XXIAN INTERLUDE
My nerves began to feel as if some one were gently sliding his fingers along their bared length—not a pain, but as fear-inspiring as the sound of the stealthy creep of the assassin moving up behind to strike a sudden and mortal blow. I dismissed business and politics and went cruising on the lakes with restful, non-political Fred Sandys.
After we had been knocking about perhaps a week, we landed one noon at the private pier of the Liscombes to lunch with them. As Sandys and I strolled toward the front of the house, several people, also guests for lunch, were just descending from a long buckboard. At sight of one of them I stopped short inside, though I mechanically continued to walk toward her. I recognized her instantly—the curve of her shoulders, the poise of her head, and her waving jet-black hair to confirm. And without the slightest warning there came tumbling and roaring up in me a torrentof longings, regrets; and I suddenly had a clear understanding of my absorption in this wretched game I had been playing year in and year out with hardly a glance up from the table. That wretched game with its counterfeit stakes; and the more a man wins, the poorer he is.
She seemed calm enough as she faced me. Indeed, I was not sure when she had first caught sight of me, or whether she had recognized me, until Mrs. Liscombe began to introduce us. "Oh, yes," she then interrupted, "I remember Senator Sayler very well. We used to live in the same town. We went to the same school." And with a friendly smile she gave me her hand.
What did I say? I do not know. But I am sure I gave no sign of the clamor within. I had not cultivated surface-calm all those years in vain. I talked, and she talked—but I saw only her face, splendid fulfilment of the promise of girlhood; I hardly heard her words, so greatly was her voice moving me. It was an unusually deep voice for a woman, sweet and with a curious carrying quality that made it seem stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life andhealth—aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was dressed simply, but in the fashion—I heard the other women discussing her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was most fascinating to me—she kept her eyes down while she was talking or listening, and raised them now and then with a full, slow look at you.
When Mrs. Liscombe asked her to come to dinner the next evening with the people she was visiting, she said: "Unfortunately, I must start for Washington in the morning. I am overhauling my school and building an addition."
It had not occurred to me to think where she had come from or how she happened to be there, or of anything in the years since I was last with her. The reminder that she had a school came as a shock—she was so utterly unlike my notion of the head of a school. I think she saw or felt what was in my mind, for she went on, to me: "I've had it six years now—the next will be the seventh."
"Do you like it?" I asked.
"Don't I look like a happy woman?"
"You do," said I, after our eyes had met. "You are."
"There were sixty girls last year—sixty-three," she went on. "Next year there will be more—about a hundred. It's like a garden, and I'm the gardener, busy from morning till night, with no time to think of anything but my plants and flowers."
She had conjured a picture that made my heart ache. I suddenly felt old and sad and lonely—a forlorn failure. "I too am a gardener," said I. "But it's a sorry lot of weeds and thistles that keeps me occupied. And in the midst of the garden is a plum tree—that bears Dead Sea fruit."
She was silent.
"You don't care for politics?" said I.
"No," she replied, and lifted and lowered her eyes in a slow glance that made me wish I had not asked. "It is, I think, gardening with weeds and thistles, as you say." Then, after a pause: "Doyoulike it?"
"Don't ask me," I said with a bitterness that made us both silent thereafter.
That evening I got Fred to land me at the nearest town. The train she must have been on had just gone. In the morning I took the express for the East. Arrived at Washington, I drove straight to her school.
A high iron fence, not obstructing the view from the country road; a long drive under arching maples and beeches; a rambling, fascinating old house upon the crest of a hill; many windows, a pillared porch, a low, very wide doorway. It seemed like her in its dark, cool, odorous beauty.
She herself was in the front hall, directing some workmen. "Why, Senator Sayler, thisisa surprise," she said, advancing to greet me. But there was no suggestion of surprise in her tone or her look, only a friendly welcome to an acquaintance.
She led the way into the drawing-room to the left. The furniture and pictures were in ghostly draperies; everything was in confusion. We went on to a side veranda, seated ourselves. She looked inquiringly at me.
"I do not know why," was my answer. "I only know—I had to come."
She studied me calmly. I remember her look, everything about her—the embroidery on the sleeves and bosom of her blouse, the buckles on her white shoes. I remember also that there was a breeze, and how good it felt to my hot face, to my eyes burning from lack of sleep. At last she said: "Well—what do you think of my little kingdom?"
