One morning I found him laughing over the bill for a grand Burbank rally at Indianapolis—about thirty-five thousand dollars, as I remember the figures.

"What amuses you?" said I.

"I was thinking what fools the people are, never to ask themselves where all the money for these free shows comes from, and why those who give are willing to give so much, and how they get it back. What an ass the public is!"

"Fortunately," said I.

"For us," said he.

"And for itself," I rejoined.

"Perhaps," he admitted. "It was born to be plucked, and I suppose our crowd does do the plucking more scientifically than less experienced hands would."

"I prefer to put it another way," said I. "Let's say that we save it from a worse plucking."

"That is better," said Doc. For, on his way up in the world, he was rapidly developing what could, and should, be called conscience.

I looked at him and once more had a qualm like shame before his moral superiority to me. We were plodding along on about the same moral level; but he had ascended to that level, while I had descended to it. There were politicians posing as pure before the world and even in the party's behind-the-scene, who would have sneered at Doc's "conscience." Yet, to my notion, they, who started high and from whatever sophistry of motive trailed down into the mire, are lower far than they who began deep in the mire and have been struggling bravely toward the surface. I know a man who was born in the slums, was a pickpocket at eight years of age, was a boss at forty-five, administering justice according to his lights. I know a man who was born what he calls a gentleman and who, at forty-five, sold himself for the "honors" of a high office. And once, after he had shaken hands with that boss, he looked at me, furtively made a wry face, and wiped his hand with his pocket handkerchief!

The other part of our work of preparation—getting the Wall Street whales in condition for the "fat-frying"—was also finished. The Wall Street Roebuck and I adventured was in a state of quake from fear of the election of "the scourge of God," as our subsidized socialist and extreme radical papers had dubbed Scarborough—and what invaluable campaign material their praise of him did make for us!

Roebuck and I went from office to office among the great of commerce, industry and finance. We were received with politeness, deferential politeness, everywhere. But not a penny could we get. Everywhere the same answer: "We can not see our way to contributing just yet. But if you will call early next week—say Monday or Tuesday—" four or five days away—"we'll let you know what we can do." The most ardent eagerness to placate us, to keep us in good humor; but not a cent—until Monday or Tuesday.

When I heard "Monday or Tuesday" for the third time, my suspicions were rousing. When I heard it for the fifth time, I understood. Wall Street was negotiating with the other side, and would know the result by Monday, or at the latest Tuesday.



XXIII

IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION

I did not dare communicate my suspicions to my "dear friend" Roebuck. As it was, with each refusal I had seen his confidence in me sink; if he should get an inkling how near to utter disaster I and my candidate were, he would be upon me like a tiger upon its trainer when he slips. I reasoned out my course while we were descending from the fifth "king's" office to our cab: If the negotiations with the opposition should be successful, I should not get a cent; if they should fail, Wall Street would be frantic to get its contributions into my hand; therefore, the only sane thing to do was to go West, and make such preparations as I could against the worst.

"Let's go back to the Holland," said I to Roebuck, in a weary, bored tone. "These people are a waste of time. I'll start home to-night, and when they see in the morning papers that I've left for good, they may come to their senses. But they'll have to hunt me out. I'll not go near them again. And when they come dragging themselves to you, don't forget how they've treated us to-day."

Roebuck was silent, glancing furtively at me now and then, not knowing what to think. "How is it possible to win without them?" he finally said. "This demagogue Scarborough has set the people crazy. I can't imagine what possesses these men of property with interests throughout the country. They are inviting ruin."

I smiled. "My dear Roebuck," I replied, "do you suppose I'm the man to put all my eggs into one basket—and that basket Wall Street?"

And I refused to talk any more politics with him. We dined together, I calm and in the best of spirits; we went to a musical farce, and he watched me glumly as I showed my lightness of heart. Then I went alone, at midnight, to the Chicago Express sleeper—to lie awake all night staring at the phantoms of ruin that moved in dire panorama before me. In every great affair there is a crisis at which one must stake all upon a single throw. I had staked all upon Wall Street. Without its contributions, Woodruff's arrangements could not be carried out.

* * * * *

When I descended at the Fredonia station I found De Milt waiting for me. He had news that was indeed news. I shall give it here more consecutively than my impatience for the event permitted him to give it to me.

About ten days before, a paragraph in one of Burbank's "pilgrimage" speeches had been twisted by the reporter so that it seemed a personal attack upon Scarborough. As Burbank was a stickler for the etiquette of campaigning, he not only sent out a denial and a correction but also directed De Milt to go to Scarborough's home at Saint X, Indiana, and convey the explanation in a personal message. De Milt arrived at Saint X at eight in the evening. As he was leaving the parlor car he saw a man emerge from its drawing-room, make a hasty descent to the platform, hurriedly engage a station hack and drive away. De Milt had an amazing memory for identities—something far rarer than memory merely for faces. He was convinced he knew that man; and being shrewd and quick of thought, he jumped into a trap and told the driver to follow the hack which was just disappearing. A few minutes' driving and he saw it turn in at a gateway.

"Whose place is that?" he asked.

"The old Gardiner homestead," was the answer. "President Scarborough lives there."

De Milt did not discuss this rather premature entitling of Senator Scarborough. He said: "Oh—I've made a mistake," descended and sent his trap away. Scarborough's house was quiet, not a soul about, lights in only a few windows. De Milt strolled in at the open gates and, keeping out of view, made a detour of the gardens, the "lay" of which he could see by the starlight. He was soon in line with the front door—his man was parleying with a servant. "Evidently he's not expected," thought my chief of publicity.

Soon his man entered. De Milt, keeping in the shadows, moved round the house until he was close under open windows from which came light and men's voices. Peering through a bush he saw at a table-desk a man whom he recognized as Senator Scarborough. Seated opposite him, with a very uneasy, deprecating expression on his face, was John Thwing, president of the Atlantic and Western System, and Senator Goodrich's brother-in-law.

De Milt could not hear what Thwing was saying, so careful was that experienced voice to reach only the ears for whom its insinuating subtleties were intended. But he saw a puzzled look come into Scarborough's face, heard him say: "I don't think I understand you, John."

Thwing unconsciously raised his voice in his reply, and De Milt caught—"satisfactory assurances from you that these alarming views and intentions attributed to you are false, and they'll be glad to exert themselves to elect you."

Scarborough smiled. "Impossible," he said. "Very few of them would support me in any circumstances."

"You are mistaken, Hampden," was Thwing's answer. "On the contrary, they will—"

Scarborough interrupted with an impatient motion of his head. "Impossible!" he repeated. "But in any case, why should they send you to me? My speeches speak for themselves. Surely no intelligent man could fancy that my election would mean harm to any legitimate business, great or small, East or West. You've known me for twenty years, Thwing. You needn't come to me for permission to reassure your friends—such of them as you can honestly reassure."

"I have been reassuring them," Thwing answered. "I tell them that you are about the last man in the world to permit mob rule."

"Precisely," said Scarborough. "I purpose to continue to do what I can to break up the mob that is being led on by demagogues disguised as captains of industry and advance agents of prosperity—led on to pillage the resources of the country, its riches and its character."

This ought to have put Thwing on his guard. But, convinced that the gods he worshiped must be the gods of all men, whatever they might profess, he held to his purpose.

"Still, you don't quite follow me," he persisted. "You've said some very disquieting things against some of my friends—of course, they understand that the exigencies of campaigning, the necessity of rousing the party spirit, the—"

Thwing stopped short; De Milt held his breath. Scarborough was leaning forward, was holding Thwing's eyes with one of those looks that grip. "Do you mean," said he, "that, if I'll assure these friends of yours that I don't mean what I say, they'll buy me the presidency?"

"My dear Hampden," expostulated Thwing, "nothing of the sort. Simply that the campaign fund which Burbank must get to be elected won't go to him, but will be at the disposal of your national committee. My friends, naturally, won't support their enemies."

De Milt, watching Scarborough, saw him lower his head, his face flushing deeply.

"Believe me, Hampden," continued Thwing, "without our support Burbank is beaten, and you are triumphantly elected—not otherwise. But you know politics; I needn't tell you. You know that the presidency depends upon getting the doubtful element in the doubtful states."

Scarborough stood, and, without lifting his eyes, said in a voice very different from his strong, clear tones of a few minutes before: "I suppose in this day no one is beyond the reach of insult. I have thought I was. I see I have been mistaken. And it is a man who has known me twenty years and has called me friend, who has taught me the deep meaning of the word shame. The servant will show you the door." And he left Thwing alone in the room.

I had made De Milt give me the point of his story as soon as I saw its drift. While he was going over it in detail, I was thinking out all the bearings of Scarborough's refusal upon my plans.

"Has Senator Goodrich seen Governor Burbank yet?" I asked De Milt in a casual tone, when he had told how he escaped unobserved in Thwing's wake and delivered Burbank's message the next morning.

"I believe he's to see him by appointment to-morrow," replied De Milt.

So my suspicion was well-founded. Goodrich, informed of his brother-in-law's failure, was posting to make peace on whatever terms he could honeyfugle out of my conciliation-mad candidate.

A few minutes later I shut myself in with the long-distance telephone and roused Burbank from bed and from sleep. "I am coming by the first train to-morrow," I said. "I thought you'd be glad to know that I've made satisfactory arrangements in New York—unexpectedly satisfactory."

