant manner, +revealed what my modesty--or, if you prefer, my stupidity--had hidden +from me. I had known all along that Dominick was keeping away and +driving away clients; but I had not suspected his creatures on the +bench. To this day, after all these years of use, only with the greatest +reluctance and with a moral uneasiness which would doubtless amuse most +political managers, do I send "suggestions" or "intimations" to my men +in judicial office--and I always do it, and always have done it, +indirectly. And I feel relieved and grateful when my judges, eager to +"serve the party," anticipate me by sending me a reassuring hint. + +I did not let Buck see into my mind. "Nonsense!" I pooh-poohed; "I've no +cause to complain of lack of business: but even if I had, I'd not blame +Dominick or any one else but myself." Then I gave him a straight but +good-humored look. "Drop it, Buck," said I. "What did the old man send +you to me for? What does he want?" + +He was too crafty to defend an indefensible position. "I'll admit he did +send me," said he with a grin, "but I came on my own account, too. Do +you want to make it up with him? You can get back under the plum tree if +you'll say the word." + +I could see my mother, as I had seen her two hours before at our poor +midday meal,--an old, old woman, so broken, so worn! And all through +the misery this Dominick had brought upon us. Before I could control +myself to speak, Buck burst out, a look of alarm in his face, "Don't say +it, Mr. Sayler,--I know,--I know. I told him it'd be no use. Honest, he +ain't as bad as you think,--he don't know no better, and it's because he +liked and still likes you that he wants you back." He leaned across the +desk toward me, in his earnestness,--and I could not doubt his +sincerity. "Sayler," he went on, "take my advice, get out of the state. +You ain't the sort that gives in, and no more is he. You've got more +nerve than any other man I know, bar none, but don't waste it on a fool +fight. You know enough about politics to know what you're up against." + +"Thank you," said I, "but I'll stay on." + +He gave over trying to persuade me. "I hope," said he, "you've got a +card up your sleeve that the old man don't know about." + +I made some vague reply, and he soon went away. I felt that I had +confirmed his belief in my fearlessness. Yet, if he could have looked +into my mind, how he would have laughed at his credulity! Probably he +would have pitied me, too, for it is one of the curious facts of human +nature that men are amazed and even disgusted whenever they see--in +others--the weaknesses that are universal. I doubt not, many who read +these memoirs will be quite honestly Pharisaical, thanking Heaven that +they are not touched with any of my infirmities. + +It may have been coincidence, though I think not, that, a few days after +Fessenden's call, a Reform movement against Dominick appeared upon the +surface of Jackson County politics. I thought, at the time, that it was +the first streak of the dawn I had been watching for,--the awakening of +the sluggish moral sentiment of the rank and file of the voters. I know +now that it was merely the result of a quarrel among the corporations +that employed Dominick. He had been giving the largest of them, +Roebuck's Universal Gas and Electric Company, called the Power Trust, +more than its proportional share of the privileges and spoils. The +others had protested in vain, and as a last resort had ordered their +lawyers to organize a movement to "purify" Jackson County, Dominick's +stronghold. + +I did not then know it, but I got the nomination for county prosecutor +chiefly because none of the other lawyers, not even those secretly +directing the Reform campaign, was brave enough publicly to provoke the +Power Trust. I made a house to house, farm to farm, man to man, canvass. +We had the secret ballot, and I was elected. The people rarely fail to +respond to that kind of appeal if they are convinced that response can +not possibly hurt, and may help, their pockets. And, by the way, those +occasional responses, significant neither of morality nor of +intelligence, lead political theorists far astray. As if honor or +honesty could win other than sporadic and more or less hypocritical +homage--practical homage, I mean--among a people whose permanent ideal +is wealth, no matter how got or how used. That is another way of saying +that the chief characteristic of Americans is that we are human and, +whatever we may profess, cherish the human ideal universal in a world +where want is man's wickedest enemy and wealth his most winning friend. +But as I was relating, I was elected, and my majority, on the face of +the returns, was between ten and eleven hundred. It must actually have +been many thousands, for never before had Dominick "doctored" the tally +sheets so recklessly. + +Financially I was now on my way to the surface. I supposed that I had +become a political personage also. Was I not in possession of the most +powerful office in the county? I was astonished that neither Dominick +nor any other member of his gang made the slightest effort to conciliate +me between election day and the date of my taking office. I did succeed +in forcing from reluctant grand juries indictments against a few of the +most notorious, but least important, members of the gang; and I got one +conviction--which was reversed on trial-errors by the higher court. + +The truth was that my power had no existence. Dominick still ruled, +through the judges and the newspapers. The press was silent when it +could not venture to deprecate or to condemn me. + +But I fought on almost alone. I did not fail to make it clear to the +people why I was not succeeding, and what a sweep there must be before +Jackson County could have any real reform. I made an even more vigorous +campaign for reëlection than I had made four years before. The farmers +stood by me fairly well, but the town went overwhelmingly against me. +Why? Because I was "bad for business" and, if reëlected, would be still +worse. The corporations with whose law-breaking I interfered were +threatening to remove their plants from Pulaski,--that would have meant +the departure of thousands of the merchants' best customers, and the +destruction of the town's prosperity. I think the election was fairly +honest. Dominick's man beat me by about the same majority by which I had +been elected. + +"Bad for business!"--the most potent of political slogans. And it will +inevitably result some day in the concentration of absolute power, +political and all other kinds, in the hands of the few who are strongest +and cleverest. For they can make the people bitterly regret and speedily +repent having tried to correct abuses; and the people, to save their +dollars, will sacrifice their liberty. I doubt if they will, in our time +at least, learn to see far enough to realize that who captures their +liberty captures them and, therefore, their dollars too. + +By my defeat in that typical contest I was disheartened, +embittered,--and ruined. For, in my enthusiasm and confidence I had gone +deeply into debt for the expenses of the Reform campaign. At midnight of +election day I descended into the black cave of despair. For three weeks +I explored it. When I returned to the surface, I was a man, ready to +deal with men on the terms of human nature. I had learned my lesson. + +For woman the cost of the attainment of womanhood's maturity is the +beautiful, the divine freshness of girlhood. For man, the cost of the +attainment of manhood's full strength and power is equally great, and +equally sad,--his divine faith in human nature, his divine belief that +abstract justice and right and truth rule the world. + +Even now, when life is redeeming some of those large promises to pay +which I had long ago given up as hopeless bad debts; even now, it gives +me a wrench to remember the crudest chapter in that bitter lesson. So +certain had I been of reëlection that I had arranged to go to Boston the +day after my triumph at the polls. For I knew from friends of the +Crosbys in Pulaski that Elizabeth was still unmarried, was not engaged, +and upon that I had built high a romantic hope. + + * * * * * + +I made up my mind that mother and I must leave Pulaski, that I must give +up the law and must, in Chicago or Cleveland, get something to do that +would bring in a living at once. Before I found courage to tell her that +which would blast hopes wrapped round and rooted in her very heart, and, +fortunately, before I had to confess to her the debts I had made, Edward +Ramsay threw me a life-line. + +He came bustling into my office one afternoon, big and broad, and +obviously pleased with himself, and, therefore, with the world. He had +hardly changed in the years since we were at Ann Arbor together. He had +kept up our friendship, and had insisted on visiting me several times, +though not in the past four years, which had been as busy for him as for +me. Latterly his letters urging me to visit him at their great country +place, away at the other end of the state, had set me a hard task of +inventing excuses. + +"Well, well!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand violently in both his. "You +wouldn't come to see me, so I've come to you." + +I tried not to show the nervousness this announcement stirred. "I'm +afraid you'll find our hospitality rather uncomfortable," was all I +said. Mother and I had not spread much sail to our temporary gust of +prosperity; and when the storm began to gather, she straightway +closereefed. + +"Thanks, but I can't stop with you this time," said he. "I'm making an +inspection of the Power Trust's properties, and I've got mother and +sister along. We're living in the private car the company gives me for +the tour." He went on to tell how, since his father's death, he had been +forced into responsibilities, and was, among many other things, a member +of the Power Trust's executive committee. + +Soon came the inevitable question, "And how are you getting on?" + +"So so," replied I; "not too well, just at the present. I was beaten, +you know, and have to go back to my practice in January." + +"Wish you lived in my part of the state," said he. "But the Ramsay +Company hasn't anything down here." He reflected a moment, then beamed. +"I can get you the legal business of the Power Trust if you want it," he +said. "Their lawyer down here goes on the bench, you know--he was on the +ticket that won. Roebuck wanted a good, safe, first-class man on the +bench in this circuit." + +But he added nothing more about the Power Trust vacancy at Pulaski. +True, my first impulse was that I couldn't and wouldn't accept; also, I +told myself it was absurd to imagine they would consider me. Still, I +wished to hear, and his failure to return to the subject settled once +more the clouds his coming had lifted somewhat. + +Mother was not well enough to have the Ramsays at the house that +evening, so I dined with them in the car. Mrs. Ramsay was the same +simple, silent, ill-at-ease person I had first met at the Ann Arbor +commencement,--probably the same that she had been ever since her +husband's wealth and her children's infection with newfangled ideas had +forced her from the plain ways of her youth. I liked her, but I was not +so well pleased with her daughter. Carlotta was then twenty-two, had +abundant, noticeably nice brown hair, an indifferent skin, pettish lips, +and restless eyes, a little too close together,--a spoiled wilful young +woman, taking to herself the deference that had been paid chiefly to her +wealth. She treated me as if I were a candidate for her favor whom she +was testing so that she might decide whether she would be graciously +pleased to tolerate him. + +Usually, superciliousness has not disturbed me. It is a cheap and +harmless pleasure of cheap and harmless people. But just at that time my +nerves were out of order, and Miss Ramsay's airs of patronage "got" on +me. I proceeded politely to convey to her the impression that she did +not attract me, that I did not think her worth while--this, not through +artful design of interesting by piquing, but simply in the hope of +rasping upon her as she was rasping upon me. When I saw that I had +gained my point, I ignored her. I tried to talk with Ed, then with his +mother, but neither would interfere between me and Carlotta. I had to +talk to her until she voluntarily lapsed into offended silence. Then Ed, +to save the evening from disaster, began discussing with me the fate of +our class-mates. I saw that Carlotta was studying me curiously,--even +resentfully, I thought; and she was coldly polite when I said good +night. + +She and her mother called on my mother the next morning. "And what a +nice girl Miss Ramsay is,--so sensible, so intelligent, and so +friendly!" said my mother, relating the incidents of the visit in minute +detail when I went home at noon. + +"I didn't find her especially friendly," said I. Whereat I saw, or +fancied I saw, a smile deep down in her eyes,--and it set me to +thinking. + +In the afternoon Ed looked in at my office in the court-house to say +good-by. "But first, old man, I want to tell you I got that place for +you. I thought I had better use the wire. Old Roebuck is +delighted,--telegraphed me to close the arrangement at +once,--congratulated me on being able to get you. I knew it'd be so. He +has his eyes skinned for bright young men,--all those big men have. +Whenever a fellow, especially a bright young lawyer, shows signs of +ability, they scoop him in." + +"I can't believe it," said I, dazed. "I've been fighting him for four +years--hard." + +"That's it!" said he. "And don't you fret about its being a case of +trying to heap coals of fire on your head. Roebuck don't use the +fire-shovel for that sort of thing. He's snapping you up because you've +shown him what you can do. That's the way to get on nowadays, they tell +me. Whenever the fellows on top find the chap, especially one in public +office, who makes it hot for them, they hire him. Good business all +around." + +Thus, so suddenly that it giddied me, I was translated from failure to +success, from poverty to affluence, from the most harassing anxiety to +ease and security. Two months before I should have rejected the Power +Trust's offer with scorn, and should have gloried in my act as proof of +superior virtue. But in those crucial two months I had been apprentice +to the master whom all men that ever come to anything in this world must +first serve. I had reformed my line of battle, had adjusted it to the +lines laid down in the tactics of Life-as-it-is. + +Before I was able to convince myself that my fortunes had really +changed, Ed Ramsay telegraphed me to call on him in Fredonia on business +of his own. It proved to be such a trifle that I began to puzzle at his +real reason for sending for me. When he spun that trifle out over ten +days, on each of which I was alone with Carlotta at least half my waking +hours, I thought I had the clue to the mystery. I saw how I could +increase the energy of his new enthusiasm for me, and, also, how I could +cool it, if I wished to be rash and foolish and to tempt fate again. + +"Oh, the business didn't amount to much," was my answer to one of my +mother's first questions, on my return. She smiled peculiarly. In spite +of my efforts, the red came--at least I felt red. + +"How did you like his sister?" she went on, again with that fluttering +smile in the eyes only. + +"A very nice girl," said I, in anything but a natural manner. My +mother's expression teased me into adding: "Don't be silly. Nothing of +_that_ sort. You are always imagining that every one shares your opinion +of me. She isn't likely to fall in love with me. Certainly I shan't with +her." + +Mother's silence somehow seemed argumentative. + +"I couldn't marry a girl for her money," I retorted to it. + +"Of course not," rejoined mother. "But there are other things to marry +for besides money, or love,--other things more sensible than either. For +instance, there are the principal things,--home and children." + +I was listening with an open mind. + +"The glamour of courtship and honeymoon passes," she went on. "Then +comes the sober business of living,--your career and your home. The +woman's part in both is better played if there isn't the sort of love +that is exacting, always interfering with the career, and making the +home-life a succession of ups and downs, mostly downs." + +"Carlotta is very ambitious," said I. + +"Ambitious for her husband," replied my mother, "as a sensible woman +should be. She appreciates that a woman's best chance for big dividends +in marriage is by being the silent partner in her husband's career. +She'll be very domestic when she has children. I saw it the instant I +looked at her. She has the true maternal instinct. What a man who's +going to amount to something needs isn't a woman to be taken care of, +but a woman to take care of him." + +She said no more,--she had made her point; and, when she had done that, +she always stopped. + +Within a month Ed Ramsay sent for me again, but this time it was +business alone. I found him in a panic, like a man facing an avalanche +and armed only with a shovel. Dunkirk, the senior United States senator +for our state, lived at Fredonia. He had seen that, by tunneling the +Mesaba Range, a profitable railroad between Fredonia and Chicago could +be built that would shorten the time at least three hours. But it would +take away about half the carrying business of the Ramsay Company, +besides seriously depreciating the Ramsay interest in the existing +road. "And," continued Ed, "the old scoundrel has got the capital +practically subscribed in New York. The people here are hot for the new +road. It'll be sure to carry at the special election, next month. He has +the governor and legislature in his vest pocket, so they'll put through +the charter next winter." + +"I don't see that anything can be done," said Ed's lawyer, old Judge +Barclay, who was at the consultation. "It means a big rake-off for +Dunkirk. Politics is on a money basis nowadays. That's natural enough, +since there is money to be made out of it. I don't see how those in +politics that don't graft, as they call it, are any better than those +that do. Would they get office if they didn't help on the jobs of the +grafters? I suppose we might buy Dunkirk off." + +"What do you think, Harvey?" asked Ed, looking anxiously at me. "We've +got to fight the devil with fire, you know." + +I shook my head. "Buying him off isn't fighting,--it's surrender. We +must fight him,--with fire." + +I let them talk themselves out, and then said, "Well, I'll take it to +bed with me. Perhaps something will occur to me that can be worked up +into a scheme." + +In fact, I had already thought of a scheme, but before suggesting it I +wished to be sure it was as good as it seemed. Also, there was a +fundamental moral obstacle,--the road would be a public benefit; it +ought to be built. That moral problem caused most of my wakefulness that +night, simple though the solution was when it finally came. The first +thing Ed said to me, as we faced each other alone at breakfast, showed +me how well spent those hours were. + +"About this business of the new road," said he. "If I were the only +party at interest, I'd let Dunkirk go ahead, for it's undoubtedly a good +thing from the public standpoint. But I've got to consider the interests +of all those I'm trustee for,--the other share-holders in the Ramsay +Company and in our other concerns here." + +"Yes," replied I, "but why do you say Dunkirk intends to build the road? +Why do you take that for granted?" + +"He's all ready to do it, and it'd be a money-maker from the start." + +"But," I went on, "you must assume that he has no intention of building, +that he is only making an elaborate bluff. How do you know but that he +wants to get this right of way and charter so that he can blackmail you +and your concerns, not merely once, but year after year? You'd gladly +pay him several hundred thousand a year not to use his charter and right +of way, wouldn't you?" + +"I never thought of that!" exclaimed Ed. "I believe you're right, +Harvey, and you've taken a weight off my conscience. There's nothing +like a good lawyer to make a man see straight. What an infernal hound +old Dunkirk is!" + +"And," I went on, "if he should build the road, what would he do with +it? Why, the easiest and biggest source of profit would be to run big +excursions every Saturday and Sunday, especially Sunday, into Fredonia. +He'd fill the place every Sunday, from May till November, with +roistering roughs from the slums of Chicago. How'd the people like +that?" + +"He wouldn't dare," objected Ramsay, stupidly insisting on leaning +backward in his determination to stand straight. "He's a religious +hypocrite. He'd be afraid." + +"As Deacon Dunkirk he wouldn't dare," I replied. "But as the Chicago and +Fredonia Short Line he'd dare anything, and nobody would blame him +personally. You know how that is." + +Ed was looking at me in dazed admiration. "Then," I went on, "there are +the retail merchants of Fredonia. Has it ever occurred to them, in their +excitement in favor of this road, that it'll ruin them? Where will the +shopping be done if the women can get to Chicago in two hours and a +half?" + +"You're right, you're right!" exclaimed Ed, rising to pace the floor in +his agitation. "Bully for you, Harvey! We'll show the people that the +road'll ruin the town morally and financially." + +"But you must come out in favor of it," said I. "We mustn't give Dunkirk +the argument that you're fighting it because you'd be injured by it. No, +you must be hot for the road. Perhaps you might give out that you were +considering selling your property on the lake front to a company that +was going to change it into a brewery and huge pleasure park. As the +lake's only a few hundred yards wide, with the town along one bank and +your place along the other, why, I think that'd rouse the people to +their peril." + +"That's the kind of fire to fight the devil with," said he, laughing. "I +don't think Mister Senator Dunkirk will get the consent of Fredonia." + +"But there's the legislature," said I. + +His face fell. "I'm afraid he'll do us in the end, old man." + +I thought not, but I only said, "Well, we've got until next winter,--if +we can beat him here." + +Ed insisted that I must stay on and help him at the delicate task of +reversing the current of Fredonia sentiment. My share of the work was +important enough, but, as it was confined entirely to making +suggestions, it took little of my time. I had no leisure, however, for +there was Carlotta to look after. + + * * * * * + +When it was all over and she had told Ed and he had shaken hands with +her and had kissed me and had otherwise shown the chaotic condition of +his mind, and she and I were alone again, she said, "How did it happen? +I don't remember that you really proposed to me. Yet we certainly are +engaged." + +"We certainly are," said I, "and that's the essential point, isn't it?" + +"Yes," she admitted, "but,--" and she looked mystified. + +"We drifted," I suggested. + +She glanced at me with a smile that was an enigma. "Yes--we just +drifted. Why do you look at me so queerly?" + +"I was just going to ask you that same question," said I by way of +evasion. + +Then we both fell to thinking, and after a long time she roused herself +to say, "But we shall be very happy. I am so fond of you. And you are +going to be a great man and you do so look it, even if you aren't tall +and fair, as I always thought the man I married would be. Don't look at +me like that. Your eyes are strange enough when you are smiling; but +when you--I often wonder what you're so sad about." + +"Have you ever seen a grown person's face that wasn't sad in repose?" I +asked, eager to shift from the particular to the general. + +"A few idiots or near idiots," she replied with a laugh. Thereafter we +talked of the future and let the past sleep in its uncovered coffin. + + + + +V + +A GOOD MAN AND HIS WOES + + +After Ed and I had carried the Fredonia election against Dunkirk's road, +we went fishing with Roebuck in the northern Wisconsin woods. I had two +weeks, two uninterrupted weeks, in which to impress myself upon him; +besides, there was Ed, who related in tedious but effective detail, on +the slightest provocation, the achievements that had made him my devoted +admirer. So, when I went to visit Roebuck, in June, at his house near +Chicago, he was ready to listen to me in the proper spirit. + +I soon drew him on to tell of his troubles with Dunkirk--how the Senator +was gouging him and every big corporation doing business in the state. +"I've been loyal to the party for forty years," said he bitterly, "yet, +if I had been on the other side it couldn't cost me more to do business. +I have to pay enough here, heaven knows. But it costs me more in your +state,--with your man Dunkirk." His white face grew pink with anger. +"It's monstrous! Yet you should have heard him address my Sunday-school +scholars at the last annual outing I gave them. What an evidence of the +power of religion it is that such wretches as he pay the tribute of +hypocrisy to it!" + +His business and his religion were Roebuck's two absorbing +passions,--religion rapidly predominating as he drew further away from +sixty. + +"Why do you endure this blackmailing, Mr. Roebuck?" I asked. "He is +growing steadily worse." + +"He is certainly more rapacious than he was ten years ago," Roebuck +admitted. "Our virtues or our vices, whichever we give the stronger hold +on us, become more marked as we approach Judgment. When we finally go, +we are prepared for the place that has been prepared for us." + +"But why do you put up with his impudence?" + +"What can we do? He has political power and is our only protection +against the people. They have been inflamed with absurd notions about +their rights. They are filled with envy and suspicion of the rich. They +have passed laws to hamper us in developing the country, and want to +pass more and worse laws. So we must either go out of business and let +the talents God has given us lie idle in a napkin, or pay the Dunkirks +to prevent the people from having their ignorant wicked way, and +destroying us and themselves. For how would they get work if we didn't +provide it for them?" + +"A miserable makeshift system," said I, harking back to Dunkirk and his +blackmailing, for I was not just then in the mood to amuse myself with +the contortions of Roebuck's flexible and fantastic "moral sense." + +"I've been troubled in conscience a great deal, Harvey, a great deal, +about the morality of what we business men are forced to do. I +hope--indeed I feel--that we are justified in protecting our property in +the only way open to us. The devil must be fought with fire, you know." + +"How much did Dunkirk rob you of last year?" I asked. + +"Nearly three hundred thousand dollars," he said, and his expression +suggested that each dollar had been separated from him with as great +agony as if it had been so much flesh pinched from his body. "There was +Dominick, besides, and a lot of infamous strike-bills to be quieted. It +cost five hundred thousand dollars in all--in your state alone. And we +didn't ask a single bit of new legislation. All the money was paid just +to escape persecution under those alleged laws! Yet they call this a +free country! When I think of the martyrdom--yes, the mental and moral +martyrdom, of the men who have made this country--What are the few +millions a man may amass, in compensation for what he has to endure? +Why, Sayler, I've not the slightest doubt you could find well-meaning, +yes, really honest, God-fearing people, who would tell you I am a +scoundrel! I have read _sermons_, delivered from _pulpits_ against me! +_Sermons_ from _pulpits_!" + +"I have thought out a plan," said I, after a moment's silent and shocked +contemplation of this deplorable state of affairs, "a plan to end +Dunkirk and cheapen the cost of political business." + +At "cheapen the cost" his big ears twitched as if they had been tickled. + +"You can't expect to get what you need for nothing," I continued, "in +the present state of public opinion. But I'm sure I could reduce +expenses by half--at least half." + +I had his undivided attention. + +"It is patently absurd," I went on, "that you who finance politics and +keep in funds these fellows of both machines should let them treat you +as if you were their servants. Why don't you put them in their place, +servants at servants' wages?" + +"But I've no time to go into politics,--and I don't know anything about +it--don't want to know. It's a low business,--ignorance, corruption, +filthiness." + +"Take Dunkirk, for example," I pushed on. "His lieutenants and heelers +hate him because he doesn't divide squarely. The only factor in his +power is the rank and file of the voters of our party. They, I'm +convinced, are pretty well aware of his hypocrisy,--but it doesn't +matter much what they think. They vote like sheep and accept whatever +leaders and candidates our machine gives them. They are almost +stone-blind in their partizanship and they can always be fooled up to +the necessary point. And we can fool them ourselves, if we go about it +right, just as well as Dunkirk does it for hire." + +"But Dunkirk is _their_ man, isn't he?" he suggested. + +"Any man is their man whom you choose to give them," replied I. "And +don't _you_ give them Dunkirk? He takes the money from the big business +interests, and with it hires the men to sit in the legislature and +finances the machine throughout the state. It takes big money to run a +political machine. His power belongs to you people, to a dozen of you, +and you can take it away from him; his popularity belongs to the party, +and it would cheer just as loudly for any other man who wore the party +uniform." + +"I see," he said reflectively; "the machine rules the party, and money +rules the machine, and we supply the money and don't get the benefit. +It's as if I let my wife or one of my employés run my property." + +"Much like that," I answered. "Now, why shouldn't you finance the +machine directly and do away with Dunkirk, who takes as his own wages +about half what you give him? He takes it and wastes it in stock +speculations,--gambling with your hard-earned wealth, gambling it away +cheerfully, because he feels that you people will always give him more." + +"What do you propose?" he asked; and I could see that his acute business +mind was ready to pounce upon my scheme and search it hopefully if +mercilessly. + +"A secret, absolutely secret, combine of a dozen of the big corporations +of my state,--those that make the bulk of the political business,--the +combine to be under the management of some man whom they trust and whose +interests are business, not political." + +"He would have enormous power," said Roebuck. + +I knew that he would point first and straight at that phase of my +scheme, no matter how subtly I might disguise it. So I had pushed it +into his face and had all but pointed at it myself so that I might +explain it away. "Power?" said I. "How do you make that out? Any member +of the combine that is dissatisfied can withdraw at any time and go +back to the old way of doing business. Besides, the manager won't dare +appear in it at all,--he'll have to hide himself from the people and +from the politicians, behind some popular figure-head. There's another +advantage that mustn't be overlooked. Dunkirk and these other demagogues +who bleed you are inflaming public sentiment more and more against you +big corporations,--that's their way of frightening you into yielding to +their demands. Under the new plan their demagoguery would cease. Don't +you think it's high time for the leaders of commerce and industry to +combine intelligently against demagoguery? Don't you think they have +cringed before it, and have financed and fostered it too long?" + +This argument, which I had reserved for the last, had all the effect I +anticipated. He sat rubbing his broad, bald forehead, twisting his white +whiskers and muttering to himself. Presently he asked, "When are you and +Lottie Ramsay going to be married?" + +"In the fall," said I. "In about three months." + +"Well, we'll talk this over again--after you are married and settled. +If you had the substantial interests to give you the steadiness and +ballast, I think you'd be the very man for your scheme. Yes, +something--some such thing as you suggest--must be done to stop the +poisoning of public opinion against the country's best and strongest +men. The political department of the business interests ought to be as +thoroughly organized as the other departments are. Come to me again +after you're married." + +I saw that his mind was fixed, that he would be unable to trust me until +I was of his class, of the aristocracy of corpulent corporate persons. I +went away much downcast; but, two weeks afterward he telegraphed for me, +and when I came he at once brought up the subject of the combine. + +"Go ahead with it," he said. "I've been thinking it over and talking it +over. We shall need only nine others besides myself and you. You +represent the Ramsay interest." + +He equipped me with the necessary letters of introduction and sent me +forth on a tour of my state. When it was ended, my "combine" was formed. +And _I_ was the combine,--was master of this political blind pool. I +had taken the first, the hardest step, toward the realization of my +dream of real political power,--to become an unbossed boss, not the +agent and servant of Plutocracy or Partizanship, but using both to +further my own purposes and plans. + +I had thus laid out for myself the difficult feat of controlling two +fiery steeds. Difficult, but not impossible, if I should develop skill +as a driver--for the skilful driver has a hand so light that his horses +fancy they are going their own road at their own gait. + + + + +VI + +MISS RAMSAY REVOLTS + + +The last remark Roebuck had made to me--on his doorstep, as I was +starting on my mission--was: "Can't you and Lottie hurry up that +marriage of yours? You ought to get it over and out of the way." When I +returned home with my mission accomplished, the first remark my mother +made after our greeting was: "Harvey, I wish you and Lottie were going +to marry a little sooner." + +A note in her voice made me look swiftly at her, and then, without a +word, I was on my knees, my face in her lap and she stroking my head. "I +feel that I'm going to--to your father, dear," she said. + +I heard and I thought I realized; but I did not. Who, feeling upon him +the living hand of love, was ever able to imagine that hand other than +alive? But her look of illness, of utter exhaustion,--_that_ I +understood and suffered for. "You must rest," said I; "you must sit +quiet and be waited on until you are strong again." + +"Yes, I will rest," she answered, "as soon as my boy is settled." + +That very day I wrote Carlotta telling her about mother's health and +asking her to change the date of our wedding to the first week in +August, then just under a month away. She telegraphed me to come and +talk it over. + +She was at the station in her phaeton to meet me. We had not driven far +before I felt and saw that she was intensely irritated against me. As I +unburdened my mind of my anxieties about mother, she listened coldly. +And I had to wait a long time before I got her answer, in a strained +voice and with averted eyes: "Of course, I'm sorry your mother isn't +well, but I can't get ready that soon." + +It was not her words that exasperated me; the lightning of speech from +the storm-clouds of anger tends to clear the air. It was her expression. + +Never have I known any one who could concentrate into brows and eyes and +chin and lips more of that sullen and aggressive obstinacy which is the +climax of provocativeness. Patience, in thought at least, with refusal +has not been one of my virtues. This refusal of hers, this denial of +happiness to one who had deserved so much and had received so little, +set temper to working in me like a quick poison. But I was silent, not +so much from prudence as from inability to find adequate words. + +"I can't do it," repeated Carlotta, "and I won't." She made it clear +that she meant the "won't,"--that she was bent upon a quarrel. + +But in my struggle to train those stanchest of servants and maddest of +masters, the passions, I had got at least far enough always to choose +both the time and the ground of a quarrel. So I said: "Very well, +Carlotta. Then, that is settled." And with an air sufficiently deceptive +to pass muster before angry eyes, I proceeded to talk of indifferent +matters. + +As I sat beside her, my temper glowering in the straining leash, I +revolved her conduct and tried to puzzle out its meaning. It is clear, +thought I, that she does not care for me as people about to marry +usually profess to care. Then, does she wish to break the engagement? + +That tamed my anger instantly. + +Yes, I thought on, she wishes to be free--to free me. And, as my combine +is formed and my career well advanced in the way to being established, +what reason is there for trying to prevent her from freeing herself? +None--for I can easily explain the situation to mother. "Yes," I +concluded, "you can avoid a quarrel, can remain friends with Carlotta, +can give and get freedom." What had changed her? I did not know; I did +not waste time in puzzling; I did not tempt fate by asking. "You are +poor, she is rich," I reminded myself. "That makes it impossible for you +to hesitate. You must give her no excuse for thinking you lack pride." + +Thus I reasoned and planned, my temper back in its kennel and peaceful +as a sheep. That evening I avoided being alone with her; just as I was +debating how to announce that I must be leaving by the first train in +the morning a telegram came from Roebuck calling me to Chicago at once. +When we were all going to bed, I said to Mrs. Ramsay: "I shall see you +and Ed in the morning, but"--to Carlotta--"you don't get up so early. +I'll say good-by now,"--this in the friendliest possible way. + +I was conscious of Mrs. Ramsay's look of wonder and anxiety; of Ed's +wild stare from Carlotta to me and back again at her. She bit her lip +and her voice was unsteady as she said: "Oh, no, Harvey. I'll be up." +There was a certain meekness in her tone which would probably have +delighted me had I been what is usually called "masterful." + +When I came down at seven o'clock after an unquiet night, Carlotta was +lying in wait for me, took me into the parlor and shut the door. "What +do you mean?" she demanded, facing me with something of her wonted +imperiousness. + +"Mean?" said I, for once feeling no resentment at her manner. + +"By leaving--this way," she explained with impatience. + +"You heard Mr. Roebuck's telegram," said I. + +"You are angry with me," she persisted. + +"No, Carlotta," said I. "I was, but I am not. As soon as I saw what you +wished, I was grateful, not angry." + +"What did I wish?" + +"To let me know as gently and kindly as you could that you purposed to +end our engagement. And I guess you are right. We do not seem to care +for each other as we ought if we--" + +"You misunderstood me," she said, pale and with flashing eyes, and in +such a struggle with her emotions that she could say no more. + +If I had not seen that only her pride and her vanity were engaged in the +struggle, and her heart not at all, I think I should have abandoned my +comfortable self-deception that my own pride forbade discussion with +her. As it was, I was able to say: "Don't try to spare me, Carlotta, I'm +glad you had the courage and the good sense not to let us both drift +into irrevocable folly. I thank you." I opened the door into the hall. +"Let us talk no more about it. We could say to each other only the +things that sting or the things that stab. Let us be friends. You must +give me your friendship, at least." I took her hand. + +She looked strangely at me. "You want me to humble myself, to crawl at +your feet and beg your pardon," said she between her teeth. "But I +shan't." She snatched away her hand and threw back her head. + +"I wish nothing but what is best for us both," said I. "But let us not +talk of it now--when neither of us is calm." + +"You don't care for me!" she cried. + +"Do _you_ love _me_?" I rejoined. + +Her eyes shifted. I waited for her reply and, when it did not come, I +said: "Let us go to breakfast." + +"I'll not go in just now," she answered, in a quiet tone, a sudden and +strange shift from that of the moment before. And she let me take her +hand, echoed my good-by, and made no further attempt to detain me. + +That was a gloomy breakfast despite my efforts to make my own seeming of +good-humor permeate to the others. Mrs. Ramsay hid a somber face behind +the coffee-urn; Ed ate furiously, noisily, choking every now and then. +He drove me to the station; his whole body was probably as damp from his +emotions as were his eyes and his big friendly hand. The train got +under way; I drew a long breath. I was free. + +But somehow freedom did not taste as I had anticipated. Though I +reminded myself that I had acted as any man with pride and self-respect +would have acted in such delicate circumstances, and though I knew that +Carlotta was no more in love with me than I was with her, this end to +our engagement seemed even more humiliating to me than its beginning had +seemed. It was one more instance of that wretched fatality which has +pursued me through life, which has made every one of my triumphs come to +me in mourning robes and with a gruesome face. In the glittering array +of "prizes" that tempts man to make a beast and a fool of himself in the +gladiatorial show called Life, the sorriest, the most ironic, is the +grand prize, Victory. + + * * * * * + +The parlor car was crowded; its only untaken seat was in the smoking +compartment, which had four other occupants, deep in a game of poker. +Three of them were types of commonplace, prosperous Americans; the +fourth could not be so easily classed and, therefore, interested +me--especially as I was in the mood to welcome anything that would crowd +to the background my far from agreeable thoughts. + +The others called him "Doc," or Woodruff. As they played, they drank +from flasks produced by each in turn. Doc drank with the others, and +deeper than any of them. They talked more and more, he less and less, +until finally he interrupted their noisy volubility only when the game +compelled. I saw that he was one of those rare men upon whom amiable +conversation or liquor or any other relaxing force has the reverse of +the usual effect. Instead of relaxing, he drew himself together and +concentrated more obstinately upon his game. Luck, so far as the cards +controlled it, was rather against him, and the other three players took +turns at audacious and by no means unskilful play. I was soon admiring +the way he "sized up" and met each in turn. Prudence did not make him +timid. He advanced and retreated, "bluffed" and held aloof, with +acuteness and daring. + +At a station perhaps fifty miles from Chicago, the other three +left,--and Doc had four hundred-odd dollars of their money. + +I dropped into the seat opposite him--it was by the window--and amused +myself watching him, while waiting for a chance to talk with him; for I +saw that he was a superior person, and, in those days, when I was +inconspicuous and so was not compelled constantly to be on guard, I +never missed a chance to benefit by such exchanges of ideas. + +He was apparently about forty years old, to strike a balance between the +youth of eyes, mouth, and contour, and the age of deep lines and +grayish, thinning hair. He had large, frank, blue eyes, a large nose, a +strong forehead and chin, a grossly self-indulgent mouth,--there was the +weakness, there, as usual! Evidently, the strength his mind and +character gave him went in pandering to physical appetites. In +confirmation of this, there were two curious marks on him,--a nick in +the rim of his left ear, a souvenir of a bullet or a knife, and a scar +just under the edge of his chin to the right. When he compressed his +lips, this scar, not especially noticeable at other times, lifted up +into his face, became of a sickly, bluish white, and transformed a +careless, good-humored cynic into a man of danger, of terror. + +His reverie began, as I gathered from his