"It is yours—entirely?"
"House, gardens—everything. I paid the last of my debts in June."
"I'm contrasting it with my own," I said.
"But that isn't fair," she protested with a smile. "You must remember, I'm only a woman."
"With my own," I went on, as if she had not interrupted. "Yours is—yours, honestly got. It makes you proud, happy. Mine—" I did not finish.
She must have seen or felt how profoundly I was moved, for I presently saw her looking at me with an expression I might have resented for its pity from any other than her. "Why do you tellmethis?" she asked.
"There is always for every one," was my answer,"some person to whom he shows himself as he is. You are that person for me because—I'm surrounded by people who care for me for what I can give. Even my children care to a great extent for that reason. It's the penalty for having the power to give the material things all human beings crave. Only two persons ever cared—cared much for me just because I was myself. They were my mother—and you."
She laughed in quiet raillery. "Two have cared for you, but you have cared for only one. And what devotion you have given him!"
"I have cared for my mother—for my children—"
"Yes—your children. I forgot them."
"And—for you."
She made what I thought a movement of impatience.
"For you," I repeated. Then: "Elizabeth, you were right when you wrote that I was a coward."
She rose and stood—near enough to me for me to catch her faint, elusive perfume—and gazed out into the distance.
"In St. Louis the other day," I went on, "Isaw a man who has risen to power greater than I can ever hope to have. And he got it by marching erect in the open."
"Yet you have everything you used to want," she said dreamily.
"Yes—everything. Only to learn how worthless what I wanted was. And for this trash, this dirt, I have given—all I had that was of value."
"All?"
"All," I replied. "Your love and my own self-respect."
"Why do you think you've not been brave?" she asked after a while.
"Because I've won by playing on the weaknesses and fears of men which my own weaknesses and fears enabled me to understand."
"You have done wrong—deliberately?"
"Deliberately."
"But that good might come?"
"So I told myself."
"And good has come? I have heard that figs do grow on thistles."
"Good has come. But, I think, in spite of me, not through me."
"But now that you see," she said, turning her eyes to mine with appeal in them, and something more, I thought, "you will—you will not go on?"
"I don't know. Is there such a thing as remorse without regret?" And then my self-control went and I let her see what I had commanded myself to keep hid: "I only know clearly one thing, Elizabeth—only one thing matters.Youare the whole world to me. You and I could—what could we not do together!"
Her color slowly rose, slowly vanished. "Wasthatwhat you came to tell me?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered, not flinching.
"Thatis the climax of your moralizings?"
"Yes," I answered. "And of my cowardice."
A little icy smile just changed the curve of her lips. "When I was a girl, you won my love—or took it when I gave it to you, if you prefer. And then—you threw it away. For an ambition you weren't brave enough to pursue honorably, you broke my heart."
"Yes," I answered. "But—I loved you."
"And now," she went on, "after your years ofself-indulgence, of getting what you wanted, no matter about the cost, you see me again. You find I have mended my heart, have coaxed a few flowers of happiness to bloom. You find there was something you did not destroy, something you think it will make you happier to destroy."
"Yes," I answered, "I came to try to make you as unhappy as I am. For I love you."
She drew a long breath. "Well," she said evenly, "for the first time in your life you are defeated. I learned the lesson you so thoroughly taught me. And I built the wall round my garden high and strong. You—" she smiled, a little raillery, a little scorn—"you can't break in, Harvey—nor slip in."
"No need," I said. "For Iamin—I've always been in."
Her bosom rose and fell quickly, and her eyes shifted. But that was for an instant only. "If you were as brave as you are bold!" she scoffed.
"If I were as brave without you as I should be with you!" I replied. Then: "But you love as a woman loves—herself first, the man afterward."
"Harvey Sayler denouncing selfishness!"
"Do not sneer," I said. "For—I love you as a man loves. A poor, pale shadow of ideal love, no doubt, but a man's best, Elizabeth."
I saw that she was shaken; but even as I began to thrill with a hope so high that it was giddy with fear, she was once more straight and strong and calm.
"You have come. You have tried. You have failed," she went on after a long pause. And in spite of her efforts, that deep voice of hers was gentle and wonderfully sweet. "Now—you will return to your life, I to mine." And she moved toward the entrance to the drawing-room, I following her. We stood in silence at the front doorway waiting for my carriage to come up. I watched her—maddeningly mistress of herself.