"That's good—excellent," came the reply. I noted an instant change of tone which told me that Burbank had got, by some underground route, news of my failure in New York and had been preparing to give Goodrich a cordial reception.

"If Goodrich comes, James," I went on, "don't see him till I've seen you."

A pause, then in a strained voice: "But I've given him an appointment at nine to-morrow."

"Put him off till noon. I'll be there at eleven. It's—imperative." That last word with an accent I did not like to use, but knew how to use—and when.

Another pause, then: "Very well, Harvey. But we must be careful about him. De Milt has told you how dangerous he is, hasn't he?"

"Yes—how dangerous he tried to be." I was about to add that Goodrich was a fool to permit any one to go to such a man as Scarborough with such a proposition; but I bethought me of Burbank's acute moral sensitiveness and how it would be rasped by the implication of his opponent's moral superiority. "We're past the last danger, James. That's all. Sleep sound. Good night."

"Good night, old man," was his reply in his pose's tone for affection. But I could imagine him posing there in his night shirt, the anger against me snapping in his eyes.

On the train the next morning, De Milt, who had evidently been doing a little thinking, said, "I hope you won't let it out to Cousin James that I told you Goodrich was coming to see him."

"Certainly not," I replied, not losing the opportunity to win over to myself one so near to my political ward. "I'm deeply obliged to you for telling me." And presently I went on: "By the way, has anything been done for you for your brilliant work at Saint X?"

"Oh, that's all right," he said, "I guess Cousin James'll look after me—unless he forgets about it." "Cousin James" had always had the habit of taking favors for granted unless reward was pressed for; and since he had become a presidential candidate, he was inclining more than ever to look on a favor done him as a high privilege which was its own reward.

I made no immediate reply to De Milt; but just before we reached the capital, I gave him a cheque for five thousand dollars. "A little expression of gratitude from the party," said I. "Your reward will come later." From that hour he was mine, for he knew now by personal experience that "the boys" were right in calling me appreciative.

It is better to ignore a debt than to pay with words.



XXIV

GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN

Burbank had grown like a fungus in his own esteem.

The adulation of the free excursionists I had poured in upon him, the eulogies in the newspapers, the flatteries of those about him, eager to make themselves "solid" with the man who might soon have the shaking of the huge, richly laden presidential boughs of the plum tree—this combination of assaults upon sanity was too strong for a man with such vanity as his, a traitor within. He had convinced his last prudent doubt that he was indeed a "child of destiny." He was resentful lest I might possibly think myself more important than he to the success of the campaign. And his resentment was deepened by the probably incessant reminders of his common sense that all this vast machine, public and secret, could have been set in motion just as effectively for any one of a score of "statesmen" conspicuous in the party.

I saw through his labored cordiality; and it depressed me again—started me down toward those depths of self-condemnation from which I had been held up for a few days by the excitement of the swiftly thronging events and by the necessity of putting my whole mind upon moves for my game.

"I am heartily glad you were successful," he began when we were alone. "That takes a weight off my mind."

"You misunderstood me, I see," said I. "I haven't got anything from those people in New York as yet. But within a week they'll be begging me to take whatever I need. Thwing's report will put them in a panic."

His face fell. "Then I must be especially courteous to Goodrich," he said, after thinking intently. "Your hopes might be disappointed."

"Not the slightest danger," was my prompt assurance. "And if you take my advice, you will ask Goodrich how his agent found Senator Scarborough's health, and then order him out of this house. Why harbor a deadly snake that can be of no use to you?"

"But you seem to forget, Harvey, that he is the master of at least the eastern wing of the party. And you must now see that he will stop at nothing, unless he is pacified."

"He is the fetch-and-carry of an impudent and cowardly crowd in Wall Street," I retorted, "that is all. When they find he can no longer do their errands, they'll throw him over and come to us. And we can have them on our own terms."

We argued, with growing irritation on both sides, and after an hour or so, I saw that he was hopelessly under the spell of his pettiness and his moral cowardice. He had convinced himself that I was jealous of Goodrich and would sacrifice anything to gratify my hate. And Goodrich's sending an agent to Scarborough had only made him the more formidable in Burbank's eyes. As I looked in upon his mind and watched its weak, foolish little workings, my irritation subsided. "Do as you think best," said I wearily. "But when he presents the mortgage you are going to give him on your presidency, remember my warning."

He laughed this off, feeling my point only in his vanity, not at all in his judgment. "And how will you receive him, Harvey? He will be sure to come to you next—must, as you are in charge of my campaign."

"I'll tell him straight out that I'll have nothing to do with him," said I blandly. "The Wall Street submission to the party must be brought to me by some other ambassador. I'll not help him to fool his masters and to hide it from them that he has lost control."

I could have insisted, could have destroyed Goodrich—for Burbank would not have dared disobey me. But the campaign, politics in general, life itself, filled me with disgust, a paralyzing disgust that made me almost lose confidence in my theory of practical life.

"What's the use?" I said to myself. "Let Burbank keep his adder. Let it sting him. If it so much as shoots a fang at me, I can crush it."

And so, Burbank lifted up Goodrich and gave hostages to him; and Goodrich, warned that I would not deal with him, made some excuse or other to his masters for sending Senator Revell to me. "See Woodruff," said I to Revell, for I was in no mood for such business. "He knows best what we need."

"They give up too damn cheerfully," Woodruff said to me, when I saw him a week or ten days later, and he gave me an account of the negotiations. "I suspect they've paid more before."

"They have," said I. "In two campaigns where they had to elect against hard times."

"But I've a notion," he warned me, "that our candidate has promised them something privately."

"No doubt," I replied, as indifferently as I felt.

I had intended to make some speeches—I had always kept the public side of my career in the foreground, and in this campaign my enforced prominence as director of the machine was causing the public to dwell too much on the real nature of my political activity. But I could not bring myself to it. Instead, I set out for home to spend the time with my children and to do by telephone, as I easily could, such directing of Woodruff as might be necessary.

My daughter Frances was driving me from the Fredonia station. A man darted in front of the horses, flung up his arms and began to shriek curses at me. If she had not been a skilful driver, we should both have been thrown from the cart. As it was, the horses ran several miles before she got them under control, I sitting inactive, because I knew how it would hurt her pride if I should interfere.

When the horses were quiet, she gave me an impetuous kiss that more than repaid me for the strain on my nerves. "You are the dearest papa that ever was!" she said. Then—"Who was he? He looked like a crazy man!"

"No doubt he is," was my reply. And I began complimenting her on her skill with horses, chiefly to prevent her pressing me about the man. I had heard, and had done, so much lying that I had a horror of it, and tried to make my children absolutely truthful—my boy Ed used to think up and do mischief just for the pleasure of pleasing me by confessing. To make my example effective, I was always strictly truthful with them. I did not wish to tell her who the man was; but I instantly recognized, through the drunken dishevelment, my mutineer, Granby—less than a year before one of the magnates of the state. My orders about him had been swiftly and literally obeyed. Deserted by his associates, blacklisted at the banks, beset by his creditors, harassed by the attorney general, his assets chained with injunctions, his liabilities given triple fangs, he went bankrupt, took to drink, became a sot and a barroom lounger. His dominant passion was hatred of me; he discharged the rambling and frantic story of his wrongs upon whoever would listen. And here he was in Fredonia!

I had one of my secretaries telephone the police to look after him; they reported that he had disappeared.

The next morning but one, my daughter and I went for an early walk. At the turn of the main drive just beyond view from the lodge, she exclaimed, "Oh, father, oh!" and clung to me. Something—like a scarecrow, but not a scarecrow—swung from a limb overhanging the drive. The face was distorted and swollen; the arms and legs were drawn up in sickening crookedness. Before I saw, I knew it was Granby.

I took Frances home, then returned, passing the swaying horror far on the other side of the road. I got the lodge-keeper, and he and I went back together. I had them telephone from the lodge for the coroner and personally saw to it that the corpse should be reported as found in the open woods a long distance from my place. But Granby had left a message "to the public" in his room at the hotel: "Senator Sayler ruined me and drove me to death. I have gone to hang myself in his park. Down with monopoly!" In spite of my efforts, this was published throughout the country—though not in Fredonia. Such of the big opposition papers as were not under our control sent reporters and raked out the whole story; and it was blown up hugely and told everywhere. Our organs retold it, giving the true color and perspective; but my blundering attempt to avoid publicity had put me in too bad a light.

It was the irony of fate—my power thus ludicrously thwarted by a triviality. Within twenty-four hours I realized the danger to our campaign. I sent Woodruff post-haste to the widow. He gave her convincing assurances that she and her children were to be lifted from the slough of poverty into which Granby's drunkenness had thrust them. And in return she wrote at his dictation and issued an apparently uninspired public statement, exonerating me from all blame for her husband's reverses, and saying that he had been acting strangely for over a year and had been insane for several months. In brief, I did everything suggested by sincere regret and such skill at influencing public opinion as I had and commanded. But not until my reports began to show the good effects of the million dollars Woodruff put into the last week of the campaign, did I begin to hope again.

