The Governor was sitting alone in his private office with an open letter in his hand. He was devoutly and gloomily wishing that some other man was just then in his shoes. The Governor had not devoted a large portion of his life to nursing a desire of that nature, for he was a man in whose soul the flame of self-satisfaction glowed cheeringly; but just now there were reasons, and he deemed them ample, for deploring that he had been made chief executive of his native State.
Had he chosen to take you into his confidence—a thing the Governor would assuredly choose not to do—he would have told you there were greater things in the world than the governorship of that State. He might have suggested a seat in the Senate of the United States as one of those things. It was of the United States Senate his Excellency was thinking as he sat there alone moodily deploring the gubernatorial shoes.
The senior Senator was going to die. He differed therein from his fellows in that he was going to die soon, almost immediately. He had reached the tottering years even at the time of his reelection, and it had never been supposed that his life would outstretch his term. He had been sent back, not for another six years of service, but to hold out the leader of the Boxers, as they called themselves—the younger and unorthodox element of the party in the State, an element growing to dangerous proportions. It was only by returning the aged Senator, whom they held it would be brutal to turn down after a life of service to the party, that the “machine” won the memorable fight of the previous winter.
From the viewpoint of the machine, the Governor was the senior Senator's logical successor. Had it not been for the heavy inroads of the Boxers, his Excellency would even then have been sitting in the Senate Chamber at Washington. It had not been considered safe to nominate the Governor. Had his supporters conceded that the time was at hand for a change, there would have been a general clamour for the leader of the Boxers—Huntington, undeniably the popular man of the State. And so they concocted a beautiful sentiment about “rounding out the veteran's career,” and letting him “die with his boots on”; and through the omnipotence of sentiment, they won.
Down in his heart the venerable Senator was not seeking to die with his boots on. He would have preferred sitting in a large chair before the fire and reading quietly of what other men were doing in the Senate of the United States. But they told him he must sacrifice that wish, for if he retired he would be succeeded by a dangerous man. And the old man, believing them, had gone dutifully back into the arena.
Now it seemed that a power outside man's control was declaring against the well-laid plans of the machine. As the machine saw things, the time was not ripe for the senior Senator to die. He had just entered upon his new term, and the Governor himself had but lately stepped into a second term. They had assumed that the Senator would live on for at least two years, but now they heard that he was likely to die almost at once. His Excellency could not very well name himself for the vacancy, and it seemed dangerous just then to risk a call of the Assembly. They dared not let the Governor appoint a weaker man, even if he would consent to do so, for they would need the best they had to put up against the leader of the Boxers. With the Governor, they believed they could win, but the question of appointing him had suddenly become a knotty one.
The Governor himself was bowed with chagrin. He saw now that he had erred in taking a second term, and he was not the man to enjoy reviewing his mistakes. As he sat there reading and rereading the letter which told him that the work of the senior Senator was almost done, he said to himself that it was easy enough to wrestle with men, but a harder thing to try one's mettle with fate. He spent a gloomy and unprofitable day.
Late in the afternoon a telegram reached the executive office. Styles was coming to town that night, and wanted to see the Governor at the hotel. Things always cleared when Styles came to town; and so, though still unable to foresee the outcome, he brightened at once.
Styles was a railroad man, and rich. People to whom certain things were a sealed book said that it was nice of Mr. Styles to take an interest in politics when he had so many other things on his mind, and that he must be a very public-spirited man. That he took an interest in politics, no one familiar with the affairs of the State would deny. The orthodox papers painted him as a public benefactor, but the Boxers arrayed him with hoofs and horns.
The Governor and Mr. Styles were warm friends. It was said that their friendship dated from mere boyhood, and that the way the two men had held together through all the vicissitudes of life was touching and beautiful—at least, so some people observed. There were others whose eyebrows went up when the Governor and Mr. Styles were mentioned in their Damon and Pythias capacity.
That night, in the public benefactor's room at the hotel, the Governor and his old friend had a long talk. When twelve o'clock came they were still talking; more than that, the Governor was excitedly pacing the floor.
“I tell you, Styles,” he expostulated, “I don't like it! It doesn't put me in a good light. It's too apparent, and I'll suffer for it, sure as fate. Mark my words, we'll all suffer for it!”
Mr. Styles was sitting in an easy attitude before the table. The public benefactor never paced the floor; it did not seem necessary. He smoked in silence for a minute; then raised himself a little in his chair.
“Well, have you anything better to offer?”
“No, I haven't,” replied the Governor, tartly; “but it seems to me you ought to have.”
Styles sank back in his chair and for several minutes more devoted himself to the art of smoking. There were times when this philanthropic dabbler in politics was irritating.
“I think,” he began presently, “that you exaggerate the unpleasant features of the situation. It will cause talk, of course; but isn't it worth it? You say it's unheard of; maybe, but so is the situation, and wasn't there something in the copy-books about meeting new situations with new methods? If you have anything better to offer, produce it; if not, we've got to go ahead with this. And really, I don't see that it's so bad. You have to go South to look after your cotton plantation; you find now that it's going to take more time than you feel you should take from the State; you can't afford to give it up; consequently, you withdraw in favor of the Lieutenant-Governor. We all protest, but you say Berriman is a good man, and the State won't suffer, and you simply can't afford to go on. Well, we can keep the Senator's condition pretty quiet here; and after all, he's sturdy, and may live on to the close of the year. After due deliberation Berriman appoints you. A little talk?—Yes. But it's worth a little talk. It seems to me the thing works out very smoothly.”