"How can you be so cold!" I cried. "Don't you see, don't you feel, how I, who love you, suffer?"
Without a word she stretched out her beautiful, white hands, long and narrow and capable. In each of the upturned palms were four deep and bloody prints where her nails had been crushing into them.
Before I could lift my eyes to her face she was turning to rejoin her workmen. As I stood uncertain, dazed, she glanced at me with a bright smile. "Good-by again," she called. "A pleasant journey!"
"Thank you," I replied. "Good-by."
Driving toward the road gates, I looked at the house many times, from window to window, everywhere. Not a glimpse of her until I was almost at the road again. Then I saw her back—the graceful white dress, the knot of blue-black hair, the big white hat, and she directing her workmen with her closed white parasol.
XXIIMOSTLY ABOUT MONEY
I went up to New York, to find confusion and gloom at our headquarters there.
Senator Goodrich had subtly given the impression, not only to the workers but also to the newspaper men, who had given it to the public, that with his resignation the Burbank campaign had fallen to pieces. "And I fear you'll have some difficulty in getting any money at all down town," said Revell, the senior Senator from New York state, who envied and hated Goodrich and was therefore, if not for personal reasons, amiably disposed toward me. "They don't like our candidate."
"Naturally," said I. "That's why he's running and that's why he may win."
"Of course, he'll carry everything here in the East. The only doubt was in this state, but I had no difficulty in making a deal with the opposition machine as soon as they had sounded Scarboroughand had found that if he should win, there'd be nothing in it for them—nothing but trouble. I judged he must have thrown them down hard, from their being so sore. How do things look out West?"
"Bad," said I. "Our farmers and workingmen have had lots of idle time these last four years. They've done too much of what they call thinking."
"Then you need money?" asked Revell, lengthening his sly, smug old face.
"We must have four millions, at least. And we must get it from those people down town."
He shook his head.
"I think not," was my careless reply. "When they wake up to the danger in Scarborough's election, the danger to business, especially to their sort of business, they'll give me twice four millions if I ask it."
"What do you wish me to do?"
"Nothing, except look after these eastern states. We'll take care of the West, and also of raising money here for our campaign during October out there."
"Can I be of any service to you in introducing you down town?" he asked.
"No, thank you," said I. "I have a few acquaintances there. I'm not going to fry any fat this trip. My fire isn't hot enough yet."
And I did not. I merely called on two of the big bankers and four heads of industrial combinations and one controller of an ocean-to-ocean railway system. I stayed a very few minutes with each, just long enough to set him thinking and inquiring what the election of Scarborough would mean to him and to his class generally. "If you'll read his speeches," said I to each, "you'll see he intends to destroy your kind of business, that he regards it as brigandage. He's honest, afraid of nothing, and an able lawyer, and he can't be fooled or fooled with. If he's elected he'll carry out his program, Senate or no Senate—and no matter what scares you people cook up in the stock market." To this they made no answer beyond delicately polite insinuations about being tired of paying for that which was theirs of right. I did not argue; it is never necessary to puncture the pretenses of men of affairs with a view to savingthem from falling into the error of forgetting that whatever "right" may mean on Sunday, on week days it means that which a man can compel.
I returned to Fredonia and sent Woodruff East to direct a campaign of calamity-howling in the eastern press, for the benefit of the New York, Boston and Philadelphia "captains of industry." At the end of ten days I recalled him, and sent Roebuck to Wall Street to confirm the fears and alarms Woodruff's campaign had aroused. And in the West I was laying out the money I had been able to collect from the leading men of Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania—except a quarter of a million from Howard of New York, to whom we gave the vice-presidential nomination for that sum, and about half a million more given by several eastern men, to whom we promised cabinet offices and posts abroad. I put all this money, not far from two millions, into our "campaign of education" and into those inpourings of delegations upon Burbank at his "rural retreat."
To attempt to combat Scarborough's popularity with the rank and file of his own party, was hopeless.I contented myself with restoring order and arousing enthusiasm in the main body of our partizans in the doubtful and uneasy states. So ruinous had been Goodrich's management that even at that comparatively simple task we should not have succeeded but for the fortunate fact that the great mass of partizans refuses to hear anything from the other side; they regard reasoning as disloyalty—which, curiously enough, it so often is. Then, too, few newspapers in the doubtful states printed the truth about what Scarborough and his supporters were saying and doing. The cost of this perversion of publicity to us—direct money cost, I mean—was almost nothing. The big papers and news associations were big properties, and their rich proprietors were interested in enterprises to which Scarborough's election meant disaster; a multitude of the smaller papers, normally of the opposition, were dependent upon those same enterprises for the advertising that kept them alive.