unguarded face, in cynical +amusement, probably at his triumph over his friends. It passed on to +still more agreeable things,--something in the expression of the mouth +suggested thoughts of how he was going to enjoy himself as he "blew in" +his winnings. Then his features shadowed, darkened, and I had my first +view of the scar terrible. He shook his big head and big shoulders, +roused himself, made ready to take a drink, noticed me, and said, "Won't +you join me?" His look was most engaging. + +I accepted and we were soon sociable, each taking an instinctive liking +to the other. We talked of the business situation, of the news in the +papers, and then of political affairs. Each of us saw that there he was +at the other's keenest interest in life. He knew the game,--practical +politics as distinguished from the politics talked by and to the public. +But he evaded, without seeming to do so, all the ingenious traps I laid +for drawing from him some admission that would give me a clue to where +he "fitted in." I learned no more about him than I thought he learned +about me. + +"I hope we shall meet again," said I cordially, as we parted at the +cab-stand. + +"Thank you," he answered, and afterward I remembered the faint smile in +his eyes. + +I, of course, knew that Roebuck was greatly interested in my project for +putting political business on a business basis; but not until he had +explained why he sent for me did I see how it had fascinated and +absorbed his mind. "You showed me," he began, "that you must have under +you a practical man to handle the money and do the arranging with the +heelers and all that sort of thing." + +"Yes," said I; "it's a vital part of the plan. We must find a man who is +perfectly trustworthy and discreet. Necessarily he'll know or suspect +something--not much, but still something--of the inside workings of the +combine." + +"Well, I've found him," went on Roebuck, in a triumphant tone. "He's a +godless person, with no character to lose, and no conception of what +character means. But he's straight as a string. Providence seems to have +provided such men for just such situations as these, where the devil +must be fought with fire. I've been testing him for nearly fifteen +years. But you can judge for yourself." + +I was the reverse of pleased. It was not in my calculations to have a +creature of Roebuck's foisted upon me, perhaps--indeed, probably--a spy. +I purposed to choose my own man; and I decided while he was talking, +that I would accept the Roebuck selection only to drop him on some +plausible pretext before we began operations. I was to meet the man at +dinner,--Roebuck had engaged a suite at the Auditorium. "It wouldn't do +to have him at my house or club," said he; "neither do we want to be +seen with him." + +Coincidence is so familiar a part of the daily routine that I was not +much surprised when my acquaintance, the astute poker player with the +scar, walked in upon us at the Auditorium. But Roebuck was both +astonished and chagrined when we shook hands and greeted each other like +old friends. + +"How do you do, Mr. Sayler?" said Woodruff. + +"Glad to see you, Doctor Woodruff," I replied. "Then you knew me all the +time? Why didn't you speak out? We might have had an hour's business +talk in the train." + +"If I'd shown myself as leaky as all that, I guess there'd have been no +business to talk about," he replied. "Anyhow, I didn't know you till you +took out your watch with the monogram on the back, just as we were +pulling in. Then I remembered where I'd seen your face before. I was up +at your state house the day that you threw old Dominick down. That's +been a good many years ago." + +That chance, easy, smoking-compartment meeting, at which each had +studied the other dispassionately, was most fortunate for us both. + +The relation that was to exist between us--more, much more, than that of +mere employer and employé--made fidelity, personal fidelity, imperative; +and accident had laid the foundation for the mutual attachment without +which there is certain to be, sooner or later, suspicion on both sides, +and cause for it. + +The two hours and a half with Woodruff, at and after dinner, served to +reinforce my first impression. I saw that he was a thorough man of the +world, that he knew politics from end to end, and that he understood the +main weaknesses of human nature and how to play upon them for the +advantage of his employers and for his own huge amusement. He gave a +small exhibition of that skill at the expense of Roebuck. He appreciated +that Roebuck was one of those unconscious hypocrites who put conscience +out of court in advance by assuming that whatever they wish to do is +right or _they_ could not wish to do it. He led Roebuck on to show off +this peculiarity of his,--a jumbling, often in the same breath, of the +most sonorous piety and the most shameless business perfidy. All the +time Woodruff's face was perfectly grave,--there are some men who refuse +to waste any of their internal enjoyment in external show. + +Before he left us I arranged to meet him the next morning for the +settlement of the details of his employment. When Roebuck and I were +alone, I said: "What do you know about him? Who is he?" + +"He comes of a good family here in Chicago,--one of the best. Perhaps +you recall the Bowker murder?" + +"Vaguely," I answered. + +"It was Woodruff who did it. We had a hard time getting him off. Bowker +and Woodruff's younger brother were playing cards one day, and Bowker +accused him of cheating. Young Woodruff drew,--perhaps they both drew at +the same time. At any rate, Bowker shot first and killed his man,--he +got off on the plea of self-defense. It was two years before Bowker and +Doc met,--in the lobby of the Palmer House,--I happened to be there. I +was talking to a friend when suddenly I felt as if something awful was +about to happen. I started up, and saw Bowker just rising from a table +at the far end of the room. I shan't ever forget his look,--like a bird +charmed by a snake. His lips were ajar and wrinkled as if his blood had +fled away inside of him, and his throat was expanding and contracting." + +Roebuck wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. "It was Doc Woodruff +walking slowly toward him, with a wicked smile on his face, and that +scar--you noticed the scar?" + +I nodded. + +"Well, you can imagine how that scar stood out. He came slowly on, +nobody able to move a muscle to stop him. When he was about ten feet +from Bowker and as near me as you are now, Bowker gave a kind of shudder +and scream of fright, drew his pistol, and fired. The bullet clipped +Woodruff's ear. Quick as that--" Roebuck snapped his fingers--"Doc drew, +and sent a bullet into his heart. He fell forward across the table and +his pistol crashed on the marble floor. Doc looked at him, gave a cold +sort of laugh, like a jeer and a curse, and walked out into the street. +When he met a policeman he said, 'I've killed Dick Bowker. Here's my +gun. Lock me up'--perfectly cool, just as he talked to us to-night." + +"And you got him off?" + +"Yes. I hated to do it, too, for Dick was one of my best friends. But +Doc was too useful to us. In his line he's without an equal." + +"How did he get that scar?" said I. + +"Nobody knows. He left here when he was a boy,--to avoid being sent to +the reformatory. When he turned up, after a dozen years, he said he had +been a doctor, but didn't say where or how. And he had that scar. One +day a man asked him how he got it. He picked up a bottle, and, with his +pleasant laugh, broke it over the fellow's jaw. 'About like that,' said +he. People don't ask him questions." + +"He's my man," said I. + + + + +VII + +BYGONES + + +A telegram had been thrust under my door--"I must see you. Don't fail to +stop off here on your way back. Answer. Carlotta." + +Again she was at the station in her phaeton. Her first look, long before +I was near enough for speech, showed me how her mood had changed; but +she waited until we were clear of the town. "Forgive me," she then said +in the abrupt, direct manner which was the expression of her greatest +charm, her absolute honesty. "I've got the meanest temper in the world, +but it don't last, and as soon as you were gone I was ashamed of +myself." + +"I don't understand why you are making these apologies," said I, "and I +don't understand why you were angry." + +"That's what it means to be a man," she replied. "Your letter about your +mother made me furious. You hadn't ever urged me to hurry up the +wedding on your own account. And your letter made me feel as if, while +you personally didn't care whether we ever married or not, still for +your mother's sake you were willing to--to sacrifice yourself." + +"Let me see my letter," said I. + +"I tore it into a thousand pieces," said she. "But I don't mean that you +really wrote just that. You didn't. But you made me jealous of your +mother, and my temper got hold of me, and then I read the meanest kind +of things into and under and all round every word. And--I'm sorry." + +I could find nothing to say. I saw my freedom slipping from me. I +watched it, sick at heart; yet, on the other hand, I neither tried nor +wished to detain it, though I could easily have made a renewal of our +engagement impossible. I have no explanation for this conflict of +emotions and motives. + +"Don't make it so hard for me," she went on. "I never before in my life +told anybody I was sorry for anything, and I thought I never would. But +I _am_ sorry, and--we'll have the wedding the first day of August." + +Still I found nothing to say. It was so painfully obvious that, true to +her training, she had not given and was not giving a thought to the +state of my mind and feelings. What _she_ wished, that she would do--the +rest did not interest her. + +"Are you satisfied, my lord?" she demanded. "Have I humbled myself +sufficiently?" + +"You haven't humbled yourself at all," said I. "You have only humbled +me." + +She did not pause on my remark long enough to see what it meant. "Now +that it's all settled," she said gaily, "I don't mind telling you that I +began to make my preparations to be married on the first of +August--when, do you think?" + +"When?" I said. + +"The very day I got your nasty letter, putting me second to your +mother." And she laughed, and was still laughing, when she added: "So, +you see, I was determined to marry you." + +"I do," said I dryly. "I suppose I ought to feel flattered." + +"No, you oughtn't," she retorted. "I simply made up my mind to marry +you. And I'd do it, no matter what it cost. I get _that_ from father. +But I've got mother's disposition, too--and that makes me far too good +for such a cold, unsentimental, ambitious person as you." + +"Don't you think you're rather rash to confess so frankly--when I could +still escape?" + +"Not at all," was her confident answer. "I know you, and so I know +nothing could make you break your word." + +"There's some truth in that,"--and I hope that I do not deceive myself +in thinking I was honest there. "More truth, perhaps, than you guess." + +She looked shrewdly at me--and friendlily. "Don't be too sure I haven't +guessed," said she. "Nobody's ever so blind as he lets others think. +It's funny, isn't it? There are things in your mind that you'd never +tell me, and things in my mind that I'd never tell you. And each of us +guesses most of them, without ever letting on." She laughed queerly, and +struck the horse smartly so that he leaped into a gait at which +conversation was impossible. + +When we resumed, the subject was the details of our wedding. + +At home again, I found my mother too ill to leave her bed. She had been +ill before,--many times when she wouldn't confess it, several times when +she was forced to admit it, but never before so ill that she could not +dress and come down stairs. "I shall be up to-morrow," she assured me, +and I almost believed her. She drew a letter from under her pillow. +"This came while you were away," she went on. "I kept it here, +because--" a look of shame flitted across her face, and then her eyes +were steady and proud again,--"why should I be ashamed of it? I had the +impulse to destroy the letter, and I'm not sure but that I'm failing in +my duty." + +I took it,--yes, it was from Boston, from Betty. I opened it and +fortunately had nerved myself against showing myself to my mother. There +was neither beginning nor end, just a single sentence: + +"From the bottom of my broken heart I am thankful that I have been +spared the horror of discovering I had bound myself for life to a +coward." + +The shot went straight to the center of the target. But----There lay my +mother--did _she_ not have the right to determine my destiny--she who +had given me my life and her own? I tore up Betty's letter, and I looked +at mother and said, "There's nothing in that to make me waver--or +regret." It was the only lie I ever told her. I told it well, thank God, +for she was convinced, and the look in her face repaid me a +thousandfold. It repays me once more as I write. + +Carlotta and I were married at her bedside, and she lived only until the +next day but one. When the doctor told me of the long concealed mortal +disease that was the cause of her going, he ended with: "And, Mr. +Sayler, it passes belief that she managed to keep alive for five years. +I can't understand it." But _I_ understood. She simply refused to go +until she felt that her mission was accomplished. + +"We must never forget her," said Carlotta, trying to console me by +grieving with me. + +I did not answer,--how could I explain? Never forget her! On the +contrary, I knew that I must forget, and that I must work and grow and +so heal the wound and cover its scar. I lost not a day in beginning. + +To those few succeeding months I owe the power I have had all these +years to concentrate my mind upon whatever I will to think about; for in +those months I fought the fight I dared not lose--fought it and won. Let +those who have never loved talk of remembering the dead. + + * * * * * + +I turned away from her grave with the resolve that my first act of power +would be to stamp out Dominick. But for him she would not have gone for +many a year. It was his persecutions that involved us in the miseries +which wasted her and made her fall a victim to the mortal disease. It +was his malignity that poisoned her last years, which, but for him, +would have been happy. + +As my plans for ousting Dunkirk took shape, I saw clearly that, if he +were to be overthrown at once, I must use part of the existing control +of the machine of the party,--it would take several years, at least +three, to build up an entirely new control. To work quickly, I must use +Croffut, Dunkirk's colleague in the Senate. And Croffut was the creature +of Dominick. + +Early in September Woodruff came to me, at Fredonia, his manner +jubilant. "I can get Dominick," he exclaimed. "He is furious against +Dunkirk because he's just discovered that Dunkirk cheated him out of a +hundred thousand dollars on that perpetual street railway franchise, +last winter." + +"But we don't want Dominick," said I. + +My face must have reflected my mind, for Woodruff merely replied, "Oh, +very well. Of course that alters the case." + +"We must get Croffut without him," I went on. + +Woodruff shook his head. "Can't get him," he said. "Dominick controls +the two southern ranges of counties. He finances his own machine from +what he collects from vice and crime in those cities. He gives that +branch of the plum tree to the boys. He keeps the bigger one, the +corporations, for himself." + +"He can be destroyed," said I, waving aside these significant reminders. + +"Yes, in five years or so of hard work. Meanwhile, Dunkirk will run +things at the capital to suit himself. Anyhow, you're taking on a good +deal more than's necessary--starting with two big fights, one of 'em +against a man you ought to use to do up the other. It's like breaking +your own sword at the beginning of the duel." + +"Go back to the capital," said I, after a moment's thought; "I'll +telegraph you up there what to do." + +It was my first test--my first chance to show whether I had learned at +the savage school at which I had been a pupil. Scores, hundreds of men, +can plan, and plan wisely,--at almost any cross-roads' general store you +hear in the conversation round the stove as good plans as ever moved the +world to admiration. But execution,--there's the rub! And the first +essential of an executive is freedom from partialities and hatreds,--not +to say, "Do I like him? Do I hate him? Was he my enemy a year or a week +or a moment ago?" but only to ask oneself the one question, "Can he be +useful to me _now_?" + +"I will use Dominick to destroy Dunkirk, and then I will destroy him," I +said to myself. But that did not satisfy me. I saw that I was +temporizing with the weakness that has wrecked more careers than +misjudgment. I felt that I must decide then and there whether or not I +would eliminate personal hatred from my life. After a long and bitter +struggle, I did decide once and for all. + +I telegraphed Woodruff to go ahead. When I went back to Pulaski to +settle my affairs there, Dominick came to see me. Not that he dreamed of +the existence of my combine or of my connection with the new political +deal, but simply because I had married into the Ramsay family and was +therefore now in the Olympus of corporate power before which he was on +his knees,--for a price, like a wise devotee, untroubled by any such +qualmishness as self-respect. I was ready for him. I put out my hand. + +"I'm glad you're willing to let bygones be bygones, Mr. Sayler," said +he, so moved that the tears stood in his eyes. + +Then it flashed on me that, after all, he was only a big brute, driven +blindly by his appetites. How silly to plot revenges upon the creatures +of circumstance--how like a child beating the chair it happens to +strike against! Hatreds and revenges are for the small mind with small +matters to occupy it. Of the stones I have quarried to build my career, +not one has been, or could have been, spared to waste as a missile. + +I went down to the Cedar Grove cemetery, where my mother lay beside my +father. My two sisters who died before I was born were at their feet; +her parents and his on either side. And I said to her, "Mother, I am +going to climb up to a place where I can use my life as you would have +me use it. To rise in such a world as this I shall have to do many +things you would not approve. I shall do them. But when I reach the +height, I shall justify myself and you. I know how many have started +with the same pledge and have been so defiled by what they had to handle +that when they arrived they were past cleansing; and they neither kept +nor cared to keep their pledge. But I, mother, shall not break this +pledge to you." + + + + +VIII + +A CALL FROM "THE PARTY" + + +About a month after the Chicago and Fredonia bill was smothered in +committee there appeared upon the threshold of my office, in the +administration building of the Ramsay Company, a man whom at first +glance you might have taken for an exhorter or a collector for some +pious enterprise. But if you had made a study of faces, your second +glance would have cut through that gloze of oily, apologetic appeal. +Behind a thin screen of short gray beard lay a heavy loose mouth, cruel +and strong; above it, a great beak and a pair of pale green eyes, +intensely alive. They were in startling contrast to the apparent +decrepitude of the stooped shambling body, far too small for its +covering of decent but somewhat rusty black. + +"Senator Dunkirk," said I, rising and advancing to greet the justly +feared leader of my party. I knew there was an intimate connection +between this visit and the death of his pet project. I thought it safe +to assume that he had somehow stumbled upon Woodruff's tunnelings, and +with that well-trained nose of his had smelled out their origin. But I +need not have disquieted myself; I did not then know how softly Woodruff +moved, sending no warnings ahead, and leaving no trail behind. + +For several minutes the Senator and I felt for each other in the dark in +which we both straightway hid. He was the first to give up and reveal +himself in the open. "But I do not wish to waste your time and my own, +Mr. Sayler," he said; "I have come to see you about the threatened split +in the party. You are, perhaps, surprised that I should have come to +you, when you have been so many years out of politics, but I think you +will understand, as I explain myself. You know Mr. Roebuck?" + +"I can't say that I _know_ him," I replied. "He is not an easy man to +know--indeed, who is?" + +"A very able man; in some respects a great man," Dunkirk went on. "But, +like so many of our great men of business, he can not appreciate +politics,--the difficulties of the man in public life where persuasion +and compromise must be used, authority almost never. And, because I have +resisted some of his impossible demands, he has declared war on the +party. He has raised up in it a faction headed by your old enemy, +Dominick. I need not tell you what a brute, what a beast he is, the +representative of all that is abhorrent in politics." + +"A faction headed by Dominick couldn't be very formidable," I suggested. + +"But Dominick isn't the nominal leader," replied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is +far too shrewd for that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my +colleague, Croffut,--perhaps you know him? If so, I needn't tell you +what a vain, shallow, venal fellow he is, with his gift of gab that +fools the people." + +"I know him," said I, in a tone which did not deny the accuracy of +Dunkirk's description. + +"Their object," continued the Senator, "is to buy the control of the +party machinery away from those who now manage it in the interests of +conservatism and fair dealing. If they succeed, the only business +interest that will be considered in this state will be the Power Trust. +And we shall have Dominick, the ignorant brute, lashed on by Roebuck's +appetites, until the people will rise in fury and elect the +opposition,--and you know what _it_ is." + +"What you say is most interesting," said I, "but I confess I haven't +imagination enough to conceive a condition of affairs in which anybody +with 'the price' couldn't get what he wanted by paying for it. Perhaps +the business interests would gain by a change,--the other crowd might be +less expensive. Certainly the demands of our party's machine have become +intolerable." + +"It astonishes me, Mr. Sayler, to hear you say that,--you, who have been +in politics," he protested, taken aback by my hardly disguised attack +upon him,--for he was in reality "party" and "machine." "Surely, you +understand the situation. We must have money to maintain our +organization, and to run our campaign. Our workers can't live on air; +and, to speak of only one other factor, there are thousands and +thousands of our voters, honest fellows, too, who must be paid to come +to the polls. They wouldn't vote against us for any sum; but, unless we +pay them for the day lost in the fields, they stay at home. Now, where +does our money come from? The big corporations are the only source,--who +else could or would give largely enough? And it is necessary and just +that they should be repaid. But they are no longer content with moderate +and prudent rewards for their patriotism. They make bigger and bigger, +and more and more unreasonable, demands on us, and so undermine our +popularity,--for the people can't be blinded wholly to what's going on. +And thus, year by year, it takes more and more money to keep us in +control." + +"You seem to have forgotten my point," said I, smiling. "Why should +_you_ be kept in control? If you go out, the others come in. They +bluster and threaten, in order to get themselves in; but, once they're +elected, they discover that it wasn't the people's woes they were +shouting about, but their own. And soon they are docile 'conservatives' +lapping away at the trough, with nothing dangerous in them but their +appetites." + +"Precisely,--their appetites," said he. + +"A starved man has to practise eating a long, long time before he can +equal the performances of a trained glutton," I suggested. + +His facial response to my good-humored raillery was feeble indeed. And +it soon died in a look of depression that made him seem even older and +more decrepit than was his wont. "The same story, wherever I go," said +he sadly. "The business interests refuse to see their peril. And when I, +in my zeal, persist, they,--several of them, Sayler, have grinned at me +and reminded me that the legislature to be elected next fall will choose +my successor! As if my own selfish interests were all I have in mind! I +am old and feeble, on the verge of the grave. Do you think, Mr. Sayler, +that I would continue in public life if it were not for what I conceive +to be my duty to my party? I have toiled too long for it--" + +"Your record speaks for itself, Senator," I put in, politely but +pointedly. + +"You are very discouraging, Sayler," he said forlornly. "But I refuse to +be discouraged. The party needs you, and I have come to do my duty, and +I won't leave without doing it." + +"I have nothing to do with the company's political contributions," said +I. "You will have to see Mr. Ramsay, as usual." + +He waved his hand. "Let me explain, please. Roover is about to +resign,--as you probably know, he's been chairman of the party's state +committee for seventeen years. I've come to ask you to take his place." + +It was impossible wholly to hide my amazement, my stupefaction. Had he +had the shadowiest suspicion of my plans, of the true inwardness of the +Croffut-Dominick movement, he would as readily have offered me his own +head. In fact, he was offering me his own head; for, with the money and +the other resources at my command, I needed only this place of official +executive of the party to make me master. And here he was, giving me the +place, under the delusion that he could use me as he had been using +Roover. + +He must have misread my expression, for he went on: "Don't refuse on +impulse, Sayler. I and the others will do everything to make your duties +as light as possible." + +"I should not be content to be a mere figure-head, as Roover has been," +I warned him. He had come, in his desperation, to try to get the man who +combined the advantages of being, as he supposed, Dominick's enemy and a +member of one of the state's financially influential families. He had +come to cozen me into letting him use me in return for a mockery of an +honor. And I was simply tumbling him, or, rather, permitting him to +tumble himself, into the pit he had dug for me. Still, I felt that I +owed it to my self-respect to give him a chance. "If I take the place, I +shall fill it _to the best of my ability_." + +"Certainly, certainly,--we want your ability." Behind his bland, cordial +mask I saw the spider eyes gleaming and the spider claws twitching as he +felt his net quiver under hovering wings. "We want you--we need you, +Sayler. We expect you to do your best." + +My best! What would my "best" have been, had I been only what he +thought,--dependent upon him for supplies, surrounded by his +lieutenants, hearing nothing but what he chose to tell me, and able to +execute only such orders as he gave or approved! + +"I am sure we can count on you," he urged. + +"I will try it," said I, after a further hesitation that was not +altogether show. + +He did not linger,--he wished to give me no chance to change my mind and +fly his net. I was soon alone, staring dazedly at my windfall and +wondering if fortune would ever give me anything without attaching to it +that which would make me doubt whether my gift had more of bitter or +more of sweet in it. + +Dunkirk announced the selection of a new chairman that very +afternoon,--as a forecast, of course, for there was the formality of my +"election" by the sixty-three members of the state committee to be gone +through. His proposition was well received. The old-line politicians +remembered my father; the Reformers recalled my fight against Dominick; +the business men liked my connection with the Ramsay Company, assuring +stability and regard for "conservatism"; the "boys" were glad because I +had a rich wife and a rich brother-in-law. The "boys" always cheer when +a man with money develops political aspirations. + +I did not see Woodruff until I went down to the capital to begin my +initiation. I came upon him there, in the lobby of the Capital City +Hotel. As we talked for a moment like barely-acquainted strangers, +saying nothing that might not have been repeated broadcast, his look was +asking: "How did you manage to trap Dunkirk into doing it?" I never told +him the secret, and so never tore out the foundation of his belief in me +as a political wizard. It is by such judicious use of their few strokes +of good luck that successful men get their glamour of the superhuman. In +the eyes of the average man, who is lazy or intermittent, the result of +plain, incessant, unintermittent work is amazing enough. All that is +needed to make him cry, "Genius!" is a little luck adroitly exploited. + +I left Woodruff, to join Dunkirk. "Who is that chap over there,--Doctor +Woodruff?" I asked him. + +"Woodruff?" replied the Senator. "Oh, a lobbyist. He does a good deal +for Roebuck, I believe. An honest fellow,--for that kind,--they tell me. +It's always well to be civil to them." + +Dunkirk's "initiation" of me into the duties of my office wiped away my +last lingering sense of double, or, at least, doubtful, dealing. He told +me nothing that was not calculated to mislead me. And he was so glib and +so frank and so sympathetic that, had I not known the whole machine from +the inside, I should have been his dupe. + +It is not pleasant to suspect that, in some particular instance, one of +your fellow men takes you for a simple-minded fool. To know you are +being so regarded, not in one instance, but in general, is in the +highest degree exasperating, no matter how well your vanity is under +control. + +Perhaps I should not have been able to play my part and deceive my +deceiver had I been steadily at headquarters. As it was, I went there +little and then gave no orders, apparently contenting myself with the +credit for what other men were doing in my name. In fact, so obvious did +I make my neglect as chairman that the party press commented on it and +covertly criticized me. Dunkirk mildly reproached me for lack of +interest. He did not know--indeed, he never knew--that his chief +lieutenant, Thurston, in charge at headquarters, had gone over to "the +enemy," and was Woodruff's right-hand man. And it is not necessary for +me to say where Woodruff got the orders he transmitted to Thurston. + +My excuse for keeping aloof was that I was about to be transformed into +a man of family. As I was fond of children I had looked forward to this +with more eagerness than I ventured to show to my wife. She might not +have liked it, eager though she was also. As soon as she knew that her +longings were to be satisfied, she entered upon a course of preparation +so elaborate that I was secretly much amused, though I thoroughly +approved and encouraged her. Every moment of her days was laid out in +some duty imposed upon her by the regimen she had arranged after a study +of all that science says on the subject. + +As perfect tranquillity was a fundamental of the _régime_, she permitted +nothing to ruffle her. But Ed more than made up for her calm. Two weeks +before the event, she forbade him to enter her presence--"or any part of +the grounds where I'm likely to see you," said she. "The very sight of +you, looking so flustered, unnerves me." + +While he and I were waiting in the sitting-room for the news, he turned +his heart inside out. + +"I want to tell you, Harvey," said he, "that the--boy or girl--whichever +it is--is to be my heir." + +"I shan't hold you to that," I replied with a laugh. + +"No,--I'll never marry," he went on. "There was an--an angel. You know +the Shaker settlement?--well, out there." + +I looked at him in wonder. If ever there was a man who seemed +unromantic, it was he, heavy and prosaic and so shy that he was visibly +agitated even in bowing to a woman acquaintance. + +"I met her," he was saying, "when I was driving that way,--the horse +ran, I was thrown out, and her parents had to take me in and let her +nurse me. You've seen her face,--or faces like it. Most of those +Madonnas over on the other side in all the galleries suggest her. +Well,--her parents were furious,--wouldn't hear of it,--you know Shakers +think marriage and love and all those things are wicked. And she thought +so, too. How she used to suffer! It wore her to a shadow. She wouldn't +marry me,--wouldn't let me so much as touch her hand. But we used to +meet and--then she caught a cold--waiting hours for me, one winter +night, when there'd been a misunderstanding about the place--I was in +one place, she in another. And the cold,--you see, she couldn't fight +against it. And--and--there won't be another, Harvey. All women are +sacred to me for her sake, but I couldn't any more marry than I +could--could stop feeling her sitting beside me, just a little way off, +wrapped in her drab shawl, with her face--like a glimpse through the +gates of Heaven." + +Within me up-started the memories that I kept battened down. + +"Your children are mine, too, Harvey," he ended. + +I took from Carlotta's work-basket an unfinished bit of baby clothing. I +went to him and held it up and pointed to the monogram she had +embroidered on it. + +"E. R. S.," he read aloud. Then he looked at me with a queer expression +beginning to form in his eyes. + +"Edward Ramsay Sayler, if it's a boy," said I. "Edwina Ramsay Sayler, if +it's a girl." + +He snatched the bit of linen from me and buried his face in it. + +The baby was a boy,--fortunately, for I don't admire the name Edwina, +and I shouldn't have liked to handicap a child with it. Carlotta and Ed +were delighted, but I felt a momentary keen disappointment. I had wanted +a girl. Girls never leave their parents completely, as boys do. Also I +should rather have looked forward to my child's having a sheltered life, +one in which the fine and beautiful ideals do not have to be molded into +the gross, ugly forms of the practical. I may say, in passing, that I +deplore the entrance of women into the world of struggle. Women are the +natural and only custodians of the ideals. We men are compelled to +wander, often to wander far, from the ideal. Unless our women remain +aloof from action, how are the ideals to be preserved? Man for action; +woman to purify man, when he returns stained with the blood and sin of +battle. + +But--with the birth of the first child I began to appreciate how +profoundly right my mother had been about marriage and its source of +happiness. There are other flowers than the rose,--other flowers, and +beautiful, the more beautiful for its absence. + + + + +IX + +TO THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY + + +We, our party, carried the state, as usual. Our legislative majority was +increased by eleven, to thirty-seven on joint ballot. It was certain +that Dunkirk's successor would be of the same political faith; but would +he be Dunkirk? At first that venerable custodian of the plum tree hadn't +a doubt. He had come to look on it as his personal property. But, after +he had talked to legislators-elect from various parts of the state, he +became uneasy. He found that the party's members were dangerously evenly +divided between himself and the "Dominick-Croffut" faction. And soon he +was at me to declare for him. + +I evaded as long as I could,--which did not decrease his nervousness. +When he put it to me point-blank, I said: "I can't do it, Senator. I +will not mix in quarrels within the party." + +"But they are saying you are against me," he pleaded. + +"And your people are saying I am for you," I retorted. + +"But surely you are not against _me_ and for Schoolcraft? What has he +done for you?" + +"And what have _you_ done for me?" I replied,--a mere interrogation, +without any feeling in it. "Tell me. I try to pay my debts." + +His eyes shifted. "Nothing, Sayler, nothing," he said. "I didn't mean to +insinuate that you owed me anything. Still, I thought--you wouldn't have +been state chairman, except--" + +As he halted, I said, "Except that you needed me. And you will recall +that I took it only on condition that I should be free." + +"Then you are opposed to me," he said. "Nobody can be on the fence in +this fight." + +"I do not think you can be elected," I replied. + +As he sat silent, the puffs under his eyes swelled into bags and the +pallor of his skin changed to the gray which makes the face look as if a +haze or a cloud lay upon it. I pitied him so profoundly that, had I +ventured to speak, I should have uttered impulsive generosities that +would have cost me dear. How rarely are our impulses of generosity +anything but impulses to folly, injustice, and wrong! + +"We shall see," was all he said, and he rose and shambled away. + +They told me he made a pitiful sight, wheedling and whining among the +legislators. But he degraded himself to some purpose. He succeeded in +rallying round him enough members to deadlock the party caucus for a +month,--members from the purely rural districts, where the sentiment of +loyalty is strongest, where his piety and unselfish devotion to the +party were believed in, and his significance as a "statesman." I let +this deadlock continue--forty-one for Dunkirk, forty-one for +Schoolcraft--until I felt that the party throughout the state was +heartily sick of the struggle. Then Woodruff bought, at twelve thousand +dollars apiece, two Dunkirk men to vote to transfer the contest to the +floor of a joint session of the two houses. + +After four days of balloting there, seven Dominick-Croffut men voted for +me--my first appearance as a candidate. On the seventy-seventh ballot +Schoolcraft withdrew, and all the Dominick-Croffut men voted for me. On +the seventy-ninth ballot I got, in addition, two opposition votes +Woodruff had bought for me at eight hundred dollars apiece. The ballot +was: Dunkirk, forty-one; Grassmere, (who was receiving the opposition's +complimentary vote) thirty-six; Sayler, forty-three. I was a Senator of +the United States. + +There was a wild scene. Threats, insults, blows even, were exchanged. +And down at the Capital City Hotel Dunkirk crawled upon a table and +denounced me as an infamous ingrate, a traitor, a serpent he had warmed +in his bosom. But the people of the state accepted it as natural and +satisfactory that "the vigorous and fearless young chairman of the +party's state committee" should be agreed on as a compromise. An hour +after that last ballot, he hadn't a friend left except some galling +sympathizers from whom he hid himself. Those who had been his firmest +supporters were paying court to the new custodian of the plum tree. + +The governor was mine, and the legislature. Mine was the Federal +patronage, also--all of it, if I chose, for Croffut was my dependent, +though he did not realize it; mine also were the indefinitely vast +resources of the members of my combine. Without my consent no man could +get office anywhere in my state, from governorship and judgeship down as +far as I cared to reach. Subject only to the check of public +sentiment,--so easily defeated if it be not defied,--I was master of the +making and execution of laws. Why? Not because I was leader of the +dominant party. Not because I was a Senator of the United States. Solely +because I controlled the sources of the money that maintained the +political machinery of both parties. The hand that holds the purse +strings is the hand that rules,--if it knows how to rule; for rule is +power _plus_ ability. + +I was not master because I had the plum tree. I had the plum tree +because I was master. + + * * * * * + +The legislature attended to such of the demands of my combine and such +of the demands of the public as I thought it expedient to grant, and +then adjourned. Woodruff asked a three months' leave. I did not hear +from or of him until midsummer, when he sent me a cablegram from +London. He was in a hospital there, out of money and out of health. I +cabled him a thousand dollars and asked him to come home as soon as he +could. It was my first personal experience with that far from uncommon +American type, the periodic drunkard. I had to cable him money three +times before he started. + +When he came to me at Washington, in December, he looked just as +before,--calm, robust, cool, cynical, and dressed in the very extreme of +the extreme fashion. I received him as if nothing had happened. It was +not until the current of mutual liking was again flowing freely between +us that I said: "Doc, may I impose on your friendship to the extent of +an intrusion into your private affairs?" + +He started, and gave me a quick look, his color mounting. "Yes," he said +after a moment. + +"When I heard from you," I went on, "I made some inquiries. I owe you no +apology. You had given me a shock,--one of the severest of my life. But +they told me that you never let--that--that peculiarity of yours +interfere with business." + +His head was hanging. "I always go away," he said. "Nobody that knows me +ever sees me when--at that time." + +I laid my hand on his arm. "Doc, why do you do--that sort of thing?" + +The scar came up into his face to put agony into the reckless despair +that looked from his eyes. For an instant I stood on the threshold of +_his_ Chamber of Remorse and Vain Regret,--and well I knew where I was. +"Why not?" he asked bitterly. "There's always a--sort of horror--inside +me. And it grows until I can't bear it. And then--I drown it--why +shouldn't I?" + +"That's very stupid for a man of your brains," said I. "There's +nothing--nothing in the world, except death--that can not be wiped out +or set right. Play the game, Doc. Play it with me for five years. Play +it for all there is in it. Then--go back, if you want to." + +He thought a long time, and I did not try to hurry him. At length he +said, in his old off-hand manner: "Well, I'll go you, Senator; I'll not +touch a drop." + +And he didn't. Whenever I thought I saw signs of the savage internal +battle against the weakness, I gave him something important and +absorbing to do, and I kept him busy until I knew the temptation had +lost its power for the time. + +This is the proper place to put it on the record that he was the most +scrupulously honest man I have ever known. He dealt with the shadiest +and least scrupulous of men--those who train their consciences to be the +eager servants of their appetites; he handled hundreds of thousands of +dollars, millions, first and last, all of it money for which he could +never have been forced to account. He has had at one time as much as +half a million dollars in checks payable to bearer. I am not confiding +by nature or training, but I am confident that he kept not a penny for +himself beyond his salary and his fixed commission. I put his salary at +the outset, at ten thousand a year; afterward, at fifteen; finally, at +twenty. His commissions, perhaps, doubled it. + +There are many kinds of honesty nowadays. There is "corporate honesty," +not unlike that proverbial "honor among thieves," which secures a fair +or fairly fair division of the spoils. Then there is "personal +honesty," which subdivides into three kinds--legal, moral, and +instinctive. Legal honesty needs no definition. Moral honesty defies +definition--how untangle its intertwinings of motives of fear, pride, +insufficient temptation, sacrifice of the smaller chance in the hope of +a larger? Finally, there is instinctive honesty--the rarest, the only +bed-rock, unassailable kind. Give me the man who is honest simply +because it never occurs to him, and never could occur to him, to be +anything else. That is Woodruff. + +There is, to be sure, another kind of instinctively honest man--he who +disregards loyalty as well as self-interest in his uprightness. But +there are so few of these in practical life that they may be +disregarded. + +Perhaps I should say something here as to the finances of my combine, +though it was managed in the main precisely like all these +political-commercial machines that control both parties in all the +states, except a few in the South. + +My assessments upon the various members of my combine were sent, for +several years, to me, afterward to Woodruff directly, in one thousand, +five thousand, and ten thousand dollar checks, sometimes by mail, and at +other times by express or messenger. + +These checks were always payable to bearer; and I made through Woodruff, +for I kept to the far background in all my combine's affairs, an +arrangement with several large banks in different parts of the state, +including one at the capital, that these checks were to be cashed +without question, no matter who presented them, provided there was a +certain flourish under the line where the amount was written in figures. +Sometimes these checks were signed by the corporation, and sometimes +they were the personal checks of the president or some other high +official. Often the signature was that of a person wholly disconnected, +so far as the public knew. Once, I remember, Roebuck sent me a thousand +dollar check signed by a distinguished Chicago lawyer who was just then +counsel to his opponent in a case involving millions, a case which +Roebuck afterward won! + +Who presented these checks? I could more easily say who did not. + +From the very beginning of my control I kept my promise to reduce the +cost of the political business to my clients. When I got the machine +thoroughly in hand, I saw I could make it cost them less than a third of +what they had been paying, on the average, for ten years. I cut off, +almost at a stroke, a horde of lobbyists, lawyers, threateners without +influence, and hangers-on of various kinds. I reduced the payments for +legislation to a system, instead of the shameless, scandal-creating and +wasteful auctioneering that had been going on for years. + +In fact, so cheaply did I run the machine that I saw it would be most +imprudent to let my clients have the full benefit. Cheapness would have +made them uncontrollably greedy and exacting, and would have given them +a wholly false idea of my value as soon as it had slipped their short +memories how dearly they used to pay. + +So I continued to make heavy assessments, and put by the surplus in a +reserve fund for emergencies. I thought, for example, that I might some +day have trouble with one or more members of my combine; my reserve +would supply me with the munitions for forcing insurgents to return to +their agreements. + +This fund was in no sense part of my private fortune. Nowhere else, I +think, do the eccentricities of conscience show themselves more +interestingly than in the various attitudes of the various political +leaders toward the large sums which the exigencies of commercialized +politics place absolutely and secretly under their control. I have no +criticism for any of these attitudes. + +I have lived long enough and practically enough to learn not to +criticize the morals of men, any more than I criticize their facial +contour or their physical build. "As many men, so many minds,"--and +morals. Wrong, for practical purposes, is that which a man can not +cajole or compel his conscience to approve. + +It so happened that I had a sense that to use my assessments for my +private financial profits would be wrong. Therefore, my private fortune +has been wholly the result of the opportunities which came through my +intimacy with Roebuck and such others of the members of my combine as +were personally agreeable,--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to +say, not disagreeable, for, in the circumstances, I naturally saw a side +of those men which a friend must never see in a friend. I could not help +having toward most of these distinguished clients of mine much the +feeling his lawyer has for the guilty criminal he is defending. + + + + +X + +THE FACE IN THE CROWD + + +Except the time given to the children,--there were presently three,--my +life, in all its thoughts and associations, was now politics: at +Washington, from December until Congress adjourned, chiefly national +politics, the long and elaborate arrangements preliminary to the +campaign for the conquest of the national fields; at home, chiefly state +politics,--strengthening my hold upon the combine, strengthening my hold +upon the two political machines. As the days and the weeks, the months +and the years, rushed by, as the interval between breakfast and bedtime, +between Sunday and Sunday, between election day and election day again, +grew shorter and shorter, I played the game more and more furiously. +What I won, once it was mine, seemed worthless in itself, and worth +while only if I could gain the next point; and, when that was gained, +the same story was repeated. Whenever I paused to reflect, it was to +throttle reflection half-born, and hasten on again. + +"A silly business, this living, isn't it?" said Woodruff to me. + +"Yes,--but--" replied I. "You remember the hare and the hatter in _Alice +in Wonderland_. 