A LIGHT IN THE WEST GOES DOWN
The strenuousness of the fall campaign almost wiped these events from
Dick's mind. Day after day he spent in bringing home his points to the
man on the street and in the workshop. Much of it was dreary and
monotonous work, but he kept doggedly at it. It seemed his whole life,
now. And night after night Mr. Preston, Dick and Ellery tried to put
fire into some dingy little hall-full of men. To Percival's surprise,
Norris developed a plain common-sense variety of eloquence that appealed
to his audiences quite as much as did Dick's more fervid eloquence.
Ellery invariably spoke straight to some well-known condition. But they
hammered and pounded and reasoned and explained; they tried emotion, and
logic and everything except bribes to win their ground, until their
speeches began to sound automatic to themselves, their voices grew
hoarse, and they moved like men in a dream.
"If there were one day more of this," Dick said to Norris, as they
tramped home late on the night before election, and felt a certain
restfulness in the November starlight, "I should send down a wheezing
nasal phonograph to grind out my speech. I am played out. Everything I
say sounds like tommy-rot."
"It does grow hollow. The worst of it is it robs me of my evenings with
Madeline."
"Um!" said Dick. "When are you to be married?"
"About Christmas. The death of Golden, poor fellow, shoves me up a peg
on the editorial staff, and justifies me in facing matrimony. Mr. Elton
is good enough to give us a little home. They are a family to hang to,
Dick. I feel as though I had 'belongings' for the first time since I
lost my own father and mother. Madeline and I shall make rather a small
beginning, but, as you know, she has not set her heart on luxuries."
"No," said Dick slowly. "You are a lucky fellow, Ellery. You're going to
get away ahead of me in the long run. Preston said yesterday that the
honors of this campaign were yours. He has been a fine figure-head, and
I have hollered loud, but you've hollered deepest, and the public knows
it. I guess that's the real reason that you've been shoved ahead on the
staff. Here's your boarding-house. Good night, old fellow. To-morrow
night our labors will be over."
"I hope yours will have just begun, Mr. Alderman," Norris retorted.
The polls closed in uncertainty and for three days speculation filled
the papers, and election bets remained unpaid. Then the decks cleared.
Mr. Preston was elected mayor by a narrow plurality; and out of the
eighteen aldermen, the reform element had carried seven, Dick Percival
among them, to victory. The Municipal Club counted its gains and was
jubilant, for this meant that, if the city council passed any
objectionable measure, their iniquity could be vetoed by the mayor, and
the bad men of the city fathers lacked one of the two-thirds majority
which they would need to carry their legislation over the executive's
veto.
Dick took Lena and went away for a fortnight's rest, but came back
looking old and dissatisfied.
It was understood that the first battle in the new council would be over
the lighting franchise, which was about to expire and which the company
in power wished to renew. There had been some talk of an attempt to
force it through before the old council went out of power, but even
Billy Barry's henchmen refused to commit themselves to so unpopular a
measure on the very eve of election; for St. Etienne had been paying a
notoriously high price for notably bad lighting, and the citizen,
usually a meek animal, had been stirred to a realization of his injuries
by wholesale exposition of the truth.
But now there were new councils of war, and Billy swore more intricate
oaths than he had ever been known to produce in days of yore. He was
still in possession of his aldermanic seat, but a little uncertain
whether it was a throne or a stool of repentance. Still Billy talked
loudly of the things he meant to do; and, as usual in his troubles, went
to consult the delphic Mr. Murdock; and Mr. Murdock went to see Mr.
Early; and Mr. Early, after very much demur, went to see Mr. Percival.
Sebastian did not like to mix himself publicly in politics, and the
reformers were his friends.
Still, one evening just before the franchise was introduced, Mr. Early
did drop in on Dick in a friendly sort of way. Percival took him to his
own sanctum, and settled down with him to the friendly communion of
cigars.
Mr. Early hesitated and was manifestly ill at ease, which gave Dick a
pleasurable amusement while he waited to hear the discomfort unfolded.