Perhaps the most far-sighted—certainly, as the event showed, the most fortunate—single stroke of my campaign was done in Illinois. That statewas vital to our success; also it was one of the doubtful states where, next to his own Indiana, Scarborough's chances were best. I felt that we must put a heavy handicap on his popularity there. I had noticed that in Illinois the violently radical wing of the opposition was very strong. So I sent Merriweather to strengthen the radicals still further. I hoped to make them strong enough to put through their party's state convention a platform that would be a scarecrow to timid voters in Illinois and throughout the West; and I wished for a "wild man" as the candidate for governor, but I didn't hope it, though I told Merriweather it must be done. Curiously enough, my calculation of the probabilities was just reversed. The radicals were beaten on platform; but, thanks to a desperate effort of Merriweather's in "coaxing" rural delegates, a frothing, wild-eyed, political crank got the nomination. And he never spoke during the campaign that he didn't drive voters away from his ticket—and, therefore, from Scarborough. And our machine there sacrificed the local interests to the general by nominating a popular and not insincere reformer.
When Roebuck and I descended upon Wall Street on October sixteenth, three weeks before election, I had everything in readiness for my final and real campaign.
Throughout the doubtful states, Woodruff was in touch with local machine leaders of Scarborough's party, with corruptible labor and fraternal order leaders, with every element that would for a cash price deliver a body of voters on election day. Also he had arranged in those states for the "right sort" of election officers at upward of five hundred polling places, at least half of them places where several hundred votes could be shifted without danger or suspicion. Also, Burbank and our corps of "spellbinders" had succeeded beyond my hopes in rousing partizan passion—but here again part of the credit belongs to Woodruff. Never before had there been so many free barbecues, distributions of free uniforms to well-financed Burbank and Howard Campaign Clubs, and arrangings of those expensive parades in which the average citizen delights. The wise Woodruff spent nearly one-third of my "education" money in this way.
One morning I found him laughing over the bill for a grand Burbank rally at Indianapolis—about thirty-five thousand dollars, as I remember the figures.
"What amuses you?" said I.
"I was thinking what fools the people are, never to ask themselves where all the money for these free shows comes from, and why those who give are willing to give so much, and how they get it back. What an ass the public is!"
"Fortunately," said I.
"For us," said he.
"And for itself," I rejoined.
"Perhaps," he admitted. "It was born to be plucked, and I suppose our crowd does do the plucking more scientifically than less experienced hands would."
"I prefer to put it another way," said I. "Let's say that we save it from a worse plucking."
"Thatisbetter," said Doc. For, on his way up in the world, he was rapidly developing what could, and should, be called conscience.
I looked at him and once more had a qualm like shame before his moral superiority to me.We were plodding along on about the same moral level; but he had ascended to that level, while I had descended to it. There were politicians posing as pure before the world and even in the party's behind-the-scene, who would have sneered at Doc's "conscience." Yet, to my notion, they, who started high and from whatever sophistry of motive trailed down into the mire, are lower far than they who began deep in the mire and have been struggling bravely toward the surface. I know a man who was born in the slums, was a pickpocket at eight years of age, was a boss at forty-five, administering justice according to his lights. I know a man who was born what he calls a gentleman and who, at forty-five, sold himself for the "honors" of a high office. And once, after he had shaken hands with that boss, he looked at me, furtively made a wry face, and wiped his hand with his pocket handkerchief!
The other part of our work of preparation—getting the Wall Street whales in condition for the "fat-frying"—was also finished. The Wall Street Roebuck and I adventured was in a state of quake from fear of the election of "the scourgeof God," as our subsidized socialist and extreme radical papers had dubbed Scarborough—and what invaluable campaign material their praise of him did make for us!
Roebuck and I went from office to office among the great of commerce, industry and finance. We were received with politeness, deferential politeness, everywhere. But not a penny could we get. Everywhere the same answer: "We can not see our way to contributing just yet. But if you will call early next week—say Monday or Tuesday—" four or five days away—"we'll let you know what we can do." The most ardent eagerness to placate us, to keep us in good humor; but not a cent—until Monday or Tuesday.