'Why?' said the hare. 'Why not?' said the hatter. A +sensible man does not interrogate life; he lives it." + +"H'm," retorted Woodruff. + +And we went on with the game,--shuffling, dealing, staking. But more and +more frequently there came hours, when, against my will, I would pause, +drop my cards, watch the others; and I would wonder at them, and at +myself, the maddest of these madmen,--and the saddest, because I had +moments in which I was conscious of my own derangement. + +I have often thought on the cause of this dissatisfaction which has +never ceased to gird me, and which I have learned girds all men of +intelligence who lead an active life. I think it is that such men are +like a civilized man who has to live among a savage tribe. To keep +alive, to have influence, he must pretend to accept the savage point of +view, must pretend to disregard his own knowledge and intelligent +methods, must play the game of life with the crude, clumsy counters of +caste and custom and creed and thought which the savages regard as fit +and proper. Intelligent men of action do see as clearly as the +philosophers; but they have to pretend to adapt their mental vision to +that of the mass of their fellow men or, like the philosophers, they +would lead lives of profitless inaction, enunciating truths which are of +no value to mankind until it rediscovers them for itself. No man of +trained reasoning power could fail to see that the Golden Rule is not a +piece of visionary altruism, but a sound principle of practical +self-interest. Or, could anything be clearer, to one who takes the +trouble really to think about it, than that he who advances himself at +the expense of his fellow men does not advance, but sinks down into the +class of murderers for gain, thieves, and all those who seek to advance +themselves by injustice? Yet, so feeble is man's reason, so near to the +brute is he, so under the rule of brute appetites, that he can not +think beyond the immediate apparent good, beyond to-day's meal. + +I once said to Scarborough: "Politics is the science and art of fooling +the people." + +"That is true, as far as it goes," he said. "If that were all, justice, +which is only another name for common sense, would soon be established. +But, unfortunately, politics is the art of playing upon cupidity, the +art of fooling the people into thinking they are helping to despoil the +other fellow and will get a share of the swag." + +And he was right. It is by subtle appeal to the secret and shamefaced, +but controlling, appetites of men that the clever manipulate them. To +get a man to vote for the right you must show him that he is voting for +the personally profitable. And very slow he is to believe that what is +right can be practically profitable. Have not the preachers been +preaching the reverse all these years; have they not been insisting that +to do right means treasure in Heaven only? + + * * * * * + +It was in my second term as Senator, toward the middle of it. I was +speaking, one afternoon, in defense of a measure for the big +contributors, which the party was forcing through the Senate in face of +fire from the whole country. Personally, I did not approve the measure. +It was a frontal attack upon public opinion, and frontal attacks are as +unwise and as unnecessary in politics as in war. But the party leaders +in the nation insisted, and, as the move would weaken their hold upon +the party and so improve my own chances, I was not deeply aggrieved that +my advice had been rejected. Toward the end of my speech, aroused by +applause from the visitors' gallery, I forgot myself and began to look +up there as I talked, instead of addressing myself to my fellow +Senators. The eyes of a speaker always wander over his audience in +search of eyes that respond. My glance wandered, unconsciously, until it +found an answering glance that fixed it. + +This answering glance was not responsive, nor even approving. It was the +reverse,--and, in spite of me, it held me. At first it was just a pair +of eyes, in the shadow of the brim of a woman's hat, the rest of the +face, the rest of the woman, hid by those in front and on either side. +There was a movement among them, and the whole face appeared,--and I +stopped short in my speech. I saw only the face, really only the mouth +and the eyes,--the lips and the eyes of Elizabeth Crosby,--an expression +of pain, and of pity. + +[Illustration: I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBY p. 141] + +I drank from the glass of water on my desk, and went on. When I ventured +to look up there again, the face was gone. Had I seen or imagined? Was +it she or was it only memory suddenly awakening and silhouetting her +upon that background of massed humanity? I tried to convince myself that +I had only imagined, but I knew that I had seen. + +Within me--and, I suppose, within every one else--there is a dual +personality: not a good and a bad, as is so often shallowly said; but +one that does, and another that watches. The doer seems to me to be +myself; the watcher, he who stands, like an idler at the rail of a +bridge, carelessly, even indifferently, observing the tide of my thought +and action that flows beneath,--who is he? I do not know. But I do know +that I have no control over him,--over his cynical smile, or his lip +curling in good-natured contempt of me, or his shrug at self-excuse, or +his moods when he stares down at the fretting stream with a look of +weariness so profound that it is tragic. It was he who was more +interested in the thoughts,--the passion, the protest, the defiance, and +the dread,--which the sight of that face set to boiling within me. +Sometimes he smiled cynically at the turmoil, and at other times he +watched it with what seemed to me bitter disgust and disappointment and +regret. + +While this tempest was struggling to boil over into action, Carlotta +appeared. She had never stayed long at Washington after the first +winter; she preferred, for the children and perhaps for herself, the +quiet and the greater simplicity of Fredonia. But--"I got to thinking +about it," said she, "and it seemed to me a bad idea for a man to be +separated so long from his wife and children--and home influences." + +That last phrase was accompanied by one of her queer shrewd looks. + +"Your idea is not without merit," replied I judicially. + +"What are you smiling at?" she demanded sharply. + +"If it was a smile," said I, "it was at myself." + +"No, you were laughing at me. You think I am jealous." + +"Of what? Of whom?" + +She looked fixedly at me and finally said: "I want to tell you two +things about myself and you. The first is that I am afraid of you." + +"Why?" said I. + +"I don't know," she answered. + +"And the second confession?" + +"That I never trust you." + +"Why?" + +"I don't know." + +"Yet you are always telling me I am cold." + +She laughed shortly. "So is a stick of dynamite," said she. + +She stayed on at Washington. + + + + +XI + +BURBANK + + +It was through Carlotta that I came to know Burbank well. + +He was in the House, representing the easternmost district of our state. +I had disliked him when we were boys in the state assembly together, +and, when I met him again in Washington, he seemed to me to have all his +faults of fifteen years before aggravated by persistence in them. +Finally, I needed his place in Congress for a useful lieutenant of +Woodruff's and ordered him beaten for the renomination. He made a bitter +fight against decapitation, and, as he was popular with the people of +his district, we had some difficulty in defeating him. But when he was +beaten, he was of course helpless and hopelessly discredited,--the +people soon forget a fallen politician. He "took off his coat" and +worked hard and well for the election of the man who had euchred him out +of the nomination. When he returned to Washington to finish his term, +he began a double, desperate assault upon my friendship. The direct +assault was unsuccessful,--I understood it, and I was in no need of +lieutenants. More than I could easily take care of were already striving +to serve me, scores of the brightest, most ambitious young men of the +state eager to do my bidding, whatever it might be, in the hope that in +return I would "take care of" them, would admit them to the coveted +inclosure round the plum tree. The plum tree! Is there any kind of fruit +which gladdens the eyes of ambitious man, that does not glisten upon +some one of its many boughs, heavy-laden with corporate and public +honors and wealth? + +Burbank's indirect attack, through his wife and Carlotta, fared better. + +The first of it I distinctly recall was after a children's party at our +house. Carlotta singled out Mrs. Burbank for enthusiastic commendation. +"The other women sent nurses with their children," said she, "but Mrs. +Burbank came herself. She was so sweet in apologizing for coming. She +said she hadn't any nurse, and that she was so timid about her children +that she never could bring herself to trust them to nurses. And really, +Harvey, you don't know how nice she was all the afternoon. She's the +kind of mother I approve of, the kind I try to be. Don't you admire +her?" + +"I don't know her," said I. "The only time I met her she struck me as +being--well, rather silent." + +"That's it," she exclaimed triumphantly. "She doesn't care a rap for +men. She's absorbed in her children and her husband." Then, after a +pause, she added: "Well, she's welcome to him. I can't see what she +finds to care for." + +"Why?" said I. + +"Oh, he's distinguished-looking, and polite, offensively polite to +women--he doesn't understand them at all--thinks they like deference and +flattery, the low-grade molasses kind of flattery. He has a very nice +smile. But he's so stilted and tiresome, always serious,--and such a +pose! It's what I call the presidential pose. No doubt he'll be +President some day." + +"Why?" said I. It is amusing to watch a woman fumble about for reasons +for her intuitions. + +Carlotta did uncommonly well. "Oh, I don't know. He's the sort of +high-average American that the people go crazy about. He--he--_looks_ +like a President, that sort of--solemn--no-sense-of-humor, _Sunday_ +look,--you know what I mean. Anyhow, he's going to be President." + +I thought not. A few days later, while what Carlotta had said was fresh +in my mind, he overtook me walking to the capitol. As we went on +together, I was smiling to myself. He certainly did look and talk like a +President. He was of the average height, of the average build, and of a +sort of average facial mold; he had hair that was a compromise among the +average shades of brown, gray, and black, with a bald spot just where +most men have it. + +His pose--I saw that Carlotta was shrewdly right. He was acutely +self-conscious, and was acting his pose every instant. He had selected +it early in life; he would wear it, even in his nightshirt, until death. +He said nothing brilliant, but neither did he say anything that would +not have been generally regarded as sound and sensible. His impressive +manner of delivering his words made one overvalue the freight they +carried. But I soon found, for I studied him with increasing interest, +thanks to my new point of view upon him,--I soon found that he had one +quality the reverse of commonplace. He had magnetism. + +Whenever a new candidate was proposed for Mazarin's service, he used to +ask, first of all, "Has he luck?" My first question has been, "Has he +magnetism?" and I think mine is the better measure. Such of one's luck +as is not the blundering blindness of one's opponents is usually the +result of one's magnetism. However, it is about the most dangerous of +the free gifts of nature,--which are all dangerous. Burbank's merit lay +in his discreet use of it. It compelled men to center upon him; he +turned this to his advantage by making them feel, not how he shone, but +how they shone. They went away liking him because they had new reasons +for being in love with themselves. + +I found only two serious weaknesses. The first was that he lacked the +moral courage boldly to do either right or wrong. That explained why, in +spite of his talents for impressing people both privately and from the +platform, he was at the end of his political career. The second weakness +was that he was ashamed of his very obscure and humble origin. He knew +that his being "wholly self-made" was a matchless political asset, and +he used it accordingly. But he looked on it somewhat as the beggar looks +on the deformity he exhibits to get alms. + +Neither weakness made him less valuable to my purpose,--the first one, +if anything, increased his value. I wanted an instrument that was +capable, but strong only when I used it. + +I wanted a man suitable for development first into governor of my state, +and then into a President. I could not have got the presidency for +myself, but neither did I want it. My longings were all for power,--the +reality, not the shadow. In a republic the man who has the real power +must be out of view. If he is within view, a million hands stretch to +drag him from the throne. He _must_ be out of view, putting forward his +puppets and changing them when the people grow bored or angry with them. +And the President--in all important matters he must obey his party, +which is, after all, simply the "interests" that finance it; in +unimportant matters, his so-called power is whittled down by the party's +leaders and workers, whose requirements may not be disregarded. He +shakes the plum tree, but he does it under orders; others gather the +fruit, and he gets only the exercise and the "honor." + +I had no yearning for puppetship, however exalted the title or sonorous +the fame; but to be the power that selects the king-puppet of the +political puppet-hierarchy, to be the power that selects and rules +him,--that was the logical development of my career. + +In Burbank I thought I had found a man worthy to wear the puppet +robes,--one who would glory in them. He, like most of the other +ambitious men I have known, cared little who was behind the throne, +provided he himself was seated upon it, the crown on his head and the +crowds tossing the hats that shelter their dim-thinking brains. Also, in +addition to magnetism and presence, he had dexterity and distinction and +as much docility as can be expected in a man big enough to use for +important work. + +In September I gave him our party nomination for governor. In our +one-sided state that meant his election. + +As I had put him into the governorship not so much for use there as for +use thereafter, it was necessary to protect him from my combine, which +had destroyed his two immediate predecessors by over-use,--they had +become so unpopular that their political careers ended with their terms. +Protect him I must, though the task would be neither easy nor pleasant. +It involved a collision with my clients,--a square test of strength +between us. What was to me far more repellent, it involved my personally +taking a hand in that part of my political work which I had hitherto +left to Woodruff and his lieutenants. + +One does not in person chase and catch and kill and dress and serve the +chicken he has for dinner; he orders chicken, and hears and thinks no +more about it until it is served. Thus, all the highly disagreeable part +of my political work was done by others; Woodruff, admirably capable and +most careful to spare my feelings, received the demands of my clients +from their lawyers and transmitted them to the party leaders in the +legislature with the instructions how the machinery was to be used in +making them into law. As I was financing the machines of both parties, +his task was not difficult, though delicate. + +But now that I began to look over Woodruff's legislative program in +advance, I was amazed at the rapacity of my clients, rapacious though I +knew them to be. I had been thinking that the independent +newspapers--there were a few such, but of small circulation and +influence--were malignant in their attacks upon my "friends." In fact, +as I soon saw, they had told only a small part of the truth. They had +not found out the worst things that were done; nor had they grasped how +little the legislature and the governor were doing other than the +business of the big corporations, most of it of doubtful public benefit, +to speak temperately. An hour's study of the facts and I realized as +never before why we are so rapidly developing a breed of +multi-millionaires in this country with all the opportunities to wealth +in their hands. I had only to remember that the system which ruled my +own state was in full blast in every one of the states of the Union. +Everywhere, no sooner do the people open or propose to open a new road +into a source of wealth, than men like these clients of mine hurry to +the politicians and buy the rights to set up toll-gates and to fix their +own schedule of tolls. + +However, the time had now come when I must assert myself. I made no +radical changes in that first program of Burbank's term. I contented +myself with cutting off the worst items, those it would have ruined +Burbank to indorse. My clients were soon grumbling, but Woodruff handled +them well, placating them with excuses that soothed their annoyance to +discontented silence. So ably did he manage it that not until Burbank's +third year did they begin to come directly to me and complain of the way +they were being "thrown down" at the capitol. + +Roebuck, knowing me most intimately and feeling that he was my author +and protector, was frankly insistent. "We got almost nothing at the last +session," he protested, "and this winter--Woodruff tells me we may not +get the only thing we're asking." + +I was ready for him, as I was for each of the ten. I took out the list +of measures passed or killed at the last session in the interest of the +Power Trust. It contained seventy-eight items, thirty-four of them +passed. I handed it to him. + +"Yes,--a few things," he admitted, "but all trifles!" + +"That little amendment to the Waterways law must alone have netted you +three or four millions already." + +"Nothing like that. Nothing like that." + +"I can organize a company within twenty-four hours that will pay you +four millions in cash for the right, and stock besides." + +He did not take up my offer. + +"You have already had thirteen matters attended to this winter," I +pursued. "The one that can't be done--Really, Mr. Roebuck, the whole +state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan Christian University are +your dummies. It would be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred +thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to them, so that they can +presently sell it to you for a song." + +He reddened. "Newspaper scandal!" he blustered, but changed the subject +as soon as he had shown me and re-shown himself that his motives were +pure. + +I saw that Burbank's last winter was to be crucial. My clients were +clamorous, and were hinting at all sorts of dire doings if they were not +treated better. Roebuck was questioning, in the most malignantly +friendly manner, "whether, after all, Harvey, the combine isn't a +mistake, and the old way wasn't the best." On the other hand Burbank was +becoming restless. He had so cleverly taken advantage of the chances to +do popular things, which I had either made for him or pointed out to +him, that he had become something of a national figure. When he got +eighty-one votes for the presidential nomination in our party's national +convention his brain was dizzied. Now he was in a tremor lest my clients +should demand of him things that would diminish or destroy this sapling +popularity which, in his dreams, he already saw grown into a mighty tree +obscuring the national heavens. + +I gave many and many an hour to anxious thought and careful planning +that summer and fall. It was only a few days before Doc Woodruff +appeared at Fredonia with the winter's legislative program that I saw my +way straight to what I hoped was broad day. The program he brought was +so outrageous that it was funny. There was nothing in it for the Ramsay +interests, but each of the other ten had apparently exhausted the +ingenuity of its lawyers in concocting demands that would have wrecked +for ever the party granting them. + +"Our friends are modest," said I. + +"They've gone clean crazy," replied Woodruff. "And if you could have +heard them talk! It's impossible to make them see that anybody has any +rights but themselves." + +"Well, let me have the details," said I. "Explain every item on this +list; tell me just what it means, and just how the lawyers propose to +disguise it so the people won't catch on." + +When he finished, I divided the demands into three classes,--the +impossible, the possible, and the practicable. "Strike out all the +impossible," I directed. "Cut down the possible to the ten that are +least outrageous. Those ten and the practicable must be passed." + +He read off the ten which were beyond the limits of prudence, but not +mob-and-hanging matters. "We can pass them, of course," was his comment. +"We could pass a law ordering the state house burned, but--" + +"Precisely," said I. "I think the consequences will be interesting." I +cross-marked the five worst of the ten possibilities. "Save those until +the last weeks of the session." + +Early in the session Woodruff began to push the five least bad of the +bad measures on to the calendar of the legislature, one by one. When the +third was introduced, Burbank took the Limited for Washington. He +arrived in time to join my wife and my little daughter Frances and me at +breakfast. He was so white and sunken-eyed and his hands were so +unsteady that Frances tried in vain to take her solemn, wondering, +pitying gaze from his face. As soon as my study door closed behind us, +he burst out, striding up and down. + +"I don't know _what_ to think, Sayler," he cried, "I don't _know_ what +to think! The demands of these corporations have been growing, growing, +growing! And now--You have seen the calendar?" + +"Yes," said I. "Some of the bills are pretty stiff, aren't they? But the +boys tell me they're for our best friends, and that they're all +necessary." + +"No doubt, no doubt," he replied, "but it will be impossible to +reconcile the people." Suddenly he turned on me, his eyes full of fear +and suspicion. "Have _you_ laid a plot to ruin me, Sayler? It certainly +looks that way. Have you a secret ambition for the presidency--" + +"Don't talk rubbish, James," I interrupted. Those few meaningless votes +in the national convention had addled his common sense. "Sit down,--calm +yourself,--tell me all about it." + +He seated himself and ran his fingers up and down his temples and +through his wet hair that was being so rapidly thinned and whitened by +the struggles and anxieties of his ambition. "My God!" he cried out, +"how I am punished! When I started in my public career, I looked +forward and saw just this time,--when I should be the helpless tool in +the hands of the power I sold myself to. Governor!" He almost shouted +the word, rising and pacing the floor again. "Governor!"--and he laughed +in wild derision. + +I watched him, fascinated. I, too, at the outset of my career, had +looked forward, and had seen the same peril, but I had avoided it. +Wretched figure that he was!--what more wretched, more pitiable than a +man groveling and moaning in the mire of his own self-contempt? +"Governor!" I said to myself, as I saw awful thoughts flitting like +demons of despair across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and +rejoiced,--shuddered at the narrowness of my own escape; pitied the man +who seemed myself as I might have been; and rejoiced that I had had my +mother with me and in me to impel me into another course. + +"Come, come, Burbank," said I, "you're not yourself; you've lost +sleep--" + +"Sleep!" he interrupted, "I have not closed my eyes since I read those +cursed bills." + +"Tell me what you want done," was my suggestion. "I'll help in any way +I can,--any way that's practicable." + +"Oh, I understand your position, Sayler," he answered, when he had got +control of himself again, "but I see plainly that the time has come when +the power that rules me,--that rules us both,--has decided to use me to +my own destruction. If I refuse to do these things, it will destroy +me,--and a hundred are eager to come forward and take my place. If I do +these things, the people will destroy me,--and neither is that of the +smallest importance to our master." + +His phrases, "the power that rules us both," and "our master," jarred on +me. So far as he knew, indeed, so far as "our master" knew, were not he +and I in the same class? But that was no time for personal vanity. All I +said was: "The bills must go through. This is one of those crises that +test a man's loyalty to the party." + +"For the good of the party!" he muttered with a bitter sneer. "Crime +upon crime--yes, crime, I say--that the party may keep the favor of the +powers! And to what end? to what good? Why, that the party may continue +in control and so may be of further use to its rulers." He rested his +elbows on the table and held his face between his hands. He looked +terribly old, and weary beyond the power ever to be rested again. "I +stand with the party,--what am I without it?" he went on in a dull +voice. "The people may forget, but, if I offend the master,--he never +forgives or forgets. I'll sign the bills, Sayler,--_if_ they come to me +as party measures." + +Burbank had responded to the test. + +A baser man would have acted as scores of governors, mayors, and judges +have acted in the same situation--would have accepted popular ruin and +would have compelled the powers to make him rich in compensation. A +braver man would have defied it and the powers, would have appealed to +the people--with one chance of winning out against ten thousand chances +of being disbelieved and laughed at as a "man who thinks he's too good +for his party." Burbank was neither too base nor too brave; clearly, I +assured myself, he is the man I want. I felt that I might safely relieve +his mind, so far as I could do so without letting him too far into my +secret plans. + +I had not spent five minutes in explanation before he was up, his face +radiant, and both hands stretched out to me. + +"Forgive me, Harvey!" he cried. "I shall never distrust you again. I put +my future in your hands." + + + + +XII + +BURBANK FIRES THE POPULAR HEART + + +That was, indeed, a wild winter at the state capital,--a "carnival of +corruption," the newspapers of other states called it. One of the first +of the "black bills" to go through was a disguised street railway grab, +out of which Senator Croffut got a handsome "counsel fee" of fifty-odd +thousand dollars. But as the rout went on, ever more audaciously and +recklessly, he became uneasy. In mid-February he was urging me to go +West and try to do something to "curb those infernal grabbers." I +refused to interfere. He went himself, and Woodruff reported to me that +he was running round the state house and the hotels like a crazy man; +for when he got into the thick of it, he realized that it was much worse +than it seemed from Washington. In a few days he was back and at me +again. + +"It's very strange," said he suspiciously. "The boys say they're getting +nothing out of it. They declare they're simply obeying orders." + +"Whose orders?" I asked. + +"I don't know," he answered, his eyes sharply upon me. "But I do know +that, unless something is done, I'll not be returned to the Senate. +We'll lose the legislature, sure, next fall." + +"It does look that way," I said with a touch of melancholy. "That street +railway grab was the beginning of our rake's progress. We've been going +it, hell bent, ever since." + +He tossed his handsome head and was about to launch into an angry +defense of himself. But my manner checked him. He began to plead. "_You_ +can stop it, Sayler. Everybody out there says you can. And, if I am +reëlected, I've got a good chance for the presidential nomination. +Should I get it and be elected, we could form a combination that would +interest you, I think." + +It was a beautiful irony that in his conceit he should give as his +reason why I should help him the very reason why I was not sorry he was +to be beaten. For, although he was not dangerous, still he was a rival +public figure to Burbank in our state, and,--well, accidents sometimes +happen, unless they're guarded against. + +"What shall I do?" I asked him. + +"Stop them from passing any more black bills. Why, they've got half a +dozen ready, some of them worse even than the two they passed over +Burbank's veto, a week ago." + +"For instance?" + +He cited three Power Trust bills. + +"But why don't _you_ stop those three?" said I. "They're under the +special patronage of Dominick. You have influence with him." + +"Dominick!" he groaned. "Are you sure?" And when I nodded emphatically, +he went on: "I'll do what I can, but--" He threw up his hands. + +He was off for the West that night. When he returned, his face wore the +look of doom. He had always posed for the benefit of the galleries, +especially the women in the galleries. But now he became sloven in +dress, often issued forth unshaven, and sat sprawled at his desk in the +Senate, his chin on his shirt bosom, looking vague and starting when any +one spoke to him. + +Following my advice on the day when I sent him away happy, Burbank left +the capital and the state just before the five worst bills left the +committees. He was called to the bedside of his wife who, so all the +newspapers announced, was at the point of death at Colorado Springs. + +While he was there nursing her as she "hovered between life and death," +the bills were jammed through the senate and the assembly. + +He telegraphed the lieutenant governor not to sign them, as he was +returning and wished to deal with them himself. He reached the capital +on a Thursday morning, sent the bills back with a "ringing" veto +message, and took the late afternoon train for Colorado Springs. It was +as good a political "grand-stand play" as ever thrilled a people. + +The legislature passed the bills over his veto and adjourned that night. + +Press and people, without regard to party lines, were loud in their +execrations of the "abandoned and shameless wretches" who had "betrayed +the state and had covered themselves with eternal infamy." I quote from +an editorial in the newspaper that was regarded as my personal organ. +But there was only praise for Burbank; his enemies, and those who had +doubted his independence and had suspected him of willingness to do +anything to further his personal ambitions, admitted that he had shown +"fearless courage, inflexible honesty, and the highest ideals of private +sacrifice to public duty." And they eagerly exaggerated him, to make his +white contrast more vividly with the black of the "satanic spawn" in the +legislature. His fame spread, carried far and wide by the sentimentality +in that supposed struggle between heart and conscience, between love for +the wife of his bosom and duty to the people. + +Carlotta, who like most women took no interest in politics because it +lacks "heart-interest," came to me with eyes swimming and cheeks aglow. +She had just been reading about Burbank's heroism. + +"Isn't he splendid!" she cried. "I always told you he'd be President. +And you didn't believe me." + +"Be patient with me, my dear," said I. "I am not a woman with +seven-league boots of intuition. I'm only a heavy-footed man." + + + + +XIII + +ROEBUCK & CO. PASS UNDER THE YOKE + + +And now the stage had been reached at which my ten mutinous clients +could be, and must be, disciplined. + +As a first step, I resigned the chairmanship of the state committee and +ordered the election of Woodruff to the vacancy. I should soon have +substituted Woodruff for myself, in any event. I had never wanted the +place, and had taken it only because to refuse it would have been to +throw away the golden opportunity Dunkirk so unexpectedly thrust at me. +Holding that position, or any other officially connecting me with my +party's machine, made me a target; and I wished to be completely hidden, +for I wished the people of my state to think me merely one of the party +servants, in sympathy with the rank and file rather than with the +machine. Yet, in the chairmanship, in the targetship, I must have a man +whom I could trust through and through; and, save Woodruff, who was +there for the place? + +When my resignation was announced, the independent and the opposition +press congratulated me on my high principle in refusing to have any +official connection with the machine responsible for such infamies. When +Woodruff's election was announced it came as a complete surprise. Such +of the newspapers as dared, and they were few, denounced it as infamy's +crown of infamy; and the rank and file of the party was shocked,--as I +had known it would be. He made not a murmur, but I knew what must be in +his mind. I said nothing until six weeks or two months had passed; then +I went straight at him. + +"You are feeling bitter against me," said I. "You think I dropped out +when there was danger of heavy firing, and put you up to take it." + +"No, indeed, Senator," he protested, "nothing like that. Honestly, I +have not had a bitter thought against you. I'm depressed simply because, +just as I had a chance to get on my feet again, they won't let me." + +"But," I rejoined, "I did resign and put you in my place because I +didn't want to take the fire and thought you could." + +"And so I can," said he. "I haven't any reputation to lose. I'm no worse +off than I was before. Let 'em do their damnedest." + +"Your first campaign will probably be a failure," I went on, "and, the +day after election, there'll be a shout for your head." + +He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm enlisted for the war," said he. "You're +my general. I go where you order." + +I hope the feelings that surged up in me showed in my face, as I +stretched out my hand. "Thank you, Doc," said I. "And--there's another +side to it. It isn't all black." + +"It isn't black at all," he replied stoutly. + +I explained: "I've wanted you to have the place from the outset. But I +shouldn't dare give it to you except at a time like this, when our party +has done so many unpopular things that one more won't count; and there's +so much to be said against us, so much worse things than they can +possibly make out your election to be, that it'll soon be almost +neglected." + +"They're beginning to drop me already and go back to harrying those poor +devils of ours in the legislature," said Woodruff. + +"A few weeks more," I went on, "and you'll be safe and you are to stay +chairman, no matter what happens. When they have leisure to attack you, +there'll be nothing to attack. The people will have dismissed the matter +from their minds. They don't care to watch the threshing of old straw." + +I saw that I had lifted a weight from him, though he said nothing. + +So much for my first move toward the chastening of my clients. Further +and even more effective in the same direction, I cut down our campaign +fund for the legislative ticket to one-fifth what it usually was; and, +without even Woodruff's knowing it, I heavily subsidized the opposition +machine. Wherever it could be done with safety I arranged for the +trading off of our legislative ticket for our candidate for governor. +"The legislature is hopelessly lost," I told Woodruff; "we must +concentrate on the governorship. We must save what we can." In fact, so +overwhelmingly was our party in the majority, and so loyal were its +rank and file, that it was only by the most careful arrangement of weak +candidates and of insufficient campaign funds that I was able to throw +the legislature to the opposition. Our candidate for governor, +Walbrook--Burbank was ineligible to a second successive term--was +elected by a comfortable plurality. And, by the way, I saw to it that +the party organs gave Woodruff enthusiastic praise for rescuing so much +from what had looked like utter ruin. + +My clients had been uneasy ever since the furious popular outburst which +had followed their breaking away from my direction and restraint. When +they saw an opposition legislature, they readily believed what they read +in the newspapers about the "impending reign of radicalism." Silliman, +the opposition leader, had accepted John Markham's offer of one hundred +and fifty thousand dollars for Croffut's seat in the Senate; but I +directed him to send Veerhoft, one of the wildest and cleverest of the +opposition radicals. He dared not disobey me. Veerhoft went, and Markham +never saw again the seventy-five thousand he had paid Silliman as a +"retainer." + +Veerhoft in the United States Senate gave my clients the chills; but I +was preparing the fever for them also. I had Silliman introduce bills in +both houses of the legislature that reached for the privileges of the +big corporations and initiated proceedings to expose their corruption. I +had Woodruff suggest to Governor Walbrook that, in view of the popular +clamor, he ought to recommend measures for equalizing taxation and +readjusting the prices of franchises. As my clients were bonded and +capitalized on the basis of no expense either for taxes or for +franchises, the governor's suggestion, eagerly adopted by Silliman's +"horde," foreshadowed ruin. If the measures should be passed, all the +dividends and interest they were paying on "water" would go into the +public treasury. + +My clients came to me, singly and in pairs, to grovel and to implore. An +interesting study these arrogant gentlemen made as they cringed, utterly +indifferent to the appearance of self-respect, in their agony for their +imperiled millions. A mother would shrink from abasing herself to save +the life of her child as these men abased themselves in the hope of +saving their dollars. How they fawned and flattered! They begged my +pardon for having disregarded my advice; they assured me that, if I +would only exert that same genius of mine which had conceived the +combine, I could devise some way of saving them from this tidal wave of +popular clamor,--for they hadn't a suspicion of my part in making that +tidal wave. + +Reluctantly I consented to "see what I can do." + +The instant change in the atmosphere of the capital, the instant outcry +from the organs of both parties that "the people had voted for reform, +not for confiscatory revolution," completed my demonstration. My clients +realized who was master of the machines. The threatening storm rapidly +scattered; the people, relieved that the Silliman program of upheaval +was not to be carried out, were glad enough to see the old +"conservative" order restored,--our people always reason that it is +better to rot slowly by corruption than to be frightened to death by +revolution. + +"Hereafter, we must trust to your judgment in these political matters, +Harvey," said Roebuck. "The manager must be permitted to manage." + +I smiled at the ingenuousness of this speech. It did not ruffle me. +Roebuck was one of those men who say their prayers in a patronizing +tone. + +Yes, I was master. But it is only now, in the retrospect of years, that +I have any sense of triumph; for I had won the supremacy with small +effort, comparatively,--with the small effort required of him who sees +the conditions of a situation clearly, and, instead of trying to combat +or to change them, intelligently uses them to his ends. Nor do I now +regard my