At last Sebastian said: "Dick, you know I am a man of art rather than of
politics, and of course I am in entire sympathy with the idea of clean
government; but I want to talk to you about this lighting business."
"Well?" said Dick, as he took out his cigar.
"It's a matter of some importance to one or two of my friends, and I may
say, to myself, that the old contract should be renewed," said Mr.
Early, gaining confidence. "I want to ask you to look at it in a
reasonable light. I suppose you fellows had to be a little outrageously
virtuous to make your campaign; but now it's time to drop that and get
down to business."
Dick resumed his cigar with an air of settling the question.
"Mr. Early," he said, "I do not think it necessary for us even to
discuss this matter. This was one of the main issues in the campaign.
Some of us were elected on purpose that we might rid the city of this
kind of thing; and we propose to carry out our pledges. There is
nothing more to be said."
"There are personal considerations to every question, Percival,"
answered Mr. Early, shading his face with his hand, and watching Dick's
expression with artistic appreciation of the changes that he felt sure
he should see.
"Not for me," said Dick. "Thank Heaven my hands are clean, and I can do
whatever I believe to be right."
"Yes, for you," answered Mr. Early suavely, and then he broke into a
suppressed laugh. "Why, you young idiot, if you care to be told, your
feet are limed, and the sooner you recognize the fact the better."
"What do you mean?" cried Dick with fierce resentment.
"Oh, sit down, my boy," said Mr. Early, still amiable. "There's no use
in rampaging. I just want to tell you a little story and show you a
little piece of paper."
Dick sat down and glared at his guest.
"Your wife--" Dick started up with something like a groan. "Yes, your
wife, Percival. You see a man does not always stand alone. Your wife has
a necklace of worthless rubies, which she has told you was a present
from our dear departed Swami. If people only knew about it, there might
be a certain amount of scandal about a young woman's receiving a
supposedly valuable gift from a swindler who was also a social idol.
Don't go off your head, Dick. You've got to listen to me. As a matter of
fact, she lied to you when she told you he gave them to her. She bought
them; and she had not the money to pay for them. I suppose it was at his
suggestion that she borrowed the sum from me. That would have been all
right, except that she gave me a note signed by Richard Percival, and
she quite omitted to tell me that her husband was away at the time. I
found that out by chance afterward, after I had supplied her demand.
Would you like to see the forgery, Dick? It's an ugly word, but we might
just as well be plain with each other."
Dick's tongue had grown dry and speechless, so that he seemed to have no
power to check this recital, and now all he could do was to reach out an
eager hand.
"Not so fast," said Mr. Early. "It's mine, not yours. And it will take
more than the five thousand dollars out of which it swindled me to buy
it back. It sounds bad, doesn't it? A forgery, connected with a rascal
who was the talk of the country. I should not myself care to pose again
as the dupe of a woman and her friendly counterfeiter, but that would be
a small matter compared with the hail of scandal that would whir around
the head of that pretty little butterfly, your wife."
"Scandal! My wife!" Dick staggered to his feet.
"That is what we all want to avoid, don't we?" Mr. Early asked with his
fat smile.
They looked at each other in silence. Dick had a wild impulse to fling
himself on his knees, spiritually speaking, and to beg for mercy; but
the expression of Mr. Early's face suggested that all sentiment would
fall into cold storage in his breast.
"You've been devoting yourself, with a certain amount of success, to
digging out the hidden things in other men's careers," the tormentor
went on with a cheerful sneer. "I suppose it has amused you. I know it
amuses me, and it would doubtless amuse the public, to fix attention on
this little affair of your own. You must remember that you have this
disadvantage: you and your kind are thin-skinned. Billy Barry and his
kind are pachyderms."
He settled back comfortably in his chair and smiled benevolently at
Dick's white face.
"Well?" Dick asked at last hoarsely.
Mr. Early carefully refolded the slip of paper, and tucked it away in
his vest pocket, but he spoke with engaging openness.