Another hope brightened toward confidence when, on the Saturday before election, I sprung my carefully matured scheme for stiffening those of our partizans who were wavering. The Scarborough speakers had, with powerful effect, been taunting us with our huge campaign fund, daring us to disclose its sources. On that Sunday morning, when it was too late for the opposition to discount me, I boldly threw open a set of campaign ledgers which showed that our fund was just under a million dollars, with the only large subscription, the hundred thousand which I myself had given. Tens of thousands of our partizans, longing for an excuse for staying with us, returned cheering to the ranks—enough of them in the doubtful states, we believed, to restore the floating vote to its usual balance of power.

Each horse of my team had taken a turn at doing dangerous, even menacing, threshing about; but both were now quietly pulling in the harness, Partizanship as docile as Plutocracy. The betting odds were six to five against us, but we of the "inside" began to plunge on Burbank and Howard.



XXV

AN HOUR OF EMOTION

It was after midnight of election day before we knew the result, so close were the two most important doubtful states.

Scarborough had swept the rural districts and the small towns. But we had beaten him in the cities where the machines and other purchasable organizations were powerful. His state gave him forty-two thousand plurality, Burbank carried his own state by less than ten thousand—and in twenty-four years our majority there in presidential campaigns had never before been less than forty thousand.

By half-past one, the whole capital city knew that Burbank had won. And they flocked and swarmed out the road to his modest "retreat," until perhaps thirty thousand people were shouting, blowing horns, singing, sending up rockets and Roman candles, burning red fire, lighting bonfires in and near the grounds. I had come down from Fredonia to be in instant touch with Burbank and the whole national machine, should there arise at the last minute necessity for bold and swift action. When Burbank finally yielded to the mob and showed himself on his porch with us, his immediate associates, about him, I for the first time unreservedly admired him. For the man inside seemed at last to swell until the presidential pose he had so long worn prematurely was filled to a perfect fit. And in what he said as well as in the way he said it there was an unexpected dignity and breadth and force. "I have made him President," I thought, "and it looks as if the presidency had made him a man."

After he finished, Croffut spoke, and Senator Berwick of Illinois. Then rose a few calls for me. They were drowned in a chorus of hoots, toots and hisses. Burbank cast a quick glance of apprehension at me—again that hidden conviction of my vanity, this time shown in dread lest it should goad me into hating him. I smiled reassuringly at him—and I can say in all honesty that the smile came from the bottom of my heart. An hour later, as I bade him good night, I said:

"I believe the man and the opportunity have met, Mr. President. God bless you."

Perhaps it was the unusualness of my speaking with feeling that caused the tears to start in his eyes. "Thank you, Harvey," he replied, clasping my hand in both his. "I realize now the grave responsibility. I need the help of every friend—the true help of every true friend. And I know what I owe to you just as clearly as if she were here to remind me."

I was too moved to venture a reply. Woodruff and I drove to the hotel together—the crowd hissing me wherever it recognized me. Woodruff looked first on one side then on the other, muttering at them. "The fools!" he said to me, with his abrupt, cool laugh. "Just like them, isn't it? Cheering the puppet, hissing its proprietor."

I made no answer—what did it matter? Not for Burbank's position and opportunity, as in that hour of emotion they appeared even to us who knew politics from behind the scenes, not for the reality of what the sounding title of President seems to mean, would I have changed with him, would I have paid the degrading price he had paid. I preferred my own position—if I had bowed the knee, at least it was not to men. As for hisses, I saw in them a certain instinctive tribute to my power. The mob cheers its servant, hisses its master.

"Doc," said I, "do you want to go to the Senate instead of Croffut?"

By the flames on the torches on either side I saw his amazement. "Me?" he exclaimed. "Why, you forget I've got a past."

"I do," said I, "and so does every one else. All we know is that you've got a future."

He drew in his breath hard and leaned back into the corner where the shadow hid him. At last he said in a quiet earnest voice: "You've given me self-respect, Senator. I can only say—I'll see that you never regret it."

I was hissed roundly at the hotel entrance, between cheers for Croffut and Berwick, and even for Woodruff. But I went to bed in the most cheerful, hopeful humor I had known since the day Scarborough was nominated. "At any rate"—so I was thinking—"my President, with my help, will be a man."



XXVI

"ONLY AN OLD JOKE"

On the train going home, I was nearer to castle-building than at any time since my boyhood castles collapsed under the rude blows of practical life.

My paths have not always been straight and open, said I to myself; like all others who have won in the conditions of this world of man still thrall to the brute, I have had to use the code of the jungle. In climbing I have had to stoop, at times to crawl. But, now that I have reached the top, I shall stand erect. I shall show that the sordidness of the struggle has not unfitted me to use the victory. True, there are the many and heavy political debts I've had to contract in getting Burbank the presidency; and as we must have a second term to round out our work, we shall be compelled to make some further compromises. We must still deal with men on the terms which human nature exacts. But in the main we can and we will do what is just and right, what helps to realize the dreams of the men and women who founded our country—the men and women like my father and mother.

And my mother's grave, beside my father's and among the graves of my sisters and my grandparents, rose before me. And I recalled the pledge I had made there, in the boyish beginnings of my manhood and my career. "My chance and Burbank's," said I, "comes just in time. We are now at the age where reputation is fixed; and our children are growing up and will soon begin to judge us and be judged from us."

Years of patient sowing, thought I, and at last the harvest! And what a harvest it will be! For under the teachings of experience I have sown not starlight and moonshine, but seeds.

The next morning I could not rise; it was six weeks before I was able to leave my bed. During that savage illness I met each and every one of the reckless drafts I had been drawing against my reserve vitality. Four times the doctors gave me up; once even Frances lost hope. When I was getting well she confessed to me how she had warned God that He need never expect to hear from her again if her prayer for me were not answered—and I saw she rather suspected that her threat was not unassociated with my recovery.

Eight weeks out of touch with affairs, and they the crucial eight weeks of all my years of thought and action! At last the harvest, indeed; and I was reaping what I had sown.

In the second week of January I revolted against the doctors and nurses and had my political secretary, Wheelock, telephone for Woodruff—the legislature had elected him to the Senate three days before. When he had sat with me long enough to realize that I could bear bad news, he said: "Goodrich and Burbank have formed a combination against you."

"How do you know?" said I, showing no surprise, and feeling none.

"Because"—he laughed—"I was in it. At least, they thought so until they had let me be safely elected. As nearly as I can make it out, they began to plot about ten days after you fell sick. At first they had it on the slate to do me up, too. But—the day after Christmas—Burbank sent for me—"

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. And I began to think. It was on Christmas day that Burbank telephoned for the first time in nearly three weeks, inquiring about my condition. I remembered their telling me how minute his questionings were. And I had thought his solicitude was proof of his friendship! Instead, he had been inquiring to make sure about the reports in the papers that I was certain to recover, in order that he might shift the factors in his plot accordingly. "When did you say Burbank sent for you?" I asked.

"On Christmas day," Woodruff replied.

I laughed; he looked at me inquiringly. "Nothing," said I. "Only an old joke—as old as human nature. Go on."

"Christmas day," he continued; "I didn't get to him until next morning. I can't figure out just why they invited me into their combine."

But I could figure it out, easily. If I had died, my power would have disintegrated and Woodruff would have been of no use to them. When they were sure I was going to live, they had to have him because he might be able to assassinate me, certainly could so cripple me that I would—as they reasoned—be helpless under their assaults. But it wasn't necessary to tell Woodruff this, I thought.

"Well," said I, "and what happened?"

"Burbank gave me a dose of his 'great and gracious way'—you ought to see the 'side' he puts on now!—and turned me over to Goodrich. He had been mighty careful not to give himself away any further than that. Then Goodrich talked to me for three solid hours, showing me it was my duty to the party as well as to myself to join him and Burbank in eliminating the one disturber of harmony—that meant you."

"And didn't they tell you they'd destroy you if you didn't?"

"Oh, that of course," he answered indifferently.

"Well, what did you do?"

"Played with 'em till I was elected. Then I dropped Goodrich a line. 'You can go to hell,' I wrote. 'I travel only with men'."

"Very imprudent," was my comment.

"Yes," he admitted, "but I had to do something to get the dirt off my hands."

"So Burbank has gone over to Goodrich!" I went on presently, as much to myself as to him.

"I always knew he was one of those chaps you have to keep scared to keep straight," said Woodruff. "They think your politeness indicates fear and your friendship fright. Besides, he's got a delusion that his popularity carried the West for him and that you and I did him only damage." Woodruff interrupted himself to laugh. "A friend of mine," he resumed, "was on the train with Scarborough when he went East to the meeting of Congress last month. He tells me it was like a President-elect on the way to be inaugurated. The people turned out at every cross-roads, even beyond the Alleghanies. And Burbank knows it. If he wasn't clean daft about himself he'd realize that if it hadn't been for you—well, I'd hate to say how badly he'd have got left. But then, if it hadn't been for you, he'd never have been governor. He was a dead one, and you hauled him out of the tomb."

True enough. But what did it matter now?

"He's going to get a horrible jolt before many months," Woodruff went on. "I can see you after him."

"You forget. He's President," I answered. "He's beyond our reach."

"Not when he wants a renomination," insisted Woodruff.