achievement as marvelous. Everything was in my favor; against +me, there was nothing,--no organization, no plan, no knowledge of my +aim. I wonder how much of their supernal glory would be left to the +world's men of action, from its Alexanders and Napoleons down to its +successful bandits and ward-bosses, if mankind were in the habit of +looking at what the winner had opposed to him,--Alexander faced only by +flocks of sheep-like Asiatic slaves; Napoleon routing the badly trained, +wretchedly officered soldiers of decadent monarchies; and the bandit or +ward-boss overcoming peaceful and unprepared and unorganized citizens. +Who would erect statues or write eulogies to a man for mowing a field of +corn-stalks with a scythe? Mankind is never more amusing than in its +hero-worship. + +No, I should simply have been stupid had I failed. + +But--even had I been disposed to rein in and congratulate myself at the +quarter-stretch, I could not have done it. A man has, perhaps, some +choice as to his mount before he enters the race for success. But once +in the saddle and off, he must let the reins go; his control is confined +to whip and spur. + + + + +XIV + +A "BOOM-FACTORY" + + +In the early autumn of that last year of his as governor, Burbank's wife +died--a grim and unexpected fulfilment of their pretended anxieties of +six months before. + +It was, in some respects, as great a loss to me as to him--how great to +us both I did not--indeed, could not--measure until several years +passed. She was what I regard as a typical American wife--devoted to her +husband, jealously guarding his interests, yet as keen to see his +shortcomings as she was to see her own. And how much more persistent and +intelligent in correcting her faults than he in correcting his! Like +most men, he was vain--that is, while he would probably have admitted in +a large, vague way that he wasn't perfect, when it came to details he +would defend his worst fault against any and all criticism. Like most +women, she, too, was vain--but an intelligent woman's vanity, instead of +making her self-complacent, somehow spurs her on to hide her weak +points and to show her best points in the best light. For example, Mrs. +Burbank, a pretty woman and proud of it, was yet conscious of her +deficiencies in dress and in manners through her plain and rural early +surroundings. It was interesting, and instructive, too, to watch her +studying and cleverly copying, or rather, adapting Carlotta; for she +took from Carlotta only that which could be fitted without visible joint +into her own pattern. + +Latterly, whenever I was urging upon Burbank a line of action requiring +courage or a sacrifice of some one of his many insidious forms of +personal vanity, I always arranged for her to be present at our +conferences. And she would sit there, apparently absorbed in her sewing; +but in reality she was seeing not only the surface reasons I gave him, +but also those underlying and more powerful reasons which we do not +utter, sometimes because we like to play the hypocrite to ourselves, +again because we must give the other person a chance to play the +hypocrite before himself--and us. And often I left him reluctant and +trying to muster courage to refuse or finesse to evade, only to find +him the next day consenting, perhaps enthusiastic. Many's the time she +spared me the disagreeable necessity of being peremptory--doubly +disagreeable because show of authority has ever been distasteful to me +and because an order can never be so heartily executed as is an +assimilated suggestion. + +When I went to him a month after her death, I expected he would still be +crushed as he was at the funeral. I listened with a feeling of revulsion +to his stilted and, as it seemed to me, perfunctory platitudes on his +"irreparable loss"--stale rhetoric about _her_, and to her most intimate +friend and his! I had thought he would be imagining himself done with +ambition for ever; I had feared his strongly religious nature would lead +him to see a "judgment" upon him and her for having exaggerated her +indisposition to gain a political point. And I had mapped out what I +would say to induce him to go on. Instead, after a few of those +stereotyped mortuary sentences, he shifted to politics and was presently +showing me that her death had hardly interrupted his plannings for the +presidential nomination. As for the "judgment," I had forgotten that in +his religion his deity was always on his side, and his misfortunes were +always of the evil one. These deities of men of action! Man with his god +a ventriloquist puppet in his pocket, and with his conscience an old dog +Tray at his heels, needing no leading string! + +However, it gave me a shock, this vivid reminder from Burbank of the +slavery of ambition--ambition, the vice of vices. For it takes its +victims' all--moral, mental, physical. And, while other vices rarely +wreck any but small men or injure more than what is within their small +circles of influence, ambition seizes only the superior and sets them on +to use their superior powers to blast communities, states, nations, +continents. Yet it is called a virtue. And men who have sold themselves +to it and for it to the last shred of manhood are esteemed and, mystery +of mysteries, esteem themselves! + +I had come to Burbank to manufacture him into a President. His wife and +I had together produced an excellent raw material. Now, to make it up +into the finished product! + +He pointed to the filing-cases that covered the west wall of his library +from floor to ceiling, from north window to south. "I base my hope on +those--next to you, of course," said he. Then with his "woeful widower" +pose, he added: "They were _her_ suggestions." + +I looked at the filing-cases and waited for him to explain. + +"When we were first married," he went on presently, "she said, 'It seems +to me, if I were a public man, I should keep everything relating to +myself--every speech, all that the newspapers said, every meeting and +the lists of the important people who were there, notes of _all_ the +people I ever met anywhere, every letter or telegram or note I received. +If you do, you may find after a few years that you have an enormous list +of acquaintances. You've forgotten them because you meet so many, but +they will not have forgotten you, who were one of the principal figures +at the meeting or reception.' That's in substance what she said. And so, +we began and kept it up"--he paused in his deliberate manner, compressed +his lips, then added--"together." + +I opened one of the filing-cases, glanced at him for permission, took +out a slip of paper under the M's. It was covered with notes, in Mrs. +Burbank's writing, of a reception given to him at the Manufacturers' +Club in St. Louis three years before. A lot of names, after each some +reminders of the standing and the personal appearance of the man. +Another slip, taken at random from the same box, contained similar notes +of a trip through Montana eight years before. + +"Wonderful!" I exclaimed, as the full value of these accumulations +loomed in my mind. "I knew she was an extraordinary woman. Now I see +that she had genius for politics." + +His expression--a peering through that eternal pose of his--made me +revise my first judgment of his mourning. For I caught a glimpse of a +real human being, one who had loved and lost, looking grief and pride +and gratitude. "If she had left me two or three years earlier," he said +in that solemn, posing tone, "I doubt if I should have got one step +further. As it is, I may be able to go on, though--I have lost--my +staff." + +What fantastic envelopes does man, after he has been finished by +Nature, wrap about himself in his efforts to improve her handiwork! +Physically, even when most dressed, we are naked in comparison with the +enswathings that hide our real mental and moral selves from one +another--and from ourselves. + +My campaign was based on the contents of those filing-cases. I learned +all the places throughout the West--cities, towns, centrally-located +villages--where he had been and had made an impression; and by simple +and obvious means we were able to convert them into centers of "the +Burbank boom." I could afterward trace to the use we made of those +memoranda the direct getting of no less than one hundred and seven +delegates to the national convention--and that takes no account of the +vaster indirect value of so much easily worked-up, genuine, unpurchased +and unpurchasable "Burbank sentiment." The man of only local prominence, +whom Burbank remembered perfectly after a chance meeting years before, +could have no doubt who ought to be the party's nominee for President. + +The national machine of our party was then in the custody, and +supposedly in the control, of Senator Goodrich of New Jersey. He had a +reputation for Machiavellian dexterity, but I found that he was an +accident rather than an actuality. + +The dominion of the great business interests over politics was the rapid +growth of about twenty years--the consolidations of business naturally +producing concentrations of the business world's political power in the +hands of the few controllers of the big railway, industrial and +financial combines. Goodrich had happened to be acquainted with some of +the most influential of these business "kings"; they naturally made him +their agent for the conveying of their wishes and their bribes of one +kind and another to the national managers of both parties. They knew +little of the details of practical politics, knew only what they needed +in their businesses; and as long as they got that, it did not interest +them what was done with the rest of the power their "campaign +contributions" gave. + +With such resources any man of good intelligence and discretion could +have got the same results as Goodrich's. He was simply a lackey, +strutting and cutting a figure in his master's clothes and under his +master's name. He was pitifully vain of his reputation as a Machiavelli +and a go-between. Vanity is sometimes a source of great strength; but +vanity of that sort, and about a position in which secrecy is the prime +requisite, could mean only weakness. + +Throughout his eight years of control of our party it had had possession +of all departments of the national administration--except of the House +of Representatives during the past two years. This meant the +uninterrupted and unchecked reign of the interests. To treat with +consideration the interests, the strong men of the country, they who +must have a free hand for developing its resources, to give them +privileges and immunities beyond what can be permitted the ordinary +citizen or corporation--that is a course which, however offensive to +abstract justice, still has, as it seems to me, a practical justice in +it, and, at any rate, must be pursued so long as the masses of the +voters are short-sighted, unreasoning and in nose-rings to political +machines. A man's rights, whatever they may be in theory, are in +practice only what he has the intelligence and the power to compel. +But, for the sake of the nation, for the upholding of civilization +itself, these over-powerful interests should never be given their heads, +should be restrained as closely as may be to their rights--their +_practical_ rights. Goodrich had neither the sagacity nor the +patriotism--nor the force of will, for that matter--to keep them within +the limits of decency and discretion. Hence the riot of plunder and +privilege which revolted and alarmed me when I came to Washington and +saw politics in the country-wide, yes, history-wide, horizon of that +view-point. + +Probably I should have been more leisurely in bringing my presidential +plans to a focus, had I not seen how great and how near was the peril to +my party. It seemed to me, not indeed a perfect or even a satisfactory, +but the best available, instrument for holding the balances of order as +even as might be between our country's two opposing elements of +disorder--the greedy plunderers and the rapidly infuriating plundered. +And I saw that no time was to be lost, if the party was not to be blown +to fragments. The first mutterings of the storm were in our summary +ejection from control of the House in the midway election. If the party +were not to be dismembered, I must oust Goodrich, must defeat his plans +for nominating Cromwell, must nominate Burbank instead. If I should +succeed in electing him, I reasoned that I could through him carry out +my policy of moderation and _practical_ patriotism--to yield to the +powerful few a minimum of what they could compel, to give to the +prostrate but potentially powerful many at least enough to keep them +quiet--a stomachful. The world may have advanced; but patriotism still +remains the art of restraining the arrogance of full stomachs and the +anger of empty ones. + +In Cromwell, Goodrich believed he had a candidate with sufficient hold +upon the rank and file of the party to enable him to carry the election +by the usual means--a big campaign fund properly distributed in the +doubtful states. I said to Senator Scarborough of Indiana soon after +Cromwell's candidacy was announced: "What do you think of Goodrich's +man?" + +Scarborough, though new to the Senate then, had shown himself far and +away the ablest of the opposition Senators. He had as much intellect as +any of them; and he had what theorists, such as he, usually lack, skill +at "grand tactics"--the management of men in the mass. His one +weakness--and that, from my standpoint, a great one--was a literal +belief in democratic institutions and in the inspiring but in practice +pernicious principle of exact equality before the law. + +"Cromwell's political sponsors," was his reply, "are two as shrewd +bankers as there are in New York. I have heard it said that a fitting +sign for a bank would be: 'Here we do nothing for nothing for nobody.'" + +An admirable summing up of Cromwell's candidacy. And I knew that it +would so appear to the country, that no matter how great a corruption +fund Goodrich might throw into the campaign, we should, in that time of +public exasperation, be routed if Cromwell was our standard-bearer--so +utterly routed that we could not possibly get ourselves together again +for eight, perhaps twelve years. There might even be a re-alignment of +parties with some sort of socialism in control of one of them. If +control were to be retained by the few who have the capital and the +intellect to make efficient the nation's resources and energy, my +projects must be put through at once. + +I had accumulated a fund of five hundred thousand dollars for my +"presidential flotation"--half of it contributed by Roebuck in exchange +for a promise that his son-in-law should have an ambassadorship if +Burbank were elected; the other half set aside by me from the "reserve" +I had formed out of the year-by-year contributions of my combine. By the +judicious investment of that capital I purposed to get Burbank the +nomination on the first ballot--at least four hundred and sixty of the +nine hundred-odd delegates. + +In a national convention the delegates are, roughly speaking, about +evenly divided among the three sections of the country--a third from +east of the Alleghanies; a third from the West; a third from the South. +It was hopeless for us to gun for delegates in the East; that was the +especial bailiwick of Senator Goodrich. The most we could do there would +be to keep him occupied by quietly encouraging any anti-Cromwell +sentiment--and it existed a-plenty. Our real efforts were to be in the +West and South. + +I organized under Woodruff a corps of about thirty traveling agents. +Each man knew only his own duties, knew nothing of the general plan, not +even that there was a general plan. Each was a trained political worker, +a personal retainer of ours. I gave them their instructions; Woodruff +equipped them with the necessary cash. During the next five months they +were incessantly on the go--dealing with our party's western machines +where they could; setting up rival machines in promising localities +where Goodrich controlled the regular machines; using money here, +diplomacy there, both yonder, promises of patronage everywhere. + +Such was my department of secrecy. At the head of my department of +publicity I put De Milt, a sort of cousin of Burbank's and a newspaper +man. He attended to the subsidizing of news agencies that supplied +thousands of country papers with boiler-plate matter to fill their +inside pages. He also subsidized and otherwise won over many small town +organs of the party. Further, he and three assistants wrote each week +many columns of "boom" matter, all of which was carefully revised by +Burbank himself before it went out as "syndicate letters." If Goodrich +hadn't been ignorant of conditions west of the Alleghanies and confident +that his will was law, he would have scented out this department of +publicity of mine and so would have seen into my "flotation." But he +knew nothing beyond his routine. I once asked him how many country +newspapers there were in the United States, and he said: "Oh, I don't +know. Perhaps three or four thousand." Even had I enlightened him to the +extent of telling him that there were about five times that number, he +would have profited nothing. Had he been able to see the importance of +such a fact to capable political management, he would have learned it +long before through years of constant use of the easiest avenue into the +heart of the people. + +He did not wake up to adequate action until the fourth of that group of +states whose delegations to our national conventions were habitually +bought and sold, broke its agreement with him and instructed its +delegation to vote for Burbank. By the time he had a corps of agents in +those states, Doc Woodruff had "acquired" more than a hundred delegates. +Goodrich was working only through the regular machinery of the party and +was fighting against a widespread feeling that Cromwell shouldn't, and +probably couldn't, be elected; we, on the other hand, were manufacturing +presidential sentiment for a candidate who was already popular. Nor had +Goodrich much advantage over us with the regular machines anywhere +except in the East. + +Just as I was congratulating myself that nothing could happen to prevent +our triumph at the convention, Roebuck telegraphed me to come to +Chicago. I found with him in the sitting-room of his suite in the +Auditorium Annex, Partridge and Granby, next to him the most important +members of my combine, since they were the only ones who had interests +that extended into many states. It was after an uneasy silence that +Granby, the uncouth one of the three, said: + +"Senator, we brought you here to tell you this Burbank nonsense has gone +far enough." + + + + +XV + +MUTINY + + +It was all I could do not to show my astonishment and sudden fury. "I +don't understand," said I, in a tone which I somehow managed to keep +down to tranquil inquiry. + +But I did understand. It instantly came to me that the three had been +brought into line for Cromwell by their powerful business associates in +Wall Street, probably by the great bankers who loaned them money. Swift +upon the surge of anger I had suppressed before it flamed at the surface +came a surge of triumph--which I also suppressed. I had often wished, +perhaps as a matter of personal pride, just this opportunity; and here +it was! + +"Cromwell must be nominated," said Granby in his insolent tone. He had +but two tones--the insolent and the cringing. "He's safe and sound. +Burbank isn't trusted in the East. And we didn't like his conduct last +year. He caters to the demagogues." + +Roebuck, through his liking for me, I imagine, rather than through +refined instinct, now began to speak, thinly disguising his orders as +requests. I waited until he had talked himself out. I waited with the +same air of calm attention until Partridge had given me his jerky +variation. I waited, still apparently calm, until the silence must have +been extremely uncomfortable to them. I waited until Granby said +sharply, "Then it is settled?" + +"Yes," said I, keeping all emotion out of my face and voice. "It is +settled. Ex-Governor Burbank is to be nominated. I am at a loss to +account for this outbreak. However, I shall at once take measures to +prevent its occurring again. Good day." + +And I was gone--straight to the train. I did not pause at Fredonia but +went on to the capital. The next morning I had the legislature and the +attorney-general at work demolishing Granby's business in my state--for +I had selected him to make an example of, incidentally because he had +insulted me, but chiefly because he was the most notorious of my ten, +was about the greediest and crudest "robber baron" in the West. My +legislature was to revoke his charter; my attorney-general was to +enforce upon him the laws I had put on the statute books against just +such emergencies. And it had never entered their swollen heads that I +might have taken these precautions that are in the primer of political +management. + +My three mutineers pursued me to the capital, missed me, were standing +breathless at the door of my house near Fredonia on the morning of the +third day. I refused to be seen until the afternoon of the fourth day, +and then I forbade Granby. But when I descended to the reception-room he +rushed at me, tried to take my hand, pouring out a stream of sickening +apologies. I rang the bell. When a servant appeared, I said, "Show this +man the door." + +Granby turned white and, after a long look into my face, said in a +broken voice to Roebuck: "For God's sake, don't go back on me, Mr. +Roebuck. Do what you can for me." + +As the curtain dropped behind him, I looked expectantly at Roebuck, +sweating with fright for his imperiled millions. Probably his mental +state can be fully appreciated only by a man who has also felt the dread +of losing the wealth upon which he is wholly dependent for courage, +respect and self-respect. + +"Don't misunderstand me, Harvey," he began to plead, forgetting that +there was anybody else to save besides himself. "I didn't mean--" + +"What _did_ you mean?" I interrupted, my tone ominously quiet. + +"We didn't intend--" began Partridge. + +"What _did_ you intend?" I interrupted as quietly as before. + +They looked nervously each at the other, then at me. "If you think +Burbank's the man," Roebuck began again, "why, you may go ahead--" + +There burst in me such a storm of anger that I dared not speak until I +could control and aim the explosion. Partridge saw how, and how +seriously, Roebuck had blundered. He thrust him aside and faced me. +"What's the use of beating around the bush?" he said bluntly. "We've +made damn fools of ourselves, Senator. We thought we had the whip. We +see that we haven't. We're mighty sorry we didn't do a little thinking +before Roebuck sent that telegram. We hope you'll let us off as easy as +you can, and we promise not to meddle in your business again--and you +can bet your life we'll keep our promise." + +"I think you will," said I. + +"I am a man of my word," said he. "And so is Roebuck." + +"Oh, I don't mean that," was my answer. "I mean, when the Granby +object-lesson in the stupidity of _premature_ ingratitude is complete, +you shan't be able to forget it." + +They drifted gloomily in the current of their unpleasant thoughts; then +each took a turn at wringing my hand. I invited them up to my +sitting-room where we smoked and talked amicably for a couple of hours. +It would have amused the thousands of employés and dependents over whom +these two lorded it arrogantly to have heard with what care they weighed +their timid words, how nervous they were lest they should give me fresh +provocation. As they were leaving, Roebuck said earnestly: "Isn't there +_anything_ I can do for you, Harvey?" + +"Why, yes," said I. "Give out a statement next Sunday in Chicago--for +the Monday morning papers--indorsing Cromwell's candidacy. Say you and +all your associates are enthusiastic for it because his election would +give the large enterprises that have been the object of demagogic attack +a sense of security for at least four years more." + +He thought I was joking him, being unable to believe me so lacking in +judgment as to fail to realize what a profound impression in Cromwell's +favor such a statement from the great Roebuck would produce. I wrote and +mailed him an interview with himself the following day; he gave it out +as I had requested. It got me Burbank delegations in Illinois, South +Dakota and Oregon the same week. + + + + +XVI + +A VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE + + +I arrived at Chicago the day before the convention and, going at once to +our state headquarters in the Great Northern, shut myself in with Doc +Woodruff. My door-keeper, the member of the legislature from Fredonia, +ventured to interrupt with the announcement that a messenger had come +from Senator Goodrich. + +"Let him in," said I. + +As the door-man disappeared Doc Woodruff glanced at his watch, then said +with a smile: "You've been here seven minutes and a half--just time for +a lookout down stairs to telephone to the Auditorium and for the +messenger to drive from there here. Goodrich is on the anxious-seat, all +right." + +The messenger was Goodrich's handy-man, Judge Dufour. I myself have +always frowned on these public exhibitions of the intimacy of judges in +practical politics; but Goodrich had many small vanities--he liked his +judges to hold his coat and his governors to carry his satchel. One +would say that such petty weaknesses would be the undoing of a man. +Fortunately, we are not as weak as our weakness but as strong as our +strength; and while the universal weaknesses are shared by the strong, +their strength is peculiar and rare. After Dufour had introduced himself +and we had exchanged commonplaces he said: "Senator, there's a little +conference of some of the leaders at headquarters and it isn't complete +without you. So, Senator Goodrich has sent me over to escort you." + +"Thank you--very courteous of you and of him," said I without +hesitation, for I knew what was coming as soon as his name had been +brought in, and my course was laid out. "But I can't leave just now. +Please ask him if he won't come over--any time within the next four +hours." This blandly and without a sign that I was conscious of Dufour's +stupefaction--for his vanity made him believe that the god the great +Dufour knelt to must be the god of gods. + +There is no more important branch of the art of successful dealing with +men than the etiquette of who shall call upon whom. Many a man has in +his very hour of triumph ruined his cause with a blunder there--by going +to see some one whom he should have compelled to come to him, or by +compelling some one to come to him when he should have made the +concession of going. I had two reasons for thus humiliating Goodrich, +neither of them the reason he doubtless attributed to me, the desire to +feed my vanity. My first reason was his temperament; I knew his having +to come to me would make him bow before me in spirit, as he was a +tyrant, and tyrants are always cringers. My second reason was that I +thought myself near enough to control of the convention to be able to +win control by creating the atmosphere of impending success. There is +always a lot of fellows who wait to see who is likely to win, so that +they may be on the side of the man in the plum tree; often there are +enough of these to gain the victory for him who can lure them over at +just the right moment. + +As soon as Dufour had taken his huge body away I said to Woodruff: "Go +out with your men and gather in the office down stairs as many members +of the doubtful delegations as you can. Keep them where they'll be bound +to see Goodrich come in and go out." + +He rushed away, and I waited--working with the leaders of three +far-western states. At the end of two hours, I won them by the spectacle +of the arriving Goodrich. He came in, serene, smiling, giving me the +joyously shining eyes and joyously firm hand-clasp of the politician's +greeting; not an outward sign that he would like to see me tortured to +death by some slow process then and there. Hypocritical preliminaries +were not merely unnecessary but even highly ridiculous; yet, so great +was his anger and confusion that he began with the "prospects for an +old-time convention, with old-time enthusiasm and that generous rivalry +which is the best sign of party health." + +"I hope not, Senator," said I pleasantly. "Here, we think the fight is +over--and won." + +He lifted his eyebrows; but I saw his maxillary muscles twitching. "We +don't figure it out just that way at headquarters," he replied oilily. +"But, there's no doubt about it, your man has developed strength in the +West." + +"And South," said I, with deliberate intent to inflame, for I knew how +he must feel about those delegates we had bought away from him. + +There were teeth enough in his smile--but little else. "I think Burbank +and Cromwell will be about even on the first ballot," said he. "May the +best man win! We're all working for the good of the party and the +country. But--I came, rather, to get your ideas about platform." + +I opened a drawer in the table at which I was sitting and took out a +paper. "We've embodied our ideas in this," said I, holding the paper +toward him. "There's a complete platform, but we only insist on the five +paragraphs immediately after the preamble." + +He seemed to age as he read. "Impossible!" he finally exclaimed. +"Preposterous! It would be difficult enough to get any money for +_Cromwell_ on such a platform, well as our conservative men know they +can trust him. But for _Burbank_--you couldn't get a cent--not a damn +cent! A rickety candidate on a rickety platform--that's what they'd +say." + +I made no answer. + +"May I ask," he presently went on, "has ex-Governor Burbank seen +this--this astonishing document?" + +Burbank had written it. I confess when he first showed it to me, it had +affected me somewhat as it was now affecting Goodrich. For, a dealer +with business men as well as with public sentiment, I appreciated +instantly the shock some of the phrases would give the large interests. +But Burbank had not talked to me five minutes before I saw he was in the +main right and that his phrases only needed a little "toning down" so +that they wouldn't rasp too harshly on "conservative" ears, "Yes, Mr. +Burbank has seen it," said I. "He approves it--though, of course, it +does not represent his _personal_ views, or his _intentions_." + +"If Mr. Burbank approves _this_," exclaimed Goodrich, red and tossing +the paper on the table, "then my gravest doubts about him are confirmed. +He is an utterly unsafe man. He could not carry a single state in the +East where there are any large centerings of capital or of +enterprise--not even our yellow-dog states." + +"He can and will carry them all," said I. "They _must_ go for him, +because after the opposition have nominated, and have announced their +platform, your people will regard him as, at any rate, much the less of +two evils. We have decided on that platform because we wish to make it +possible for him to carry the necessary Western states. We can't hold +our rank and file out here unless we have a popular platform. The people +must have their way _before_ election, Senator, if the interests are to +continue to have their way _after_ election." + +"I'll never consent to that platform," said he, rising. + +"Very well," said I with a mild show of regret, rising also as if I had +no wish to prolong the interview. + +He brought his hand down violently upon the paper. "This," he exclaimed, +"is a timely uncovering of a most amazing plot--a plot to turn our party +over to demagoguery." + +"To rescue it from the combination of demagoguery and plutagoguery that +is wrecking it," said I without heat, "and make it again an instrument +of at least sanity, perhaps of patriotism." + +"We control the platform committee," he went on, "and I can tell you +now, Senator Sayler, that that there platform, nor nothing like it, will +never be reported." In his agitation he went back to the grammar of his +youthful surroundings. + +"I regret that you will force us to a fight on the floor of the +convention," I returned. "It can't but make a bad impression on the +country to see two factions in the party--one for the people, the other +against them." + +Goodrich sat down. + +"But," I went on, "at least, such a fight will insure Burbank all the +delegates except perhaps the two or three hundred you directly control. +You are courageous, Senator, to insist upon a count of noses on the +issues we raise there." + +He took up the platform again, and began to pick it to pieces phrase by +phrase. That was what I wanted. Some phrases I defended, some I conceded +might be altered to advantage, others I cheerfully agreed to discard +altogether. Presently he had a pencil in his hand and was going over the +crucial paragraphs, was making interlineations. And he grew more and +more reasonable. At last I suggested that he take the platform away +with him, make the changes agreed upon and such others as he might +think wise, and send it back for my criticism and suggestions. He +assented, and we parted on excellent terms--"harmony" in the convention +was assured. + +When the amended platform came back late in the afternoon, I detained +Goodrich's messenger, the faithful Dufour again. It was still the +Burbank platform, with no changes we could not concede. I had a copy +made and gave it to Dufour, saying: "Tell the Senator I think this +admirable, a great improvement. But I'll try to see him to-night and +thank him." + +I did not try to see him, however. I took no risk of lessening the +effect created by his having to come to me. He had entered through +groups of delegates from all parts of the country. He had passed out +through a crowd, so well did my men employ the time his long stay with +me gave them. + +On the next day the platform was adopted. On the following day, amid +delirious enthusiasm in the packed galleries and not a little agitation +among the delegates--who, even to the "knowing ones," were as ignorant +of what was really going on as private soldiers are of the general's +plan of battle--amid waving of banners and crash of band and shriek of +crowd Burbank was nominated on the first ballot. Our press hailed the +nomination as a "splendid victory of the honest common sense of the +entire party over the ultra conservatism of a faction associated in the +popular mind with segregated wealth and undue enjoyment of the favors of +laws and law-makers." + +When I saw Burbank he took me graciously by the hand. "I thank you, +Harvey," he said, "for your aid in this glorious victory of the people." + +I did not realize then that his vanity was of the kind which can in an +instant spring into a Redwood colossus from the shriveled stalk to which +the last glare of truth has wilted it. Still his words and manner jarred +on me. As our eyes met, something in mine--perhaps something he imagined +he saw--made him frown in the majesty of offended pose. Then his +timidity took fright and he said apologetically, "How can I repay you? +After all, it is your victory." + +I protested. + +"Then _ours_," said he. "Yours, for us." + + + + +XVII + +SCARBOROUGH + + +Now came _the_ problem--to elect. + +We hear much of many wonders of combination and concentration of +_industrial_ power which railway and telegraph have wrought. But nothing +is said about what seems to me the greatest wonder of them all--how +these forces have resulted in the concentration of the _political_ power +of upwards of twelve millions of our fifteen million voters; how the few +can impose their ideas and their will upon widening circles, out and +out, until all are included. The people are scattered; the powers +confer, man to man, day by day. The people are divided by partizan and +other prejudices; the powers are bound together by the one +self-interest. The people must accept such political organizations as +are provided for them; the powers pay for, and their agents make and +direct, those organizations. The people are poor; the powers are rich. +The people have not even offices to bestow; the powers have offices to +give and lucrative employment of all kinds, and material and social +advancement,--everything that the vanity or the appetite of man craves. +The people punish but feebly--usually the wrong persons--and soon +forget; the powers relentlessly and surely pursue those who oppose them, +forgive only after the offender has surrendered unconditionally, and +they never forget where it is to their interest to remember. The powers +know both what they want and how to get it; the people know neither. + +Back in March, when Goodrich first suspected that I had outgeneraled +him, he opened negotiations with the national machine of the opposition +party. He decided that, if I should succeed in nominating Burbank, he +would save his masters and himself by nominating as the opposition +candidate a man under their and his control, and by electing him with an +enormous campaign fund. + +Beckett, the subtlest and most influential of the managers of the +national machine of the opposition party, submitted several names to +him. He selected Henry J. Simpson, Justice of the Supreme Court of +Ohio--a slow, shy, ultra-conservative man, his brain spun full in every +cell with the cobwebs of legal technicality. He was, in his way, almost +as satisfactory a candidate for the interests as Cromwell would have +been. For, while he was honest, of what value is honesty when combined +with credulity and lack of knowledge of affairs? They knew what advisers +he would select, men trained in their service and taken from their legal +staffs. They knew he would shrink from anything "radical" or +"disturbing"--that is, would not molest the two packs of wolves, the +business and the political, at their feast upon the public. He came of a +line of bigoted adherents of his party; he led a simple, retired life +among sheep and cows and books asleep in the skins of sheep and cows. He +wore old-fashioned rural whiskers, thickest in the throat, thinning +toward the jawbone, scant about the lower lip, absent from the upper. +These evidences of unfitness to cope with up-to-date corruption seemed +to endear him to the masses. + +As soon as those big organs of the opposition that were in the control +of the powers began to talk of Simpson as an ideal candidate, I +suspected what was in the wind. But I had my hands full; the most I +could then do was to supply my local "left-bower," Silliman, with funds +and set him to work for a candidate for his party more to my taste. It +was fortunate for me that I had cured myself of the habit of worrying. +For it was plain that, if Goodrich and Beckett succeeded in getting +Simpson nominated by the opposition, I should have a hard fight to raise +the necessary campaign money. The large interests either would finance +Simpson or, should I convince them that Burbank was as good for their +purposes as Simpson, would be indifferent which won. + +I directed Silliman to work for Rundle of Indiana, a thoroughly honest +man, in deadly earnest about half a dozen deadly wrong things, and +capable of anything in furthering them--after the manner of fanatics. If +he had not been in public life, he would have been a camp-meeting +exhorter. Crowds liked to listen to him; the radicals and radically +inclined throughout the West swore by him; he had had two terms in +Congress, had got a hundred-odd votes for the nomination for President +at the last national convention of the opposition. A splendid scarecrow +for the Wall Street crowd, but difficult to nominate over Goodrich's man +Simpson in a convention of practical politicians. + +In May--it was the afternoon of the very day my mutineers got back into +the harness--Woodruff asked me if I would see a man he had picked up in +a delegate-hunting trip into Indiana. "An old pal of mine, much the +better for the twelve years' wear since I last saw him. He has always +trained with the opposition. He's a full-fledged graduate of the Indiana +school of politics, and that's the best. It's almost all craft +there--they hate to give up money and don't use it except as a last +resort." + +He brought in his man--Merriweather by name. I liked the first look at +him--keen, cynical, indifferent. He had evidently sat in so many games +of chance of all kinds that play roused in him only the ice-cold passion +of the purely professional. + +"There's been nothing doing in our state for the last two or three +years--at least nothing in my line," said he. "A rank outsider, +Scarborough--" + +I nodded. "Yes, I know him. He came into the Senate from your state two +years ago." + +"Well, he's built up a machine of his own and runs things to suit +himself." + +"I thought he wasn't a politician," said I. + +Merriweather's bony face showed a faint grin. "The best ever," said he. +"He's put the professionals out of business, without its costing him a +cent. I've got tired of waiting for him to blow over." + +Tired--and hungry, I thought. After half an hour of pumping I sent him +away, detaining Woodruff. "What does he really think about Rundle?" I +asked. + +"Says he hasn't the ghost of a chance--that Scarborough'll control the +Indiana delegation and that Scarborough has no more use for lunatics +than for grafters." + +This was not encouraging. I called Merriweather back. "Why don't you +people nominate Scarborough at St. Louis?" said I. + +Behind his surface of attention, I saw his mind traveling at lightning +speed in search of my hidden purpose along every avenue that my +suggestion opened. + +"Scarborough'd be a dangerous man for you," he replied. "He's got a +nasty way of reaching across party lines for votes." + +I kept my face a blank. + +"You've played politics only in your own state or against the Eastern +crowd, these last few years," he went on, as if in answer to my +thoughts. "You don't realize what a hold Scarborough's got through the +entire West. He has split your party and the machine of his own in our +state, and they know all about him and his doings in the states to the +west. The people like a fellow that knocks out the regulars." + +"A good many call him a demagogue, don't they?" said I. + +"Yes--and he is, in sort of a way," replied Merriweather. "But--well, +he's got a knack of telling the truth so that it doesn't scare folks. +And he's managed to convince them that he isn't looking out for number +one. It can't be denied that he made a good governor. For instance, he +got after the monopolies, and the cost of living is twenty per cent. +lower in Indiana than just across the line in Ohio." + +"Then I should say that all the large interests in the country would +line up against him," said I. + +"Every one," said Merriweather, and an expression of understanding +flitted across his face. He went on: "But it ain't much use talking +about him. He couldn't get the nomination--at least, it wouldn't be easy +to get it for him." + +"I suppose not," said I. "That's a job for a first-class man--and +they're rare." And I shook hands with him. + +About a week later he returned, and tried to make a report to me. But I +sent him away, treating him very formally. I appreciated that, being an +experienced and capable man, he knew the wisdom of getting intimately in +touch with his real employer; but, as I had my incomparable Woodruff, +better far than I at the rough work of politics, there was no necessity +for my entangling myself. Merriweather went to Woodruff, and Woodruff +reported to me--Scarborough's friends in Indianapolis all agreed that +he did not want the nomination and would not have it. + +"We must force it on him," said I. "We must have Scarborough." + +Immediately after Burbank's nomination, Goodrich concentrated upon +nominating Judge Simpson. He had three weeks, and he worked hard and +well. I think he overdid it in the editorials in our party organs under +his influence in New York, Boston and other eastern cities--never a day +without lugubrious screeds on the dismal outlook for Burbank if the +other party should put up Simpson. But his Simpson editorials in big +opposition papers undoubtedly produced an effect. I set for De Milt and +his bureau of underground publicity the task of showing up, as far as it +was prudent to expose intimate politics to the public, Goodrich and