When Tom Styles leaned back in his chair and declared a thing worked out very smoothly, that thing was quite likely to go. In three days the Governor went South. When he returned, the newspaper men were startled by the announcement that business considerations which he could not afford to overlook demanded his withdrawal from office. Previous to this time the Lieutenant-Governor and Mr. Styles had met and the result of their meeting was not made a matter of public record.
As the Governor had anticipated, many things were said. Inquiries were made into the venerable Senator's condition—which, the orthodox papers declared, was but another example of the indecency of the Boxer journals. The Governor went to his cotton plantation. The Lieutenant-Governor went into office, and was pronounced a worthy successor to a good executive. The venerable Senator continued to live. As Mr. Styles had predicted, the gossip soon quieted into a friendly hope that the Governor would realise large sums with his cotton.
It was late in the fall when the senior Senator finally succumbed. The day the papers printed the story of his death, they printed speculative editorials on his probable successor. When the bereaved family commented with bitterness on this ill-concealed haste, they were told that it was politics—enterprise—life.
The old man's remains lay in state in the rotunda of the State Capitol, and the building was draped in mourning. Many came and looked upon the quiet face; but far more numerous than those who gathered at his bier to weep were those who assembled in secluded corners to speculate on the wearing of his toga. It was politics—enterprise—life.
Mr. Styles told the Lieutenant-Governor to be deliberate. There was no need of an immediate appointment, he said. And so for a time things went on about the State-house much as usual, save that the absorbing topic was the senatorial situation, and that every one was watching the new chief executive. The retired Governor now spent part of his time in the South, and part at home. The cotton plantation was not demanding all his attention, after all.
It could not be claimed that John Berriman had ever done any great thing. He was not on record as having ever risen grandly to an occasion; but there may have been something in the fact that an occasion admitting of a grand rising had never presented itself. Before he became Lieutenant-Governor, he had served inoffensively in the State Senate for two terms. No one had ever worked very hard for Senator Berriman's vote. He had been put in by the machine, and it had always been assumed that he was machine property.
Berriman himself had never given the matter of his place in the human drama much thought. He had an idea that it was proper for him to vote with his friends, and he always did it. Had he been called a tool, he would have been much ruffled; he merely trusted to the infallibility of the party.
The Boxers did not approach him now concerning the appointment of Huntington. That, of course, was a fixed matter, and they were not young and foolish enough to attempt to change it.
One day the Governor received a telegram from Styles suggesting that he “adjust that matter” immediately. He thought of announcing the appointment that very night, but the newspaper men had all left the building, and as he had promised that they should know of it as soon as it was made, he concluded to wait until the next morning.
Governor Berriman had a brother in town that week, attending a meeting of the State Agricultural Society. Hiram Berriman had a large farm in the southern part of the State. He knew but little of political methods, and had primitive ideas about honesty. There had always been a strong tie between the brothers, despite the fact that Hiram was fifteen years the Governor's senior. They talked of many things that night, and the hour was growing late. They were about to retire when the Governor remarked, a little sleepily:
“Well, to-morrow morning I announce the senatorial appointment.”
“You do, eh?” returned the farmer.
“Yes, there's no need of waiting any longer, and it's getting on to the time the State wants two senators in Washington.”
“Well, I suppose, John,” Hiram said, turning a serious face to his brother, “that you've thought the matter all over, and are sure you are right?”
The Governor threw back his head with a scoffing laugh.
“I guess it didn't require much thought on my part,” he answered carelessly.
“I don't see how you figure that out,” contended Hiram warmly. “You're Governor of the State, and your own boss, ain't you?”
It was the first time in all his life that anyone had squarely confronted John Berriman with the question whether or not he was his own boss, and for some reason it went deep into his soul, and rankled there.
“Now see here, Hiram,” he said at length, “there's no use of your putting on airs and pretending you don't understand this thing. You know well enough it was all fixed before I went in.” The other man looked at him in bewilderment, and the Governor continued brusquely: “The party knew the Senator was going to die, and so the Governor pulled out and I went in just so the thing could be done decently when the time came.”
The old farmer was scratching his head.
“That's it, eh? They got wind the Senator was goin' to die, and so the Governor told that lie about having to go South just so he could step into the dead man's shoes, eh?”
“That's the situation—if you want to put it that way.”
“And now you're going to appoint the Governor?”
“Of course I am; I couldn't do anything else if I wanted to.”
“Why not?”
“Why, look here, Hiram, haven't you any idea of political obligation? It's expected of me.”
“Oh, it is, eh? Did you promise to appoint the Governor?”
“Why, I don't know that I exactly made any promises, but that doesn't make a particle of difference. The understanding was that the Governor was to pull out and I was to go in and appoint him. It's a matter of honour;” and Governor Berriman drew himself up with pride.
The farmer turned a troubled face to the fire.
“I suppose, then,” he said finally, “that you all think the Governor is the best man we have for the United States Senate. I take it that in appointing him, John, you feel sure he will guard the interests of the people before everything else, and that the people—I mean the working people of this State—will always be safe in his hands; do you?”
“Oh, Lord, no, Hiram!” exclaimed the Governor irritably. “I don't think that at all!”