When I heard "Monday or Tuesday" for the third time, my suspicions were rousing. When I heard it for the fifth time, I understood. Wall Street was negotiating with the other side, and would know the result by Monday, or at the latest Tuesday.
XXIIIIN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION
I did not dare communicate my suspicions to my "dear friend" Roebuck. As it was, with each refusal I had seen his confidence in me sink; if he should get an inkling how near to utter disaster I and my candidate were, he would be upon me like a tiger upon its trainer when he slips. I reasoned out my course while we were descending from the fifth "king's" office to our cab: If the negotiations with the opposition should be successful, I should not get a cent; if they should fail, Wall Street would be frantic to get its contributions into my hand; therefore, the only sane thing to do was to go West, and make such preparations as I could against the worst.
"Let's go back to the Holland," said I to Roebuck, in a weary, bored tone. "These people are a waste of time. I'll start home to-night, and when they see in the morning papers that I've left for good, they may come to their senses. Butthey'll have to hunt me out. I'll not go near them again. And when they come dragging themselves to you, don't forget how they've treated us to-day."
Roebuck was silent, glancing furtively at me now and then, not knowing what to think. "How is it possible to win without them?" he finally said. "This demagogue Scarborough has set the people crazy. I can't imagine what possesses these men of property with interests throughout the country. They are inviting ruin."
I smiled. "My dear Roebuck," I replied, "do you suppose I'm the man to put all my eggs into one basket—and that basket Wall Street?"
And I refused to talk any more politics with him. We dined together, I calm and in the best of spirits; we went to a musical farce, and he watched me glumly as I showed my lightness of heart. Then I went alone, at midnight, to the Chicago Express sleeper—to lie awake all night staring at the phantoms of ruin that moved in dire panorama before me. In every great affair there is a crisis at which one must stake all upon a single throw. I had staked all upon Wall Street.Without its contributions, Woodruff's arrangements could not be carried out.
When I descended at the Fredonia station I found De Milt waiting for me. He had news that was indeed news. I shall give it here more consecutively than my impatience for the event permitted him to give it to me.
About ten days before, a paragraph in one of Burbank's "pilgrimage" speeches had been twisted by the reporter so that it seemed a personal attack upon Scarborough. As Burbank was a stickler for the etiquette of campaigning, he not only sent out a denial and a correction but also directed De Milt to go to Scarborough's home at Saint X, Indiana, and convey the explanation in a personal message. De Milt arrived at Saint X at eight in the evening. As he was leaving the parlor car he saw a man emerge from its drawing-room, make a hasty descent to the platform, hurriedly engage a station hack and drive away. De Milt had an amazing memory for identities—something far rarer than memory merely for faces. He was convinced he knew that man; and being shrewdand quick of thought, he jumped into a trap and told the driver to follow the hack which was just disappearing. A few minutes' driving and he saw it turn in at a gateway.
"Whose place is that?" he asked.
"The old Gardiner homestead," was the answer. "President Scarborough lives there."
De Milt did not discuss this rather premature entitling of Senator Scarborough. He said: "Oh—I've made a mistake," descended and sent his trap away. Scarborough's house was quiet, not a soul about, lights in only a few windows. De Milt strolled in at the open gates and, keeping out of view, made a detour of the gardens, the "lay" of which he could see by the starlight. He was soon in line with the front door—his man was parleying with a servant. "Evidently he's not expected," thought my chief of publicity.
Soon his man entered. De Milt, keeping in the shadows, moved round the house until he was close under open windows from which came light and men's voices. Peering through a bush he saw at a table-desk a man whom he recognized as Senator Scarborough. Seated opposite him,with a very uneasy, deprecating expression on his face, was John Thwing, president of the Atlantic and Western System, and Senator Goodrich's brother-in-law.
De Milt could not hear what Thwing was saying, so careful was that experienced voice to reach only the ears for whom its insinuating subtleties were intended. But he saw a puzzled look come into Scarborough's face, heard him say: "I don't think I understand you, John."
Thwing unconsciously raised his voice in his reply, and De Milt caught—"satisfactory assurances from you that these alarming views and intentions attributed to you are false, and they'll be glad to exert themselves to elect you."
Scarborough smiled. "Impossible," he said. "Very few of them would supportmein any circumstances."