"He can get that without us—if," I said. "You must remember we've made him a fetish with our rank and file. And he's something of a fetish with the country, now that he's President. No, we can't destroy him—can't even injure him. He'll have to do that himself, if it's done. Besides—"

I did not finish. I did not care to confess that since Frances and I saw Granby swinging from that tree in my grounds I had neither heart nor stomach for the relentless side of the game. Indeed, whether from calculation or from sentimentality or from both—or, from a certain sympathy and fellow feeling for all kinds of weakness—I have never pursued those who have played me false, except when exemplary punishment was imperative.

"Well—" Woodruff looked bitterly disappointed. "I guess you're right." He brightened. "I forgot Goodrich for a minute. Burbank'll do himself up through that—I'd have to be in a saloon to feel free to use the language that describes him."

"I fear he will," I said. And it was not a hypocrisy—for I did not, and could not, feel anger toward him. Had I not cut this staff deliberately because it was crooked? What more natural than that it should give way under me as soon as I leaned upon it?

"Your sickness certainly couldn't have come at an unluckier time," Woodruff observed just before he left.

"I'm not sure of that," was my reply. "It would have been useless to have found him out sooner. And if he had hidden himself until later, he might have done us some serious mischief."

As he was the President-elect, to go to him uninvited would have been infringement of his dignity as well as of my pride. A few days later I wrote him, thanking him for his messages and inquiries during my illness and saying that I was once more taking part in affairs. He did not reply by calling me up on the telephone, as he would have done in the cordial, intimate years preceding his grandeur. Instead he sent a telegram of congratulation, following it with a note. He urged me to go South, as I had planned, and to stay until I was fully restored. "I shall deny myself the pleasure of seeing you until you return." That sentence put off our meeting indefinitely—I could see him smiling at its adroitness as he wrote it.

But he made his state of mind even clearer. His custom had been to begin his notes "Dear Harvey," or "Dear Sayler," and to end them "James" or "Burbank." This note began "My dear Senator"; it ended, "Yours sincerely, James E. Burbank." As I stared at these phrases my blood steamed in my brain. Had he spat in my face my fury would have been less, far less. "So!" I thought in the first gush of anger, "you feel that you have been using me, that you have no further use for me. You have decided to take the advice of those idiotic independent newspapers and 'wash your hands of the corruptionist who almost defeated you'."

To make war upon him was in wisdom impossible—even had I wished. And when anger flowed away and pity and contempt succeeded, I really did not wish to war upon him. But there was Goodrich—the real corruptionist, the wrecker of my plans and hopes, the menace to the future of the party. I sent for Woodruff and together we mapped out a campaign against the senior senator from New Jersey in all the newspapers we could control or influence. I gave him a free hand to use—with his unfailing discretion, of course—all the facts we had accumulated to Goodrich's discredit. I put at his disposal a hundred thousand dollars. As every available dollar of the party funds had been used in the campaign, I advanced this money from my own pocket.

And I went cheerfully away to Palm Beach, there to watch at my ease the rain of shot and shell upon my enemy.



XXVII

A DOMESTIC DISCORD

After a month in the South, I was well again—younger in feeling, and in looks, than I had been for ten years. Carlotta and the children, except "Junior" who was in college, had gone to Washington when I went to Florida. I found her abed with a nervous attack from the double strain of the knowledge that Junior had eloped with an "impossible" woman he had met, I shall not say where, and of the effort of keeping the calamity from me until she was sure he had really entangled himself hopelessly.

She was now sitting among her pillows, telling the whole story. "If he only hadn't married her!" she ended.

This struck me as ludicrous—a good woman citing to her son's discredit the fact that he had goodness' own ideals of honor.

"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.

I was about to tell her I was hopeful of the boy chiefly because he had thus shown the splendid courage that more than redeems folly. But I refrained. I had never been able to make Carlotta understand me or my ideas, and I had long been weary of the resentful silences or angry tirades which mental and temperamental misunderstandings produce.

"Courage never gets into a man unless it's born there," said I. "Folly is born into us all and can be weeded out."

"What can be expected?" she went on after trying in vain to connect my remark with our conversation. "A boy needs a father. You've been so busy with your infamous politics that you've given him scarcely a thought."

Painfully true, throughout; but it was one of those criticisms we can hardly endure even when we make it upon ourselves. I was silent.

"I've no patience with men!" she went on. "They're always meddling with things that would get along better without them, and letting their own patch run to weeds."

Unanswerable. I held my peace.

"What are you going to do about it, Harvey? How can you be so calm? Isn't there anything that would rouse you?"

"I'm too busy thinking what to do to waste any energy in blowing off steam," was my answer in my conciliatory tone.

"But there's nothing we can do," she retorted, with increasing anger, which vented itself toward me because the true culprit, fate, was not within reach.

"Precisely," I agreed. "Nothing."

"That creature won't let him come to see me."

"And you musn't see him when he sends for you," said I. "He'll come as soon as his money gives out. She'll see that he does."

"But you aren't going to cut him off!"

"Just that," said I.

A long silence, then I added in answer to her expression: "And you must not let him have a cent, either."

In a gust of anger, probably at my having read her thoughts, she blurted out: "One would think it was your money."

I had seen that thought in her eyes, had watched her hold it back behind her set teeth, many times in our married years. And I now thanked my stars I had had the prudence to get ready for the inevitable moment when she would speak it. But at the same time I could not restrain a flush of shame. "It is my money," I forced myself to say. "Ask your brother. He'll tell you what I've forbidden him to tell before—that I have twice rescued you and him from bankruptcy."

"With our own money," she retorted, hating herself for saying it, but goaded on by a devil that lived in her temper and had got control many a time, though never before when I happened to be the one with whom she was at outs.

"No—with my own," I replied tranquilly.

"Your own!" she sneered. "Every dollar you have has come through what you got by marrying me—through what you married me for. Where would you be if you hadn't married me? You know very well. You'd still be fighting poverty as a small lawyer in Pulaski, married to Betty Crosby or whatever her name was." And she burst into hysterical tears. At last she was showing me the secrets that had been tearing at her, was showing me her heart where they had torn it.

"Probably," said I in my usual tone, when she was calm enough to hear me. "So, that's what you brood over?"

"Yes," she sobbed. "I've hated you and myself. Why don't you tell me it isn't so? I'll believe it—I don't want to hear the truth. I know you don't love me, Harvey. But just say you don't love her."

"What kind of middle-aged, maudlin moonshine is this, anyway?" said I. "Let's go back to Junior. We've passed the time of life when people can talk sentimentality without being ridiculous."

"That's true of me, Harvey," she said miserably, "but not of you. You don't look a day over forty—you're still a young man, while I—"

She did not need to complete the sentence. I sat on the bed beside her and patted her vaguely. She took my hand and kissed it. And I said—I tried to say it gently, tenderly, sincerely: "People who've been together, as you and I have, see each other always as at first, they say."

She kissed my hand gratefully again. "Forgive me for what I said," she murmured. "You know I didn't think it, really. I've got such a nasty disposition and I felt so down, and—that was the only thing I could find to throw at you."

"Please—please!" I protested. "Forgive isn't a word that I'd have the right to use to any one."

"But I must—"

"Now, I've known for years," I went on, "that you were in love with that other man when I asked you to marry me. I might have taunted you with it, might have told you how I've saved him from going to jail for passing worthless checks."

This delighted her—this jealousy so long and so carefully hidden. Under cover of her delight I escaped from the witness-stand. And the discovery that evening by Doc Woodruff that my son's ensnarer had a husband living put her in high good humor. "If he'd only come home," said she, adding: "Though, now I feel that he's perfectly safe with her."

"Yes—let them alone," I replied. "He has at least one kind of sense—a sense of honor. And I suspect and hope that he has at bottom common sense too. Let him find her out for himself. Then, he'll be done with her, and her kind, for good."

"I must marry him off as soon as possible," said Carlotta. "I'll look about for some nice, quiet young girl with character and looks and domestic tastes." She laughed a little bitterly. "You men can profit by experience and it ruins us women."

"Unjust," said I, "but injustice and stupidity are the ground plan of life."

We had not long to wait. The lady, as soon as Junior reached the end of his cash, tried to open negotiations. Failing and becoming convinced that he had been cast off by his parents, she threw aside her mask. One straight look into her real countenance was enough for the boy. He fled shuddering—but not to me as I had expected. Instead, he got a place as a clerk in Chicago.

"Why not let him shift for himself a while?" suggested Woodruff, who couldn't have taken more trouble about the affair if the boy had been his own. "A man never knows whether his feet were made to stand on and walk with, unless he's been down to his uppers."

"I think the boy's got his grandmother in him," said I. "Let's give him a chance."

"He'll make a career for himself yet—like his father's," said Woodruff.

That, with the sincerest enthusiasm. But instinctively I looked at him for signs of sarcasm. And then I wondered how many "successful" men would, in the same circumstances, have had the same curiously significant instinct.



XXVIII

UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT

It was now less than a month before inauguration. Daily the papers gave probable selections for the high posts under the approaching administration; and, while many of them were attributed to my influence, Roebuck's son as ambassador to Russia was the only one I even approved of. As payments for the services of the plutocracy they were unnecessary and foolishly lavish; as preparations for a renomination and reelection, the two guiding factors in every plan of a President-elect, they were preposterous. They were first steps toward an administration that would make Scarborough's triumph inevitable, in spite of his handicap of idealism.