Hiram Berriman's brown face warmed to a dull red.
“You don't?” he cried. “You mean to sit there, John Berriman, and tell me that you don't think the man you're going to put in the United States Senate will be an honest man? What do you mean by saying you're going to put a dishonest man in there to make laws for the people, to watch over them and protect them? If you don't think he's a good man, if you don't think he's the best man the State has”—the old farmer was pounding the table heavily with his huge fist—“if you don't think that, in God's name,why do you appoint him?”
“I wish I could make you understand, Hiram,” said the Governor in an injured voice, “that it's not for me to say.”
“Why ain't it for you to say? Why ain't it, I want to know? Who's running you, your own conscience or some gang of men that's trying to steal from the State? Good God, I wish I had never lived to see the day a brother of mine put a thief in the United States Senate to bamboozle the honest, hard-working people of this State!”
“Hold on, please—that's a little too strong!” flamed the Governor.
“It ain't too strong. If a Senator ain't an honest man, he's a thief; and if he ain't lookin' after the welfare of the people, he's bamboozlin' them, and that's all there is about it. I don't know much about politics, but I ain't lived my life without learning a little about right and wrong, and it's a sorry day we've come to, John Berriman, if right and wrong don't enter into the makin' of a Senator!”
The Governor could think of no fitting response, so he held his peace. This seemed to quiet the irate farmer, and he surveyed his brother intently, and not unkindly.
“You're in a position now, John,” he said, and there was a kind of homely eloquence in his serious voice, “to be a friend to the people. It ain't many of us ever get the chance of doin' a great thing. We work along, and we do the best we can with what comes our way, but most of us don't get the chance to do a thing that's goin' to help thousands of people, and that the whole country's goin' to say was a move for the right. You want to think of that, and when you're thinkin' so much about honour, you don't want to clean forget about honesty. Don't you stick to any foolish notions about bein' faithful to the party; it ain't the party that needs helpin'. No matter how you got where you are, you're Governor of the State right now, John, and your first duty is to the people of this State, not to Tom Styles or anybody else. Just you remember that when you're namin' your Senator in the morning.”
It was long before the Governor retired. He sat there by the fireplace until after the fire had died down, and he was too absorbed to grow cold. He thought of many things. Like the man who had preceded him in office, he wished that some one else was just then encumbered with the gubernatorial shoes.
The next morning there was a heavy feeling in his head which he thought a walk in the bracing air might dispel, so he started on foot for the Statehouse. A light snow was on the ground, and there was something reassuring in the crispness of the morning. It would make a slave feel like a free man to drink in such air, he was thinking. Snatches of his brother's outburst of the night before kept breaking into his consciousness but curiously enough they did not greatly disturb him. He concluded that it was wonderful what a walk in the bracing air could do. From the foot of the hill he looked up at the State-house, for the first time in his experience seeing and thinking about it—not simply taking it for granted. There seemed a nobility about it—in the building itself, and back of that in what it stood for.
As he walked through the corridor to his office he was greeted with cheerful, respectful salutations. His mood let him give the greetings a value they did not have and from that rose a sense of having the trust and goodwill of his fellows.
But upon reaching his desk he found another telegram from Styles. It was imperatively worded and as he read it the briskness and satisfaction went from his bearing. He walked to the window and stood there looking down at the city, and, as it had been in looking ahead at the State-house, he now looked out over the city really seeing and understanding it, not merely taking it for granted. He found himself wondering if many of the people in that city—in that State—looked to their Governor with the old-fashioned trust his brother had shown. His eyes dimmed; he was thinking of the satisfaction it would afford his children, if—long after he had gone—they could tell how a great chance had once come into their father's life, and how he had proved himself a man.
“Will you sign these now, Governor?” asked a voice behind him.
It was his secretary, a man who knew the affairs of the State well, and whom every one seemed to respect.
“Mr. Haines,” he said abruptly, “who do you think is the best man we have for the United States Senate?”
The secretary stepped back, dumfounded; amazed that the question should be put to him, startled at that strange way of putting it. Then he told himself he must be discreet. Like many of the people at the State-house, in his heart Haines was a Boxer.
“Why, I presume,” he ventured, “that the Governor is looked upon as the logical candidate, isn't he?”
“I'm not talking about logical candidates. I want to know who you think is the man who would most conscientiously and creditably represent this State in the Senate of the United States.”
It was so simply spoken that the secretary found himself answering it as simply. “If you put it that way, Governor, Mr. Huntington is the man, of course.”
“You think most of the people feel that way?”
“I know they do.”
“You believe if it were a matter of popular vote, Huntington would be the new Senator?”
“There can be no doubt of that, Governor. I think they all have to admit that. Huntington is the man the people want.”
“That's all, Mr. Haines. I merely wondered what you thought about it.”
Soon after that Governor Berriman rang for a messenger boy and sent a telegram. Then he settled quietly down to routine work. It was about eleven when one of the newspaper men came in.
“Good-morning, Governor,” he said briskly “how's everything to-day?”
“All right, Mr. Markham. I have nothing to tell you to-day, except that I've made the senatorial appointment.”
“Oh,” laughed the reporter excitedly, “that's all, is it?”
“Yes,” replied the Governor, smiling too; “that's all!”
The reporter looked at the clock. “I'll just catch the noon edition,” he said, “if I telephone right away.”