his +crowd and their conspiracy with Beckett and his crowd to secure the +opposition nomination for a man of the same offensive type as Cromwell. +And I directed Woodruff to supply Silliman and Merriweather and that +department of my "bi-partizan" machine with all the money they wanted. +"They can't spend much to advantage at this late day except for +traveling expenses," said I. "Our best plan, anyhow, is good honest +missionary work with the honest men of the other party who wish to see +its best man nominated." + +While Goodrich's agents and Beckett's agents were industriously +arranging the eastern machinery of the opposition party for Simpson, +Merriweather had Silliman's men toiling in the West and South to get +Rundle delegates or uninstructed delegations. And, after our +conversation, he was reinforced by Woodruff and such men of his staff as +could be used without suspicion. Woodruff himself could permeate like an +odorless gas; you knew he was there only by the results. Nothing could +be done for Rundle in his own state; but the farther away from his home +our men got, the easier it was to induce--by purchase and otherwise--the +politicians of his party to think well of him. This the more because +they regarded Simpson as a "stuff" and a "stiff"--and they weren't far +wrong. + +"It may not be Scarborough, and it probably won't be Rundle," Woodruff +said in his final report to me, "but it certainly won't be Simpson. +He's the dead one, no matter how well he does on the first ballot." + +But I would not let him give me the details--the story of shrewd and +slippery plots, stratagems, surprises. "I am worn out, mind and body," +said I in apology for my obvious weariness and indifference. + +For six months I had been incessantly at work. The tax upon memory +alone, to say nothing of the other faculties, had been crushing. Easy as +political facts always were for me, I could not lightly bear the strain +of keeping constantly in mind not merely the outlines, but also hundreds +of the details, of the political organizations of forty-odd states with +all their counties. And the tax on memory was probably the least. Then +added to all my political work was business care; for while I was +absorbed in politics, Ed Ramsay had badly muddled the business. Nor had +I, like Burbank and Woodruff, the power to empty my mind as I touched +the pillow and so to get eight hours of unbroken rest each night. + +Woodruff began asking me for instructions. But my judgment was +uncertain, and my imagination barren. "Do as you think best," said I. "I +must rest. I've reached my limit,"--my limit of endurance of the sights +and odors and befoulings of these sewers of politics I must in person +adventure in order to reach my goal. I must pause and rise to the +surface for a breath of decent air or I should not have the strength to +finish these menial and even vile tasks which no man can escape if he is +a practical leader in the practical activities of practical life. + + + + +XVIII + +A DANGEROUS PAUSE + + +I took train for my friend Sandys' country place near Cleveland, +forbidding Woodruff or Burbank or my secretaries to communicate with me. +Sandys had no interest in politics--his fortune was in real estate and, +therefore, did not tempt or force him into relations with political +machines. + +Early in the morning after my arrival I got away from the others and, +with a stag-hound who remembered me with favor from my last visit, +struck into woods that had never been despoiled by man. As I tramped on +and on, my mind seemed to revive, and I tried to take up the plots and +schemes that had been all-important yesterday. But I could not. Instead, +as any sane man must when he and nature are alone and face to face, I +fell to marveling that I could burn up myself, the best of me, the best +years of my one life, in such a fever of folly and fraud as this +political career of mine. I seemed to be in a lucid interval between +paroxysms of insanity. I reviewed the men and things of my world as one +recalls the absurd and repellent visions of a nightmare. I shrank from +passing from this mood of wakefulness and reason back into the unreal +reality of what had for years been my all-in-all. I wandered hour after +hour, sometimes imagining that I was flying from the life I loathed, +again that somewhere in those cool, green, golden-lighted mazes I should +find--my lost youth, and her. For, how could I think of _it_ without +thinking of _her_ also? It had been lighted by her; it had gone with +her; it lived in memory, illumined by her. + +The beautiful, beautiful world-that-ought-to-be! The hideous, the +horrible world-that-is! + +I did not return to the house until almost dinner-time. "I have to go +away to-morrow morning," I announced after dinner. For I felt that, if I +did not fly at once, I should lose all heart for the task which must be +finished. + +"Why," protested Sandys, "you came to stay until we all started with you +for St. Louis." + +"I must go," I repeated. I did not care to invent an excuse; I could +not give the reason. Had I followed my impulse, I should have gone at +once, that night. + +By noon the next day I had again flung myself into the vexed political +ocean whose incessant buffetings give the swimmers small chance to think +of anything beyond the next oncoming wave. + + + + +XIX + +DAVID SENT OUT AGAINST GOLIATH + + +I was almost master of myself again when, a week later, I got aboard the +car in which Carlotta and I were taking our friends to look on at the +opposition's convention at St. Louis. + +When we arrived, I went at once to confer with Merriweather in a room at +the Southern Hotel which no one knew he had. "Simpson has under, rather +than over, five hundred delegates," was his first item of good news. "It +takes six hundred and fifty to nominate. As his sort of boom always +musters its greatest strength on the first ballot, I'm putting my money +two to one against him." + +"And Scarborough?" I asked, wondering at my indifference to this +foreshadowing of triumph. + +"My men talk him to every incoming delegation. It's well known that he +don't want the nomination and has forbidden his friends to vote for him +and has pledged them to work against him. Then, too, the bosses and the +boys don't like him--to put it mildly. But I think we're making every +one feel he's the only man they can put up, with a chance to beat +Burbank." + +[Illustration: "THAT," I REPLIED TO MRS. SANDYS, "IS SENATOR SCARBOROUGH +OF INDIANA" p. 226] + +My wife and our friends and I dined at the Southern that night. As we +were about to leave, the streets began to fill. And presently through +the close-packed masses came at a walk an open carriage--the +storm-center of a roar that almost drowned the music of the four or five +bands. The electric lights made the scene bright as day. + +"Who is he?" asked the woman at my side--Mrs. Sandys. + +She was looking at _the_ man in that carriage--there were four, but +there was no mistaking him. He was seated, was giving not the slightest +heed to the cheering throngs. His soft black hat was pulled well down +over his brows; his handsome profile was stern, his face pale. If that +crowd had been hurling curses at him and preparing to tear him limb from +limb he would not have looked different. He was smooth-shaven, which +made him seem younger than I knew him to be. And over him was the +glamour of the world-that-ought-to-be in which he lived and had the +power to compel others to live as long as they were under the spell of +his personality. + +"That," I replied to Mrs. Sandys, "is Senator Scarborough of Indiana." + +"What's he so stern about?" + +"I'm sure I don't know--perhaps to hide his joy," said I. + +But I did know, and my remark was the impulsive fling of envy. He had +found out, several weeks before, what a strong undercurrent was running +toward him. He was faced by a dilemma--if he did not go to the +convention, it would be said that he had stayed away deliberately, and +he would be nominated; if he went, to try to prevent his nomination, the +enthusiasm of his admirers and followers would give the excuse for +forcing the nomination upon him. And as he sat there, with that ominous +tumult about him, he was realizing how hard his task was to be. + +His companions pushed him a passage through the crowds on the sidewalk +and in the lobby, and he shut himself away in the upper part of the +hotel. When we left, half an hour later, the people were packed before +that face of the hotel which displayed the banner of the Indiana +delegation, were cheering Scarborough, were clamoring--in vain--for him +to show himself. + +"But won't he offend them?" asked my wife. + +"A crowd loves like a woman," said I. "Indifference only excites it." + +"Oh, _I_ never loved that way," protested Mrs. Sandys. + +"Then," said my wife, rather sourly I thought, "you and Mr. Sandys have +something to live for." + +And so we talked no more politics. There may be American women who +_really_ like to talk politics, but I never happened to know one with so +little sense. It's a pity we men do not imitate our women more closely +in one respect. In season and out of season, they never talk anything +but business--woman's one business. When other things are being +discussed, they listen, or rather, pretend to listen; in reality, their +minds are still on their business, and how they shall contrive to bring +it back into the conversation with advantage to themselves. + +Next day the convention adopted a wishy-washy platform much like +Burbank's--if anything, weaker. I saw Goodrich's blight upon it. But the +victory cost him dear. That night the delegates realized what a blunder +they had made--or thought they realized it after Merriweather and his +staff had circulated among them. Few of them had been trusted by Beckett +with the secret that, with that platform and with Simpson as the +nominee, their party would have the interests behind it, would almost +certainly win. They only saw ahead a dull campaign, and no real issue +between the parties, and their candidate, if he was Simpson, much the +less attractive personality of the two. + +The following morning the voting began; and after seven ballots Simpson +had thirty-nine votes less than on the first ballot. "It was like a +funeral," was the verdict of my disappointed guests that evening. A +night of debate and gloom among the politicians and other delegates, and +on the opening ballot Merriweather sprung his trap. + +The first big doubtful state in the alphabetical list of states is +Illinois. When the secretary of the convention called for Illinois' +vote, it was cast solidly for Scarborough. + +There was straightway pandemonium. It was half an hour before any one +could get a hearing. Then Indiana was called, and Pierson, attorney +general of that state and chairman of its delegation, cast its vote as +in the other ballots, for Hitchens, its governor. From my box I was +watching Scarborough and his immediate friends going from delegation to +delegation, and I knew what he was about. When Iowa was called and cast +its vote solidly for him I knew he had failed. + +"How white he is!" said Mrs. Sandys, who was looking at him through +opera-glasses. + +I borrowed them and saw that his gaze was fixed on a box on the other +side of the huge auditorium, on a woman in that box--I had only to look +at her to see which woman. She was beautiful, of that type of charm +which the French sum up in the phrase "the woman of thirty." I have +heard crowds bellow too often to be moved by it--though the twenty or +thirty thousand gathered under that roof were outdoing the cannonade of +any thunderstorm. But that woman's look in response to +Scarborough's--there was sympathy and understanding in it, and more, +infinitely more. He had been crushed for the moment--and I understood +enough of his situation to understand what a blow to all his plans this +untimely apparent triumph was. She was showing that she too felt the +blow, but she was also sending a message of courage to him--one of those +messages that transcend words, like music, like the perfumes of flowers +and fields, like that which fills us as we look straight up into a clear +night sky. I lowered the glasses and looked away--I could not bear it. +For the moment I hated him--hating myself for it. + +I heard Carlotta asking a woman in the box next ours the name of "the +woman with the white plume in the big black hat in the seventh box on +the other side." + +"Mrs. Scarborough," was the answer. + +"Oh, is that _she_?" exclaimed Mrs. Sandys, almost snatching her glasses +from me in her eagerness. "You know who she was--John Dumont's +widow--you remember him? She must be an unusual person to have attracted +two such men." + +But Scarborough was nominated now. He waved aside those who tried to +take him up and bear him to the platform. He walked down the aisle alone +and ascended amid a tense silence; he stood looking calmly out. His face +had lost its whiteness of a few minutes before. As he stood there, big +and still, a sort of embodiment of fearlessness, I wondered--and I fancy +many others were wondering--whether he was about to refuse the +nomination. But an instant's thought drove the wild notion from my mind. +He could not strike that deadly blow at his party. + +"Fellow delegates," said he--a clearer, more musical voice than his I +have never heard--"I thank you for this honor. As you know, I opposed +the platform you saw fit to adopt. I have nothing to retract. I do not +like it. But, after all, a candidate must be his own platform. And I +bring my public record as proof of my pledge--that--" he paused and the +silence was tremendous. He went on, each word distinct and by +itself--"if I am elected"--a long pause--"I shall obey the +Constitution"--another long pause--"I shall enforce the laws!" + +He was descending to the aisle before the silence was broken--a feeble, +rippling applause, significant of disappointment at what seemed an +anti-climax. He had merely repeated in condensed form the oath of office +which a President takes at his inauguration. But somehow--no doubt, it +was the magic of his voice and his manner and superb presence--those +simple words kept on ringing; and all at once--full half a minute must +have elapsed, a long time in such circumstances--all at once the +enormous meaning of the two phrases boomed into the brains of those +thousands: If this man is elected, there will be a President without +fear or favor, and he will really obey the Constitution, will really +enforce the laws! That little speech, though only a repetition of an +oath embodied in our century-old supreme law, was a firebrand to light +the torch of revolution, of revolution back toward what the republic +used to be before differences of wealth divided its people into upper, +middle and lower classes, before enthroned corporate combinations made +equality before the law a mockery, before the development of our vast +material resources restored to the intelligent and energetic few their +power over the careless and purposeless many. + +As the multitude realized his meaning,--I doubt if many times in all +history such a sight and sound has burst upon mortal ears and eyes. For +the moment I was daunted; it was impossible not to think that here was +the whole people, not to feel that Scarborough had been chosen President +and was about to fulfil his pledge. Daunted, yet thrilled too. For, at +bottom, are we not all passionate dreamers of abstract right and +justice? + +Then I remembered; and I said to myself, "He has defied the interests. +David has gone out against Goliath--but the Davids do not win nowadays. +I can elect Burbank." + +But where was the elation that thought would have set to swelling in the +_me_ of less than two weeks before? And then I began clearly to see +that, for me at least, the prize, to be prized, must be fairly won from +start to goal; and to be enjoyed, must gladden eyes that would in turn +gladden me with the approval and sympathy which only a woman can give +and without which a man is alone and indeed forlorn. + + + + +XX + +PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS + + +From St. Louis I went direct to Burbank. + +His heart had been set upon a grand speech-making tour. He was fond of +wandering about, showing himself to cheering crowds; and he had a deep, +and by no means unwarranted, confidence in his platform magnetism. At +first I had been inclined to give him his way. But the more I considered +the matter, the stronger seemed to become the force of the +objections--it takes a far bigger man than was Burbank at that stage of +his growth not to be cheapened by "steeple-chasing for votes"; also, the +coming of the candidate causes jealousy and heart-burnings over matters +of precedence, reception and entertainment among the local celebrities, +and so he often leaves the party lukewarm where he found it +enthusiastic. Further, it uses up local campaign money that ought to be +spent in hiring workers at the polls, which is the polite phrase for +vote-buying as "retaining-fee" is the polite phrase for bribe. + +I decided against the tour and for the highly expensive but always +admirable and profitable "pilgrimage plan". + +Burbank's own home was at Rivington, and I should have had him visited +there, had it not been on a single-track branch-railway which could not +handle without danger and discomfort the scores of thousands we were +planning to carry to and from him almost daily. So, it was given out +that he purposed as far as possible to withdraw from the strife of the +campaign and to await the results in the dignified calm in which he +wished the voters to determine it. He took--after Woodruff had carefully +selected it--a "retired" house "in the country." + +And it was in the open country. A farm garden adjoined it on the one +side, a wheat field on the other, a large orchard to the rear. The broad +meadow in front gave plenty of room for delegations visiting the +"standard bearer of the party of patriotism" in his "rural seclusion," +to hear his simple, spontaneous words of welcome. But for all the remote +aspect of the place, it was only five minutes' drive and ten minutes' +walk from a station through which four big railroads passed. One of the +out-buildings was changed into a telegraph office from which accounts of +the enthusiasm of the delegations and of his speeches could be sent to +the whole country. On his desk in his little study stood a private-wire +telephone that, without danger of leakage, would put him in direct +communication either with my study at Fredonia or with Doc Woodruff's +privatest private room in the party national headquarters at Chicago. +Thus, our statesman, though he seemed to be aloof, was in the very thick +of the fray; and the tens of thousands of his fellow citizens, though +they seemed to come almost on their own invitation inspired by +uncontrollable enthusiasm for the great statesman, were in fact free +excursionists--and a very troublesome, critical, expensive lot they +were. But--the public was impressed. It sits in its seat in the theater +of action and believes that the play is real, and ignores and forgets +the fact that there is a behind-the-scenes. + +The party distributed from various centers tons of "literature." And in +addition to meetings arranged by state and local committees, a series +of huge demonstrations was held in the cities of every doubtful state. +Besides the party's regular speakers, we hired as many "independent" +orators as we could. But all these other branches of the public side of +the campaign were subsidiary to the work at the "retreat." It might be +called the headquarters of the rank and file of the party--those +millions of "principle" voters and workers who were for Burbank because +he was the standard-bearer of their party. No money, no bribes of +patronage have to be given to them; but it costs several millions to +raise that mass to the pitch of hot enthusiasm which will make each +individual in it certain to go to the polls on election day and take his +neighbors, instead of staying at home and hoping the party won't lose. + +Burbank's work was, therefore, highly important. But the seat of the +real campaign was Woodruff's privatest private room in the Chicago +headquarters. For, there were laid and were put in the way of execution +the plans for acquiring those elements that, in the doubtful states, +have the balance of power between the two opposing and about evenly +matched masses of "principle" voters. I just now recall a talk I had +with my wife, about that time. She took no interest in politics and +rarely spoke of political matters--and both of us discouraged political +talk before the children. One day she said to me: "This campaign of +yours and Mr. Burbank's must be costing an awful lot of money." + +"A good deal," said I. + +"Several millions?" + +"This is a big country, and you can't stir it up politically for +nothing. Why do you ask?" + +"Who gives the money?" she persisted. + +"The rich men--the big corporations--give most of it." + +"Why?" + +"Patriotism," said I. "To save the nation from our wicked opponent." + +"How do Mr. Roebuck and the others get it back?" she pursued, ignoring +my pleasantry. + +"Get what back?" + +"Why the money they advance. They aren't the men to _give_ anything." + +I answered with a smile only. + +She lapsed into thoughtfulness. When I was assuming that her mind had +wandered off to something else she said: "The people must be very +stupid--not to suspect." + +"Or, the rich men and the corporations very stupid to give," I +suggested. + +"Do you mean that they don't get it back?" she demanded. + +"Of course," said I, "their patriotism must be rewarded. We can not +expect them to save the country year after year for nothing." + +"I should think not!" she said, adding disgustedly, "I think politics is +very silly. And men get excited about it! But _I_ never listen." + +Arriving at the "retreat" from the Scarborough convention, I found +Burbank much perturbed because Scarborough had been nominated. He did +not say so--on the contrary, he expressed in sonorous phrases his +satisfaction that there was to be "a real test of strength between +conservatism and radicalism." He never dropped his pose, even with +me--not even with himself. + +"I confess I don't share your cheerfulness," said I. "If Scarborough +were a wild man, we'd have a walkover. But he isn't, and I fear he'll +be more and more attractive to the wavering voters, to many of our own +people. Party loyalty has been overworked in the last few presidential +campaigns. He'll go vote-hunting in the doubtful states, but it won't +seem undignified. He's one of those men whose dignity comes from the +inside and can't be lost." + +Burbank was unable to conceal his annoyance--he never could bear praise +of another man of his own rank in public life. Also he showed surprise. +"Why, I understood--I had been led to believe--that you--favored his +nomination," was his guarded way of telling me he knew I had a hand in +bringing it about. + +"So I did," replied I. "He was your only chance. He won't be able to get +a campaign fund of so much as a quarter of a million, and the best +workers of his party will at heart be against him. Simpson would have +had--well, Goodrich could and would have got him enough to elect him." + +Burbank's eyes twitched. "I think you're prejudiced against Senator +Goodrich, Harvey," said he in his gentlest tone. "He is first of all a +loyal party man." + +"Loyal fiddlesticks!" replied I. "He is agent of the Wall Street +crowd--they're his party. He's just the ordinary machine politician, +with no more party feeling than--than--" I smiled--"than any other man +behind the scenes." + +Burbank dodged this by taking it as a jest. He always shed my frank +speeches as humor. "Prejudice, prejudice, Harvey!" he said in mild +reproof. "We need Goodrich, and--" + +"Pardon me," I interrupted. "We do not need him. On the contrary, we +must put him out of the party councils. If we don't, he may try to help +Scarborough. The Senate's safe, no matter who's elected President; and +Goodrich will rely on it to save his crowd. He's a mountain of vanity +and the two defeats we've given him have made every atom of that vanity +quiver with hatred of us." + +"I wish you could have been here when he called," said Burbank. "I am +sure you would have changed your mind." + +"When does he resign the chairmanship of the national committee?" I +asked. "He agreed to plead bad health and resign within two weeks after +the convention." + +Burbank gave an embarrassed cough. "Don't you think, Harvey," said he, +"that, to soothe his vanity, it might be well for us--for you--to let +him stay on there--nominally, of course? I know _you_ care nothing for +titles." + +Instead of being angered by this attempt to cozen me, by this exhibition +of treachery, I felt disgust and pity--how nauseating and how hopeless +to try to forward one so blind to his own interests, so easily +frightened into surrender to his worst enemies! But I spoke very quietly +to him. "The reason you want me to be chairman--for it is you that want +and need it, not I--the reason I _must_ be chairman is because the +machine throughout the country must know that Goodrich is out and that +your friends are in. In what other way can this be accomplished?" + +He did not dare try to reply. + +I went on: "If he stays at the head of the national committee +Scarborough will be elected." + +"You are prejudiced, Harvey--" + +"Please don't say that again, Governor," I interrupted coldly. "I +repeat, Goodrich must give place to me, or Scarborough will be +elected." + +"You don't mean that you would turn against me?" came from him in a +queer voice after a long pause. + +"While I was in St. Louis, working to make you President," said I, "you +were plotting behind my back, plotting against me and yourself." + +"You were at St. Louis aiding in the nomination of the strongest +candidate," he retorted, his bitterness distinct though guarded. + +"Strongest--yes. But strongest with whom?" + +"With the people," he replied. + +"Precisely," said I. "But the people are not going to decide this +election. The party lines are to be so closely drawn that money will +have the deciding vote. The men who organize and direct industry and +enterprise--_they_ are going to decide it. And, in spite of Goodrich's +traitorous efforts, the opposition has put up the man who can't get a +penny from them." + +In fact, I had just discovered that Scarborough had instructed Pierson, +whom he had made chairman of his campaign, not to take any money from +any corporation even if it was offered. But I thought it wiser to keep +this from Burbank. + +He sat folding a sheet of paper again and again. I let him reason it +out. Finally he said: "I see your point, Harvey. But I practically +promised Goodrich--practically asked him to remain--" + +I waited. + +"For the sake of the cause," he went on when he saw he was to get no +help from me, "any and all personal sacrifices must be made. If you +insist on having Goodrich's head, I will break my promise, and--" + +"Pardon me again," I interrupted. My mood would not tolerate twaddle +about "the cause" and "promises" from Burbank--Burbank, whose "cause," +as he had just shown afresh, was himself alone, and who promised +everything to everybody and kept only the most advantageous promises +after he had made absolutely sure how his advantage lay. "It's all a +matter of indifference to me. If you wish to retain Goodrich, do so. He +must not be dismissed as a personal favor to me. The favor is to you. I +do not permit any man to thimblerig his debts to me into my debts to +him." + +Burbank seemed deeply moved. He came up to me and took my hand. "It is +not like my friend Sayler to use the word indifference in connection +with me," he said. And then I realized how completely the nomination had +turned his head. For his tone was that of the great man addressing his +henchman. + +I did not keep my amusement out of my eyes. "James," said I, +"indifference is precisely the word. I should welcome a chance to +withdraw from this campaign. I have been ambitious for power, _you_ want +place. If you think the time has come to dissolve partnership, say +so--and trade yourself off to Goodrich." + +He was angry through and through, not so much at my bluntness as at my +having seen into his plot to help himself at my expense--for, not even +when I showed it to him, could he see that it was to his interest to +destroy Goodrich. Moral coward that he was, the course of conciliation +always appealed to him, whether it was wise or not, and the course of +courage always frightened him. He bit his lip and dissembled his anger. +Presently he began to pace up and down the room, his head bent, his +hands clasped behind him. After perhaps five minutes he paused to say: +"You insist on taking the place yourself, Harvey?" + +I stood before him and looked down at him. "Your suspicion that I have +also a personal reason is well-founded, James," said I. "I wouldn't put +myself in a position where I should have to ask as a favor what I now +get as a right. If I help you to the presidency, I must be master of the +national machine of the party, able to use it with all its power and +against _any one_--" here I looked him straight in the eye--"who shall +try to build himself up at my expense. Personally, we are friends, and +it has been a pleasure to me to help elevate a man I liked. But there is +no friendship in affairs, except where friendship and interest point the +same way. It is strange that a man of your experience should expect +friendship from me at a time when you are showing that you haven't for +me even the friendship of enlightened self-interest." + +"Your practice is better than your theory, Harvey," said he, putting on +an injured, forgiving look and using his chest tones. "A better friend +never lived than you, and I know no other man who gets the absolute +loyalty you get." He looked at me earnestly. "What has changed you?" he +asked. "Why are you so bitter and so--so unlike your even-tempered +self?" + +I waved his question aside,--I had no mind to show him my uncovered +coffin with its tenant who only slept, or to expose to him the feelings +which the erect and fearless figure of Scarborough had set to stirring +in me. "I'm careful to choose my friends from among those who can serve +me and whom I can therefore serve," I said. "And that is the +sentimentalism of the wise. I wish us to remain friends--therefore, I +must be able to be as useful to you as you can be useful to me." + +"Goodrich shall go," was the upshot of his thinking. "I'll telephone him +this afternoon. Is my old friend satisfied?" + +"You have done what was best for yourself," said I, with wholly +good-humored raillery. And we shook hands, and I went. + +I was glad to be alone where I could give way to my weariness and +disgust; for I had lost all the joy of the combat. The arena of ambition +had now become to me a ring where men are devoured by the beast-in-man +after hideous battles. I turned from it, heart-sick. "If only I had less +intelligence, less insight," I thought, "so that I could cheat myself as +Burbank cheats himself. Or, if I had the relentlessness or the supreme +egotism, or whatever it is, that enables great men to trample without a +qualm, to destroy without pity, to enjoy without remorse." + + + + +XXI + +AN INTERLUDE + + +My nerves began to feel as if some one were gently sliding his fingers +along their bared length--not a pain, but as fear-inspiring as the sound +of the stealthy creep of the assassin moving up behind to strike a +sudden and mortal blow. I dismissed business and politics and went +cruising on the lakes with restful, non-political Fred Sandys. + +After we had been knocking about perhaps a week, we landed one noon at +the private pier of the Liscombes to lunch with them. As Sandys and I +strolled toward the front of the house, several people, also guests for +lunch, were just descending from a long buckboard. At sight of one of +them I stopped short inside, though I mechanically continued to walk +toward her. I recognized her instantly--the curve of her shoulders, the +poise of her head, and her waving jet-black hair to confirm. And without +the slightest warning there came tumbling and roaring up in me a +torrent of longings, regrets; and I suddenly had a clear understanding +of my absorption in this wretched game I had been playing year in and +year out with hardly a glance up from the table. That wretched game with +its counterfeit stakes; and the more a man wins, the poorer he is. + +She seemed calm enough as she faced me. Indeed, I was not sure when she +had first caught sight of me, or whether she had recognized me, until +Mrs. Liscombe began to introduce us. "Oh, yes," she then interrupted, "I +remember Senator Sayler very well. We used to live in the same town. We +went to the same school." And with a friendly smile she gave me her +hand. + +What did I say? I do not know. But I am sure I gave no sign of the +clamor within. I had not cultivated surface-calm all those years in +vain. I talked, and she talked--but I saw only her face, splendid +fulfilment of the promise of girlhood; I hardly heard her words, so +greatly was her voice moving me. It was an unusually deep voice for a +woman, sweet and with a curious carrying quality that made it seem +stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life +and health--aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was +dressed simply, but in the fashion--I heard the other women discussing +her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was +most fascinating to me--she kept her eyes down while she was talking or +listening, and raised them now and then with a full, slow look at you. + +When Mrs. Liscombe asked her to come to dinner the next evening with the +people she was visiting, she said: "Unfortunately, I must start for +Washington in the morning. I am overhauling my school and building an +addition." + +It had not occurred to me to think where she had come from or how she +happened to be there, or of anything in the years since I was last with +her. The reminder that she had a school came as a shock--she was so +utterly unlike my notion of the head of a school. I think she saw or +felt what was in my mind, for she went on, to me: "I've had it six years +now--the next will be the seventh." + +"Do you like it?" I asked. + +"Don't I look like a happy woman?" + +"You do," said I, after our eyes had met. "You are." + +"There were sixty girls last year--sixty-three," she went on. "Next year +there will be more--about a hundred. It's like a garden, and I'm the +gardener, busy from morning till night, with no time to think of +anything but my plants and flowers." + +She had conjured a picture that made my heart ache. I suddenly felt old +and sad and lonely--a forlorn failure. "I too am a gardener," said I. +"But it's a sorry lot of weeds and thistles that keeps me occupied. And +in the midst of the garden is a plum tree--that bears Dead Sea fruit." + +She was silent. + +"You don't care for politics?" said I. + +"No," she replied, and lifted and lowered her eyes in a slow glance that +made me wish I had not asked. "It is, I think, gardening with weeds and +thistles, as you say." Then, after a pause: "Do _you_ like it?" + +"Don't ask me," I said with a bitterness that made us both silent +thereafter. + +That evening I got Fred to land me at the nearest town. The train she +must have been on had just gone. In the morning I took the express for +the East. Arrived at Washington, I drove straight to her school. + +A high iron fence, not obstructing the view from the country road; a +long drive under arching maples and beeches; a rambling, fascinating old +house upon the crest of a hill; many windows, a pillared porch, a low, +very wide doorway. It seemed like her in its dark, cool, odorous beauty. + +She herself was in the front hall, directing some workmen. "Why, Senator +Sayler, this _is_ a surprise," she said, advancing to greet me. But +there was no suggestion of surprise in her tone or her look, only a +friendly welcome to an acquaintance. + +She led the way into the drawing-room to the left. The furniture and +pictures were in ghostly draperies; everything was in confusion. We went +on to a side veranda, seated ourselves. She looked inquiringly at me. + +"I do not know why," was my answer. "I only know--I had to come." + +She studied me calmly. I remember her look, everything about her--the +embroidery on the sleeves and bosom of her blouse, the buckles on her +white shoes. I remember also that there was a breeze, and how good it +felt to my hot face, to my eyes burning from lack of sleep. At last she +said: "Well--what do you think of my little kingdom?" + +"It is yours--entirely?" + +"House, gardens--everything. I paid the last of my debts in June." + +"I'm contrasting it with my own," I said. + +"But that isn't fair," she protested with a smile. "You must remember, +I'm only a woman." + +"With my own," I went on, as if she had not interrupted. "Yours +is--yours, honestly got. It makes you proud, happy. Mine--" I did not +finish. + +She must have seen or felt how profoundly I was moved, for I presently +saw her looking at me with an expression I might have resented for its +pity from any other than her. "Why do you tell _me_ this?" she asked. + +"There is always for every one," was my answer, "some person to whom he +shows himself as he is. You are that person for me because--I'm +surrounded by people who care for me for what I can give. Even my +children care to a great extent for that reason. It's the penalty for +having the power to give the material things all human beings crave. +Only two persons ever cared--cared much for me just because I was +myself. They were my mother--and you." + +She laughed in quiet raillery. "Two have cared for you, but you have +cared for only one. And what devotion you have given him!" + +"I have cared for my mother--for my children--" + +"Yes--your children. I forgot them." + +"And--for you." + +She made what I thought a movement of impatience. + +"For you," I repeated. Then: "Elizabeth, you were right when you wrote +that I was a coward." + +She rose and stood--near enough to me for me to catch her faint, elusive +perfume--and gazed out into the distance. + +"In St. Louis the other day," I went on, "I saw a man who has risen to +power greater than I can ever hope to have. And he got it by marching +erect in the open." + +"Yet you have everything you used to want," she said dreamily. + +"Yes--everything. Only to learn how worthless what I wanted was. And for +this trash, this dirt, I have given--all I had that was of value." + +"All?" + +"All," I replied. "Your love and my own self-respect." + +"Why do you think you've not been brave?" she asked after a while. + +"Because I've won by playing on the weaknesses and fears of men which my +own weaknesses and fears enabled me to understand." + +"You have done wrong--deliberately?" + +"Deliberately." + +"But that good might come?" + +"So I told myself." + +"And good has come? I have heard that figs do grow on thistles." + +"Good has come. But, I think, in spite of me, not through me." + +"But now that you see," she said, turning her eyes to mine with appeal +in them, and something more, I thought, "you will--you will not go on?" + +"I don't know. Is there such a thing as remorse without regret?" And +then my self-control went and I let her see what I had commanded myself +to keep hid: "I only know clearly one thing, Elizabeth--only one thing +matters. _You_ are the whole world to me. You and I could--what could we +not do together!" + +Her color slowly rose, slowly vanished. "Was _that_ what you came to +tell me?" she asked. + +"Yes," I answered, not flinching. + +"_That_ is the climax of your moralizings?" + +"Yes," I answered. "And of my cowardice." + +A little icy smile just changed the curve of her lips. "When I was a +girl, you won my love--or took it when I gave it to you, if you prefer. +And then--you threw it away. For an ambition you weren't brave enough to +pursue honorably, you broke my heart." + +"Yes," I answered. "But--I loved you." + +"And now," she went on, "after your years of self-indulgence, of +getting what you wanted, no matter about the cost, you see me again. You +find I have mended my heart, have coaxed a few flowers of happiness to +bloom. You find there was something you did not destroy, something you +think it will make you happier to destroy." + +"Yes," I answered, "I came to try to make you as unhappy as I am. For I +love you." + +She drew a long breath. "Well," she said evenly, "for the first time in +your life you are defeated. I learned the lesson you so thoroughly +taught me. And I built the wall round my garden high and strong. You--" +she smiled, a little raillery, a little scorn--"you can't break in, +Harvey--nor slip in." + +"No need," I said. "For I _am_ in--I've always been in." + +Her bosom rose and fell quickly, and her eyes shifted. But that was for +an instant only. "If you were as brave as you are bold!" she scoffed. + +"If I were as brave without you as I should be with you!" I replied. +Then: "But you love as a woman loves--herself first, the man afterward." + +"Harvey Sayler denouncing selfishness!" + +"Do not sneer," I said. "For--I love you as a man loves. A poor, pale +shadow of ideal love, no doubt, but a man's best, Elizabeth." + +I saw that she was shaken; but even as I began to thrill with a hope so +high that it was giddy with fear, she was once more straight and strong +and calm. + +"You have come. You have tried. You have failed," she went on after a +long pause. And in spite of her efforts, that deep voice of hers was +gentle and wonderfully sweet. "Now--you will return to your life, I to +mine." And she moved toward the entrance to the drawing-room, I +following her. We stood in silence at the front doorway waiting for my +carriage to come up. I watched her--maddeningly mistress of herself. + +"How can you be so cold!" I cried. "Don't you see, don't you feel, how +I, who love you, suffer?" + +Without a word she stretched out her beautiful, white hands, long and +narrow and capable. In each of the upturned palms were four deep and +bloody prints where her nails had been crushing into them. + +Before I could lift my eyes to her face she was turning to rejoin her +workmen. As I stood uncertain, dazed, she glanced at me with a bright +smile. "Good-by again," she called. "A pleasant journey!" + +"Thank you," I replied. "Good-by." + +Driving toward the road gates, I looked at the house many times, from +window to window, everywhere. Not a glimpse of her until I was almost at +the road again. Then I saw her back--the graceful white dress, the knot +of blue-black hair, the big white hat, and she directing her workmen +with her closed white parasol. + + + + +XXII + +MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY + + +I went up to New York, to find confusion and gloom at our headquarters +there. + +Senator Goodrich had subtly given the impression, not only to the +workers but also to the newspaper men, who had given it to the public, +that with his resignation the Burbank campaign had fallen to pieces. +"And I fear you'll have some difficulty in getting any money at all down +town," said Revell, the senior Senator from New York state, who envied +and hated Goodrich and was therefore, if not for personal reasons, +amiably disposed toward me. "They don't like our candidate." + +"Naturally," said I. "That's why he's running and that's why he may +win." + +"Of course, he'll carry everything here in the East. The only doubt was +in this state, but I had no difficulty in making a deal with the +opposition machine as soon as they had sounded Scarborough and had +found that if he should win, there'd be nothing in it for them--nothing +but trouble. I judged he must have thrown them down hard, from their +being so sore. How do things look out West?" + +"Bad," said I. "Our farmers and workingmen have had lots of idle time +these last four years. They've done too much of what they call +thinking." + +"Then you need money?" asked Revell, lengthening his sly, smug old face. + +"We must have four millions, at least. And we must get it from those +people down town." + +He shook his head. + +"I think not," was my careless reply. "When they wake up to the danger +in Scarborough's election, the danger to business, especially to their +sort of