I sent Woodruff west to find out what Burbank was doing about the places I had pledged—all of them less "honorable" but more lucrative offices which party workers covet. He returned in a few days with the news that, according to the best information he could get through his spies in Burbank's entourage, all our pledges would be broken; the Sayler-Burbank machine was to be made over into a Goodrich-Burbank.

I saw that I could not much longer delay action. But I resolved to put it off until the very last minute, meanwhile trying to force Burbank to send for me. My cannonade upon Goodrich in six thousand newspapers, great and small, throughout the West and South, had been reinforced by the bulk of the opposition press. I could not believe it was to be without influence upon the timid Burbank, even though he knew who was back of the attack, and precisely how I was directing it. I was relying—as I afterward learned, not in vain—upon my faithful De Milt to bring to "Cousin James'" attention the outburst of public sentiment against his guide, philosopher and friend, the Wall Street fetch-and-carry.

I had fixed on February fifteenth as the date on which I would telegraph a formal demand for an interview. On February eleventh, he surrendered—he wired, asking me to come. I took a chance; I wired back a polite request to be excused as I had urgent business in Chicago. And twenty-four hours later I passed within thirty miles of Rivington on my way to Chicago with Carlotta—we were going to see Junior, hugely proud of himself and his twenty-seven dollars a week. At the Auditorium a telegram waited from Burbank: He hoped I would come as soon as I could; the matters he wished to discuss were most important.

Toward noon of the third day thereafter we were greeting each other—he with an attempt at his old-time cordiality, I without concealment of at least the coldness I felt. But my manner apparently, and probably, escaped his notice. He was now blind and drunk with the incense that had been whirling about him in dense clouds for three months; he was incapable of doubting the bliss of any human being he was gracious to. He shut me in with him and began confiding the plans he and Goodrich had made—cabinet places, foreign posts, and so forth. His voice, lingering and luxuriating upon the titles—"my ambassador to his Brittanic Majesty," "my ambassador to the German Emperor," and so on—amused and a little, but only a little, astonished me; I had always known that he was a through-and-through snob. For nearly an hour I watched his ingenuous, childish delight in bathing himself in himself, the wonderful fountain of all these honors. At last he finished, laid down his list, took off his nose-glasses. "Well, Harvey, what do you think?" he asked, and waited with sparkling eyes for my enthusiastic approval.

"I see Goodrich drove a hard bargain," said I. "Yet he came on his knees, if you had but realized it."

Burbank's color mounted. "What do you mean, Sayler?" he inquired, the faint beginnings of the insulted god in his tone and manner.

"You asked my opinion," I answered, "I'm giving it. I don't recall a single name that isn't obviously a Goodrich suggestion. Even the Roebuck appointment—"

"Sayler," he interrupted, in a forbearing tone, "I wish you would not remind me so often of your prejudice against Senator Goodrich. It is unworthy of you. But for my tact—pardon my frankness—your prejudice would have driven him away, and with him a support he controls—"

I showed my amusement.

"Don't smile, Sayler," he protested with some anger in his smooth, heavy voice. "You are not the only strong man in the party. And I venture to take advantage of our long friendship to speak plainly to you. I wish to see a united party. One of my reasons for sending for you was to tell you how greatly I am distressed and chagrined by the attacks on Senator Goodrich in our papers."

"Did you have any other reason for sending for me?" said I very quietly.

"That was the principal one," he confessed.

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"What do you mean, Sayler?"

"I thought possibly you might also have wished to tell me how unjust you thought the attacks on me in the eastern papers, and to assure me that they had only strengthened our friendship."

He was silent.

I rose, threw my overcoat on my arm, took up my hat.

"Wait a moment, please," he said. "I have always found you very impartial in your judgments—your clear judgment has been of the highest usefulness to me many times."

"Thank you," I said. "You are most kind—most generous."

"So," he went on, not dreaming that he might find sarcasm if he searched for it, "I hope you appreciate why I have refrained from seeing you, as I wished. I know, Sayler, your friendship was loyal. I know you did during the campaign what you thought wisest and best. But I feel that you must see now what a grave mistake you made. Don't misunderstand me, Harvey. I do not hold it against you. But you must see, no doubt you do see, that it would not be fair for me, it would not be in keeping with the dignity of the great office with which the people have intrusted me, to seem to lend my approval."

I looked straight at him until his gaze fell. Then I said, my voice even lower than usual: "If you will look at the election figures carefully you will find written upon them a very interesting fact. That fact is: In all the doubtful states—the ones that elected you—Scarborough swept everything where our party has heretofore been strongest; you were elected by carrying districts where our party has always been weakest. And in those districts, James, our money was spent—as you well know."

I waited for this to cut through his enswaddlings of self-complacence, waited until I saw its acid eating into him. Then I went on: "I hope you will never again deceive yourself, or let your enemies deceive you. As to your plans—the plans for Goodrich and his crowd—I have nothing to say. My only concern is to have Woodruff's matters—his pledges—attended to. That I must insist upon."

He lowered his brows in a heavy frown.

"I have your assent?" I insisted.

"Really, Harvey,"—there was an astonishing change from the complacent, superior voice of a few minutes before,—"I'll do what I can—but—the responsibilities—the duties of—of my position—"

"You are going to take the office, James," said I. "You can't cheat the men who gave it to you."

He did not answer.

"I pledged my word," I went on. "You gave the promises. I indorsed for you. The debts must be met." Never before had I enjoyed using that ugliest of words.

"You ask me to bring myself into unpopularity with the entire country," he pleaded. "Several of the men on your list are ex-convicts. Others are about to be indicted for election frauds. Many are men utterly without character—"

"They did your work, James," said I. "I guarantee that in no case will the unpleasant consequences to you be more than a few disagreeable but soon forgotten newspaper articles. You haggle over these trifles, and—why, look at your cabinet list! There are two names on it—two of the four Goodrich men—that will cost you blasts of public anger—perhaps the renomination."

"Is this my friend Harvey Sayler?" he exclaimed, grief and pain in that face which had been used by him for thirty years as the sculptor uses the molding clay.

"It is," I answered calmly. "And never more your friend than now, when you have ceased to be a friend to him—and to yourself."

"Then do not ask me to share the infamy of those wretches," he pleaded.

"They are our allies and helpers," I said, "wretches only as I and all of us in practical politics are wretches. Difference of degree, perhaps; but not of kind. And, James, if our promises to these invaluable fellow workers of ours are not kept, kept to the uttermost, you will compel me and my group of Senators to oppose and defeat your most important nominations. And I shall myself, publicly, from the floor of the Senate, show up these Goodrich nominees of yours as creatures of corrupt corporations and monopolies." I said this without heat; every word of it fell cold as arctic ice upon his passion.

A long pause, then: "Your promises shall be kept," he assented with great dignity of manner; "not because you threaten, Harvey, but because I value your friendship beyond anything and everything. And I may add I am sorry, profoundly sorry, my selections for the important places do not please you."

"I think of your future," I said. "You talk of friendship—"

"No, no, Harvey," he protested, with a vehemence of reassurance that struck me as amusing.

"And," I went on, "it is in friendship, James, that I warn you not to fill all your crucial places with creatures of the Goodrich crowd. They will rule your administration, they will drive you, in spite of yourself, on and on, from excess to excess. You will put the middle West irrevocably against you. You will make even the East doubtful. You are paying, paying with your whole future, for that which is already yours. If you lose your hold on the people, the money-crowd will have none of you. If you keep the people, the money-crowd will be your very humble servant."

I happened just then to glance past him at a picture on the wall over his chair. It was a crayon portrait of his wife, made from an enlarged photograph—a poor piece of work, almost ludicrous in its distortions of proportion and perspective. But it touched me the more because it was such a humble thing, reminiscent of her and his and my lowly beginnings. And an appeal seemed to go straight to my heart from those eyes that had so often been raised from the sewing in sympathetic understanding of the things I was struggling to make her husband see.

I pointed to the picture; he slowly turned round in his chair until he too was looking at it. "What would she say, Burbank," I asked, "if she were with us now?"

And then I went on to analyze his outlined administration, to show him in detail why I thought it would ruin him, to suggest men who were as good party men as the Goodrich crowd and would be a credit to him and a help. And he listened with his old-time expression, looking up at his dead wife's picture all the while. "You must be popular, at any cost," I ended. "The industrial crowd will stay with the party, no matter what we do. As long as Scarborough is in control on the other side, we are their only hope. And so, we are free to seek popularity—and we must regain it or we're done for. Money won't save us when we've lost our grip on the rank and file. The presidency can't be bought again for you. If it must be bought next time, another figure-head will have to be used."

"I can't tell you how grateful I am," was his conclusion after I had put my whole mind before him and he and I had discussed it. "But there are certain pledges to Goodrich—"

"Break them," said I. "To keep them is catastrophe."

I knew the pledges he had in the foreground of his thoughts—a St. Louis understrapper of the New York financial crowd for Secretary of the Treasury; for Attorney General a lawyer who knew nothing of politics or public sentiment or indeed of anything but how to instruct corporations in law-breaking and law-dodging.

He thought a long time. When he answered it was with a shake of the head. "Too late, I'm afraid, Harvey. I've asked the men and they've accepted. That was a most untimely illness of yours. I'll see what can be done. It's a grave step to offend several of the most conspicuous men in the party."

"Not so serious as to offend the party itself," I replied. "Money is a great power in politics, but partizanship is a greater."