"You are mistaken, Hampden," was Thwing's answer. "On the contrary, they will—"
Scarborough interrupted with an impatient motion of his head. "Impossible!" he repeated. "But in any case, why should they send you to me? My speeches speak for themselves. Surelyno intelligent man could fancy that my election would mean harm to any legitimate business, great or small, East or West. You've known me for twenty years, Thwing. You needn't come to me for permission to reassure your friends—such of them as you canhonestlyreassure."
"I have been reassuring them," Thwing answered. "I tell them that you are about the last man in the world to permit mob rule."
"Precisely," said Scarborough. "I purpose to continue to do what I can to break up the mob that is being led on by demagogues disguised as captains of industry and advance agents of prosperity—led on to pillage the resources of the country, its riches and its character."
This ought to have put Thwing on his guard. But, convinced that the gods he worshiped must be the gods of all men, whatever they might profess, he held to his purpose.
"Still, you don't quite follow me," he persisted. "You've said some very disquieting things against some of my friends—of course, they understand that the exigencies of campaigning, the necessity of rousing the party spirit, the—"
Thwing stopped short; De Milt held his breath. Scarborough was leaning forward, was holding Thwing's eyes with one of those looks that grip. "Do you mean," said he, "that, if I'll assure these friends of yours that I don't mean what I say, they'll buy me the presidency?"
"My dear Hampden," expostulated Thwing, "nothing of the sort. Simply that the campaign fund which Burbank must get to be elected won't go to him, but will be at the disposal of your national committee. My friends, naturally, won't support their enemies."
De Milt, watching Scarborough, saw him lower his head, his face flushing deeply.
"Believe me, Hampden," continued Thwing, "without our support Burbank is beaten, and you are triumphantly elected—not otherwise. But you know politics; I needn't tell you. You know that the presidency depends upon getting the doubtful element in the doubtful states."
Scarborough stood, and, without lifting his eyes, said in a voice very different from his strong, clear tones of a few minutes before: "I suppose in this day no one is beyond the reach of insult. Ihave thought I was. I see I have been mistaken. And it is a man who has known me twenty years and has called me friend, who has taught me the deep meaning of the word shame. The servant will show you the door." And he left Thwing alone in the room.
I had made De Milt give me the point of his story as soon as I saw its drift. While he was going over it in detail, I was thinking out all the bearings of Scarborough's refusal upon my plans.
"Has Senator Goodrich seen Governor Burbank yet?" I asked De Milt in a casual tone, when he had told how he escaped unobserved in Thwing's wake and delivered Burbank's message the next morning.
"I believe he's to see him by appointment to-morrow," replied De Milt.
So my suspicion was well-founded. Goodrich, informed of his brother-in-law's failure, was posting to make peace on whatever terms he could honeyfugle out of my conciliation-mad candidate.
A few minutes later I shut myself in with the long-distance telephone and roused Burbank from bed and from sleep. "I am coming by the firsttrain to-morrow," I said. "I thought you'd be glad to know that I've made satisfactory arrangements in New York—unexpectedly satisfactory."
"That's good—excellent," came the reply. I noted an instant change of tone which told me that Burbank had got, by some underground route, news of my failure in New York and had been preparing to give Goodrich a cordial reception.
"If Goodrich comes, James," I went on, "don't see him till I've seen you."
A pause, then in a strained voice: "But I've given him an appointment at nine to-morrow."
"Put him off till noon. I'll be there at eleven. It's—imperative." That last word with an accent I did not like to use, but knew how to use—and when.
Another pause, then: "Very well, Harvey. But we must be careful about him. De Milt has told you how dangerous he is, hasn't he?"
"Yes—how dangerous he tried to be." I was about to add that Goodrich was a fool to permit any one to go to such a man as Scarborough with such a proposition; but I bethought me of Burbank's acute moral sensitiveness and how it wouldbe rasped by the implication of his opponent's moral superiority. "We're past the last danger, James. That's all. Sleep sound. Good night."
"Good night, old man," was his reply in his pose's tone for affection. But I could imagine him posing there in his night shirt, the anger against me snapping in his eyes.
On the train the next morning, De Milt, who had evidently been doing a little thinking, said, "I hope you won't let it out to Cousin James that I told you Goodrich was coming to see him."
"Certainly not," I replied, not losing the opportunity to win over to myself one so near to my political ward. "I'm deeply obliged to you for telling me." And presently I went on: "By the way, has anything been done for you for your brilliant work at Saint X?"