business, they'll give me twice four millions if I ask it." + +"What do you wish me to do?" + +"Nothing, except look after these eastern states. We'll take care of the +West, and also of raising money here for our campaign during October out +there." + +"Can I be of any service to you in introducing you down town?" he asked. + +"No, thank you," said I. "I have a few acquaintances there. I'm not +going to fry any fat this trip. My fire isn't hot enough yet." + +And I did not. I merely called on two of the big bankers and four heads +of industrial combinations and one controller of an ocean-to-ocean +railway system. I stayed a very few minutes with each, just long enough +to set him thinking and inquiring what the election of Scarborough would +mean to him and to his class generally. "If you'll read his speeches," +said I to each, "you'll see he intends to destroy your kind of business, +that he regards it as brigandage. He's honest, afraid of nothing, and an +able lawyer, and he can't be fooled or fooled with. If he's elected +he'll carry out his program, Senate or no Senate--and no matter what +scares you people cook up in the stock market." To this they made no +answer beyond delicately polite insinuations about being tired of paying +for that which was theirs of right. I did not argue; it is never +necessary to puncture the pretenses of men of affairs with a view to +saving them from falling into the error of forgetting that whatever +"right" may mean on Sunday, on week days it means that which a man can +compel. + +I returned to Fredonia and sent Woodruff East to direct a campaign of +calamity-howling in the eastern press, for the benefit of the New York, +Boston and Philadelphia "captains of industry." At the end of ten days I +recalled him, and sent Roebuck to Wall Street to confirm the fears and +alarms Woodruff's campaign had aroused. And in the West I was laying out +the money I had been able to collect from the leading men of Minnesota, +Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania--except a quarter of a million +from Howard of New York, to whom we gave the vice-presidential +nomination for that sum, and about half a million more given by several +eastern men, to whom we promised cabinet offices and posts abroad. I put +all this money, not far from two millions, into our "campaign of +education" and into those inpourings of delegations upon Burbank at his +"rural retreat." + +To attempt to combat Scarborough's popularity with the rank and file of +his own party, was hopeless. I contented myself with restoring order +and arousing enthusiasm in the main body of our partizans in the +doubtful and uneasy states. So ruinous had been Goodrich's management +that even at that comparatively simple task we should not have succeeded +but for the fortunate fact that the great mass of partizans refuses to +hear anything from the other side; they regard reasoning as +disloyalty--which, curiously enough, it so often is. Then, too, few +newspapers in the doubtful states printed the truth about what +Scarborough and his supporters were saying and doing. The cost of this +perversion of publicity to us--direct money cost, I mean--was almost +nothing. The big papers and news associations were big properties, and +their rich proprietors were interested in enterprises to which +Scarborough's election meant disaster; a multitude of the smaller +papers, normally of the opposition, were dependent upon those same +enterprises for the advertising that kept them alive. + +Perhaps the most far-sighted--certainly, as the event showed, the most +fortunate--single stroke of my campaign was done in Illinois. That +state was vital to our success; also it was one of the doubtful states +where, next to his own Indiana, Scarborough's chances were best. I felt +that we must put a heavy handicap on his popularity there. I had noticed +that in Illinois the violently radical wing of the opposition was very +strong. So I sent Merriweather to strengthen the radicals still further. +I hoped to make them strong enough to put through their party's state +convention a platform that would be a scarecrow to timid voters in +Illinois and throughout the West; and I wished for a "wild man" as the +candidate for governor, but I didn't hope it, though I told Merriweather +it must be done. Curiously enough, my calculation of the probabilities +was just reversed. The radicals were beaten on platform; but, thanks to +a desperate effort of Merriweather's in "coaxing" rural delegates, a +frothing, wild-eyed, political crank got the nomination. And he never +spoke during the campaign that he didn't drive voters away from his +ticket--and, therefore, from Scarborough. And our machine there +sacrificed the local interests to the general by nominating a popular +and not insincere reformer. + +When Roebuck and I descended upon Wall Street on October sixteenth, +three weeks before election, I had everything in readiness for my final +and real campaign. + +Throughout the doubtful states, Woodruff was in touch with local machine +leaders of Scarborough's party, with corruptible labor and fraternal +order leaders, with every element that would for a cash price deliver a +body of voters on election day. Also he had arranged in those states for +the "right sort" of election officers at upward of five hundred polling +places, at least half of them places where several hundred votes could +be shifted without danger or suspicion. Also, Burbank and our corps of +"spellbinders" had succeeded beyond my hopes in rousing partizan +passion--but here again part of the credit belongs to Woodruff. Never +before had there been so many free barbecues, distributions of free +uniforms to well-financed Burbank and Howard Campaign Clubs, and +arrangings of those expensive parades in which the average citizen +delights. The wise Woodruff spent nearly one-third of my "education" +money in this way. + +One morning I found him laughing over the bill for a grand Burbank rally +at Indianapolis--about thirty-five thousand dollars, as I remember the +figures. + +"What amuses you?" said I. + +"I was thinking what fools the people are, never to ask themselves where +all the money for these free shows comes from, and why those who give +are willing to give so much, and how they get it back. What an ass the +public is!" + +"Fortunately," said I. + +"For us," said he. + +"And for itself," I rejoined. + +"Perhaps," he admitted. "It was born to be plucked, and I suppose our +crowd does do the plucking more scientifically than less experienced +hands would." + +"I prefer to put it another way," said I. "Let's say that we save it +from a worse plucking." + +"That _is_ better," said Doc. For, on his way up in the world, he was +rapidly developing what could, and should, be called conscience. + +I looked at him and once more had a qualm like shame before his moral +superiority to me. We were plodding along on about the same moral +level; but he had ascended to that level, while I had descended to it. +There were politicians posing as pure before the world and even in the +party's behind-the-scene, who would have sneered at Doc's "conscience." +Yet, to my notion, they, who started high and from whatever sophistry of +motive trailed down into the mire, are lower far than they who began +deep in the mire and have been struggling bravely toward the surface. I +know a man who was born in the slums, was a pickpocket at eight years of +age, was a boss at forty-five, administering justice according to his +lights. I know a man who was born what he calls a gentleman and who, at +forty-five, sold himself for the "honors" of a high office. And once, +after he had shaken hands with that boss, he looked at me, furtively +made a wry face, and wiped his hand with his pocket handkerchief! + +The other part of our work of preparation--getting the Wall Street +whales in condition for the "fat-frying"--was also finished. The Wall +Street Roebuck and I adventured was in a state of quake from fear of the +election of "the scourge of God," as our subsidized socialist and +extreme radical papers had dubbed Scarborough--and what invaluable +campaign material their praise of him did make for us! + +Roebuck and I went from office to office among the great of commerce, +industry and finance. We were received with politeness, deferential +politeness, everywhere. But not a penny could we get. Everywhere the +same answer: "We can not see our way to contributing just yet. But if +you will call early next week--say Monday or Tuesday--" four or five +days away--"we'll let you know what we can do." The most ardent +eagerness to placate us, to keep us in good humor; but not a cent--until +Monday or Tuesday. + +When I heard "Monday or Tuesday" for the third time, my suspicions were +rousing. When I heard it for the fifth time, I understood. Wall Street +was negotiating with the other side, and would know the result by +Monday, or at the latest Tuesday. + + + + +XXIII + +IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION + + +I did not dare communicate my suspicions to my "dear friend" Roebuck. As +it was, with each refusal I had seen his confidence in me sink; if he +should get an inkling how near to utter disaster I and my candidate +were, he would be upon me like a tiger upon its trainer when he slips. I +reasoned out my course while we were descending from the fifth "king's" +office to our cab: If the negotiations with the opposition should be +successful, I should not get a cent; if they should fail, Wall Street +would be frantic to get its contributions into my hand; therefore, the +only sane thing to do was to go West, and make such preparations as I +could against the worst. + +"Let's go back to the Holland," said I to Roebuck, in a weary, bored +tone. "These people are a waste of time. I'll start home to-night, and +when they see in the morning papers that I've left for good, they may +come to their senses. But they'll have to hunt me out. I'll not go near +them again. And when they come dragging themselves to you, don't forget +how they've treated us to-day." + +Roebuck was silent, glancing furtively at me now and then, not knowing +what to think. "How is it possible to win without them?" he finally +said. "This demagogue Scarborough has set the people crazy. I can't +imagine what possesses these men of property with interests throughout +the country. They are inviting ruin." + +I smiled. "My dear Roebuck," I replied, "do you suppose I'm the man to +put all my eggs into one basket--and that basket Wall Street?" + +And I refused to talk any more politics with him. We dined together, I +calm and in the best of spirits; we went to a musical farce, and he +watched me glumly as I showed my lightness of heart. Then I went alone, +at midnight, to the Chicago Express sleeper--to lie awake all night +staring at the phantoms of ruin that moved in dire panorama before me. +In every great affair there is a crisis at which one must stake all upon +a single throw. I had staked all upon Wall Street. Without its +contributions, Woodruff's arrangements could not be carried out. + + * * * * * + +When I descended at the Fredonia station I found De Milt waiting for me. +He had news that was indeed news. I shall give it here more +consecutively than my impatience for the event permitted him to give it +to me. + +About ten days before, a paragraph in one of Burbank's "pilgrimage" +speeches had been twisted by the reporter so that it seemed a personal +attack upon Scarborough. As Burbank was a stickler for the etiquette of +campaigning, he not only sent out a denial and a correction but also +directed De Milt to go to Scarborough's home at Saint X, Indiana, and +convey the explanation in a personal message. De Milt arrived at Saint X +at eight in the evening. As he was leaving the parlor car he saw a man +emerge from its drawing-room, make a hasty descent to the platform, +hurriedly engage a station hack and drive away. De Milt had an amazing +memory for identities--something far rarer than memory merely for faces. +He was convinced he knew that man; and being shrewd and quick of +thought, he jumped into a trap and told the driver to follow the hack +which was just disappearing. A few minutes' driving and he saw it turn +in at a gateway. + +"Whose place is that?" he asked. + +"The old Gardiner homestead," was the answer. "President Scarborough +lives there." + +De Milt did not discuss this rather premature entitling of Senator +Scarborough. He said: "Oh--I've made a mistake," descended and sent his +trap away. Scarborough's house was quiet, not a soul about, lights in +only a few windows. De Milt strolled in at the open gates and, keeping +out of view, made a detour of the gardens, the "lay" of which he could +see by the starlight. He was soon in line with the front door--his man +was parleying with a servant. "Evidently he's not expected," thought my +chief of publicity. + +Soon his man entered. De Milt, keeping in the shadows, moved round the +house until he was close under open windows from which came light and +men's voices. Peering through a bush he saw at a table-desk a man whom +he recognized as Senator Scarborough. Seated opposite him, with a very +uneasy, deprecating expression on his face, was John Thwing, president +of the Atlantic and Western System, and Senator Goodrich's +brother-in-law. + +De Milt could not hear what Thwing was saying, so careful was that +experienced voice to reach only the ears for whom its insinuating +subtleties were intended. But he saw a puzzled look come into +Scarborough's face, heard him say: "I don't think I understand you, +John." + +Thwing unconsciously raised his voice in his reply, and De Milt +caught--"satisfactory assurances from you that these alarming views and +intentions attributed to you are false, and they'll be glad to exert +themselves to elect you." + +Scarborough smiled. "Impossible," he said. "Very few of them would +support _me_ in any circumstances." + +"You are mistaken, Hampden," was Thwing's answer. "On the contrary, they +will--" + +Scarborough interrupted with an impatient motion of his head. +"Impossible!" he repeated. "But in any case, why should they send you to +me? My speeches speak for themselves. Surely no intelligent man could +fancy that my election would mean harm to any legitimate business, great +or small, East or West. You've known me for twenty years, Thwing. You +needn't come to me for permission to reassure your friends--such of them +as you can _honestly_ reassure." + +"I have been reassuring them," Thwing answered. "I tell them that you +are about the last man in the world to permit mob rule." + +"Precisely," said Scarborough. "I purpose to continue to do what I can +to break up the mob that is being led on by demagogues disguised as +captains of industry and advance agents of prosperity--led on to pillage +the resources of the country, its riches and its character." + +This ought to have put Thwing on his guard. But, convinced that the gods +he worshiped must be the gods of all men, whatever they might profess, +he held to his purpose. + +"Still, you don't quite follow me," he persisted. "You've said some very +disquieting things against some of my friends--of course, they +understand that the exigencies of campaigning, the necessity of rousing +the party spirit, the--" + +Thwing stopped short; De Milt held his breath. Scarborough was leaning +forward, was holding Thwing's eyes with one of those looks that grip. +"Do you mean," said he, "that, if I'll assure these friends of yours +that I don't mean what I say, they'll buy me the presidency?" + +"My dear Hampden," expostulated Thwing, "nothing of the sort. Simply +that the campaign fund which Burbank must get to be elected won't go to +him, but will be at the disposal of your national committee. My friends, +naturally, won't support their enemies." + +De Milt, watching Scarborough, saw him lower his head, his face flushing +deeply. + +"Believe me, Hampden," continued Thwing, "without our support Burbank is +beaten, and you are triumphantly elected--not otherwise. But you know +politics; I needn't tell you. You know that the presidency depends upon +getting the doubtful element in the doubtful states." + +Scarborough stood, and, without lifting his eyes, said in a voice very +different from his strong, clear tones of a few minutes before: "I +suppose in this day no one is beyond the reach of insult. I have +thought I was. I see I have been mistaken. And it is a man who has known +me twenty years and has called me friend, who has taught me the deep +meaning of the word shame. The servant will show you the door." And he +left Thwing alone in the room. + +I had made De Milt give me the point of his story as soon as I saw its +drift. While he was going over it in detail, I was thinking out all the +bearings of Scarborough's refusal upon my plans. + +"Has Senator Goodrich seen Governor Burbank yet?" I asked De Milt in a +casual tone, when he had told how he escaped unobserved in Thwing's wake +and delivered Burbank's message the next morning. + +"I believe he's to see him by appointment to-morrow," replied De Milt. + +So my suspicion was well-founded. Goodrich, informed of his +brother-in-law's failure, was posting to make peace on whatever terms he +could honeyfugle out of my conciliation-mad candidate. + +A few minutes later I shut myself in with the long-distance telephone +and roused Burbank from bed and from sleep. "I am coming by the first +train to-morrow," I said. "I thought you'd be glad to know that I've +made satisfactory arrangements in New York--unexpectedly satisfactory." + +"That's good--excellent," came the reply. I noted an instant change of +tone which told me that Burbank had got, by some underground route, news +of my failure in New York and had been preparing to give Goodrich a +cordial reception. + +"If Goodrich comes, James," I went on, "don't see him till I've seen +you." + +A pause, then in a strained voice: "But I've given him an appointment at +nine to-morrow." + +"Put him off till noon. I'll be there at eleven. It's--imperative." That +last word with an accent I did not like to use, but knew how to use--and +when. + +Another pause, then: "Very well, Harvey. But we must be careful about +him. De Milt has told you how dangerous he is, hasn't he?" + +"Yes--how dangerous he tried to be." I was about to add that Goodrich +was a fool to permit any one to go to such a man as Scarborough with +such a proposition; but I bethought me of Burbank's acute moral +sensitiveness and how it would be rasped by the implication of his +opponent's moral superiority. "We're past the last danger, James. That's +all. Sleep sound. Good night." + +"Good night, old man," was his reply in his pose's tone for affection. +But I could imagine him posing there in his night shirt, the anger +against me snapping in his eyes. + +On the train the next morning, De Milt, who had evidently been doing a +little thinking, said, "I hope you won't let it out to Cousin James that +I told you Goodrich was coming to see him." + +"Certainly not," I replied, not losing the opportunity to win over to +myself one so near to my political ward. "I'm deeply obliged to you for +telling me." And presently I went on: "By the way, has anything been +done for you for your brilliant work at Saint X?" + +"Oh, that's all right," he said, "I guess Cousin James'll look after +me--unless he forgets about it." "Cousin James" had always had the habit +of taking favors for granted unless reward was pressed for; and since he +had become a presidential candidate, he was inclining more than ever to +look on a favor done him as a high privilege which was its own reward. + +I made no immediate reply to De Milt; but just before we reached the +capital, I gave him a cheque for five thousand dollars. "A little +expression of gratitude from the party," said I. "Your reward will come +later." From that hour he was mine, for he knew now by personal +experience that "the boys" were right in calling me appreciative. + +It is better to ignore a debt than to pay with words. + + + + +XXIV + +GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN + + +Burbank had grown like a fungus in his own esteem. + +The adulation of the free excursionists I had poured in upon him, the +eulogies in the newspapers, the flatteries of those about him, eager to +make themselves "solid" with the man who might soon have the shaking of +the huge, richly laden presidential boughs of the plum tree--this +combination of assaults upon sanity was too strong for a man with such +vanity as his, a traitor within. He had convinced his last prudent doubt +that he was indeed a "child of destiny." He was resentful lest I might +possibly think myself more important than he to the success of the +campaign. And his resentment was deepened by the probably incessant +reminders of his common sense that all this vast machine, public and +secret, could have been set in motion just as effectively for any one +of a score of "statesmen" conspicuous in the party. + +I saw through his labored cordiality; and it depressed me again--started +me down toward those depths of self-condemnation from which I had been +held up for a few days by the excitement of the swiftly thronging events +and by the necessity of putting my whole mind upon moves for my game. + +"I am heartily glad you were successful," he began when we were alone. +"That takes a weight off my mind." + +"You misunderstood me, I see," said I. "I haven't got anything from +those people in New York as yet. But within a week they'll be begging me +to take whatever I need. Thwing's report will put them in a panic." + +His face fell. "Then I must be especially courteous to Goodrich," he +said, after thinking intently. "Your hopes might be disappointed." + +"Not the slightest danger," was my prompt assurance. "And if you take my +advice, you will ask Goodrich how his agent found Senator Scarborough's +health, and then order him out of this house. Why harbor a deadly snake +that can be of no use to you?" + +"But you seem to forget, Harvey, that he is the master of at least the +eastern wing of the party. And you must now see that he will stop at +nothing, unless he is pacified." + +"He is the fetch-and-carry of an impudent and cowardly crowd in Wall +Street," I retorted, "that is all. When they find he can no longer do +their errands, they'll throw him over and come to us. And we can have +them on our own terms." + +We argued, with growing irritation on both sides, and after an hour or +so, I saw that he was hopelessly under the spell of his pettiness and +his moral cowardice. He had convinced himself that I was jealous of +Goodrich and would sacrifice anything to gratify my hate. And Goodrich's +sending an agent to Scarborough had only made him the more formidable in +Burbank's eyes. As I looked in upon his mind and watched its weak, +foolish little workings, my irritation subsided. "Do as you think best," +said I wearily. "But when he presents the mortgage you are going to give +him on your presidency, remember my warning." + +He laughed this off, feeling my point only in his vanity, not at all in +his judgment. "And how will _you_ receive him, Harvey? He will be sure +to come to you next--must, as you are in charge of my campaign." + +"I'll tell him straight out that I'll have nothing to do with him," said +I blandly. "The Wall Street submission to the party must be brought to +me by some other ambassador. I'll not help him to fool his masters and +to hide it from them that he has lost control." + +I could have insisted, could have destroyed Goodrich--for Burbank would +not have dared disobey me. But the campaign, politics in general, life +itself, filled me with disgust, a paralyzing disgust that made me almost +lose confidence in my theory of practical life. + +"What's the use?" I said to myself. "Let Burbank keep his adder. Let it +sting him. If it so much as shoots a fang at me, I can crush it." + +And so, Burbank lifted up Goodrich and gave hostages to him; and +Goodrich, warned that I would not deal with him, made some excuse or +other to his masters for sending Senator Revell to me. "See Woodruff," +said I to Revell, for I was in no mood for such business. "He knows best +what we need." + +"They give up too damn cheerfully," Woodruff said to me, when I saw him +a week or ten days later, and he gave me an account of the negotiations. +"I suspect they've paid more before." + +"They have," said I. "In two campaigns where they had to elect against +hard times." + +"But I've a notion," he warned me, "that our candidate has promised them +something privately." + +"No doubt," I replied, as indifferently as I felt. + +I had intended to make some speeches--I had always kept the public side +of my career in the foreground, and in this campaign my enforced +prominence as director of the machine was causing the public to dwell +too much on the real nature of my political activity. But I could not +bring myself to it. Instead, I set out for home to spend the time with +my children and to do by telephone, as I easily could, such directing of +Woodruff as might be necessary. + +My daughter Frances was driving me from the Fredonia station. A man +darted in front of the horses, flung up his arms and began to shriek +curses at me. If she had not been a skilful driver, we should both have +been thrown from the cart. As it was, the horses ran several miles +before she got them under control, I sitting inactive, because I knew +how it would hurt her pride if I should interfere. + +When the horses were quiet, she gave me an impetuous kiss that more than +repaid me for the strain on my nerves. "You are the dearest papa that +ever was!" she said. Then--"Who was he? He looked like a crazy man!" + +"No doubt he is," was my reply. And I began complimenting her on her +skill with horses, chiefly to prevent her pressing me about the man. I +had heard, and had done, so much lying that I had a horror of it, and +tried to make my children absolutely truthful--my boy Ed used to think +up and do mischief just for the pleasure of pleasing me by confessing. +To make my example effective, I was always strictly truthful with them. +I did not wish to tell her who the man was; but I instantly recognized, +through the drunken dishevelment, my mutineer, Granby--less than a year +before one of the magnates of the state. My orders about him had been +swiftly and literally obeyed. Deserted by his associates, blacklisted at +the banks, beset by his creditors, harassed by the attorney general, his +assets chained with injunctions, his liabilities given triple fangs, he +went bankrupt, took to drink, became a sot and a barroom lounger. His +dominant passion was hatred of me; he discharged the rambling and +frantic story of his wrongs upon whoever would listen. And here he was +in Fredonia! + +I had one of my secretaries telephone the police to look after him; they +reported that he had disappeared. + +The next morning but one, my daughter and I went for an early walk. At +the turn of the main drive just beyond view from the lodge, she +exclaimed, "Oh, father, _oh_!" and clung to me. Something--like a +scarecrow, but not a scarecrow--swung from a limb overhanging the drive. +The face was distorted and swollen; the arms and legs were drawn up in +sickening crookedness. Before I saw, I knew it was Granby. + +I took Frances home, then returned, passing the swaying horror far on +the other side of the road. I got the lodge-keeper, and he and I went +back together. I had them telephone from the lodge for the coroner and +personally saw to it that the corpse should be reported as found in the +open woods a long distance from my place. But Granby had left a message +"to the public" in his room at the hotel: "Senator Sayler ruined me and +drove me to death. I have gone to hang myself in his park. Down with +monopoly!" In spite of my efforts, this was published throughout the +country--though not in Fredonia. Such of the big opposition papers as +were not under our control sent reporters and raked out the whole story; +and it was blown up hugely and told everywhere. Our organs retold it, +giving the true color and perspective; but my blundering attempt to +avoid publicity had put me in too bad a light. + +It was the irony of fate--my power thus ludicrously thwarted by a +triviality. Within twenty-four hours I realized the danger to our +campaign. I sent Woodruff post-haste to the widow. He gave her +convincing assurances that she and her children were to be lifted from +the slough of poverty into which Granby's drunkenness had thrust them. +And in return she wrote at his dictation and issued an apparently +uninspired public statement, exonerating me from all blame for her +husband's reverses, and saying that he had been acting strangely for +over a year and had been insane for several months. In brief, I did +everything suggested by sincere regret and such skill at influencing +public opinion as I had and commanded. But not until my reports began to +show the good effects of the million dollars Woodruff put into the last +week of the campaign, did I begin to hope again. + +Another hope brightened toward confidence when, on the Saturday before +election, I sprung my carefully matured scheme for stiffening those of +our partizans who were wavering. The Scarborough speakers had, with +powerful effect, been taunting us with our huge campaign fund, daring us +to disclose its sources. On that Sunday morning, when it was too late +for the opposition to discount me, I boldly threw open a set of +campaign ledgers which showed that our fund was just under a million +dollars, with the only large subscription, the hundred thousand which I +myself had given. Tens of thousands of our partizans, longing for an +excuse for staying with us, returned cheering to the ranks--enough of +them in the doubtful states, we believed, to restore the floating vote +to its usual balance of power. + +Each horse of my team had taken a turn at doing dangerous, even +menacing, threshing about; but both were now quietly pulling in the +harness, Partizanship as docile as Plutocracy. The betting odds were six +to five against us, but we of the "inside" began to plunge on Burbank +and Howard. + + + + +XXV + +AN HOUR OF EMOTION + + +It was after midnight of election day before we knew the result, so +close were the two most important doubtful states. + +Scarborough had swept the rural districts and the small towns. But we +had beaten him in the cities where the machines and other purchasable +organizations were powerful. His state gave him forty-two thousand +plurality, Burbank carried his own state by less than ten thousand--and +in twenty-four years our majority there in presidential campaigns had +never before been less than forty thousand. + +By half-past one, the whole capital city knew that Burbank had won. And +they flocked and swarmed out the road to his modest "retreat," until +perhaps thirty thousand people were shouting, blowing horns, singing, +sending up rockets and Roman candles, burning red fire, lighting +bonfires in and near the grounds. I had come down from Fredonia to be +in instant touch with Burbank and the whole national machine, should +there arise at the last minute necessity for bold and swift action. When +Burbank finally yielded to the mob and showed himself on his porch with +us, his immediate associates, about him, I for the first time +unreservedly admired him. For the man inside seemed at last to swell +until the presidential pose he had so long worn prematurely was filled +to a perfect fit. And in what he said as well as in the way he said it +there was an unexpected dignity and breadth and force. "I have made him +President," I thought, "and it looks as if the presidency had made him a +man." + +After he finished, Croffut spoke, and Senator Berwick of Illinois. Then +rose a few calls for me. They were drowned in a chorus of hoots, toots +and hisses. Burbank cast a quick glance of apprehension at me--again +that hidden conviction of my vanity, this time shown in dread lest it +should goad me into hating him. I smiled reassuringly at him--and I can +say in all honesty that the smile came from the bottom of my heart. An +hour later, as I bade him good night, I said: + +"I believe the man and the opportunity have met, Mr. President. God +bless you." + +Perhaps it was the unusualness of my speaking with feeling that caused +the tears to start in his eyes. "Thank you, Harvey," he replied, +clasping my hand in both his. "I realize now the grave responsibility. I +need the help of every friend--the _true_ help of every _true_ friend. +And I know what I owe to you just as clearly as if _she_ were here to +remind me." + +I was too moved to venture a reply. Woodruff and I drove to the hotel +together--the crowd hissing me wherever it recognized me. Woodruff +looked first on one side then on the other, muttering at them. "The +fools!" he said to me, with his abrupt, cool laugh. "Just like them, +isn't it? Cheering the puppet, hissing its proprietor." + +I made no answer--what did it matter? Not for Burbank's position and +opportunity, as in that hour of emotion they appeared even to us who +knew politics from behind the scenes, not for the reality of what the +sounding title of President seems to mean, would I have changed with +him, would I have paid the degrading price he had paid. I preferred my +own position--if I had bowed the knee, at least it was not to men. As +for hisses, I saw in them a certain instinctive tribute to my power. The +mob cheers its servant, hisses its master. + +"Doc," said I, "do you want to go to the Senate instead of Croffut?" + +By the flames on the torches on either side I saw his amazement. "Me?" +he exclaimed. "Why, you forget I've got a past." + +"I do," said I, "and so does every one else. All we know is that you've +got a future." + +He drew in his breath hard and leaned back into the corner where the +shadow hid him. At last he said in a quiet earnest voice: "You've given +me self-respect, Senator. I can only say--I'll see that you never regret +it." + +I was hissed roundly at the hotel entrance, between cheers for Croffut +and Berwick, and even for Woodruff. But I went to bed in the most +cheerful, hopeful humor I had known since the day Scarborough was +nominated. "At any rate"--so I was thinking--"my President, with my +help, will be a man." + + + + +XXVI + +"ONLY AN OLD JOKE" + + +On the train going home, I was nearer to castle-building than at any +time since my boyhood castles collapsed under the rude blows of +practical life. + +My paths have not always been straight and open, said I to myself; like +all others who have won in the conditions of this world of man still +thrall to the brute, I have had to use the code of the jungle. In +climbing I have had to stoop, at times to crawl. But, now that I have +reached the top, I shall stand erect. I shall show that the sordidness +of the struggle has not unfitted me to use the victory. True, there are +the many and heavy political debts I've had to contract in getting +Burbank the presidency; and as we must have a second term to round out +our work, we shall be compelled to make some further compromises. We +must still deal with men on the terms which human nature exacts. But in +the main we can and we will do what is just and right, what helps to +realize the dreams of the men and women who founded our country--the men +and women like my father and mother. + +And my mother's grave, beside my father's and among the graves of my +sisters and my grandparents, rose before me. And I recalled the pledge I +had made there, in the boyish beginnings of my manhood and my career. +"My chance and Burbank's," said I, "comes just in time. We are now at +the age where reputation is fixed; and our children are growing up and +will soon begin to judge us and be judged from us." + +Years of patient sowing, thought I, and at last the harvest! And what a +harvest it will be! For under the teachings of experience I have sown +not starlight and moonshine, but seeds. + +The next morning I could not rise; it was six weeks before I was able to +leave my bed. During that savage illness I met each and every one of the +reckless drafts I had been drawing against my reserve vitality. Four +times the doctors gave me up; once even Frances lost hope. When I was +getting well she confessed to me how she had warned God that He need +never expect to hear from her again if her prayer for me were not +answered--and I saw she rather suspected that her threat was not +unassociated with my recovery. + +Eight weeks out of touch with affairs, and they the crucial eight weeks +of all my years of thought and action! At last the harvest, indeed; and +I was reaping what I had sown. + +In the second week of January I revolted against the doctors and nurses +and had my political secretary, Wheelock, telephone for Woodruff--the +legislature had elected him to the Senate three days before. When he had +sat with me long enough to realize that I could bear bad news, he said: +"Goodrich and Burbank have formed a combination against you." + +"How do you know?" said I, showing no surprise, and feeling none. + +"Because"--he laughed--"I was in it. At least, they thought so until +they had let me be safely elected. As nearly as I can make it out, they +began to plot about ten days after you fell sick. At first they had it +on the slate to do me up, too. But--the day after Christmas--Burbank +sent for me--" + +"Wait a minute," I interrupted. And I began to think. It was on +Christmas day that Burbank telephoned for the first time in nearly three +weeks, inquiring about my condition. I remembered their telling me how +minute his questionings were. And I had thought his solicitude was proof +of his friendship! Instead, he had been inquiring to make sure about the +reports in the papers that I was certain to recover, in order that he +might shift the factors in his plot accordingly. "When did you say +Burbank sent for you?" I asked. + +"On Christmas day," Woodruff replied. + +I laughed; he looked at me inquiringly. "Nothing," said I. "Only an old +joke--as old as human nature. Go on." + +"Christmas day," he continued; "I didn't get to him until next morning. +I can't figure out just why they invited me into their combine." + +But I could figure it out, easily. If I had died, my power would have +disintegrated and Woodruff would have been of no use to them. When they +were sure I was going to live, they had to have him because he might be +able to assassinate me, certainly could so cripple me that I would--as +they reasoned--be helpless under their assaults. But it wasn't necessary +to tell Woodruff this, I thought. + +"Well," said I, "and what happened?" + +"Burbank gave me a dose of his 'great and gracious way'--you ought to +see the 'side' he puts on now!--and turned me over to Goodrich. He had +been mighty careful not to give himself away any further than that. Then +Goodrich talked to me for three solid hours, showing me it was my duty +to the party as well as to myself to join him and Burbank in eliminating +the one disturber of harmony--that meant you." + +"And didn't they tell you they'd destroy you if you didn't?" + +"Oh, that of course," he answered indifferently. + +"Well, what did you do?" + +"Played with 'em till I was elected. Then I dropped Goodrich a line. +'You can go to hell,' I wrote. 