He was moving to the other room when the Governor called to him.
“See here, it seems to me you're a strange newspaper man!”
“How so?”
“Why, I tell you I've made a senatorial appointment—a matter of some slight importance—and you rush off never asking whom I've appointed.”
The reporter gave a forced laugh. He wished the Governor would not detain him with a joke now when every second counted.
“That's right,” he said, with strained pleasantness. “Well, who's the man?”
The Governor raised his head. “Huntington,” he said quietly, and resumed his work.
“What?” gasped the reporter. “What?”
Then he stopped in embarrassment, as if ashamed of being so easily taken in. “Guess you're trying to jolly me a little, aren't you, Governor?”
“Jolly you, Mr. Markham? I'm not given to 'jollying' newspaper reporters. Here's a copy of the telegram I sent this morning, if you are still sceptical. Really, I don't see why you think it so impossible. Don't you consider Mr. Huntington a fit man for the place?”
But for the minute the reporter seemed unable to speak. “May I ask,” he fumbled at last, “why you did it?”
“I had but one motive, Mr. Markham. I thought the matter over and it seemed to me the people should have the man they wanted. I am with them in believing Huntington the best man for the place.” He said it simply, and went quietly back to his work.
For many a long day politicians and papers continued the search for “the motive.” Styles and his crowd saw it as a simple matter of selling out; they knew, of course, that it could be nothing else. After their first rage had subsided, and they saw there was nothing they could do, they wondered, sneeringly, why he did not “fix up a better story.” That was a littletoosimple-minded. Did he think people were fools? And even the men who profited by the situation puzzled their brains for weeks trying to understand it. There was something behind it, of course.
He hated to see the reporter go. With the closing of that door it seemed certain that there was no putting it off any longer.
But even when the man's footsteps were at last sounding on the stairway, he still clung to him.
“Father,” he asked, fretfully, “why do you always talk to those fellows?”
Herman Beckman turned in his chair and stared at his son. Then he laughed. “Now, that's a fine question to come from the honour man of a law school! I hope, Fritz, that your oration to-night is going to have a little more sense in it than that.”
The calling up of his oration made him reach out another clutching hand to the vanished reporter. “But it's farcical, father, to be always interviewed by a paper nobody reads.”
“Nobody—reads?”
“Why, nobody cares anything about theLeader. It's dead.”
Herman Beckman looked at his son sharply; something about him seemed strange. He decided that he was nervous about the commencement programme. Fritz had the one oration.
The boy had opened the drawer of his study table and was fingering some papers he had taken out.
“Sure you know it?” the man asked with affectionate parental anxiety.
“Oh, I know it all right,” Fred answered grimly, and again the father decided that he was nervous about the thing. He wasn't just like himself.
The man walked to the window and stood looking across at the university buildings. Colleges had always meant much to Herman Beckman. The very day Fritz was born he determined that the boy was to go to college. It was good to witness the fulfilment of his dreams. He turned his glance to the comfortable room.
“Pretty decent comfortable sort of place, isn't it, father?” Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning.
It made his father laugh. “Yes, my boy, I should call it decent—and comfortable.” He grew thoughtful after that.
“Pretty different from the place you had, father?”
“Oh—me? My place to study was any place I could find. Sometimes on top of a load of hay, lots of times by the light of the logs. I've studied in some funny places, Fritz.”
“Well, yougotthere, father!” the boy burst out with feeling. “By Jove, there aren't many of themknowthe things you know!”
“I know enough to know what I don't know,” said the old man, a little sadly. “I know enough to know what I missed. I wanted to go to college. No one will ever know how I wanted to! I began to think I'd never feel right about it. But I have a notion that when I sit there to-night listening to you, Fritz, knowing that you're speaking for two hundred boys, half of whose fathers did go to college, I think I'm going to feel better about it then.”
The boy turned away. Something in the kindly words seemed as the cut of a whip across his face.
“Well, Fritz,” his father continued, getting into his coat, “I'll be going downtown. Leave you to put on an extra flourish or two.” He laughed in proud parental fashion. “Anyway, I have some things to see about.”
The boy stood up. “Father, I have something to tell you.” He said it shortly and sharply.
The father stood there, puzzled.
“You won't like my oration to-night, father.”
And still the man did not speak. The words would not have bothered him much—it was the boy's manner.
“In fact, father, you're going to be desperately disappointed in it.”
The dull red was creeping into the man's cheeks. He was one to have little patience with that thing of not doing one's work. “Why am I going to be disappointed? This is no time to shirk! You should—”
“Oh, you'll not complain of the time and thought I've put on it,” the boy broke in with a short, hard laugh. “But, you see, father—you see”—his armour had slipped from him—“it doesn't express—your views.”
“Did I ever say I wanted you to express 'my views'? Did I bring you up to be a mouthpiece of mine? Haven't I told you tothink?” But with a long, sharp glance at his boy anger gave way. “Come, boy”—going over and patting him on the back—“brace up now. You're acting like a seven-year-old girl afraid to speak her first piece,” and his big laugh rang out, eager to reassure.
“You won't see it! You won't believe it! I don't suppose you'll believe it when you hear it!” He turned away, overwhelmed by a sudden realisation of just how difficult was the thing that lay before him.
The man started toward his son, but instead he walked over and sat down at the opposite side of the table, waiting. He was beginning to see that there was something in this which he did not understand.