"Oh, that's all right," he said, "I guess Cousin James'll look after me—unless he forgets about it." "Cousin James" had always had the habit of taking favors for granted unless reward was pressed for; and since he had become a presidential candidate, he was inclining more than ever tolook on a favor done him as a high privilege which was its own reward.
I made no immediate reply to De Milt; but just before we reached the capital, I gave him a cheque for five thousand dollars. "A little expression of gratitude from the party," said I. "Your reward will come later." From that hour he was mine, for he knew now by personal experience that "the boys" were right in calling me appreciative.
It is better to ignore a debt than to pay with words.
XXIVGRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN
Burbank had grown like a fungus in his own esteem.
The adulation of the free excursionists I had poured in upon him, the eulogies in the newspapers, the flatteries of those about him, eager to make themselves "solid" with the man who might soon have the shaking of the huge, richly laden presidential boughs of the plum tree—this combination of assaults upon sanity was too strong for a man with such vanity as his, a traitor within. He had convinced his last prudent doubt that he was indeed a "child of destiny." He was resentful lest I might possibly think myself more important than he to the success of the campaign. And his resentment was deepened by the probably incessant reminders of his common sense that all this vast machine, public and secret, could have been set in motion just as effectively for any oneof a score of "statesmen" conspicuous in the party.
I saw through his labored cordiality; and it depressed me again—started me down toward those depths of self-condemnation from which I had been held up for a few days by the excitement of the swiftly thronging events and by the necessity of putting my whole mind upon moves for my game.
"I am heartily glad you were successful," he began when we were alone. "That takes a weight off my mind."
"You misunderstood me, I see," said I. "I haven't got anything from those people in New York as yet. But within a week they'll be begging me to take whatever I need. Thwing's report will put them in a panic."
His face fell. "Then I must be especially courteous to Goodrich," he said, after thinking intently. "Your hopes might be disappointed."
"Not the slightest danger," was my prompt assurance. "And if you take my advice, you will ask Goodrich how his agent found Senator Scarborough's health, and then order him out of thishouse. Why harbor a deadly snake that can be of no use to you?"
"But you seem to forget, Harvey, that he is the master of at least the eastern wing of the party. And you must now see that he will stop at nothing, unless he is pacified."
"He is the fetch-and-carry of an impudent and cowardly crowd in Wall Street," I retorted, "that is all. When they find he can no longer do their errands, they'll throw him over and come to us. And we can have them on our own terms."
We argued, with growing irritation on both sides, and after an hour or so, I saw that he was hopelessly under the spell of his pettiness and his moral cowardice. He had convinced himself that I was jealous of Goodrich and would sacrifice anything to gratify my hate. And Goodrich's sending an agent to Scarborough had only made him the more formidable in Burbank's eyes. As I looked in upon his mind and watched its weak, foolish little workings, my irritation subsided. "Do as you think best," said I wearily. "But when he presents the mortgage you are going to give him on your presidency, remember my warning."
He laughed this off, feeling my point only in his vanity, not at all in his judgment. "And how willyoureceive him, Harvey? He will be sure to come to you next—must, as you are in charge of my campaign."
"I'll tell him straight out that I'll have nothing to do with him," said I blandly. "The Wall Street submission to the party must be brought to me by some other ambassador. I'll not help him to fool his masters and to hide it from them that he has lost control."
I could have insisted, could have destroyed Goodrich—for Burbank would not have dared disobey me. But the campaign, politics in general, life itself, filled me with disgust, a paralyzing disgust that made me almost lose confidence in my theory of practical life.
"What's the use?" I said to myself. "Let Burbank keep his adder. Let it sting him. If it so much as shoots a fang at me, I can crush it."
And so, Burbank lifted up Goodrich and gave hostages to him; and Goodrich, warned that I would not deal with him, made some excuse or other to his masters for sending Senator Revell tome. "See Woodruff," said I to Revell, for I was in no mood for such business. "He knows best what we need."
"They give up too damn cheerfully," Woodruff said to me, when I saw him a week or ten days later, and he gave me an account of the negotiations. "I suspect they've paid more before."
"They have," said I. "In two campaigns where they had to elect against hard times."
"But I've a notion," he warned me, "that our candidate has promised them something privately."
"No doubt," I replied, as indifferently as I felt.