'I travel only with men'." + +"Very imprudent," was my comment. + +"Yes," he admitted, "but I had to do something to get the dirt off my +hands." + +"So Burbank has gone over to Goodrich!" I went on presently, as much to +myself as to him. + +"I always knew he was one of those chaps you have to keep scared to keep +straight," said Woodruff. "They think your politeness indicates fear and +your friendship fright. Besides, he's got a delusion that his popularity +carried the West for him and that you and I did him only damage." +Woodruff interrupted himself to laugh. "A friend of mine," he resumed, +"was on the train with Scarborough when he went East to the meeting of +Congress last month. He tells me it was like a President-elect on the +way to be inaugurated. The people turned out at every cross-roads, even +beyond the Alleghanies. And Burbank knows it. If he wasn't clean daft +about himself he'd realize that if it hadn't been for you--well, I'd +hate to say how badly he'd have got left. But then, if it hadn't been +for you, he'd never have been governor. He was a dead one, and you +hauled him out of the tomb." + +True enough. But what did it matter now? + +"He's going to get a horrible jolt before many months," Woodruff went +on. "I can see you after him." + +"You forget. He's President," I answered. "He's beyond our reach." + +"Not when he wants a renomination," insisted Woodruff. + +"He can get that without us--_if_," I said. "You must remember we've +made him a fetish with our rank and file. And he's something of a fetish +with the country, now that he's President. No, we can't destroy +him--can't even injure him. He'll have to do that himself, if it's done. +Besides--" + +I did not finish. I did not care to confess that since Frances and I saw +Granby swinging from that tree in my grounds I had neither heart nor +stomach for the relentless side of the game. Indeed, whether from +calculation or from sentimentality or from both--or, from a certain +sympathy and fellow feeling for all kinds of weakness--I have never +pursued those who have played me false, except when exemplary punishment +was imperative. + +"Well--" Woodruff looked bitterly disappointed. "I guess you're right." +He brightened. "I forgot Goodrich for a minute. Burbank'll do himself up +through that--I'd have to be in a saloon to feel free to use the +language that describes him." + +"I fear he will," I said. And it was not a hypocrisy--for I did not, and +could not, feel anger toward him. Had I not cut this staff deliberately +because it was crooked? What more natural than that it should give way +under me as soon as I leaned upon it? + +"Your sickness certainly couldn't have come at an unluckier time," +Woodruff observed just before he left. + +"I'm not sure of that," was my reply. "It would have been useless to +have found him out sooner. And if he had hidden himself until later, he +might have done us some serious mischief." + +As he was the President-elect, to go to him uninvited would have been +infringement of his dignity as well as of my pride. A few days later I +wrote him, thanking him for his messages and inquiries during my illness +and saying that I was once more taking part in affairs. He did not reply +by calling me up on the telephone, as he would have done in the +cordial, intimate years preceding his grandeur. Instead he sent a +telegram of congratulation, following it with a note. He urged me to go +South, as I had planned, and to stay until I was fully restored. "I +shall deny myself the pleasure of seeing you until you return." That +sentence put off our meeting indefinitely--I could see him smiling at +its adroitness as he wrote it. + +But he made his state of mind even clearer. His custom had been to begin +his notes "Dear Harvey," or "Dear Sayler," and to end them "James" or +"Burbank." This note began "My dear Senator"; it ended, "Yours +sincerely, James E. Burbank." As I stared at these phrases my blood +steamed in my brain. Had he spat in my face my fury would have been +less, far less. "So!" I thought in the first gush of anger, "you feel +that you have been using me, that you have no further use for me. You +have decided to take the advice of those idiotic independent newspapers +and 'wash your hands of the corruptionist who almost defeated you'." + +To make war upon him was in wisdom impossible--even had I wished. And +when anger flowed away and pity and contempt succeeded, I really did +not wish to war upon him. But there was Goodrich--the real +corruptionist, the wrecker of my plans and hopes, the menace to the +future of the party. I sent for Woodruff and together we mapped out a +campaign against the senior senator from New Jersey in all the +newspapers we could control or influence. I gave him a free hand to +use--with his unfailing discretion, of course--all the facts we had +accumulated to Goodrich's discredit. I put at his disposal a hundred +thousand dollars. As every available dollar of the party funds had been +used in the campaign, I advanced this money from my own pocket. + +And I went cheerfully away to Palm Beach, there to watch at my ease the +rain of shot and shell upon my enemy. + + + + +XXVII + +A DOMESTIC DISCORD + + +After a month in the South, I was well again--younger in feeling, and in +looks, than I had been for ten years. Carlotta and the children, except +"Junior" who was in college, had gone to Washington when I went to +Florida. I found her abed with a nervous attack from the double strain +of the knowledge that Junior had eloped with an "impossible" woman he +had met, I shall not say where, and of the effort of keeping the +calamity from me until she was sure he had really entangled himself +hopelessly. + +She was now sitting among her pillows, telling the whole story. "If he +only hadn't married her!" she ended. + +This struck me as ludicrous--a good woman citing to her son's discredit +the fact that he had goodness' own ideals of honor. + +"What are you laughing at?" she demanded. + +I was about to tell her I was hopeful of the boy chiefly because he had +thus shown the splendid courage that more than redeems folly. But I +refrained. I had never been able to make Carlotta understand me or my +ideas, and I had long been weary of the resentful silences or angry +tirades which mental and temperamental misunderstandings produce. + +"Courage never gets into a man unless it's born there," said I. "Folly +is born into us all and can be weeded out." + +"What can be expected?" she went on after trying in vain to connect my +remark with our conversation. "A boy needs a father. You've been so busy +with your infamous politics that you've given him scarcely a thought." + +Painfully true, throughout; but it was one of those criticisms we can +hardly endure even when we make it upon ourselves. I was silent. + +"I've no patience with men!" she went on. "They're always meddling with +things that would get along better without them, and letting their own +patch run to weeds." + +Unanswerable. I held my peace. + +"What are you going to do about it, Harvey? How _can_ you be so calm? +Isn't there _anything_ that would rouse you?" + +"I'm too busy thinking what to do to waste any energy in blowing off +steam," was my answer in my conciliatory tone. + +"But there's nothing we _can_ do," she retorted, with increasing anger, +which vented itself toward me because the true culprit, fate, was not +within reach. + +"Precisely," I agreed. "Nothing." + +"That creature won't let him come to see me." + +"And you musn't see him when he sends for you," said I. "He'll come as +soon as his money gives out. She'll see that he does." + +"But you aren't going to cut him off!" + +"Just that," said I. + +A long silence, then I added in answer to her expression: "And _you_ +must not let him have a cent, either." + +In a gust of anger, probably at my having read her thoughts, she blurted +out: "One would think it was _your_ money." + +I had seen that thought in her eyes, had watched her hold it back behind +her set teeth, many times in our married years. And I now thanked my +stars I had had the prudence to get ready for the inevitable moment when +she would speak it. But at the same time I could not restrain a flush of +shame. "It _is_ my money," I forced myself to say. "Ask your brother. +He'll tell you what I've forbidden him to tell before--that I have twice +rescued you and him from bankruptcy." + +"With our own money," she retorted, hating herself for saying it, but +goaded on by a devil that lived in her temper and had got control many a +time, though never before when I happened to be the one with whom she +was at outs. + +"No--with my own," I replied tranquilly. + +"_Your_ own!" she sneered. "Every dollar you have has come through what +you got by marrying me--through what you married me for. Where would you +be if you hadn't married me? You know very well. You'd still be fighting +poverty as a small lawyer in Pulaski, married to Betty Crosby or +whatever her name was." And she burst into hysterical tears. At last she +was showing me the secrets that had been tearing at her, was showing me +her heart where they had torn it. + +"Probably," said I in my usual tone, when she was calm enough to hear +me. "So, that's what you brood over?" + +"Yes," she sobbed. "I've hated you and myself. Why don't you tell me it +isn't so? I'll believe it--I don't want to hear the truth. I know you +don't love me, Harvey. But just say you don't love _her_." + +"What kind of middle-aged, maudlin moonshine is this, anyway?" said I. +"Let's go back to Junior. We've passed the time of life when people can +talk sentimentality without being ridiculous." + +"That's true of me, Harvey," she said miserably, "but not of you. You +don't look a day over forty--you're still a young man, while I--" + +She did not need to complete the sentence. I sat on the bed beside her +and patted her vaguely. She took my hand and kissed it. And I said--I +tried to say it gently, tenderly, sincerely: "People who've been +together, as you and I have, see each other always as at first, they +say." + +She kissed my hand gratefully again. "Forgive me for what I said," she +murmured. "You know I didn't think it, really. I've got such a nasty +disposition and I felt so down, and--that was the only thing I could +find to throw at you." + +"Please--_please_!" I protested. "Forgive isn't a word that I'd have the +right to use to any one." + +"But I must--" + +"Now, _I've_ known for years," I went on, "that you were in love with +that other man when I asked you to marry me. I might have taunted you +with it, might have told you how I've saved him from going to jail for +passing worthless checks." + +This delighted her--this jealousy so long and so carefully hidden. Under +cover of her delight I escaped from the witness-stand. And the discovery +that evening by Doc Woodruff that my son's ensnarer had a husband living +put her in high good humor. "If he'd only come home," said she, adding: +"Though, now I feel that he's perfectly safe with her." + +"Yes--let them alone," I replied. "He has at least one kind of sense--a +sense of honor. And I suspect and hope that he has at bottom common +sense too. Let him find her out for himself. Then, he'll be done with +her, and her kind, for good." + +"I must marry him off as soon as possible," said Carlotta. "I'll look +about for some nice, quiet young girl with character and looks and +domestic tastes." She laughed a little bitterly. "You men can profit by +experience and it ruins us women." + +"Unjust," said I, "but injustice and stupidity are the ground plan of +life." + +We had not long to wait. The lady, as soon as Junior reached the end of +his cash, tried to open negotiations. Failing and becoming convinced +that he had been cast off by his parents, she threw aside her mask. One +straight look into her real countenance was enough for the boy. He fled +shuddering--but not to me as I had expected. Instead, he got a place as +a clerk in Chicago. + +"Why not let him shift for himself a while?" suggested Woodruff, who +couldn't have taken more trouble about the affair if the boy had been +his own. "A man never knows whether his feet were made to stand on and +walk with, unless he's been down to his uppers." + +"I think the boy's got his grandmother in him," said I. "Let's give him +a chance." + +"He'll make a career for himself yet--like his father's," said +Woodruff. + +That, with the sincerest enthusiasm. But instinctively I looked at him +for signs of sarcasm. And then I wondered how many "successful" men +would, in the same circumstances, have had the same curiously +significant instinct. + + + + +XXVIII + +UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT + + +It was now less than a month before inauguration. Daily the papers gave +probable selections for the high posts under the approaching +administration; and, while many of them were attributed to my influence, +Roebuck's son as ambassador to Russia was the only one I even approved +of. As payments for the services of the plutocracy they were unnecessary +and foolishly lavish; as preparations for a renomination and reëlection, +the two guiding factors in every plan of a President-elect, they were +preposterous. They were first steps toward an administration that would +make Scarborough's triumph inevitable, in spite of his handicap of +idealism. + +I sent Woodruff west to find out what Burbank was doing about the places +I had pledged--all of them less "honorable" but more lucrative offices +which party workers covet. He returned in a few days with the news that, +according to the best information he could get through his spies in +Burbank's _entourage_, all our pledges would be broken; the +Sayler-Burbank machine was to be made over into a Goodrich-Burbank. + +I saw that I could not much longer delay action. But I resolved to put +it off until the very last minute, meanwhile trying to force Burbank to +send for me. My cannonade upon Goodrich in six thousand newspapers, +great and small, throughout the West and South, had been reinforced by +the bulk of the opposition press. I could not believe it was to be +without influence upon the timid Burbank, even though he knew who was +back of the attack, and precisely how I was directing it. I was +relying--as I afterward learned, not in vain--upon my faithful De Milt +to bring to "Cousin James'" attention the outburst of public sentiment +against his guide, philosopher and friend, the Wall Street +fetch-and-carry. + +I had fixed on February fifteenth as the date on which I would telegraph +a formal demand for an interview. On February eleventh, he +surrendered--he wired, asking me to come. I took a chance; I wired back +a polite request to be excused as I had urgent business in Chicago. And +twenty-four hours later I passed within thirty miles of Rivington on my +way to Chicago with Carlotta--we were going to see Junior, hugely proud +of himself and his twenty-seven dollars a week. At the Auditorium a +telegram waited from Burbank: He hoped I would come as soon as I could; +the matters he wished to discuss were most important. + +Toward noon of the third day thereafter we were greeting each other--he +with an attempt at his old-time cordiality, I without concealment of at +least the coldness I felt. But my manner apparently, and probably, +escaped his notice. He was now blind and drunk with the incense that had +been whirling about him in dense clouds for three months; he was +incapable of doubting the bliss of any human being he was gracious to. +He shut me in with him and began confiding the plans he and Goodrich had +made--cabinet places, foreign posts, and so forth. His voice, lingering +and luxuriating upon the titles--"my ambassador to his Brittanic +Majesty," "my ambassador to the German Emperor," and so on--amused and a +little, but only a little, astonished me; I had always known that he +was a through-and-through snob. For nearly an hour I watched his +ingenuous, childish delight in bathing himself in himself, the wonderful +fountain of all these honors. At last he finished, laid down his list, +took off his nose-glasses. "Well, Harvey, what do you think?" he asked, +and waited with sparkling eyes for my enthusiastic approval. + +"I see Goodrich drove a hard bargain," said I. "Yet he came on his +knees, if you had but realized it." + +Burbank's color mounted. "What do you mean, Sayler?" he inquired, the +faint beginnings of the insulted god in his tone and manner. + +"You asked my opinion," I answered, "I'm giving it. I don't recall a +single name that isn't obviously a Goodrich suggestion. Even the Roebuck +appointment--" + +"Sayler," he interrupted, in a forbearing tone, "I wish you would not +remind me so often of your prejudice against Senator Goodrich. It is +unworthy of you. But for my tact--pardon my frankness--your prejudice +would have driven him away, and with him a support he controls--" + +I showed my amusement. + +"Don't smile, Sayler," he protested with some anger in his smooth, heavy +voice. "You are not the only strong man in the party. And I venture to +take advantage of our long friendship to speak plainly to you. I wish to +see a united party. One of my reasons for sending for you was to tell +you how greatly I am distressed and chagrined by the attacks on Senator +Goodrich in our papers." + +"Did you have any other reason for sending for me?" said I very quietly. + +"That was the principal one," he confessed. + +"Oh!" I exclaimed. + +"What do you mean, Sayler?" + +"I thought possibly you might also have wished to tell me how unjust you +thought the attacks on me in the eastern papers, and to assure me that +they had only strengthened our friendship." + +He was silent. + +I rose, threw my overcoat on my arm, took up my hat. + +"Wait a moment, please," he said. "I have always found you very +impartial in your judgments--your clear judgment has been of the highest +usefulness to me many times." + +"Thank you," I said. "You are most kind--most generous." + +"So," he went on, not dreaming that he might find sarcasm if he searched +for it, "I hope you appreciate why I have refrained from seeing you, as +I wished. I know, Sayler, your friendship was loyal. I know you did +during the campaign what you thought wisest and best. But I feel that +you must see now what a grave mistake you made. Don't misunderstand me, +Harvey. I do not hold it against you. But you must see, no doubt you do +see, that it would not be fair for me, it would not be in keeping with +the dignity of the great office with which the people have intrusted me, +to seem to lend my approval." + +I looked straight at him until his gaze fell. Then I said, my voice even +lower than usual: "If you will look at the election figures carefully +you will find written upon them a very interesting fact. That fact is: +In all the doubtful states--the ones that elected you--Scarborough swept +everything where our party has heretofore been strongest; you were +elected by carrying districts where our party has always been weakest. +_And in those districts, James, our money was spent--as you well know._" + +I waited for this to cut through his enswaddlings of self-complacence, +waited until I saw its acid eating into him. Then I went on: "I hope you +will never again deceive yourself, or let your enemies deceive you. As +to your plans--the plans for Goodrich and his crowd--I have nothing to +say. My only concern is to have Woodruff's matters--his +pledges--attended to. That I must insist upon." + +He lowered his brows in a heavy frown. + +"I have your assent?" I insisted. + +"Really, Harvey,"--there was an astonishing change from the complacent, +superior voice of a few minutes before,--"I'll do what I can--but--the +responsibilities--the duties of--of my position--" + +"You are going to _take_ the office, James," said I. "You can't cheat +the men who _gave_ it to you." + +He did not answer. + +"I pledged my word," I went on. "You gave the promises. I indorsed for +you. The debts _must_ be met." Never before had I enjoyed using that +ugliest of words. + +"You ask me to bring myself into unpopularity with the entire country," +he pleaded. "Several of the men on your list are ex-convicts. Others are +about to be indicted for election frauds. Many are men utterly without +character--" + +"They did _your_ work, James," said I. "I guarantee that in no case will +the unpleasant consequences to you be more than a few disagreeable but +soon forgotten newspaper articles. You haggle over these trifles, +and--why, look at your cabinet list! There are two names on it--two of +the four Goodrich men--that will cost you blasts of public +anger--perhaps the renomination." + +"Is _this_ my friend Harvey Sayler?" he exclaimed, grief and pain in +that face which had been used by him for thirty years as the sculptor +uses the molding clay. + +"It is," I answered calmly. "And never more your friend than now, when +you have ceased to be a friend to him--and to yourself." + +"Then do not ask me to share the infamy of those wretches," he pleaded. + +"They are our allies and helpers," I said, "wretches only as I and all +of us in practical politics are wretches. Difference of degree, perhaps; +but not of kind. And, James, if our promises to these invaluable fellow +workers of ours are not kept, kept to the uttermost, you will compel me +and my group of Senators to oppose and defeat your most important +nominations. And I shall myself, publicly, from the floor of the Senate, +show up these Goodrich nominees of yours as creatures of corrupt +corporations and monopolies." I said this without heat; every word of it +fell cold as arctic ice upon his passion. + +A long pause, then: "Your promises shall be kept," he assented with +great dignity of manner; "not because you threaten, Harvey, but because +I value your friendship beyond anything and everything. And I may add I +am sorry, profoundly sorry, my selections for the important places do +not please you." + +"I think of your future," I said. "You _talk_ of friendship--" + +"No, no, Harvey," he protested, with a vehemence of reassurance that +struck me as amusing. + +"And," I went on, "it is in friendship, James, that I warn you not to +fill all your crucial places with creatures of the Goodrich crowd. They +will rule your administration, they will drive you, in spite of +yourself, on and on, from excess to excess. You will put the middle West +irrevocably against you. You will make even the East doubtful. You are +paying, paying with your whole future, for that which is already yours. +If you lose your hold on the people, the money-crowd will have none of +you. If you keep the people, the money-crowd will be your very humble +servant." + +I happened just then to glance past him at a picture on the wall over +his chair. It was a crayon portrait of his wife, made from an enlarged +photograph--a poor piece of work, almost ludicrous in its distortions of +proportion and perspective. But it touched me the more because it was +such a humble thing, reminiscent of her and his and my lowly beginnings. +And an appeal seemed to go straight to my heart from those eyes that had +so often been raised from the sewing in sympathetic understanding of +the things I was struggling to make her husband see. + +I pointed to the picture; he slowly turned round in his chair until he +too was looking at it. "What would _she_ say, Burbank," I asked, "if she +were with us now?" + +And then I went on to analyze his outlined administration, to show him +in detail why I thought it would ruin him, to suggest men who were as +good party men as the Goodrich crowd and would be a credit to him and a +help. And he listened with his old-time expression, looking up at his +dead wife's picture all the while. "You must be _popular_, at any cost," +I ended. "The industrial crowd will stay with the party, no matter what +we do. As long as Scarborough is in control on the other side, we are +their only hope. And so, we are free to seek popularity--and we must +regain it or we're done for. Money won't save us when we've lost our +grip on the rank and file. The presidency can't be bought again for +_you_. If it must be bought next time, another figure-head will have to +be used." + +"I can't tell you how grateful I am," was his conclusion after I had put +my whole mind before him and he and I had discussed it. "But there are +certain pledges to Goodrich--" + +"Break them," said I. "To keep them is catastrophe." + +I knew the pledges he had in the foreground of his thoughts--a St. Louis +understrapper of the New York financial crowd for Secretary of the +Treasury; for Attorney General a lawyer who knew nothing of politics or +public sentiment or indeed of anything but how to instruct corporations +in law-breaking and law-dodging. + +He thought a long time. When he answered it was with a shake of the +head. "Too late, I'm afraid, Harvey. I've asked the men and they've +accepted. That was a most untimely illness of yours. I'll see what can +be done. It's a grave step to offend several of the most conspicuous men +in the party." + +"Not so serious as to offend the party itself," I replied. "Money is a +great power in politics, but partizanship is a greater." + +"I'll think it over," was the most he had the courage to concede. "I +must look at all sides, you know. But, whatever I decide, I thank you +for your candor." + +We separated, the best friends in the world, I trying to recover some +few of the high hopes of him that had filled me on election night. "He's +weak and timid," I said to myself, "but at bottom he must have a longing +to be President in fact as well as in name. Even the meanest slave longs +to be a man." + +I should have excepted the self-enslaved slaves of ambition. Of all +bondmen, they alone, I believe, not only do not wish freedom, but also +are ever plotting how they may add to their chains. + + + + +XXIX + +A LETTER FROM THE DEAD + + +I was living alone at the Willard. + +Soon after the death of Burbank's wife, his sister and brother-in-law, +the Gracies, had come with their three children to live with him and to +look after his boy and girl. Trouble between his family and mine, +originating in some impertinences of the oldest Gracie girl, spread from +the children to the grown people until, when he went into the White +House, he and I were the only two on speaking terms. I see now that this +situation had large influence on me in holding aloof and waiting always +for overtures from him. At the time I thought, as no doubt he thought +also, that the quarrel was beneath the notice of men. + +At any rate my family decided not to come to Washington during his first +winter in the White House. I lived alone at the Willard. One afternoon +toward the end of February I returned there from the Senate and found +Woodruff, bad news in his face. "What is it?" I asked indifferently, +for I assumed it was some political tangle. + +"Your wife--was taken--very ill--very suddenly," he said. His eyes told +me the rest. + +If I had ever asked myself how this news would affect me, I should have +answered that it would give me a sensation of relief. But, instead of +relief, I felt the stunning blow of a wave of sorrow which has never +wholly receded. Not because I loved her--that I never did. Not because +she was the mother of my children--my likes and dislikes are direct and +personal. Not because she was my wife--that bond had been galling. Not +because I was fond of her--she had one of those cold, angry natures that +forbid affection. No; I was overwhelmed because she and I had been +intimates, with all the closest interests of life in common, with the +whole world, even my children whom I loved passionately, outside that +circle which fate had drawn around us two. I imagine this is not +uncommon among married people,--this unhealable break in their routine +of association when one departs. No doubt it often passes with the +unthinking for love belatedly discovered. + +"She did not suffer," said Woodruff gently. "It was heart disease. She +had just come in from a ride with your oldest daughter. They were +resting and talking in high spirits by the library fire. And then--the +end came--like putting out the light." + +Heart disease! Often I had noted the irregular beat of her heart--a +throb, a long pause, a flutter, a short pause, a throb. And I could +remember that more than once the sound had been followed by the shadowy +appearance, in the door of my mind, of one of those black thoughts which +try to tempt hope but only make it hide in shame and dread. Now, the +memory of those occasions tormented me into accusing myself of having +wished her gone. But it was not so. + +She had told me she had heart trouble; but she had confided to no one +that she knew it might bring on the end at any moment. She left a +letter, sealed and addressed to me: + + Harvey-- + + I shall never have the courage to tell you, yet I feel you ought to + know. I think every one attributes to every one else less + shrewdness than he possesses. I know you have never given me the + credit of seeing that you did not love me. And you were so kind and + considerate and so patient with my moods that no doubt I should + have been deceived had I not known what love is. I think, to have + loved and to have been loved develops in a woman a sort of sixth + sense--sensitiveness to love. And that had been developed in me, + and when it never responded to your efforts to deceive me, I knew + you did not love me. + + Well, neither did I love you, though I was able to hide it from + you. And it has often irritated me that you were so unobservant. + You know now the cause of many of my difficult moods, which have + seemed causeless. + + I admired you from the first time we met. I have liked you, I have + been proud of you, I would not have been the wife of any other man + in the world, I would not have had any other father for my + children. But I have kept on loving the man I loved before I met + you. + + Why? I don't know. I despised him for his weaknesses. I should + never have married him, though mother and Ed both feared I would. I + think I loved him because I knew he loved me. That is the way it is + with women--they seldom love independently. Men like to love; women + like to be loved. And, poor, unworthy creature that he was, still + he would have died for me, though God had denied him the strength + to live for me. But all that God gave him--the power to love--he + gave me. And so he was different in my eyes from what he was in any + one's else in the world. And I loved him. + + I don't tell you this because I feel regret or remorse. I don't; + there never was a wife truer than I, for I put him completely + aside. I tell you, because I want you to remember me right after + I'm gone, Harvey dear. You may remember how I was silly and jealous + of you, and think I am mistaken about my own feelings. But jealousy + doesn't mean love. When people really love, I think it's seldom + that they're jealous. What makes people jealous usually is + suspecting the other person of having the same sort of secret they + have themselves. It hurt my vanity that you didn't love me; and it + stung me to think you cared for some one else, just as I did. + + I want you to remember me gently. And somehow I think that, after + you've read this, you will, even if you did love some one else. If + you ever see this at all, Harvey--and I may tear it up some day on + impulse--but if you ever do see it, I shall be dead, and we shall + both be free. And I want you to come to me and look at me and-- + +It ended thus abruptly. No doubt she had intended to open the envelope +and finish it--but, what more was there to say? + +I think she must have been content with the thoughts that were in my +mind as I looked down at her lying in death's inscrutable calm. I had +one of my secretaries hunt out the man she had loved--a sad, stranded +wreck of a man he had become; but since that day he has been sheltered +at least from the worst of the bufferings to which his incapacity for +life exposed him. + +There was a time when I despised incapables; then I pitied them; but +latterly I have felt for them the sympathetic sense of brotherhood. Are +we not all incapables? Differing only in degree, and how slightly there, +if we look at ourselves without vanity; like practice-sketches put upon +the slate by Nature's learning hand and impatiently sponged away. + + + + +XXX + +A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED + + +After the funeral I lingered at our Fredonia place. There was the estate +to settle; my two daughters had now no one to look after them; Junior +must be started right at learning the business of which he would soon be +the head, as his uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for large +executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a +face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington. +The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into +disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my +activities in politics, of all activities of whatever kind. I watched Ed +and my children resuming the routine of their lives, swiftly adjusting +themselves to the loss of one who had been so dear to them and +apparently so necessary to their happiness. The cry of "man overboard," +a few ripples, a few tears; the sailing on, with the surface of the +water smooth again and the faces keen and bright. + +Woodruff wrote, urging; then he sent telegram after telegram. Still I +procrastinated; for all the effect his letters and telegrams had upon +me, I might as well have left them unopened. My final answer was: "Act +as you would if I were dead." + +Probably, what had given my pessimism its somberest tone was the +attitude of the public toward Burbank's high appointments. I had +confidently predicted that filling all the high offices with men who had +no interest but "the interests," men who were notoriously the agents and +servants of the great "campaign contributors," would cause a public +outcry that could not be ignored. The opposition press did make +perfunctory criticisms; but nowhere was there a sign that the people +were really angered. + +I got the clue to this mystery from my gardener, who prided himself on +being strenuously of the opposition party. "What do you think of the new +administration?" said I when I came upon him one morning at the +rhododendron beds. + +"Much better than I allowed," said he. "Burbank's got good men around +him." + +"You approve of his Cabinet?" + +"Of course, they're all strong party men. I like a good party man. I +like a man that has convictions and principles, and stands up for 'em." + +"Your newspapers say some pretty severe things about those men." + +"So I read," said he, "but you know how that is, Mr. Sayler. They've got +to pound 'em to please the party. But nobody believes much he sees in +the newspapers. Whenever I read an item about things I happen to know, +it's all wrong. And I guess they don't get it any nearer right about the +things I don't happen to know. Now, all this here talk of there being so +many millionaires--I don't take no kind of stock in it." + +"No?" said I. + +"Of course, some's poor and some's rich--that's got to be. But I think +it's all newspaper lies about these here big fortunes and about all the +leading men in politics being corrupt. I know it ain't so about the +leading men in _my_ party, and I reckon there ain't no more truth in it +about the leading men of your'n. I was saying to my wife last night, +'It's all newspaper lies,' says I, 'just like the story they printed +about Mrs. Timmins eloping with Maria Wilmerding's husband, when she had +only went over to Rabbit Forks to visit her married daughter.' No, they +can't fool me--them papers." + +"That's one way of looking at it," said I. + +"It's horse sense," said he. + +And I have no doubt that to the average citizen, leading a small, quiet +life and dealing with affairs in corner-grocery retail, the stupendous +facts of accumulations of wealth and wholesale, far-and-wide purchases +of the politicians, the vast system of bribery, with bribes adapted to +every taste and conscience, seem impossibilities, romancings of +partizanship and envy and sensationalism. Nor can he understand the way +superior men play the great games, the heartlessness of ambition, the +cynicism of political and commercial prostitution, the sense of +superiority to the legal and moral codes which comes to most men with +success. + +Your average citizen is a hero-worshiper too. He knows his own and his +neighbor's weaknesses, but he gapes up at the great with glamoured eyes, +and listens to their smooth plausibilities as to the reading of the +Gospel from the pulpit. He belongs to the large mass of those who +believe, not to the small class of those who question. But for the +rivalries and jealousies of superior men which have kept them always +divided into two parties, the ins and the outs, I imagine the masses +would have remained for ever sunk in the most hopeless, if the most +delightful, slavery--that in which the slave accepts his lowliness as a +divine ordinance and looks up to his oppressors and plunderers as +hero-leaders. And no doubt, so long as the exuberant riches of our +country enable the triumphant class to "take care of" all the hungry who +have intellect enough to make themselves dangerous, we shall have no +change--except occasional spasms whenever a large number of unplaced +intelligent hungry are forcing the full and fat to make room for them. +How long will this be? + +If our education did not merely feed prejudices instead of removing +them, I should say not long. As it is, I expect to "leave the world as +wicked and as foolish as I found it." At any rate, until the millenium, +I shall continue to play the game under the rules of human +nature--instead of under the rules of human ideals, as does my esteemed +friend Scarborough. And I claim that we practical men are as true and +useful servants of our country and of our fellow men as he. If men like +him are the light, men like us are the lantern that shields it from the +alternating winds of rapacity and resentment. + +But, in running on about myself, I have got away from my point, which +was how slight and even flimsy a pretense of fairness will shelter a man +in high place--and therefore a Burbank. "He will fool the people as +easily as he fools himself," said I. And more than ever it seemed to me +that I must keep out of the game of his administration. My necessity of +party regularity made it impossible for me to oppose him; my equal +necessity of not outraging my sense of the wise, not to speak of the +decent, made it impossible for me to abet him. + +At last Woodruff came in person. When his name was brought to me, I +regretted that I could not follow my strong impulse to refuse to see +him. But at sight of his big strong body and big strong face, with its +typically American careless good humor--the cool head, the warm heart, +the amused eyes and lips that could also harden into sternness of +resolution--at sight of this old friend and companion-in-arms, my mood +began to lift and I felt him stirring in it like sunshine attacking a +fog. "I know what you've come to say," I began, "but don't say it. I +shall keep to my tent for the present." + +"Then you won't have a tent to keep to," retorted he. + +"Very well," said I. "My private affairs will give me all the occupation +I need." + +He laughed. "The general resigns from the command of the army to play +with a box of lead soldiers." + +"That sounds well," said I. "But the better the analogy, the worse the +logic. I am going out of the business of making and working off gold +bricks and green goods--and that's no analogy." + +"Then you must be going to kill yourself," he replied. "For that's +life." + +"Public life--active life," said I. "Here, there are other things." And +I looked toward my two daughters, whose laughter reached us from their +pony-cart just rounding a distant curve in the drive. + +His gaze followed mine and he watched the two children until they were +out of sight, watched them with the saddest, hungriest look in his eyes. +"Guess you're right," he said gruffly. + +After a silence I asked: "What's the news?" + +A quizzical smile just curled his lips, and it broadened into a laugh as +he saw my own rather shamefaced smile of understanding. "Seems to me," +said he, "that I read somewhere once how a king, perhaps it was an +emperor, so hankered for the quiet joys that he got off the throne and +retired to a monastery--and then established lines of post-horses from +his old capital to bring him the news every half-hour or so. I reckon +he'd have taken his job back if he could have got it." + +"I reckon," said I. + +"Well," said he, "the news is that they're about to oust you from the +chairmanship of the national committee and from control in this state." + +"Really?" said I, in an indifferent tone--though I felt anything but +indifferent. + +"Really," said he. "Burbank is throwing out our people throughout the +country and is putting Goodrich men in place of 'em--wherever our +fellows won't turn traitor. And they've got hold of Roebuck. He's giving +a dinner at the Auditorium to-morrow night. It's a dinner of eleven +covers. I think you can guess who ten of 'em are for. The eleventh is +for Dominick!" + +That was enough. I grasped the situation instantly. The one weak spot in +my control of my state was my having left the city bosses their local +power, instead of myself ruling the cities from the state capital. Why +had I done this? Perhaps the bottom reason was that I shrank from +permitting any part of the machine for which I was directly responsible +to be financed by collections from vice and crime. I admit that the +distinction between corporate privilege and plunder and the pickings and +stealings and prostitutions of individuals is more apparent than real. I +admit that the kinds of vice and crime I tolerated are far more harmful +than the other sorts which are petty and make loathed outcasts of their +wretched practitioners. Still, I was snob or Pharisee or Puritan enough +to feel and to act upon the imaginary distinction. And so, I had left +the city bosses locally independent--for, without the revenues and other +aids from vice and crime, what city political machine could be kept up? + +"Dominick!" I exclaimed. + +"Exactly!" said Woodruff. "Now, Mr. Sayler, the point is just here. I +don't blame you for wanting to get out. If I had any other game, I'd get +out myself. But what's to become of us--of all your friends, not only in +this state but throughout the country? Are you going to stand by and see +them slaughtered and not lift a finger to help 'em?" + +There was no answering him. Yet the spur of vanity, which clipped into +me at thought of myself thrown down and out by these cheap ingrates and +scoundrels, had almost instantly ceased to sting; and my sense of weary +disgust had returned. If I went into the battle again, what work faced +me? The same old monotonous round. To outflank Burbank and Goodrich by +tricks as old as war and politics, and effective only because human +stupidity is infinite and unteachable. To beat down and whip back into +the ranks again these bandits of commerce disguised as respectable, +church-going, law-upholding men of property--and to do this by the same +old methods of terror and force. + +"You can't leave us in the lurch," said Doc. "And the game promises to +be interesting once more. I don't like racing on the flat. It's the +hurdles that make the fun." + +I pictured myself again a circus horse, going round and round the ring, +jumping the same old hurdles at the same old intervals. "Take my place, +Doc," said I. + +He shook his head. "I'm a good second," said he, "but a rotten bad +first." + +It was true enough. He mysteriously lacked that mysterious something +which, when a man happens to have been born with it, makes other men +yield him the command--give it to him, force it on him, if he hangs +back. + +"What do you want me to do?" I asked. + +"That dinner to-morrow night is in Suite L. Go to it--that's the +shortest way to put Roebuck and Dominick out of business. Face 'em and +they'll skulk." + +"It's a risk," said I. I saw at once that he was right, but I was in a +reluctant humor. + +"Not a bit of it," was his confident reply. "I had a horse that was +_crazy_--would run away on any old provocation. But no matter how busy +he was at kicking up the dust and the dashboard, you could always halt +him by ringing a bell once. He'd been in the street-car service. That's +the way it is with men, especially strong men, that have been broken to +the bell. They hear it ring and they can't resist. Go up and ring the +bell." + +"Go ring it yourself," said I. + +"You're the bell," said he. + + + + +XXXI + +HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD + + +At a little after eight the following night, I was in Chicago, was +knocking at Suite L in the Auditorium Hotel; I was hearing sounds from +within that indicated that the dinner was under way. The door swung back +and there stood old Roebuck himself, napkin in hand, his shriveling old +face showing that his dollar sense was taking up the strength which his +other senses were losing. He was saying cordially, "Ah, Croffut, you are +late--" + +Then his dim eyes saw me; he pulled himself up like a train when the +air-brakes are clapped on. + +"They told me at the office that you were at dinner," said I in the tone +of one who has unintentionally blundered. "As I was looking for dinner, +I rather hoped you'd ask me to join you. But I see that--" + +"Come right in," he said smoothly, but gray as a sheep. "You'll find +some old friends of yours. We're taking advantage of the convention of +western manufacturers to have a little reunion." + +I now had a full view of the table. There was a silence that made the +creaking of starched evening shirt-bosoms noisy as those men drew long +stealthy breaths when breathing became imperative. All my "clients" and +Dominick--he at Roebuck's right. At Roebuck's left there was a vacant +chair. "Shall I sit here?" said I easily. + +"That place was reserved--was for--but--" stammered Roebuck. + +"For Granby's ghost?" said I pleasantly. + +His big lips writhed. And as my glance of greeting to these old friends +of mine traveled down one side of the table and up the other, it might +have been setting those faces on fire, so brightly did they flare. It +was hard for me to keep my disgust beneath the surface. Those +"gentlemen" assembled there were among the "leading citizens" of my +state; and Roebuck was famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a king of +commerce and a philanthropist. Yet, every one of those brains was busy +most of its hours with assassin-like plottings--and for what purpose? +For ends so petty, so gross and stupid that it was inconceivable how +intelligence could waste life upon them, not to speak of the utter +depravity and lack of manliness. Liars cheats, bribers; and flaunting +the fruits of infamy as honors, as titles to respect, as gifts from +Almighty God! And here they were, assembled now for silly plottings +against the man whose only offense in their eyes was that he was saving +them from themselves--was preventing them from killing the goose that +would cheerfully keep on laying golden eggs for the privilege of +remaining alive. It was pitiful. It was nauseating. I felt my +degradation in stooping to such company. + +I spoke to Dominick last. To my surprise he squarely returned my gaze. +His eyes were twinkling, as the eyes of a pig seem to be, if you look +straight into its face when it lifts its snout from a full trough. +Presently he could contain the huge volume of his mirth no longer. It +came roaring from him in a great coarse torrent, shaking his vast bulk +and the chair that sustained it, swelling the veins in his face, +resounding through the silent room while the waiters literally stood +aghast. At last he found breath to ejaculate: "Well, I'll be good +and--damned!" + +This gale ripped from the others and whirled away their cloaks of +surface-composure. Naked, they suggested a lot of rats in a +trap--Dominick jeering at them and anticipating the pleasure of watching +me torment them. I choked back the surge of repulsion and said to +Roebuck: "Then where _shall_ I sit?" + +Roebuck looked, almost wildly, toward the foot of the table. He longed +to have me as far from him as possible. Partridge, at the foot of the +table, cried out--in alarm: "Make room for the Senator between you and +Mr. Dominick, Roebuck! He ought to be as near the head of the table as +possible." + +"No matter where Senator Sayler sits, it's the head of the table," said +Roebuck. His commonplace of courtesy indicated, not recovered +self-control, but the cunning of his rampant instinct of +self-preservation--that cunning which men so often exhibit in desperate +straits, thereby winning credit for cool courage. + +"We're a merry company," said I, as we sat. This, with a glance at +Dominick heaving in the subsiding storm of his mirth. My remark set him +off again. I glanced at his place to see if he had abandoned his former +inflexible rule of total abstinence. There stood his invariable pot of +tea. Clearly, it was not drink that enabled him to enjoy a situation +which, as it seemed to me, was fully as unattractive for him as for his +fellows. + +Soon the door opened and in strode Croffut; handsome, picturesque, with +his pose of dashing, brave manhood, which always got the crowds into the +mood for the frenzy his oratory conjured. Croffut seemed to me to put +the climax upon this despicable company--Croffut, one of the great +orators of the party, so adored by the people