"It's yours, my dear boy, the day after the lighting franchise passes
over the mayor's veto. If they fail to pass it, I shall know that you
and Mrs. Percival are willing to stand a little public obloquy for the
sake of what you consider right. Very creditable to you, I am sure, and
damned uncomfortable for your wife."
Dick still stared at him, and he went on: "I'll leave you to think it
over. In fact, I do not know that it is necessary for me to learn your
decision except by your action. Sorry to have to take extreme measures,
but it's every one for himself, in this world."
He went out, and Dick sank into a chair and stared at his toes and the
ashes.
"What's the use?" he said to himself. "She didn't know what she was
doing. I can't change it or her."
Winter went on, and Ellery and Madeline were married. Dick squandered
himself on their wedding present, and looked like a thunder-cloud as he
watched the ceremony. On the day after he returned from his brief
honeymoon, Norris started down town to take up the routine of life,
irradiated now by love and purpose. The world seemed fresh and fair, and
even the face of Billy Barry less unlovely than usual as they met near
Newspaper Row.
"Morning," said Mr. Barry. "You look ripping. My congratulations. Sorry
you could not come around to the council meeting, last night. You'd have
been pleased to see the old franchise waltz through."
"What do you mean?" demanded Norris, stopping short.
"Haven't even read the morning paper? Good land, that's what it means to
be a bridegroom!" Barry went on with a chuckle. "Couldn't stop looking
at her face behind the coffee-pot!"
Norris restrained an impulse to throttle him and allowed Barry to
proceed.
"Why, yes, we passed the old thing. I always said we would. Your friend
Percival voted with the combine. He's the real stuff. When he saw how
truth and justice lay, he buckled down and did the square thing. Have a
cigar? No? Oh yes, it's straight goods I'm givin' you. You needn't look
so queer. And say, on the quiet, I'm rather stuck on you reform
fellers. All they need is argument. So when you get 'em, you get 'em
cheap. Say, it's better than cash, any day."
Norris ran up the steps and snatched a morning's paper. Yes, it was
true. Percival had voted against his friends and had given the victory
to the other side. Ellery flung into his office and whirled into his
day's work in a kind of daze. There was much to do and no time for
outside thought, but when the afternoon was over, instead of rushing
back to the little home, as he had expected, Norris hurried into his
coat and hastened to find Dick. Mr. Percival was at home; and, without
waiting to be announced, Ellery sprang up the stairs to the little
sanctum where the two had confabbed on many a day. He plunged in on
Dick, pale and unresponsive, and blurted out his question.
"Yes," said Dick, "I voted for it. I became convinced that it was the
best thing the city could do. I've been telling the boys so for the past
two weeks. I really didn't understand the matter before. Don't get so
excited, Norris."
He spoke quietly, but without meeting his friend's eyes, and Ellery's
heart sank.
"I don't know what it means, Dick," he said bitterly, "but it seems to
me that, like Lucifer, you've been falling from dawn to dewy eve, and
now you are likely to consort with the devils in the pit. Are you the
old Dick who used to be my idol?"
"Oh, bosh!" said Dick. "You are making mountains out of mole hills. The
franchise is all right."
"It's not all right; and you're not all right," cried Norris, in a
frantic grasping after the truth of the matter. "The old relationships
are slipping away and something that was as dear to me as myself is
going with them."
He turned away and Dick suddenly rose.
"Ellery," he cried hoarsely, and Norris turned to see anguish in Dick's
face and outstretched hand, "I--I--can't explain to you," cried
Percival; "but, Ellery--" he moved forward, "don't cut the bonds of old
friendship, for God's sake! I need you now, as I never did before. If
you desert me, I shall lose my grip."
Norris stepped back, and the two took each other's hands and looked
steadfastly, eye into eye. And Norris saw something that took on him the
hold that death has on us, and made him ready to forgive. Death is the
big problem of every mind. We may perhaps master and solve the question
when the death is of the body, but when the soul dies out, the problem
is too great.