I had intended to make some speeches—I had always kept the public side of my career in the foreground, and in this campaign my enforced prominence as director of the machine was causing the public to dwell too much on the real nature of my political activity. But I could not bring myself to it. Instead, I set out for home to spend the time with my children and to do by telephone, as I easily could, such directing of Woodruff as might be necessary.
My daughter Frances was driving me from theFredonia station. A man darted in front of the horses, flung up his arms and began to shriek curses at me. If she had not been a skilful driver, we should both have been thrown from the cart. As it was, the horses ran several miles before she got them under control, I sitting inactive, because I knew how it would hurt her pride if I should interfere.
When the horses were quiet, she gave me an impetuous kiss that more than repaid me for the strain on my nerves. "You are the dearest papa that ever was!" she said. Then—"Who was he? He looked like a crazy man!"
"No doubt he is," was my reply. And I began complimenting her on her skill with horses, chiefly to prevent her pressing me about the man. I had heard, and had done, so much lying that I had a horror of it, and tried to make my children absolutely truthful—my boy Ed used to think up and do mischief just for the pleasure of pleasing me by confessing. To make my example effective, I was always strictly truthful with them. I did not wish to tell her who the man was; but I instantly recognized, through the drunken dishevelment,my mutineer, Granby—less than a year before one of the magnates of the state. My orders about him had been swiftly and literally obeyed. Deserted by his associates, blacklisted at the banks, beset by his creditors, harassed by the attorney general, his assets chained with injunctions, his liabilities given triple fangs, he went bankrupt, took to drink, became a sot and a barroom lounger. His dominant passion was hatred of me; he discharged the rambling and frantic story of his wrongs upon whoever would listen. And here he was in Fredonia!
I had one of my secretaries telephone the police to look after him; they reported that he had disappeared.
The next morning but one, my daughter and I went for an early walk. At the turn of the main drive just beyond view from the lodge, she exclaimed, "Oh, father,oh!" and clung to me. Something—like a scarecrow, but not a scarecrow—swung from a limb overhanging the drive. The face was distorted and swollen; the arms and legs were drawn up in sickening crookedness. Before I saw, I knew it was Granby.
I took Frances home, then returned, passing the swaying horror far on the other side of the road. I got the lodge-keeper, and he and I went back together. I had them telephone from the lodge for the coroner and personally saw to it that the corpse should be reported as found in the open woods a long distance from my place. But Granby had left a message "to the public" in his room at the hotel: "Senator Sayler ruined me and drove me to death. I have gone to hang myself in his park. Down with monopoly!" In spite of my efforts, this was published throughout the country—though not in Fredonia. Such of the big opposition papers as were not under our control sent reporters and raked out the whole story; and it was blown up hugely and told everywhere. Our organs retold it, giving the true color and perspective; but my blundering attempt to avoid publicity had put me in too bad a light.
It was the irony of fate—my power thus ludicrously thwarted by a triviality. Within twenty-four hours I realized the danger to our campaign. I sent Woodruff post-haste to the widow. He gave her convincing assurances that she andher children were to be lifted from the slough of poverty into which Granby's drunkenness had thrust them. And in return she wrote at his dictation and issued an apparently uninspired public statement, exonerating me from all blame for her husband's reverses, and saying that he had been acting strangely for over a year and had been insane for several months. In brief, I did everything suggested by sincere regret and such skill at influencing public opinion as I had and commanded. But not until my reports began to show the good effects of the million dollars Woodruff put into the last week of the campaign, did I begin to hope again.
Another hope brightened toward confidence when, on the Saturday before election, I sprung my carefully matured scheme for stiffening those of our partizans who were wavering. The Scarborough speakers had, with powerful effect, been taunting us with our huge campaign fund, daring us to disclose its sources. On that Sunday morning, when it was too late for the opposition to discount me, I boldly threw open a set of campaign ledgers which showed that our fund wasjust under a million dollars, with the only large subscription, the hundred thousand which I myself had given. Tens of thousands of our partizans, longing for an excuse for staying with us, returned cheering to the ranks—enough of them in the doubtful states, we believed, to restore the floating vote to its usual balance of power.
Each horse of my team had taken a turn at doing dangerous, even menacing, threshing about; but both were now quietly pulling in the harness, Partizanship as docile as Plutocracy. The betting odds were six to five against us, but we of the "inside" began to plunge on Burbank and Howard.