that, but for our +overwhelming superiority in the state, I should never have dared eject +him from office. Since I ejected him he had not spoken to me. Dominick +looked at him, said in a voice that would have flared even the warm +ashes of manhood into a furious blaze: "Go and shake hands with Senator +Sayler, Croffut, and sit down." + +Croffut advanced, smiling. "I am fit for my company," thought I as I let +him clasp my hand. + +"Better tilt Granby's ghost out of that chair, Croffut," said Dominick, +as the ex-Senator was seating himself. And in his animal exuberance of +delight at his joke and at the whole situation he clapped Roebuck on the +shoulder. + +Roebuck shrank and winced. Moral humiliation he could shed as an +armor-plated turret sheds musket-balls. But a physical humiliation, +especially with spectators, sank in and sank deep. Instantly, alarmed +lest Dominick had seen and understood, he smiled and said: "That's a +vigorous arm of yours, Mr. Dominick." + +"Not bad for a man of sixty," said Dominick. + +I ate because to eat was a necessary part of my pose of absolute +calmness; but I had to force down the food. It seemed to me to embody +the banquet there set before my mental appetite. I found I had no +stomach for that banquet. It takes the coarse palate of youth or the +depraved palate of a more debauched manhood than mine to enjoy such a +feast. Yet, less than a year before, I had enjoyed, had delighted in, a +far less strenuous contest with these mutineers. As I sat holding down +my gorge and acting as if I were at ease, I suddenly wondered what +Elizabeth Crosby would think of me if she could see. And then I saw her, +with a reality of imagining that startled me--it was as if she were in +the doorway; and her eyes lifted to mine in that slow, steady, searching +gaze of hers. + +I suppose, if a soldier thrusting his saber into the bowels of his enemy +on the battle-field were suddenly to see before him his mother or the +good and gentle wife or daughter he loved, he would drop the saber and +fly to hide himself like a murderer. So, I, overwhelmed, said to myself: +"I can not go on! Let these wretches wallow in their own vileness. I +shall not wallow with them. I am no swineherd!" + +As I was debating how to escape and what one of the many other ways of +saving my friends and lieutenants I should adopt, Dominick touched me on +the arm. "A word with you, Senator," said he. + +He glanced at the others as if he were debating whether he should order +them from the table while he talked with me. If he had ordered it, they +would have gone. But restrained, perhaps by his crude though reverent +sense of convention, he rose and led the way over to a corner. + +"I want to tell you, Senator, that as soon as I got on to what this here +push was plottin', I wired you askin' an appointment. You'll find the +telegram at your house when you go home. I don't stand for no foulin'. I +play the game straight. I came because I thought you'd want the party to +be represented at such a getherin'." + +I saw that he had come to the dinner, doubtful whether any enterprise +against me, promising enough for him to risk embarking, could be +launched; as soon as I entered the room he, like the rat when the cat +interrupted the rat-and-mouse convention to discuss belling it, +unceremoniously led the way to safety. But this was not one of those few +occasions on which it is wise to show a man that his lies do not fool +you. "I am glad to hear you say these things, Dominick," said I. "I am +glad you are loyal to the party." + +"You can trust me, Senator," said he earnestly. + +"I can trust your common sense," said I. And I proceeded to grasp this +lucky chance to get away. "I am leaving," I went on, "as soon as the +coffee is served. I shall look to you to send these gentlemen home in a +proper frame of mind toward the party." + +His eyes glistened. Except his growing fortune, nothing delighted him so +much as a chance to "rough-house" his eminently respectable "pals." He +felt toward them that quaint mixture of envy, contempt and a desire to +fight which fills a gamin at sight of a fashionably dressed boy. He put +out his big hand and dampened mine with it. "You can count on me, +Senator," he said gratefully. "I'll trim 'em, comb and tail-feathers." + +"Don't overlook their spurs," said I. + +"They ain't got none," said he, "except those you lend 'em." + +We returned to a table palled by sullen dread--dread of me, anger +against Dominick who, in the courage of his ignorance of the +conventionalities which restrained them, had taken the short, straight +cut to me and peace. And, as veterans in the no-quarter warfare of +ambition, they knew I had granted him peace on no less terms than their +heads. + +They had all, even Roebuck, been drinking freely in the effort to +counteract the depression. But the champagne seemed only to aggravate +their gloom except in the case of young Jamieson. He had just succeeded, +through the death of his father, to the privilege of levying upon the +people of eleven counties by means of trolley franchises which the +legislature had granted his father in perpetuity in return for financial +services to "the party." It is, by the way, an interesting illustration +of the human being's lack of thinking power that a legislature could not +give away a small gold-mine belonging to the public to any man for even +a brief term of years without causing a revolution, but could and does +give away far more valuable privileges to plunder and to tax, and give +them away for ever, without causing any real stir. However--young +Jamieson's liquor, acting upon a mind that had not had enough experience +to appreciate the meaning of the situation, drove him on to insolent +taunts and boasts, addressed to his neighbors but intended for me. I +ignored him and, when the coffee was served, rose to depart. + +Roebuck urged me to stay, followed me to the coat-room, took my coat +away from the servant and helped me with it. "I want to see you the +first thing in the morning, Harvey," said he. + +"I'll call you up, if I have time," said I. + +We came out of the cloak-room, his arm linked in mine, and crossed the +corner of the dining-room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw up his +arm and fluttered his hand in an impertinent gesture of farewell. "So +long, Senator Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We'll teach you +a lesson in how to treat gentlemen." + +The last word--gentlemen--was just clearing his mouth when Dominick's +tea-pot, flung with all the force of the ex-prize-fighter's big muscles +and big body, landed in the midst of his broad white shirt-bosom. And +with the tea-pot Dominick hurled his favorite epithet from his garbage +barrel of language. With a yell Jamieson crashed over backward; his +flying legs, caught by the table, tilted it; his convulsive kicks sent +it over, and half the diners, including Dominick, were floored under it. + +All this in a snap of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the +physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in +civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped +away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that +repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, wholly infuriated brutes. +There is shrewd, sly wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of the +cat changed into a queen and how she sprang from her throne at sight of +a mouse to pursue it on all fours. The best of us are, after all, +animals changed into men by the spell of reason; and in some +circumstances, it doesn't take much of a blow to dissolve that spell. + +For those men in those circumstances, that blow proved sufficient. +Partridge extricated himself, ran round the table and kicked Jamieson in +the head--partly in punishment, perhaps, and because he needed just that +vent for his rage, but chiefly to get credit with me, for he glanced +toward me as he did it. Men, sprawling and squirming side by side on the +floor, lashed out with feet and fists, striking each other and adding to +the wild dishevelment. The candles set fire to the table-cloth and +before the blaze was extinguished burned several in the hair and +mustaches. + +Dominick, roaring with laughter, came to Roebuck and me standing at the +door, both dazed at this magic shift of a "gentlemen's" dinner into a +bear-pit. "Granby's ghost is raisin' hell," said he. + +But I had no impulse to laugh or to gloat. "Good night," said I to +Roebuck and hastened away. + +It was the end of the attempt to mine the foundations of my power. But I +did not neglect its plain warning. As soon as the legislature assembled, +I publicly and strongly advocated the appointment of a joint committee +impartially to investigate all the cities of the state, those ruled by +my own party no less than those ruled by the opposition. The committee +was appointed and did its work so thoroughly that there was a popular +clamor for the taking away of the charters of the cities and for ruling +them from the state capital. It is hardly necessary to say that my +legislature and governor yielded to this clamor. And so the +semi-independent petty princes, the urban bosses, lost their +independence and passed under my control; and the "collections" which +had gone directly to them reached them by way of Woodruff as grants from +my machine, instead of as revenues of their own right. + +Before this securing of my home power was complete, I had my +counter-attack upon the Burbank-Goodrich combine well under way. +Immediately on my return to Fredonia from the disastrous dinner, I sent +for the attorney general of the state, Ferguson. He was an ideal +combination of man and politician. He held to the standards of private +morality as nearly as it is possible for a man in active public life to +hold to them--far more nearly than most men dare or, after they have +become inured, care, to hold. He always maintained with me a firm but +tactful independence; he saw the necessity for the sordid side of +politics, but he was careful personally to keep clear of smutched or +besmutching work. He had as keen an instinct for popularity as a bee has +for blossoms; he knew how to do or to direct unpopular things on dark +nights with a dark lantern, how to do or to direct popular things in +full uniform on a white horse. I have never ordered any man to a task +that was not morally congenial; and I was careful to respect Ferguson's +notion of self-respect. I sent for him now, and outlined my plan--to +bring suits, both civil and criminal, in the Federal courts in the name +of the state, against Roebuck and his associates of the Power Trust. + +When he had heard, he said: "Yes, Mr. Sayler, we can break up the Power +Trust, can cause the indictment and conviction of Mr. Roebuck. I can +prevent the United States Attorney General from playing any of the usual +tricks and defending the men whom the people think he is vigorously +prosecuting. But--" + +"But?" said I encouragingly. + +"Is this on the level? If I undertake these prosecutions, shall I be +allowed to push them _honestly_? Or will there be a private settlement +as soon as Roebuck and his crowd see their danger?" + +"No matter what happens," I replied, "you shall prosecute at least the +civil suits to the end. I give you my word for that." + +He thanked me warmly, for he appreciated that I was bestowing upon him +an enormous opportunity for national fame. + +"And you?" said I. "If you succeed in this prosecution, will you remain +in the public service or will you accept the offers the interests will +make, and remove to New York and become a rich corporation lawyer?" + +He reflected before answering. "That depends," said he. "If _you_ are +going to stay on in control in this state, I shall stick to public life, +for I believe you will let me have what I call a career. But, if you are +going to get out and leave me at the mercy of those fellows, I certainly +shan't stay where they can fool the people into turning on me." + +"I shall stay on," said I; "and after me, there will be +Woodruff--unless, of course, there's some sort of cataclysm." + +"A man must take chances," he answered. "I'll take that chance." + +We called Woodruff into the consultation. Although he was not a lawyer, +he had a talent for taking a situation by the head and tail and +stretching it out and holding it so that every crease and wrinkle in it +could be seen. And this made him valuable at any conference. + +In January we had our big battery loaded, aimed and primed. We unmasked +it, and Ferguson fired. I had expected the other side to act stupidly, +but I had not hoped for such stupidity as they exhibited. Burbank's year +of bathing in presidential flatteries and of fawning on and cringing to +the multi-millionaires and their agents hedging him around, had so +wrought upon him that he had wholly lost his point of view. And he let +his Attorney General pooh-pooh the proceedings,--this in face of the +great popular excitement and enthusiasm. It was not until Roebuck's +lawyers got far enough into the case against him to see his danger that +the administration stopped flying in the teeth of the cyclone of public +sentiment and began to pretend enthusiasm, while secretly plotting the +mistrial of Ferguson's cases. And not until the United States Attorney +General--a vain Goodrich creature whose talents were crippled by his +contempt for "the rabble" and "demagoguery"--not until he had it forced +upon him that Ferguson could not be counter-mined, did they begin to +treat with me for peace. + +I shall not retail the negotiations. The upshot was that I let the +administration drop the criminal cases against Roebuck in return for the +restoration of my power in the national committee of the party to the +smallest ejected postmaster in the farthest state. The civil action was +pressed by Ferguson with all his skill as a lawyer and a +popularity-seeking politician; and he won triumphantly in the Supreme +Court--the lower Federal Court with its Power Trust judge had added to +his triumph by deciding against him. + +Roebuck was, therefore, under the necessity of going through the +customary forms of outward obedience to the Supreme Court's order to him +to dissolve. He had to get at huge expense, and to carry out at huger, a +plan of reorganization. Though he was glad enough to escape thus +lightly, he dissembled his content and grumbled so loudly that Burbank's +fears were roused and arrangements were made to placate him. The scheme +adopted was, I believe, suggested by Vice-President Howard, as shrewd +and cynical a rascal as ever lived in the mire without getting smutch or +splash upon his fine linen of respectability. + +For several years there had been a strong popular demand for a revision +of the tariff. The party had promised to yield, but had put off +redeeming its promise. Now, there arose a necessity for revising the +tariff in the interest of "the interests." Some of the schedules were +too low; others protected articles which the interests wanted as free +raw materials; a few could be abolished without offending any large +interests and with the effect of punishing some small ones that had been +niggard in contributing to the "campaign fund" which maintains the +standing army of political workers and augments it whenever a battle is +on. Accordingly, a revision of the tariff was in progress. To soothe +Roebuck, they gave him a tariff schedule that would enable him to +collect each year more than the total of the extraordinary expenses to +which I had put him. Roebuck "forgave" me; and I really forgave Burbank. + +But I washed my hands of his administration. Not only did I actually +stand aloof but also I disassociated myself from it in the public mind. +When the crash should come, as come it must with such men at the helm, I +wished to be in a position successfully to take full charge for the work +of repair. + + + + +XXXII + +A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR + + +Not until late in the spring of his second year did Burbank find a trace +of gall in his wine. + +From the night of his election parasites and plunderers and agents of +plunderers had imprisoned him in the usual presidential fool's paradise. +The organs of the interests and their Congressional henchmen praised +everything he did; I and my group of Congressmen and my newspapers, as +loyal partizans, bent first of all upon regularity, were silent where we +did not praise also. But the second year of a President's first term is +the beginning of frank, if guarded, criticism of him from his own side. +For it is practically his last year of venturing to exercise any real +official power. The selection of delegates to the party's national +convention, to which a President must submit himself for leave to +re-submit himself to the people, is well under way before the end of +his third year; and direct and active preparations for it must begin +long in advance. + +Late in that second spring Burbank made a tour of the country, to give +the people the pleasure of seeing their great man, to give himself the +pleasure of their admiration, and to help on the Congressional campaign, +the result of which would be the preliminary popular verdict upon his +administration. The thinness of the crowds, the feebleness of the +enthusiasm, the newspaper sneers and flings at that oratory once hailed +as a model of dignity and eloquence--even he could not accept the smooth +explanations of his flatterers. And in November came the party's +memorable overwhelming defeat--reducing our majority in the Senate from +twenty to six, and substituting for our majority of ninety-three in the +House an opposition majority of sixty-seven. + +I talked with him early in January and was amazed that, while he +appreciated the public anger against the party, he still believed +himself personally popular. "There is a lull in prosperity," said he, +"and the people are peevish." Soon, however, by a sort of endosmosis to +which the densest vanity is somewhat subject, the truth began to seep +through and to penetrate into him. + +He became friendlier to me, solicitous toward spring--but he clung none +the less tightly to Goodrich. The full awakening came in his third +summer when the press and the politicians of the party began openly to +discuss the next year's nomination and to speak of him as if he were out +of the running. He was spending the hot months on the Jersey coast, the +flatterers still swarming about him and still assiduous, but their +flatteries falling upon ever deafer ears as his mind rivetted upon the +hair-suspended sword. In early September he invited me to visit him--my +first invitation of that kind in two years and a half. We had three +interviews before he could nerve himself to brush aside the barriers +between him and me. + +"I am about to get together my friends with a view to next year," said +he through an uneasy smile. "What do you think of the prospects?" + +"What do your friends say?" I asked. + +"Oh, of course, I am assured of a renomination--" He paused, and his +look at me made the confident affirmation a dubious question. + +"Yes?" said I. + +"And--don't you think my record has made me strong?" he went on +nervously. + +"Strong--with whom?" said I. + +He was silent. Finally he laid his hand on my knee--we were taking the +air on the ocean drive. "Harvey," he said, "I can count on you?" + +I shook my head. "I shall take no part in the next campaign," I said. "I +shall resign the chairmanship." + +"But I have selected you as my chairman. I have insisted on you. I can't +trust any one else. I need others, I use others, but I trust only you." + +I shook my head. "I shall resign," I repeated. "What's the matter--won't +Goodrich take the place?" + +He looked away. "I have not seriously thought of any one but you," he +said reproachfully. + +I happened to know that the place had been offered to Goodrich and that +he had declined it, protesting that I, a Western man, must not be +disturbed when the West was vital to the party's success. "My resolution +is fixed," said I. + +A long silence, then: "Sayler, have you heard anything of an attempt to +defeat me for the nomination?" + +"Goodrich has decided to nominate Governor Ridgeway of Illinois," said +I. + +He blanched and had to moisten his dry, wrinkled lips several times +before he could speak. "A report of that nature reached me last +Thursday," he went on. "For some time I have been perplexed by the +Ridgeway talk in many of our organs. I have questioned Goodrich about +it--and--I must say--his explanations are not--not wholly satisfactory." + +I glanced at him and had instantly to glance away, so plainly was I +showing my pity. He was not hiding himself from me now. He looked old +and tired and sick--not mere sickness of body, but that mortal sickness +of the mind and heart which kills a man, often years before his body +dies. + +"I have come to the conclusion that you were right about Goodrich, +Sayler. I am glad that I took your advice and never trusted him. I think +you and I together will be too strong for him." + +"You are going to seek a renomination?" I asked. + +He looked at me in genuine astonishment. "It is impossible that the +party should refuse me," he said. + +I was silent. + +"Be frank with me, Sayler," he exclaimed at last. "Be frank. Be my +friend, your own old self." + +"As frank and as friendly as you have been?" said I, rather to remind +myself than to reproach him. For I was afraid of the reviving feeling of +former years--the liking for his personal charms and virtues, the +forbearance toward that weakness which he could no more change than he +could change the color of his eyes. His moral descent had put no clear +markings upon his pose. On the contrary, he had grown in dignity through +the custom of deference. The people passing us looked admiration at him, +had a new sense of the elevation of the presidential office. Often it +takes the trained and searching eye to detect in the majestic façade the +evidences that the palace has degenerated into a rookery for pariahs. + +"I have done what I thought for the best," he answered, never more +direct and manly in manner. "I have always been afraid, been on guard, +lest my personal fondness for you should betray me into yielding to you +when I ought not. Perhaps I have erred at times, have leaned backward in +my anxiety to be fair. But I had and have no fear of your not +understanding. Our friendship is too long established, too +well-founded." And I do not doubt that he believed himself; the capacity +for self-deception is rarely short of the demands upon it. + +"It's unfortunate--" I began. I was going to say it was unfortunate that +no such anxieties had ever restrained him from yielding to Goodrich. But +I hadn't the heart. Instead, I finished my sentence with: "However, it's +idle to hold a post-mortem on this case. The cause of death is +unimportant. The fact of it is sufficient. No doubt you did the best you +could, Mr. President." + +My manner was that of finality. It forbade further discussion. He +abandoned the finesse of negotiation. + +"Harvey, I ask you, as a personal favor, to help me through this +crisis," he said. "I ask you, my friend and my dead wife's friend." + +No depth too low, no sentiment too sacred! Anger whirled up in me +against this miserable, short-sighted self-seeker who had brought to a +climax of spoliation my plans to guide the strong in developing the +resources of the country. And I turned upon him, intending to overwhelm +him with the truth about his treachery, about his attempts to destroy +me. For I was now safe from his and Goodrich's vengeance--they had +destroyed themselves with the people and with the party. But a glance at +him and--how could I strike a man stretched in agony upon his deathbed? +"If I could help you, I would," said I. + +"You--you and I together can get a convention that will nominate me," he +urged, hope and fear jostling each other to look pleadingly at me from +his eyes. + +"Possibly," I said. "But--of what use would that be?" + +He sank back in the carriage, yellow-white and with trembling hands and +eyelids. "Then you don't think I could be elected?" he asked in a +broken, breathless way. + +For answer I could only shake my head. "No matter who is the nominee," I +went on after a moment, "our party can't win." I half-yielded to the +impulse of sentimentality and turned to him appealingly. "James," said +I, "why don't you--right away--before the country sees you are to be +denied a renomination--publicly announce that you won't take it in any +circumstances? Why don't you devote the rest of your term to regaining +your lost--popularity? Every day has its throngs of opportunities for +the man in the White House. Break boldly and openly with Goodrich and +his crowd." + +I saw and read the change in his face. My advice about the nomination +straightway closed his mind against me; at the mention of Goodrich, his +old notion of my jealousy revived. And I saw, too, that contact with and +use of and subservience to corruption had so corrupted him that he no +longer had any faith in any method not corrupt. All in an instant I +realized the full folly of what I was doing. I felt confident that by +pursuing the line I had indicated he could so change the situation in +the next few months that he would make it impossible for them to refuse +to renominate him, might make it possible for him to be elected. But +even if he had the wisdom to listen, where would he get the courage and +the steadfastness to act? I gave him up finally and for ever. + +A man may lose his own character and still survive, and even go far. But +if he lose belief in character as a force, he is damned. He could not +survive in a community of scoundrels. + +Burbank sat motionless and with closed eyes, for a long time. I watched +the people in the throng of carriages--hundreds of faces all turned +toward him, all showing that mingled admiration, envy and awe which +humanity gives its exalted great. "The President! The President!" I +heard every few yards in excited undertones. And hats were lifting, and +once a crowd of enthusiastic partizans raised a cheer. + +"The President!" I thought, with mournful irony. And I glanced at him. + +Suddenly he was transformed by an expression the most frightful I have +ever seen. It was the look of a despairing, weak, vicious thing, +cornered, giving battle for its life--like a fox at bay before a pack of +huge dogs. It was not Burbank--no, _he_ was wholly unlike that. It was +Burbank's ambition, interrupted at its meal by the relentless, +sure-aiming hunter, Fate. + +"For God's sake, Burbank!" I exclaimed. "All these people are watching +us." + +"To hell with them!" he ground out. "I tell you, Sayler, I _will_ be +nominated! And elected too, by God! I will not be thrown aside like an +emptied orange-skin. I will show them that I am President." + +Those words, said by some men, in some tones, would have thrilled me. +Said by him and in that tone and with that look, they made me shudder +and shrink. Neither of us spoke again. When he dropped me at my hotel we +touched hands and smiled formally for appearances before the gaping, +peeping, peering crowd. And as he drove away, how they cheered him--the +man risen high above eighty millions, alone on the mountain-peak, in the +glorious sunshine of success. The President! + +The next seven months were months of turmoil in the party and in the +country--a turmoil of which I was a silent spectator, conspicuous by my +silence. Burbank, the deepest passions of his nature rampant, had burst +through the meshes of partizanship and the meshes of social and personal +intimacies in which he, as a "good party man" and as the father of +children with social aspirations and as the worshiper of wealth and +respectability, was entangled and bound down; with the desperate courage +that comes from fear of destruction, he was trying to save himself. + +But his only available instruments were all either Goodrich men or other +kinds of machine-men; they owed nothing to him, they had nothing to fear +from him--a falling king is a fallen king. Every project he devised for +striking down his traitor friends and making himself popular was subtly +turned by his Cabinet or by the Senate or by the press or by all three +into something futile and ridiculous or contemptible. It was a complete +demonstration of the silliness of the fiction that the President could +be an autocrat if he chose. Even had Burbank seen through the fawnings +and the flatteries of the traitors round him, and dismissed his Cabinet, +whatever men he might have put into it would not have attached +themselves to his lost cause, but would have used their positions to +ingratiate themselves with the power that had used and exhausted and +discarded him. + +He had the wisdom, or the timidity, to proceed always with caution and +safe legality and so to avoid impeachment and degradation. His chief +attempts were, naturally, upon monopoly; they were slyly balked by his +sly Attorney General, and their failure was called by the press, and was +believed by the people, the cause of the hard times which were just +beginning to be acute. What made him such an easy victim to his +lieutenants was not their craft, but the fact that he had lost his +sense of right and wrong. A man of affairs may not, indeed will not, +always steer by that compass; but he must have it aboard. Without it he +can not know how far off the course he is, or how to get back to it. No +ship ever reached any port except that of failure and disgrace, unless +it, in spite of all its tackings before the cross-winds of practical +life, kept in the main to the compass and to the course. + +His last stagger was--or seemed to be--an attempt to involve us in a war +with Germany. I say "seemed to be" because I hesitate to ascribe a +project as infamous to him, even when unbalanced by despair. The first +ugly despatch he ordered his Goodrich Secretary of State to send, +_somehow_ leaked to the newspapers before it could be put into cipher +for transmission. It was not sent--for from the press of the entire +country rose a clamor against "deliberate provocation of a nation with +which we are, and wish to remain, at peace." He repudiated the despatch +and dismissed the Secretary of State in disgrace to disgrace--the one +stroke in his fight against Goodrich in which he got the advantage. But +that advantage was too small, too doubtful and too late. + +His name was not presented to the convention. + + + + +XXXIII + +A "SPASM OF VIRTUE" + + +I forced upon Goodrich my place as chairman of the national committee +and went abroad with my daughters. We stayed there until Scarborough was +inaugurated. He had got his nomination from a convention of men who +hated and feared him, but who dared not flout the people and fling away +victory; he had got his election because the defections from our ranks +in the doubtful states far outbalanced Goodrich's extensive purchases +there with the huge campaign-fund of the interests. The wheel-horse, +Partizanship, had broken down, and the leader, Plutocracy, could not +draw the chariot to victory alone. + +As soon as the election was over, our people began to cable me to come +home and take charge. But I waited until Woodruff and my other faithful +lieutenants had thoroughly convinced all the officers of the machine how +desperate its plight was, and that I alone could repair and restore, +and that I could do it only if absolute control were given me. When the +ship reached quarantine Woodruff came aboard; and, not having seen him +in many months, I was able to see, and was startled by, the contrast +between the Doc Woodruff I had met on the train more years before than I +cared to cast up, and the United States Senator Woodruff, high in the +councils of the party and high in the esteem of its partizans among the +people. He was saying: "You can have anything you want, Senator," and so +on. But I was thinking of him, of the vicissitudes of politics, of the +unending struggle of the foul stream to purify itself, to sink or to +saturate its mud. For we ought not to forget that if the clear water is +saturated with mud, also the mud is saturated with clear water. + +A week or so after I resumed the chairmanship, Scarborough invited me to +lunch alone with him at the White House. When I had seen him, four years +before, just after his defeat, he was in high spirits and looked a +youth. Now it depressed me, but gave me no surprise, to find him worn, +and overcast by that tragic sadness which canopies every one of the +seats of the mighty. "I fear, Mr. President," said I, "you are finding +the men who will help you to carry out your ideas as rare as I once +warned you they were." + +"Not rare," was his answer, "but hard to get at through the throngs of +Baal-worshipers that have descended upon me and are trying to hedge me +in." + +"Fortunately, you are free from political and social entanglements," +said I, with ironic intent. + +He laughed with only a slightly concealed bitterness. "From political +entanglements--yes," said he. "But not from social toils. Ever since I +have been in national life, my wife and I have held ourselves socially +aloof, because those with whom we would naturally and even inevitably +associate would be precisely those who would some day beset me for +immunities and favors. And how can one hold to a course of any sort of +justice, if doing so means assailing all one's friends and their friends +and relatives? For who are the offenders? They are of the rich, of the +successful, of the clever, of the socially agreeable and charming. And +how can one enforce justice against one's dinner companions--and in +favor of whom? Of the people, voiceless, distant, unknown to one. +Personal friendship on the one side; on the other, an abstraction." + +"I should not class you among those likely to yield many inches to the +social bribe," said I. + +"That is pleasant, but not candid," replied he with his simple +directness. "No man of your experience could fail to know that the +social bribe is the arch-corrupter, the one briber whom it is not in +human nature to resist. But, as I was saying, to my amazement, in spite +of my wife's precautions and mine, I find myself beset--and with what +devilish insidiousness! When I refuse, simply to save myself from +flagrant treachery to my obligations of duty, I find myself seeming, +even to my wife and to myself, churlish and priggish; Pharisaical, in +the loathsome attitude of a moral _poseur_. Common honesty, in presence +of this social bribe, takes on the sneaking seeming of rottenest +hypocrisy. It is indeed hard to get through and to get at the men I want +and need, and must and will have." + +"Impossible," said I. "And if you could get at them, and if the Senate +would let you put them where they seem to you to belong, the temptation +would be too much for them. They too would soon become Baal-worshipers, +the more assiduous for their long abstinence." + +"Some," he admitted, "perhaps most. But at least a few would stand the +test--and just one such would repay and justify all the labor of all the +search. The trouble with you pessimists is that you don't take our +ancestry into account. Man isn't a falling angel, but a rising animal. +So, every impulse toward the decent, every gleam of light, is a +tremendous gain. The wonder isn't the bad but the good, isn't that we +are so imperfect, but that in such a few thousand years we've got so +far--so far _up_. I know you and I have in the main the same +purpose--where is there a man who'd like to think the world the worse +for his having lived? But we work by different means. You believe the +best results can be got through that in man which he has inherited from +the past--by balancing passion against passion, by offsetting appetite +with appetite. I hope for results from that in the man of to-day which +is the seed, the prophecy, of the man who is to be." + +"Your method has had one recent and very striking _apparent_ success," +said I. "But--the spasm of virtue will pass." + +"Certainly," he replied, "and so too will the succeeding spasm of +reaction. Also, your party must improve itself--and mine too--as the +result of this spasm of virtue." + +"For a time," I admitted. "I envy you your courage and hope. But I can't +share in them. You will serve four stormy years; you will retire with +friends less devoted and enemies more bitter; you will be misunderstood, +maligned; and there's only a remote possibility that your vindication +will come before you are too old to be offered a second term. And the +harvest from the best you sow will be ruined in some flood of reaction." + +"No," he answered. "It will be reaped. The evil I do, all evil, passes. +The good will be reaped. Nothing good is lost." + +"And if it is reaped," I rejoined, "the reaping will not come until +long, long after you are a mere name in history." + +Even as I spoke my doubts I was wishing I had kept them to myself; for, +thought I, there's no poorer business than shooting at the beautiful +soaring bird of illusion. But he was looking at me without seeing me. +His expression suggested the throwing open of the blinds hiding a man's +inmost self. + +"If a man," said he absently, "fixes his mind not on making friends or +defeating enemies, not on elections or on history, but just on avoiding +from day to day, from act to act, the condemnation of his own +self-respect--" The blinds closed as suddenly as they had opened--he had +become conscious that some one was looking in. And I was wishing again +that I had kept my doubts to myself; for I now saw that what I had +thought a bright bird of illusion was in fact the lost star which +lighted my own youth. + +Happy the man who, through strength or through luck, guides his whole +life by the star of his youth. Happy, but how rare! + + + + +XXXIV + +"LET US HELP EACH OTHER" + + +In the following September I took my daughters to Elizabeth. She looked +earnestly, first at Frances, tall and slim and fancying herself a woman +grown, then at Ellen, short and round and struggling with the giggling +age. "We shall like each other, I'm sure," was her verdict. "We'll get +on well together." And Frances smiled, and Ellen nodded. They evidently +thought so, too. + +"I want you to teach them your art," said I, when they were gone to +settle themselves and she and I were alone. + +"My art?" + +"The art of being one's self. I am sick of men and women who hide their +real selves behind a pose of what they want others to think them." + +"Most of our troubles come from that, don't they?" + +"All mine did," said I. "I am at the age when the very word age begins +to jar on the ear, and the net result of my years of effort is--I have +convinced other people that I am somebody at the cost of convincing +myself that I am nobody." + +"No, you are master," she said. + +"As a lion-tamer is master of his lions. He gives all his thought to +them, who think only of their appetites. And his whole reward is that +with his life in his hand he can sometimes cow them through a few +worthless little tricks." I looked round the attractive reception-room +of the school. "I wish you'd take _me_ in, too," I ended. + +She flushed a little, then shook her head, her eyes twinkling. "This is +not a reformatory," said she. And we both laughed. + +As I did not speak or look away, but continued to smile at her, she +became uneasy, glanced round as if seeking an avenue of retreat. + +"Yes--I mean just that, Elizabeth," I admitted, and my tone explained +the words. + +She clasped her hands and started up. + +"In me--in every one," I went on, "there's a beast and a man. Just +now--with me--the man is uppermost. And he wants to stay uppermost. +Elizabeth--will you--help him?" + +She lowered her head until I could see only the splendor of her thick +hair, sparkling like black quartz. + +"Will you--dear? Won't you--dear?" + +Suddenly she gave me both her hands. "Let us help each other," she said. +And slowly she lifted her glance to mine; and never before had I felt +the full glory of those eyes, the full melody of that deep voice. + + * * * * * + +And so, I end as I began, as life begins and ends--with a woman. In a +woman's arms we enter life; in a woman's arms we get the courage and +strength to bear it; in a woman's arms we leave it. And as for the span +between--the business, profession, career--how colorless, how +meaningless it would be but for her! + + +THE END + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +PRINCESS MARITZA + +A NOVEL OF RAPID ROMANCE. + +BY PERCY BREBNER + +With Harrison Fisher Illustrations in Color. + +Offers more real entertainment and keen enjoyment than any book since +"Graustark." Full of picturesque life and color and a delightful +love-story. The scene of the story is Wallaria, one of those mythical +kingdoms in Southern Europe. Maritza is the rightful heir to the throne, +but is kept away from her own country. The hero is a young Englishman of +noble family. It is a pleasing book of fiction. Large 12 mo. size. +Handsomely bound in cloth. White coated wrapper, with Harrison Fisher +portrait in colors. Price 75 cents, postpaid. + + * * * * * + +Books by George Barr McCutcheon + +BREWSTER'S MILLIONS + +Mr. Montgomery Brewster is required to spend a million dollars in one +year in order to inherit seven millions. He must be absolutely penniless +at that time, and yet have spent the million in a way that will commend +him as fit to inherit the larger sum. How he does it forms the basis for +one of the most crisp and breezy romances of recent years. + +CASTLE CRANEYCROW + +The story revolves around the abduction of a young American woman and +the adventures created through her rescue. The title is taken from the +name of an old castle on the Continent, the scene of her imprisonment. + +GRAUSTARK: A Story of a Love Behind a Throne. + +This work has been and is to-day one of the most popular works of +fiction of this decade. The meeting of the Princess of Graustark with +the hero, while travelling incognito in this country, his efforts to +find her, his success, the defeat of conspiracies to dethrone her, and +their happy marriage, provide entertainment which every type of reader +will enjoy. + +THE SHERRODS. With illustrations by C. D. Williams + +A novel quite unlike Mr. McCutcheon's previous works in the field of +romantic fiction and yet possessing the charm inseparable from anything +he writes. The scene is laid in Indiana and the theme is best described +in the words, "Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder." + +Each volume handsomely bound in cloth. Large 12 mo. size. Price 75 cents +per volume, postpaid. + + * * * * * + +GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS +52 DUANE STREET :: NEW YORK + +----------------------------------------------------------------------- + +BREWSTER'S MILLIONS + +BY + +GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON + +The hero is a young New Yorker of good parts who, to save an inheritance +of seven millions, starts out to spend a fortune of one million within a +year. An eccentric uncle, ignorant of the earlier legacy, leaves him +seven millions to be delivered at the expiration of a year, on the +condition that at that time he is penniless, and has proven himself a +capable business man, able to manage his own affairs. The problem that +confronts Brewster is to spend his legacy without proving himself either +reckless or dissipated. He has ideas about the disposition of the seven +millions which are not those of the uncle when he tried to supply an +alternative in case the nephew failed him. His adventures in pursuit of +poverty are decidedly of an unusual kind, and his disappointments are +funny in quite a new way. The situation is developed with an immense +amount of humor. + + * * * * * + +OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR: +GRAUSTARK, The Story of a Love behind a Throne. +CASTLE CRANEYCROW. THE SHERRODS. + + * * * * * + +Handsome cloth bound volumes, 75 cents each. + +At all Booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the +Publishers. + + * * * * * + +GROSSET & DUNLAP :: NEW YORK + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Plum Tree, by David Graham Phillips + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLUM TREE *** + +***** This file should be named 20449-8.txt or 20449-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/4/4/20449/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |