IXTO 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 againstmeand for Schoolcraft? What has he done for you?"
"And what haveyoudone 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 ourimpulses 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-Croffutmen 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 powerplusability.
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 ofhisChamber 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 sawsigns 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. Thenthere 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 keptmy 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 supplyme 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 itwould 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.
XTHE 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 inAlice 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 cannot 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.
I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBY p. 141I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBYp. 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 shrugat 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.
XIBURBANK
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 toWashington 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 sotimid 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—lookslike a President, that sort of—solemn—no-sense-of-humor,Sundaylook,—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 wordsmade 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 bothprivately 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. Hemustbe 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 transmittedthem 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 infull 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 anxiousthought 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 tenthat 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 knowwhatto think, Sayler," hecried, "I don'tknowwhat 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. "Haveyoulaid 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 forwardand 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 somay 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,—ifthey 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."