"I'll think it over," was the most he had the courage to concede. "I must look at all sides, you know. But, whatever I decide, I thank you for your candor."

We separated, the best friends in the world, I trying to recover some few of the high hopes of him that had filled me on election night. "He's weak and timid," I said to myself, "but at bottom he must have a longing to be President in fact as well as in name. Even the meanest slave longs to be a man."

I should have excepted the self-enslaved slaves of ambition. Of all bondmen, they alone, I believe, not only do not wish freedom, but also are ever plotting how they may add to their chains.



XXIX

A LETTER FROM THE DEAD

I was living alone at the Willard.

Soon after the death of Burbank's wife, his sister and brother-in-law, the Gracies, had come with their three children to live with him and to look after his boy and girl. Trouble between his family and mine, originating in some impertinences of the oldest Gracie girl, spread from the children to the grown people until, when he went into the White House, he and I were the only two on speaking terms. I see now that this situation had large influence on me in holding aloof and waiting always for overtures from him. At the time I thought, as no doubt he thought also, that the quarrel was beneath the notice of men.

At any rate my family decided not to come to Washington during his first winter in the White House. I lived alone at the Willard. One afternoon toward the end of February I returned there from the Senate and found Woodruff, bad news in his face. "What is it?" I asked indifferently, for I assumed it was some political tangle.

"Your wife—was taken—very ill—very suddenly," he said. His eyes told me the rest.

If I had ever asked myself how this news would affect me, I should have answered that it would give me a sensation of relief. But, instead of relief, I felt the stunning blow of a wave of sorrow which has never wholly receded. Not because I loved her—that I never did. Not because she was the mother of my children—my likes and dislikes are direct and personal. Not because she was my wife—that bond had been galling. Not because I was fond of her—she had one of those cold, angry natures that forbid affection. No; I was overwhelmed because she and I had been intimates, with all the closest interests of life in common, with the whole world, even my children whom I loved passionately, outside that circle which fate had drawn around us two. I imagine this is not uncommon among married people,—this unhealable break in their routine of association when one departs. No doubt it often passes with the unthinking for love belatedly discovered.

"She did not suffer," said Woodruff gently. "It was heart disease. She had just come in from a ride with your oldest daughter. They were resting and talking in high spirits by the library fire. And then—the end came—like putting out the light."

Heart disease! Often I had noted the irregular beat of her heart—a throb, a long pause, a flutter, a short pause, a throb. And I could remember that more than once the sound had been followed by the shadowy appearance, in the door of my mind, of one of those black thoughts which try to tempt hope but only make it hide in shame and dread. Now, the memory of those occasions tormented me into accusing myself of having wished her gone. But it was not so.

She had told me she had heart trouble; but she had confided to no one that she knew it might bring on the end at any moment. She left a letter, sealed and addressed to me:

Harvey—

I shall never have the courage to tell you, yet I feel you ought to know. I think every one attributes to every one else less shrewdness than he possesses. I know you have never given me the credit of seeing that you did not love me. And you were so kind and considerate and so patient with my moods that no doubt I should have been deceived had I not known what love is. I think, to have loved and to have been loved develops in a woman a sort of sixth sense—sensitiveness to love. And that had been developed in me, and when it never responded to your efforts to deceive me, I knew you did not love me.

Well, neither did I love you, though I was able to hide it from you. And it has often irritated me that you were so unobservant. You know now the cause of many of my difficult moods, which have seemed causeless.

I admired you from the first time we met. I have liked you, I have been proud of you, I would not have been the wife of any other man in the world, I would not have had any other father for my children. But I have kept on loving the man I loved before I met you.

Why? I don't know. I despised him for his weaknesses. I should never have married him, though mother and Ed both feared I would. I think I loved him because I knew he loved me. That is the way it is with women—they seldom love independently. Men like to love; women like to be loved. And, poor, unworthy creature that he was, still he would have died for me, though God had denied him the strength to live for me. But all that God gave him—the power to love—he gave me. And so he was different in my eyes from what he was in any one's else in the world. And I loved him.

I don't tell you this because I feel regret or remorse. I don't; there never was a wife truer than I, for I put him completely aside. I tell you, because I want you to remember me right after I'm gone, Harvey dear. You may remember how I was silly and jealous of you, and think I am mistaken about my own feelings. But jealousy doesn't mean love. When people really love, I think it's seldom that they're jealous. What makes people jealous usually is suspecting the other person of having the same sort of secret they have themselves. It hurt my vanity that you didn't love me; and it stung me to think you cared for some one else, just as I did.

I want you to remember me gently. And somehow I think that, after you've read this, you will, even if you did love some one else. If you ever see this at all, Harvey—and I may tear it up some day on impulse—but if you ever do see it, I shall be dead, and we shall both be free. And I want you to come to me and look at me and—

It ended thus abruptly. No doubt she had intended to open the envelope and finish it—but, what more was there to say?

I think she must have been content with the thoughts that were in my mind as I looked down at her lying in death's inscrutable calm. I had one of my secretaries hunt out the man she had loved—a sad, stranded wreck of a man he had become; but since that day he has been sheltered at least from the worst of the bufferings to which his incapacity for life exposed him.

There was a time when I despised incapables; then I pitied them; but latterly I have felt for them the sympathetic sense of brotherhood. Are we not all incapables? Differing only in degree, and how slightly there, if we look at ourselves without vanity; like practice-sketches put upon the slate by Nature's learning hand and impatiently sponged away.



XXX

A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED

After the funeral I lingered at our Fredonia place. There was the estate to settle; my two daughters had now no one to look after them; Junior must be started right at learning the business of which he would soon be the head, as his uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for large executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington. The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my activities in politics, of all activities of whatever kind. I watched Ed and my children resuming the routine of their lives, swiftly adjusting themselves to the loss of one who had been so dear to them and apparently so necessary to their happiness. The cry of "man overboard," a few ripples, a few tears; the sailing on, with the surface of the water smooth again and the faces keen and bright.

Woodruff wrote, urging; then he sent telegram after telegram. Still I procrastinated; for all the effect his letters and telegrams had upon me, I might as well have left them unopened. My final answer was: "Act as you would if I were dead."

Probably, what had given my pessimism its somberest tone was the attitude of the public toward Burbank's high appointments. I had confidently predicted that filling all the high offices with men who had no interest but "the interests," men who were notoriously the agents and servants of the great "campaign contributors," would cause a public outcry that could not be ignored. The opposition press did make perfunctory criticisms; but nowhere was there a sign that the people were really angered.

I got the clue to this mystery from my gardener, who prided himself on being strenuously of the opposition party. "What do you think of the new administration?" said I when I came upon him one morning at the rhododendron beds.

"Much better than I allowed," said he. "Burbank's got good men around him."

"You approve of his Cabinet?"

"Of course, they're all strong party men. I like a good party man. I like a man that has convictions and principles, and stands up for 'em."

"Your newspapers say some pretty severe things about those men."

"So I read," said he, "but you know how that is, Mr. Sayler. They've got to pound 'em to please the party. But nobody believes much he sees in the newspapers. Whenever I read an item about things I happen to know, it's all wrong. And I guess they don't get it any nearer right about the things I don't happen to know. Now, all this here talk of there being so many millionaires—I don't take no kind of stock in it."

"No?" said I.

"Of course, some's poor and some's rich—that's got to be. But I think it's all newspaper lies about these here big fortunes and about all the leading men in politics being corrupt. I know it ain't so about the leading men in my party, and I reckon there ain't no more truth in it about the leading men of your'n. I was saying to my wife last night, 'It's all newspaper lies,' says I, 'just like the story they printed about Mrs. Timmins eloping with Maria Wilmerding's husband, when she had only went over to Rabbit Forks to visit her married daughter.' No, they can't fool me—them papers."

"That's one way of looking at it," said I.

"It's horse sense," said he.

And I have no doubt that to the average citizen, leading a small, quiet life and dealing with affairs in corner-grocery retail, the stupendous facts of accumulations of wealth and wholesale, far-and-wide purchases of the politicians, the vast system of bribery, with bribes adapted to every taste and conscience, seem impossibilities, romancings of partizanship and envy and sensationalism. Nor can he understand the way superior men play the great games, the heartlessness of ambition, the cynicism of political and commercial prostitution, the sense of superiority to the legal and moral codes which comes to most men with success.

Your average citizen is a hero-worshiper too. He knows his own and his neighbor's weaknesses, but he gapes up at the great with glamoured eyes, and listens to their smooth plausibilities as to the reading of the Gospel from the pulpit. He belongs to the large mass of those who believe, not to the small class of those who question. But for the rivalries and jealousies of superior men which have kept them always divided into two parties, the ins and the outs, I imagine the masses would have remained for ever sunk in the most hopeless, if the most delightful, slavery—that in which the slave accepts his lowliness as a divine ordinance and looks up to his oppressors and plunderers as hero-leaders. And no doubt, so long as the exuberant riches of our country enable the triumphant class to "take care of" all the hungry who have intellect enough to make themselves dangerous, we shall have no change—except occasional spasms whenever a large number of unplaced intelligent hungry are forcing the full and fat to make room for them. How long will this be?