At last the boy turned to him, fighting back some things, taking on other things. He gazed at the care-worn, rugged face—face of a worker and a dreamer, reading in those lines the story of that life, seeing more clearly than he had ever seen before the beauty and futility of it. Here was the idealist, the man who would give his whole lifetime to a dream he had dreamed. He loved his father very tenderly as he looked at him, read him, then.
“Father,” he asked quietly, “are you satisfied with your life?”
The man simply stared—waiting, seeking his bearings.
“You came to this country when you were nineteen years old—didn't you, father?” The man nodded. “And now you're—it's sixty-one, isn't it?”
Again he nodded.
“You've been in America, then, forty-two years. Father, do you think as much of it now as you did forty-two years ago?”
“I don't know what you mean,” the man said, searching his son's quiet, passionate face. “I can't make you out, Fritz.”
“My favourite story as a kid,” the boy went on, “was to hear you tell of how you felt when your boat came sailing into New York Harbour, and you saw the first outlines of a country you had dreamed about all through your boyhood, which you had saved pennies for, worked nights for, ever since you were old enough to know the meaning of America. I mean,” he corrected, significantly, “the meaning of what you thought was America.
“It's a bully story, father,” he continued, with a smile at once tender and hard; “the simple German boy, born a dreamer, standing there looking out at the dim shores of that land he had idealised. If ever a man came to America bringing it rich gifts, that man was you!”
“Fritz,” his father's voice was rendered harsh by mystification and foreboding, “tell me what you're talking about. Come to the point. Clear this up.”
“I'm talking about American politics—your party—having ruined your life! I'm talking about working like a slave all your days and having nothing but a mortgaged farm at sixty-one! I'm talking about playing a losing game! I'm saying,What's the use?Father, I'm telling you thatI'mgoing to join the other party and make some money!”
The man just sat there, staring.
“Well,” the boy took it up defiantly, “why not?”
And then he moved, laid a not quite steady hand out upon the table. “My boy, you're not well. You've studied too hard. Now brace yourself up for to-night, and then we'll go down home and fix you up. What you need, Fritz,” he said, trying to laugh, “is the hayfield.”
“You're notseeingit!” The boy pushed back his chair and began moving about the room. “The only way I can brace myself up for to-night is to get so mad—father, usually you see things so easily! Don't you understand? It was my chance, my one moment, my time to strike. It will be years before I get such a hearing again. You see, father, the thing will be printed, and the men I want to have hear it, the men whoown this State, will be there. One of them is to preside. And the story of it, the worth of it, to them, is that I'm your son. You see, after all,” he seized at this wildly, “I'm getting my start on the fact that I'm your son.”
“Go on,” said the man; the brown of his wind-beaten face had yielded to a tinge of grey. “Just what is it you are going to say?”
“I call it 'The New America,' a lot of this talk about doing things, the glory of industrial America, the true Americans the men of constructive genius, the patriotism of railroad and factory building, a eulogy of railroad officials and corporation presidents,” he rushed on with a laugh. “Singing the song of Capital. Father, can't you seewhy?”
The old man had risen. “Tell me this,” he said. “None of it matters much, if you just tell me this: Youbelievethese things? You've thought it all out for yourself—and youfeelthat way? You're honest, aren't you, Fritz?” He put that last in a whisper.
The boy made no reply; after a minute the man sank back to his chair. The years seemed coming to him with the minutes.
Fred was leaning against the wall. “Father,” he said at last, “I hope you'll let me be a little roundabout. It's only fair to me to let me ramble on a little. I've got to put it all right before you or—or—You know, dad,”—he came back to his place by the table, “the first thing I remember very clearly is those men, your party managers, coming down to the farm one time and asking you to run for Governor. How many times is it you've run for Governor, father?” He put the question slowly.
“Five,” said the man heavily.
“I don't know which time this was; but you didn't want to. You were sorry when you saw them coming. I heard some of the talk. You talked about your farm, what you wanted to do that summer, how you couldn't afford the time or the money. They argued that you owed it to the party—they always got you there; how no other man could hold down majorities as you could—a man like you giving the best years of his life to holding down majorities! They said you were the one man against whom no personal attack could be made. And when there was so much to fight, anyway—oh, I know that speech by heart! They've made great capital of your honesty and your clean life. In fact, they've held that up as a curtain behind which a great many things could go on. Oh,youdidn't know about them; you were out in front of the curtain, but I haven't lived in this town without finding out that they needed your integrity and your clean record pretty bad!
“That was out on the side porch. Mother had brought out some buttermilk, and they drank it while they talked. You put up a good fight. Your time was money to you at that time of year; a man shouldn't neglect his farm—but you never yet could hold out against that 'needing-you' kind of talk. They knew there was no chance for your election. You knew it. But it takes a man of just your grit to put any snap into a hopeless campaign.
“Mother cried when you went to drive them back to town. You see, I remember all those things. She told about how hard you would work, and how it would do no good—that the State belonged to the other party. She talked about the farm, too, and the addition she had wanted for the house, and how now she wouldn't have it. Mother felt pretty bad that night. She's gone through a lot of those times.”
There was a silence.
“You were away a lot that summer, and all fall. You looked pretty well used up when you came home, but you said that you had held down majorities splendidly.”