Ellery sank into a chair with weariness.
"Tell me about it," he said.
Then Dick stiffened again.
"There isn't anything to tell."
"See here," said Norris. "This isn't only a question of the lighting
franchise. The city may walk in darkness and be damned for all I care;
but I can't bear that you should walk in darkness. Do you realize what
it means? You have fought your first public battle on a basis of truth.
You make your first public appearance in league with evil. You are
killing the hope of your public career before it is fairly in bud."
"I know it," said Dick.
"Percival, you've stirred this city into consciousness. It's been
wonderful how you have done it so swiftly, for it is your doing. The
decent elements are marching forward into control and it belongs to you
to march at their head. The thing has got to go on. If you don't lead
it, some one else will."
"I know it."
"And you are going to give up?" Ellery urged, incredulous.
"I haven't decided. Perhaps I have done with politics."
"And if you abandon your public career, what are you going to do?"
"What do other failures do?"
"Oh, stuff!" exclaimed Norris, and began to pace the room. "Then you did
not vote for the franchise because you believed in it. Somebody has a
pull on you. I'd never have believed that any man in this wide world
would get a pull on Dick Percival."
"Well, somebody has," said Dick shortly. "I wouldn't say so much as that
to any mortal but yourself. Now spare me, Ellery, and don't carry it any
further. Do you think," he went on bitterly, "that I have not gone over
the whole ground and told myself the old truths that never mean anything
to you until life rams them home on your consciousness? A man may creep
out from under the machinery of state law, and escape from the
punishment he deserves; but from the laws under which we really live,
there is no escape. It is reap what you sow; hate and you shall be
hated; sin and suffer. And it isn't as though one went out to sow. One
sows perforce, every minute, whether he will or not. In some instances
the reaping is singularly little fun, Ellery."
"Well, whatever hold this mysterious some one has on you, be a man.
Stand up and own yourself and let the consequences go hang."
"I know some men could. You could. That's the advantage of having taken
a good many hard blows. You learn to stand up against them," Dick
answered slowly. "You know other people's opinion has always been a god
to me. I haven't the strength to defy it now."
There was a short silence, then Dick laid his arms across his friend's
shoulders, quite in the old friendly way.
"Now may we drop that subject and be good pals again?"
"Not yet," Ellery said sharply. "We won't drop it till I've had one more
say. Dick, don't be knocked out by a single blow. You! Why, I thought
you had a grip like a bulldog. I can't believe even in this ugly mess.
Still less will I believe that you haven't the courage--that you aren't
man enough to own your defeat, and then go on as though you hadn't been
beaten."
Dick poked at the andirons with his toe. Suddenly he looked up with a
flash of his old brilliance and buoyancy.
"Suppose I do!" he exclaimed. "What a fellow you are, Ellery, to stick
to me this way! But don't underestimate my difficulty. I'm not an
absolute coward, but I've been beaten not only once, but on both flanks
and in the middle. Everything in life seemed to be giving me a kick. I
was at the bottom when you came in, but if you believe in me, perhaps
I'll begin to believe in myself again. You've always been telling me how
much I did for you. You've done more for me to-night than I ever dreamed
of doing for you."
Ellery's face cleared. They stood with clasped hands, and there seemed
no need of further explanations or assurances. Norris drew a long breath
of relief.
"So we are friends still?" asked Dick.
"Till the Judgment Day and beyond."
"Now good-by," said Dick, as though anxious to get rid of him, "till
to-morrow."
"Till to-morrow."
A moment later a radiant vision stood in the doorway making a pouting
face.
"Dick," said Lena.
Dick started and stiffened himself as though to give battle, his hands
rested on the chair-back in front of him, but an instant's survey of
his wife's rose-leaf face, her well-groomed masses of hair, her dainty
evening gown, seemed to inspire another attitude. He threw his arms
passionately around her.
"Oh, Lena," he cried, "love me! You must love me--you have cost me so
dear!"