If our education did not merely feed prejudices instead of removing them, I should say not long. As it is, I expect to "leave the world as wicked and as foolish as I found it." At any rate, until the millenium, I shall continue to play the game under the rules of human nature—instead of under the rules of human ideals, as does my esteemed friend Scarborough. And I claim that we practical men are as true and useful servants of our country and of our fellow men as he. If men like him are the light, men like us are the lantern that shields it from the alternating winds of rapacity and resentment.

But, in running on about myself, I have got away from my point, which was how slight and even flimsy a pretense of fairness will shelter a man in high place—and therefore a Burbank. "He will fool the people as easily as he fools himself," said I. And more than ever it seemed to me that I must keep out of the game of his administration. My necessity of party regularity made it impossible for me to oppose him; my equal necessity of not outraging my sense of the wise, not to speak of the decent, made it impossible for me to abet him.

At last Woodruff came in person. When his name was brought to me, I regretted that I could not follow my strong impulse to refuse to see him. But at sight of his big strong body and big strong face, with its typically American careless good humor—the cool head, the warm heart, the amused eyes and lips that could also harden into sternness of resolution—at sight of this old friend and companion-in-arms, my mood began to lift and I felt him stirring in it like sunshine attacking a fog. "I know what you've come to say," I began, "but don't say it. I shall keep to my tent for the present."

"Then you won't have a tent to keep to," retorted he.

"Very well," said I. "My private affairs will give me all the occupation I need."

He laughed. "The general resigns from the command of the army to play with a box of lead soldiers."

"That sounds well," said I. "But the better the analogy, the worse the logic. I am going out of the business of making and working off gold bricks and green goods—and that's no analogy."

"Then you must be going to kill yourself," he replied. "For that's life."

"Public life—active life," said I. "Here, there are other things." And I looked toward my two daughters, whose laughter reached us from their pony-cart just rounding a distant curve in the drive.

His gaze followed mine and he watched the two children until they were out of sight, watched them with the saddest, hungriest look in his eyes. "Guess you're right," he said gruffly.

After a silence I asked: "What's the news?"

A quizzical smile just curled his lips, and it broadened into a laugh as he saw my own rather shamefaced smile of understanding. "Seems to me," said he, "that I read somewhere once how a king, perhaps it was an emperor, so hankered for the quiet joys that he got off the throne and retired to a monastery—and then established lines of post-horses from his old capital to bring him the news every half-hour or so. I reckon he'd have taken his job back if he could have got it."

"I reckon," said I.

"Well," said he, "the news is that they're about to oust you from the chairmanship of the national committee and from control in this state."

"Really?" said I, in an indifferent tone—though I felt anything but indifferent.

"Really," said he. "Burbank is throwing out our people throughout the country and is putting Goodrich men in place of 'em—wherever our fellows won't turn traitor. And they've got hold of Roebuck. He's giving a dinner at the Auditorium to-morrow night. It's a dinner of eleven covers. I think you can guess who ten of 'em are for. The eleventh is for Dominick!"

That was enough. I grasped the situation instantly. The one weak spot in my control of my state was my having left the city bosses their local power, instead of myself ruling the cities from the state capital. Why had I done this? Perhaps the bottom reason was that I shrank from permitting any part of the machine for which I was directly responsible to be financed by collections from vice and crime. I admit that the distinction between corporate privilege and plunder and the pickings and stealings and prostitutions of individuals is more apparent than real. I admit that the kinds of vice and crime I tolerated are far more harmful than the other sorts which are petty and make loathed outcasts of their wretched practitioners. Still, I was snob or Pharisee or Puritan enough to feel and to act upon the imaginary distinction. And so, I had left the city bosses locally independent—for, without the revenues and other aids from vice and crime, what city political machine could be kept up?

"Dominick!" I exclaimed.

"Exactly!" said Woodruff. "Now, Mr. Sayler, the point is just here. I don't blame you for wanting to get out. If I had any other game, I'd get out myself. But what's to become of us—of all your friends, not only in this state but throughout the country? Are you going to stand by and see them slaughtered and not lift a finger to help 'em?"

There was no answering him. Yet the spur of vanity, which clipped into me at thought of myself thrown down and out by these cheap ingrates and scoundrels, had almost instantly ceased to sting; and my sense of weary disgust had returned. If I went into the battle again, what work faced me? The same old monotonous round. To outflank Burbank and Goodrich by tricks as old as war and politics, and effective only because human stupidity is infinite and unteachable. To beat down and whip back into the ranks again these bandits of commerce disguised as respectable, church-going, law-upholding men of property—and to do this by the same old methods of terror and force.

"You can't leave us in the lurch," said Doc. "And the game promises to be interesting once more. I don't like racing on the flat. It's the hurdles that make the fun."

I pictured myself again a circus horse, going round and round the ring, jumping the same old hurdles at the same old intervals. "Take my place, Doc," said I.

He shook his head. "I'm a good second," said he, "but a rotten bad first."

It was true enough. He mysteriously lacked that mysterious something which, when a man happens to have been born with it, makes other men yield him the command—give it to him, force it on him, if he hangs back.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"That dinner to-morrow night is in Suite L. Go to it—that's the shortest way to put Roebuck and Dominick out of business. Face 'em and they'll skulk."

"It's a risk," said I. I saw at once that he was right, but I was in a reluctant humor.

"Not a bit of it," was his confident reply. "I had a horse that was crazy—would run away on any old provocation. But no matter how busy he was at kicking up the dust and the dashboard, you could always halt him by ringing a bell once. He'd been in the street-car service. That's the way it is with men, especially strong men, that have been broken to the bell. They hear it ring and they can't resist. Go up and ring the bell."

"Go ring it yourself," said I.

"You're the bell," said he.



XXXI

HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD

At a little after eight the following night, I was in Chicago, was knocking at Suite L in the Auditorium Hotel; I was hearing sounds from within that indicated that the dinner was under way. The door swung back and there stood old Roebuck himself, napkin in hand, his shriveling old face showing that his dollar sense was taking up the strength which his other senses were losing. He was saying cordially, "Ah, Croffut, you are late—"

Then his dim eyes saw me; he pulled himself up like a train when the air-brakes are clapped on.

"They told me at the office that you were at dinner," said I in the tone of one who has unintentionally blundered. "As I was looking for dinner, I rather hoped you'd ask me to join you. But I see that—"

"Come right in," he said smoothly, but gray as a sheep. "You'll find some old friends of yours. We're taking advantage of the convention of western manufacturers to have a little reunion."

I now had a full view of the table. There was a silence that made the creaking of starched evening shirt-bosoms noisy as those men drew long stealthy breaths when breathing became imperative. All my "clients" and Dominick—he at Roebuck's right. At Roebuck's left there was a vacant chair. "Shall I sit here?" said I easily.

"That place was reserved—was for—but—" stammered Roebuck.

"For Granby's ghost?" said I pleasantly.

His big lips writhed. And as my glance of greeting to these old friends of mine traveled down one side of the table and up the other, it might have been setting those faces on fire, so brightly did they flare. It was hard for me to keep my disgust beneath the surface. Those "gentlemen" assembled there were among the "leading citizens" of my state; and Roebuck was famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a king of commerce and a philanthropist. Yet, every one of those brains was busy most of its hours with assassin-like plottings—and for what purpose? For ends so petty, so gross and stupid that it was inconceivable how intelligence could waste life upon them, not to speak of the utter depravity and lack of manliness. Liars cheats, bribers; and flaunting the fruits of infamy as honors, as titles to respect, as gifts from Almighty God! And here they were, assembled now for silly plottings against the man whose only offense in their eyes was that he was saving them from themselves—was preventing them from killing the goose that would cheerfully keep on laying golden eggs for the privilege of remaining alive. It was pitiful. It was nauseating. I felt my degradation in stooping to such company.

I spoke to Dominick last. To my surprise he squarely returned my gaze. His eyes were twinkling, as the eyes of a pig seem to be, if you look straight into its face when it lifts its snout from a full trough. Presently he could contain the huge volume of his mirth no longer. It came roaring from him in a great coarse torrent, shaking his vast bulk and the chair that sustained it, swelling the veins in his face, resounding through the silent room while the waiters literally stood aghast. At last he found breath to ejaculate: "Well, I'll be good and—damned!"

This gale ripped from the others and whirled away their cloaks of surface-composure. Naked, they suggested a lot of rats in a trap—Dominick jeering at them and anticipating the pleasure of watching me torment them. I choked back the surge of repulsion and said to Roebuck: "Then where shall I sit?"

Roebuck looked, almost wildly, toward the foot of the table. He longed to have me as far from him as possible. Partridge, at the foot of the table, cried out—in alarm: "Make room for the Senator between you and Mr. Dominick, Roebuck! He ought to be as near the head of the table as possible."

"No matter where Senator Sayler sits, it's the head of the table," said Roebuck. His commonplace of courtesy indicated, not recovered self-control, but the cunning of his rampant instinct of self-preservation—that cunning which men so often exhibit in desperate straits, thereby winning credit for cool courage.

"We're a merry company," said I, as we sat. This, with a glance at Dominick heaving in the subsiding storm of his mirth. My remark set him off again. I glanced at his place to see if he had abandoned his former inflexible rule of total abstinence. There stood his invariable pot of tea. Clearly, it was not drink that enabled him to enjoy a situation which, as it seemed to me, was fully as unattractive for him as for his fellows.