Again there was silence. It was the silences that seemed to be saying the most.
“You had one term in Congress—that's the only thing you ever had. Then you did so much that they concentrated in your district and saw to it that you never got back. Julius Caesar couldn't have been elected again,” he laughed harshly.
“Father,” the boy went on, after a pause, “you asked me if I were honest. There are two kinds of honesty. The primitive kind—like yours—and then the kind you develop for yourself. Do I believe the things I'm going to say to-night? No—not now. But I'll believe them more after I've heard the applause I'm sure to get. I'll believe them still more after I've had my first case thrown to me by our railroad friends who own this State. More and more after I've said them over in campaigning next fall, and pretty soon I'll be so sure I believe them that I really will believe them—and that,” he concluded, flippantly, “is the new brand of American honesty. Why, any smart man can persuade himself he's not a hypocrite!”
“MyGod!” it wrenched from the man. “This?If you'd stolen money—killed a man—but hypocrisy, cant—the very thing I've fought hardest, hated most! You lived all your life with me to learnthis?”
“I lived all my life with you to learn what pays, and what doesn't. I lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of success.”
“I never was sure I was a failure until this hour.”
“Father! Can't you see—”
“Oh, don'ttalkto me!” cried the old man, rising, reaching out his fist as though he would strike him. “Son of mine sitting there telling me he is fixing up a brand of honesty for himself!”
The boy grew quieter as self-restraint left his father. “I mean that—just that,” he said at last. “Let a man either give or get. If he gives, let it be to the real thing. There are two Americas. The America of you dreamers—and then the real America. Yours is an idea—an idea quite as much as an ideal. I don't think you have the slightest comprehension of how far apart it is from the real America. The people who dream of it over in Europe are a great deal nearer it than you people who work for it here. Father, the spirit of this country flows in a strong, swift, resistless current. You never got into it at all. Your kind of idealists influence it about as much—about as much as red lights burned on the banks of the great river would influence the current of that river. You're notofit. You came here, throbbing with the love for America; and with your ideal America you've fought the real, and you've worked and you've believed and you've sacrificed. Father,what's the use?In this State, anyway, it's hopeless. It has been so through your lifetime; it will be through mine.”
The man sat looking at him. He felt that he should say something, but the words did not come—held back, perhaps, by a sense of their uselessness. It was not so much what Fred said as it was the look in his eyes as he said it. There was nothing impetuous or youthful about that look, nothing to be laughed at or argued away. He had always felt that Fred had a mind which saw things straight, saw them in their right relations, and at that moment he had no words to plead for what Fred called the America of the dreamers.
“I'm of the second generation, dad,” the boy went on, at length, “and the second generation has an ideal of its own, and that ideal is Success. It took us these forty years to come to understand the spirit of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and opportunity and success—and that's getting Americanised. Now, father,” he sought refuge in the tone of every-day things, “you'll get used to it—won't you? I don't expect you to feel very good about it, but you aren't going to be broken up about it—are you? After all, father,” laughing and moving about as if to break the seriousness of things, “there's nothing criminal about being one of the other fellows—is there? Just remember that therearefolks who even think it's respectable!” The father had risen and picked up his hat. “No, Fred,” he said, with a sadness in which there was great dignity, “there is nothing criminal in it if a man's conviction sends him that way. But to me there is something—something too sad for words in a man's selling his own soul.”
“Father! How extravagant!Whyis it selling one's soul to sit down and figure out what's the best thing to do?” He hesitated, hating to add hurt to hurt, not wanting to say that his father's fight should have been with the revolutionists, that his life was ineffective because, seeing his dream from within a dream, his thinking had been muddled. He only said: “As I say, father, it's a question of giving or getting. I couldn't even give in your way. And I've seen enough of giving to want a taste of getting. I want to make things go—and I see my chance. Why father,” he laughed, trying to turn it, “there's nothing so American as wanting to make thingsgo.”
He looked at him for a long minute. “My boy,” he said, “I fear you are becoming so American that I am losing you.”
“Father,” the boy pleaded, affectionately, “now don't—”
The old man held up his hand. “You've tried to make me understand it,” he said, “and succeeded. You can't complain of the way you've succeeded. I don't know why I don't argue with you—plead; there are things I could say—should say, perhaps—but something assures me it would be useless. I feel a good many years older than I did when I came into this room, but the reason for it is not that you're joining the other party. You know what I think of the men who control this State, the men with whom you desire to cast your lot, but I trust the years I've spent fighting them haven't made a bigot of me. It's not joining their party—it'susingit—makes this the hardest thing I've been called upon to meet.”
“Father, don't look like that! How do you think I am going to get up and speak tonight withthatface before me?”
“You didn't think, did you,” the man laughed bitterly, “that I would inspire you to your effort?”
The boy stood looking at his father, a strange new fire in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, quietly, tenderly, “you will inspire me. When I get up before those men tonight I'm going to see the picture of that boy straining for his first glimpse of New York Harbour. I'm going to think for just a minute of the things that boy brought with him—things he has never lost. And then I'll see you as you stand here now—-it will be enough. What I need to do is to get mad. If I falter I'll just think of some of those times when you came home from your campaigns—how you looked—what you said. It will bring the inspiration. Father, I figure it out like this. We're going to get it back. We're going to get what's coming to us. There's another America than the America of you dreamers. To yours you have given; from mine I will get. And the irony of it—don't think I don't see the irony of it—is that I will be called the real American. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make the railroads of this State—oh, it sounds like schoolboy talk, but just give me a little time—I'm going to make the railroads of this State pay off every cent of that mortgage on your farm! Father,” he finished, impetuously, in a last appeal, “you're broken up now, disappointed, but would you honestly want me to travel the road you've traveled?”