"Nonsense!" Lena gave him a sharp push and spoke resentfully. "I'm not
half so extravagant as most of the women we know."
Dick drew away and became rigid again.
"Extravagant!" he exclaimed as though to himself. "You have cost me my
self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best
friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing he loves?"
"I do think, Dick," said Lena severely, "that you can talk the silliest
nonsense of any person I ever heard. What on earth is the meaning of all
this? No--no--" as she saw that he was getting ready to reply. "I have
not time to hear. I thought that tiresome Mr. Norris would never go.
What can you see in him?--Have you forgotten that we are going to the
Country Club for dinner? It's long past time for you to dress."
"Imagine it! I had forgotten that dinner!" Dick answered bitterly. For a
moment he turned away as though, he would not see her while he
readjusted something in himself. He felt like a different man and looked
to her indefinably strange when he faced her again quietly. To himself
he was saying, "What would Ellery do?" and on his answer to his own
question he was readjusting his whole life.
"We will not go out this evening, Lena," he said. "We've come to a
crisis in our affairs more important than a club dinner."
"What, have you been losing money?" cried Lena, startled and resentful.
Dick looked at her with a very unpleasant smile.
"No," he answered. "I wonder what you would say if I told you that I was
ruined?"
Lena gasped with horror. For the moment she could not speak. A gulf of
poverty--no one knew better than she what that meant--yawned before her.
A blind fury against Dick, if he should have plunged her into this,
possessed her; and Dick watched her and read her as he had never done
before.
"Will you sit down?" he asked courteously. "I want to talk with
you--just by our two selves. I haven't lost any money, Lena. Let me
relieve your mind of its worst apprehension." Her face smoothed, but
she seated herself quietly, puzzled and foreboding. Dick was so
singularly inaccessible.
"I've lost no money," he repeated, "but I've come desperately near ruin
for all that. Lena, a moment ago I made a real appeal to your love. You
answered me by a shrug and a push for fear that I might muss that very
pretty and exceedingly becoming gown. It was a kind of illustration of
all our married life."
Lena still stared at him dumbly, vague with uncomprehending fear. This
didn't seem like the easy-going husband she knew. She wished he would
look at her.
"When we were married," he went on, "I had a dream that a man's wife
stood for his ideals, that he might mold his life by her purity and
nobleness and love. I've always been saying, in effect, 'Lead on, Mrs.
Percival and I will follow where you lead!' You've led me into the
depths, Lena, and I'm never going to say that to you any more. You and I
have got to remold our relations and start again."
"What has happened?" Lena asked faintly, and feeling very helpless. She
seemed suddenly to realize how very big Dick's body was, and how little
chance she stood against it. If he was inaccessible in spirit she had no
hold over him. She wished he would get angry. That would be something
concrete. She would know how to meet it.
"What has happened?" she repeated.
"Only this," Dick said. "I am going to refuse to delude myself any
longer; and it is fair to you as it is to me that you should know it. I
am going to stop telling myself that you are my ideal woman, when you
have shown me, for instance, your unwillingness to make such tender
self-sacrifice as a mother must give to a child--that you are true and
honest when you are guilty of an underhand thrust like that little squib
about Madeline--that--"
"Ah," shrieked Lena, leaping to her feet with the light beginning to
come into her eyes. "So that's what's the matter! That girl--"
"No," said Dick evenly, "that is not what cuts most. What hurts through
and through, Lena, is the knowledge that you don't even love me enough,
in spite of all my wasted passion, to keep from intriguing with another
man behind my back for the sake of a few bits of red glass."
"How--did Mr. Early--?" Lena began, but he interrupted her again.
"Did it seem such a simple thing to keep me perpetually blinded? Last
night, Lena, I paid your debt to Mr. Early. I sold my vote in the
council, along with my self-respect and my honor in the sight of others
to get back this shred of paper. Once I might have thought you sinned
ignorantly, but I know you better now. Here is that priceless scrap." He
drew it from his pocket and threw it into her lap. "Now I've swept away
all the mists! There can't be any sweet illusions between you and me,
Lena." He drew a sharp breath.