Soon the door opened and in strode Croffut; handsome, picturesque, with his pose of dashing, brave manhood, which always got the crowds into the mood for the frenzy his oratory conjured. Croffut seemed to me to put the climax upon this despicable company—Croffut, one of the great orators of the party, so adored by the people that, but for our overwhelming superiority in the state, I should never have dared eject him from office. Since I ejected him he had not spoken to me. Dominick looked at him, said in a voice that would have flared even the warm ashes of manhood into a furious blaze: "Go and shake hands with Senator Sayler, Croffut, and sit down."

Croffut advanced, smiling. "I am fit for my company," thought I as I let him clasp my hand.

"Better tilt Granby's ghost out of that chair, Croffut," said Dominick, as the ex-Senator was seating himself. And in his animal exuberance of delight at his joke and at the whole situation he clapped Roebuck on the shoulder.

Roebuck shrank and winced. Moral humiliation he could shed as an armor-plated turret sheds musket-balls. But a physical humiliation, especially with spectators, sank in and sank deep. Instantly, alarmed lest Dominick had seen and understood, he smiled and said: "That's a vigorous arm of yours, Mr. Dominick."

"Not bad for a man of sixty," said Dominick.

I ate because to eat was a necessary part of my pose of absolute calmness; but I had to force down the food. It seemed to me to embody the banquet there set before my mental appetite. I found I had no stomach for that banquet. It takes the coarse palate of youth or the depraved palate of a more debauched manhood than mine to enjoy such a feast. Yet, less than a year before, I had enjoyed, had delighted in, a far less strenuous contest with these mutineers. As I sat holding down my gorge and acting as if I were at ease, I suddenly wondered what Elizabeth Crosby would think of me if she could see. And then I saw her, with a reality of imagining that startled me—it was as if she were in the doorway; and her eyes lifted to mine in that slow, steady, searching gaze of hers.

I suppose, if a soldier thrusting his saber into the bowels of his enemy on the battle-field were suddenly to see before him his mother or the good and gentle wife or daughter he loved, he would drop the saber and fly to hide himself like a murderer. So, I, overwhelmed, said to myself: "I can not go on! Let these wretches wallow in their own vileness. I shall not wallow with them. I am no swineherd!"

As I was debating how to escape and what one of the many other ways of saving my friends and lieutenants I should adopt, Dominick touched me on the arm. "A word with you, Senator," said he.

He glanced at the others as if he were debating whether he should order them from the table while he talked with me. If he had ordered it, they would have gone. But restrained, perhaps by his crude though reverent sense of convention, he rose and led the way over to a corner.

"I want to tell you, Senator, that as soon as I got on to what this here push was plottin', I wired you askin' an appointment. You'll find the telegram at your house when you go home. I don't stand for no foulin'. I play the game straight. I came because I thought you'd want the party to be represented at such a getherin'."

I saw that he had come to the dinner, doubtful whether any enterprise against me, promising enough for him to risk embarking, could be launched; as soon as I entered the room he, like the rat when the cat interrupted the rat-and-mouse convention to discuss belling it, unceremoniously led the way to safety. But this was not one of those few occasions on which it is wise to show a man that his lies do not fool you. "I am glad to hear you say these things, Dominick," said I. "I am glad you are loyal to the party."

"You can trust me, Senator," said he earnestly.

"I can trust your common sense," said I. And I proceeded to grasp this lucky chance to get away. "I am leaving," I went on, "as soon as the coffee is served. I shall look to you to send these gentlemen home in a proper frame of mind toward the party."

His eyes glistened. Except his growing fortune, nothing delighted him so much as a chance to "rough-house" his eminently respectable "pals." He felt toward them that quaint mixture of envy, contempt and a desire to fight which fills a gamin at sight of a fashionably dressed boy. He put out his big hand and dampened mine with it. "You can count on me, Senator," he said gratefully. "I'll trim 'em, comb and tail-feathers."

"Don't overlook their spurs," said I.

"They ain't got none," said he, "except those you lend 'em."

We returned to a table palled by sullen dread—dread of me, anger against Dominick who, in the courage of his ignorance of the conventionalities which restrained them, had taken the short, straight cut to me and peace. And, as veterans in the no-quarter warfare of ambition, they knew I had granted him peace on no less terms than their heads.

They had all, even Roebuck, been drinking freely in the effort to counteract the depression. But the champagne seemed only to aggravate their gloom except in the case of young Jamieson. He had just succeeded, through the death of his father, to the privilege of levying upon the people of eleven counties by means of trolley franchises which the legislature had granted his father in perpetuity in return for financial services to "the party." It is, by the way, an interesting illustration of the human being's lack of thinking power that a legislature could not give away a small gold-mine belonging to the public to any man for even a brief term of years without causing a revolution, but could and does give away far more valuable privileges to plunder and to tax, and give them away for ever, without causing any real stir. However—young Jamieson's liquor, acting upon a mind that had not had enough experience to appreciate the meaning of the situation, drove him on to insolent taunts and boasts, addressed to his neighbors but intended for me. I ignored him and, when the coffee was served, rose to depart.

Roebuck urged me to stay, followed me to the coat-room, took my coat away from the servant and helped me with it. "I want to see you the first thing in the morning, Harvey," said he.

"I'll call you up, if I have time," said I.

We came out of the cloak-room, his arm linked in mine, and crossed the corner of the dining-room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw up his arm and fluttered his hand in an impertinent gesture of farewell. "So long, Senator Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We'll teach you a lesson in how to treat gentlemen."

The last word—gentlemen—was just clearing his mouth when Dominick's tea-pot, flung with all the force of the ex-prize-fighter's big muscles and big body, landed in the midst of his broad white shirt-bosom. And with the tea-pot Dominick hurled his favorite epithet from his garbage barrel of language. With a yell Jamieson crashed over backward; his flying legs, caught by the table, tilted it; his convulsive kicks sent it over, and half the diners, including Dominick, were floored under it.

All this in a snap of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, wholly infuriated brutes. There is shrewd, sly wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of the cat changed into a queen and how she sprang from her throne at sight of a mouse to pursue it on all fours. The best of us are, after all, animals changed into men by the spell of reason; and in some circumstances, it doesn't take much of a blow to dissolve that spell.

For those men in those circumstances, that blow proved sufficient. Partridge extricated himself, ran round the table and kicked Jamieson in the head—partly in punishment, perhaps, and because he needed just that vent for his rage, but chiefly to get credit with me, for he glanced toward me as he did it. Men, sprawling and squirming side by side on the floor, lashed out with feet and fists, striking each other and adding to the wild dishevelment. The candles set fire to the table-cloth and before the blaze was extinguished burned several in the hair and mustaches.

Dominick, roaring with laughter, came to Roebuck and me standing at the door, both dazed at this magic shift of a "gentlemen's" dinner into a bear-pit. "Granby's ghost is raisin' hell," said he.

But I had no impulse to laugh or to gloat. "Good night," said I to Roebuck and hastened away.

It was the end of the attempt to mine the foundations of my power. But I did not neglect its plain warning. As soon as the legislature assembled, I publicly and strongly advocated the appointment of a joint committee impartially to investigate all the cities of the state, those ruled by my own party no less than those ruled by the opposition. The committee was appointed and did its work so thoroughly that there was a popular clamor for the taking away of the charters of the cities and for ruling them from the state capital. It is hardly necessary to say that my legislature and governor yielded to this clamor. And so the semi-independent petty princes, the urban bosses, lost their independence and passed under my control; and the "collections" which had gone directly to them reached them by way of Woodruff as grants from my machine, instead of as revenues of their own right.

Before this securing of my home power was complete, I had my counter-attack upon the Burbank-Goodrich combine well under way. Immediately on my return to Fredonia from the disastrous dinner, I sent for the attorney general of the state, Ferguson. He was an ideal combination of man and politician. He held to the standards of private morality as nearly as it is possible for a man in active public life to hold to them—far more nearly than most men dare or, after they have become inured, care, to hold. He always maintained with me a firm but tactful independence; he saw the necessity for the sordid side of politics, but he was careful personally to keep clear of smutched or besmutching work. He had as keen an instinct for popularity as a bee has for blossoms; he knew how to do or to direct unpopular things on dark nights with a dark lantern, how to do or to direct popular things in full uniform on a white horse. I have never ordered any man to a task that was not morally congenial; and I was careful to respect Ferguson's notion of self-respect. I sent for him now, and outlined my plan—to bring suits, both civil and criminal, in the Federal courts in the name of the state, against Roebuck and his associates of the Power Trust.

When he had heard, he said: "Yes, Mr. Sayler, we can break up the Power Trust, can cause the indictment and conviction of Mr. Roebuck. I can prevent the United States Attorney General from playing any of the usual tricks and defending the men whom the people think he is vigorously prosecuting. But—"

"But?" said I encouragingly.

"Is this on the level? If I undertake these prosecutions, shall I be allowed to push them honestly? Or will there be a private settlement as soon as Roebuck and his crowd see their danger?"

"No matter what happens," I replied, "you shall prosecute at least the civil suits to the end. I give you my word for that."

He thanked me warmly, for he appreciated that I was bestowing upon him an enormous opportunity for national fame.

"And you?" said I. "If you succeed in this prosecution, will you remain in the public service or will you accept the offers the interests will make, and remove to New York and become a rich corporation lawyer?"