“My boy,” answered the old man, and the tears came with it, “I wanted you to travel the road of an honest man.”
Herman Beckman did not go to the commencement exercises that night. There was no train home until morning, so he had the night to spend in town. He was alone, for his friends assumed that he would be out at the university. But he preferred being alone.
He sat in his room at the hotel, reading. And he could read. Years of discipline stood him in good stead now. His life had taught him to read anywhere, at any time. He had never permitted himself the luxury of not being “in the mood.” It was only the men who had gone to college who could do that. Hehadto read. He always carried some little book with him, for how did a man know that he might not have to wait an hour for a train somewhere? The man had a simple-minded veneration for knowledge. He wanted to know about things. And he had never learned to pretend that he didn't want to know. He quite lacked the modern art of flippancy. He believed in great books.
And so on the night that his son was being graduated from college he sat in his room at the hotel—cheap room in a mediocre hotel; he had never learned to feel at home in the rich ones—reading Marcus Aurelius. But his hand as he turned the pages trembled as the hand of a very old man. At midnight some reporters came in to ask him what he thought of his son's oration. They wanted a statement from him.
He told them that he had never believed the sins of a parent should be visited on a child, and that it was even so with the thought. He had always contended that a man should do his own thinking. The contention applied to his son.
“Gamey old brute!” was what one of the reporters said in the elevator.
He could not read Marcus Aurelius after that. He went to bed, but he did not sleep. Many things passed before him. His anticipations, his dreams for Fritz, had brought the warmest pleasure of his stern, unrelaxing life. There was a great emptiness tonight. What was a man to turn to, think about, when he seemed stripped, not only of the future, but of the past? He seemed called upon to readjust the whole of his life, giving up that which he had held dearest. What was left? Daylight found him turning it over and over.
In the morning he went home. He got away without seeing any of his friends.
He did not try to read this morning; somehow it seemed there was no use in trying to read any more. He watched the country through which they were passing, thinking of the hundreds of times he had ridden over it in campaigning. He wondered, vaguely, just how much money he had spent on railroad fare—he had never accepted mileage. Fred's “What's the use?” kept ringing in his ears. There was something about that phrase which made one feel very tired and old. It even seemed there was no use looking out to see how the crops were getting on.What's the use? What's the use?Was that a phrase one learned in college?
There had been two things to tell “mother” that night. The first was that he had stopped in town and told Claus Hansen he could have that south hundred and sixty he had been wanting for two years.
It was not easy to tell the woman who had worked shoulder to shoulder with him for thirty years, the woman who during those years had risen with him in the early morning and worked with him until darkness rescued the weary bodies, that in their old age they must surrender the fruit of their toil. They would have left just what they had started with. They had just held their own.
Coming down on the train he had made up his mind that if Hansen were in town he would tell him that he could have the land. He felt so very tired and old, so bowed down with Fred's “What's the use?” that he saw that he himself would never get the mortgage paid off. And Fred had said something about making the railroads pay it. He did not know just how the boy figured that out—indeed, he was getting a little dazed about the whole thing—but if Fritz had any idea of having the railroads pay off the mortgage onhisfarm—he couldn't forget how the boy looked when he said it, face white, eyes burning—he would see to it right now that there was no chance of that.
He tried not to look at the land as he drove past it on the way home. He wondered just how much campaign literature it had paid for. He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing Claus Hansen putting up his hay over there in that field.
He had felt so badly about telling mother that he told it very bluntly. And because he felt so sorry for her he said not one kind word, but just sat quiet, looking the other way.
She was clearing off the table. He heard her scraping out the potato dish with great care. Then she was coming over to him. She came awkwardly, hesitatingly—her life had not schooled her in meeting emotional moments beautifully—but she laid her hand upon him, patted him on the shoulder as one would a child. “Never mind, papa—never you mind. It will make it easier for us. There's enough left—and it will make it easier. We're getting on—we're—” There she broke off abruptly into a vigorous scolding of the dog, who was lifting covetous nostrils to a piece of meat.
That was all. And there was no woman in the country had worked harder. And Martha was ambitious; she liked land, and she did not like Claus Hansen's wife.
Yes, he had had a good wife.
Then there was that other thing to tell her—about Fritz. That was harder.
Mother had not gone up to the city to hear Fritz “speak” because her feet were bothering her, and she could not wear her shoes. He had had a vague idea of how disappointed she was, though she had said very little about it. Martha never had been one to say much about things. When he came back, of course she had wanted to know all about it, and he had put her off. Now he had to tell her.
It was much harder; and in the telling of it he broke down.
This time she did not come over and pat his shoulder. Perhaps Martha knew—likely she had never heard the word intuition, but, anyway, she knew—that it was beyond that.
It seemed difficult for her to comprehend. She was bewildered to find that Fritz could change parties all in a minute. She seemed to grasp, first of all, that it was disrespectful to his father. Some boys at school had been putting notions into his head.