Lena's heart was beating very fast and her eyes were down. She saw
shrewdly that there was no need of argument on any of these topics. The
less she said about them the better for her. And Dick, with his hands in
his pockets, was watching her from the other side of the room. She
twisted the piece of paper in her hands. She had always a bald way of
telling herself the truth. Now she would face Dick in the same spirit.
After all, she was his wife. He couldn't get away from that.
"Well," she said, "I suppose you don't love me any more?" Her voice was
like her mother's, acid and selfish.
"Do you love me?" asked Dick.
"No!" said Lena. She saw him writhe and felt glad that she had the power
to hurt him, but he answered very gently.
"Then I still have the advantage of you, Lena. I love you, not in the
old way I once dreamed of loving--but still I love you. All this that
I've said to-night was not spoken in the heat of anger. I've known these
facts for a long time, and you have never felt any change in my manner;
but gradually I have come to see that there could never be any genuine
relations between us--you and me--so long as you thought me just a silly
dupe for you to get everything you could from, to be played on as you
pleased. We must begin again, a new way. You don't love me, you say. I
do love you, sweetheart, not for what I thought you were, but for what
you are, because you are my wife, because you need my tenderness and
help. But I'm not going to let you lead any longer. We can't even walk
side by side as some husbands and wives do." Dick seemed to hear the
voices of Ellery and Madeline by their own fireside, and he went on
hurriedly. "You needn't look at me that way, Lena, as if you were
afraid of me. I shall want you to be comfortable and happy. I shall try
to give you the things you want--things--things--things! But I have some
purposes in life, and they, not you, are to be my master-spirits."
Dick turned away and stared out of the winter window, stirred by his own
words into a strange new understanding of himself--a mere fatuous
self-believer, a man who trusted to fate not fight, to fortune not to
mastery, who had not made his standards, but let them make themselves.
And now it was come to this, that a half-hour in a room with a foolish
girl was the turning-point in his life.
He seemed strange to himself, as though he were examining a life from
the outside rather than from the inside, and fumbling at its real
meaning.
He had done no wrong; but what does the march of events care whether the
failure be intentional or careless? Results follow just the same.
There flashed before his inward eye the face of his long-dead father,
white and set with some inward pain of which he did not speak. Dick
remembered that as a boy that had seemed to him a pitiful thing. Now he
saw it somewhat as the believers once saw the face of the martyr, the
visible manifestation of triumph--the success of being true to yourself
in spite of all the world.
Dick drew a long breath and dropped his boyhood without even a regret.
He knew he could accept conditions and limitations and not kick against
the pricks, but quietly, as one who is capable of being superior to
them. The bitterness, the depression of an hour, two hours, ago faded
into trifles, and the thing nearest to his consciousness was that dead
father who had had his wound and lived his life in spite of it; nearer,
infinitely nearer, than the living wife whom a slight noise brought to
his remembrance. He had forgotten her. She belonged now to the elements
outside his dearest life.
He turned toward Lena, waiting, silent, uncomprehending,--poor little
Lena, a woman who could never be anything more. He felt a wave of
strange new pity for her, unlike the pity he had once experienced for
her poverty of body, a sorrow, this, for what she was in herself, his
wife--poor, poor little child!
Lena sat still, picking at the bit of paper, but she looked up now,
moved in spite of herself by the exultant ring in Dick's voice, as he
strode over to her and held out both his hands.
"And so we begin again--honestly, this time. Perhaps some day you'll
come to accept my standards inwardly as well as outwardly. Perhaps
you'll even come to love me, some day, little wife."
Lena took his hands submissively. Her small tyranny, her stock of little
ambitions had slipped from her and she shivered as though she was
stripped and cold; but behind there was a kind of delight in this new
Dick, with authoritative eyes into which she stared, wondering still,
with trepidation, what he was going to make of her life.