But gradually she began to see it. Fritz wanted to make money. Fritz wanted to have it easier. And the other people did “have it easier.”
It divided her feeling: sorry and indignant for the father, secretly glad and relieved for the boy. “He will have it easier than we had it, papa,” she said at the last. “But it was not right of Fritz,” she concluded, vaguely but severely.
As she washed the dishes Martha was thinking that likely Fritz's wife would have a hired girl.
Then Martha went up to bed. He said that he would come in a few minutes, but many minutes went by while he sat out on the side porch trying to think it out.
The moon was shining brightly down on that hundred and sixty which Claus Hansen was to have. And the moon, too, seemed to be saying: “What's the use?”
Well, whatwasthe use? Perhaps, after all, the boy was right. What had it all amounted to? What was there left? What had he done?
Two Americas, Fred had said, and his but the America of the dreamers. He had always thought that he was fighting for the real. And now Fred said that he had never become an American at all.
From the time he was twelve years old he had wanted to be an American. A queer old man back in the German village—an old man, he recalled strangely now, who had never been in America—told him about it. He told how all men were brothers in America, how the poor and the rich loved each other—indeed, how there were no poor and rich at all, but the same chance for every man who would work. He told about the marvellous resources of that distant America—gold in the earth, which men were free to go and get, hundreds upon hundreds of miles of untouched forests and great rivers—all for men to use, great cities no older than the men who were in them, which men at that present moment weremaking—every man his equal chance. He told of rich land which a man could have for nothing, which would behis, if he would but go and work upon it. In the heart of the little German boy there was kindled then a fire which the years had never put out. His cheeks grew red, his eyes bright and very deep as he listened to the story. He went home that night and dreamed of going to America. And through the years of his boyhood, penny by penny, he saved his money for America. It was his dream. It was the passion of his life. More plainly than the events of yesterday, he remembered his first glimpse of those wonderful shores—the lump in his throat, the passionate excitement, the uplift. Leaning over the railing of his boat, staring, searching, penetrating, worshipping, he lifted up his heart and sent out his pledge of allegiance to the new land. How he would love America, work for it, be true to it!
He had three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket when he stepped upon American soil. He wondered if any man had ever felt richer. For had he not reached the land where there was an equal chance for every man who would work, where men loved each other as brothers, and where the earth itself was so rich and so gracious in its offerings?
The old man crossed one leg over the other—slowly, stiffly. It made him tired and stiff now just to think of the work he had done between that day and this.
But there was something which he had always had—that something washisAmerica. That had never wavered, though he soon learned that between it and realities were many things which were wrong and unfortunate. With the whole force and passion of his nature, with all his single mindedness—would some call it simple mindedness?—he threw himself into the fight against those things which were blurring men's vision of his America. No work, no sacrifice was too great, for America had enemies who called themselves friends, men who were striking heavy blows at that equal chance for every man. When he failed, it was because he did not know enough; he must work, he must study, he must think, in order to make more real to other men the America which was in his heart. He must fight for it because it was his.
And now it seemed that the end had come; he was old, he was tired, he was not sure. Claus Hansen would have his land and his son would join hands with the things which he had spent his life in fighting. And far deeper and sadder and more bitter than that, he had not transmitted the America of his heart even to his own son. He was not leaving someone to fight for it in his stead, to win where he had failed. Fred saw in it but a place for gain. “I lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of success.” That was what he had given to his boy. Yes, that was what he had bequeathed to America. Could the failure, the futility of his life be more clearly revealed?
Twice Martha had called to him, but still he sat, smoking, thinking. There was much to think about to-night.
Finally, it was not thought, but visions. Too tired for conscious thinking, he gave himself up to what came—Fred's America, his America, the America of the dreamers—and the things which stood between. The America of the future—-what would that America be?
At the last, taking form from many things which came and went, shaping itself slowly, form giving place to new form, he seemed to see it grow. Out beyond that land Claus Hansen was to have, a long way off, there rose the vision of the America of the future—an America of realities, and yet an America of dreams; for the dreamers had become the realists—-or was it that the realists had become dreamers? In the manifold forms taken on and cast aside destroying dualism had made way for the strength and the dignity and harmony of unity. He watched it as breathlessly, as yearningly, as the nineteen-year-old boy had watched the other America taking shape in the distance some forty years before. “How did you come?” he whispered. “What are you?”
And the voice of that real America seemed to answer: “I came because for a long-enough time there were enough men who held me in their hearts. I came because there were men who never gave me up. I was won by men who believed that they had failed.”
Again there was a lump in his throat—once more an exultation flooded all his being. For to the old man—tired, stiff, smitten though he had been, there came again that same uplift which long before had come to the boy. Was there not here an answer to “What's the use?” For he would leave America as he came to it—loving it, believing in it. What were the work and the failure of a lifetime when there was something in his heart which was his? Should he say that he had fought in vain when he had kept it for himself? It was as real, as wonderful—yes as inevitable, as it had been forty years before. Realities had taken his land, his career, his hopes for the boy. But realities had not stripped him of his dream. The futility of the years could not harm the things which were in his heart. Even in America he had not lost His America.
“Perhaps it is then that it is like that,” he murmured, his vision carrying him back to the days of his broken English. “Perhaps it is that every man's America is in the inside of his own heart. Perhaps it is that it will come when it has grown big—big and very strong—in the hearts.”