THE MAP ABOVE BASSETT'S DESK
Sometimes, in the rapid progress of their acquaintance, Allen Thatcher
exasperated Harwood, but more often he puzzled and interested him. It
was clear that the millionaire's son saw or thought he saw in Dan a
Type. To be thought a Type may be flattering or not; it depends upon the
point of view. Dan himself had no illusions in the matter. Allen wanted
to see and if possible meet the local characters of whom he read in the
newspapers; and he began joining Harwood in visits to the hotels at
night, hoping that these wonderful representatives of American democracy
might appear. Harwood's acquaintance was widening; he knew, by sight at
least, all the prominent men of the city and state, and after leaving
the newspaper he still spent one or two evenings a week lounging in the
hotel corridors. Tradition survived of taller giants before the days of
the contemporaneous Agamemnons. Allen asked questions about these and
mourned their passing. Harrison, the twenty-third President; Gresham, of
the brown eyes, judge and cabinet minister; Hendricks, the courtly
gentleman, sometime Vice-President; "Uncle Joe" McDonald and "Dan"
Voorhees, Senators in Congress, and loved in their day by wide
constituencies. These had vanished, but Dan and Allen made a pious
pilgrimage one night to sit at the feet of David Turpie, who had been a
Senator in two widely separated eras, and who, white and venerable, like
Aigyptos knew innumerable things.
The cloaked poets once visible in Market Street had vanished before our
chronicle opens, with the weekly literary journals in which they had
shone, but Dan was able to introduce Allen to James Whitcomb Riley in a
bookshop frequented by the poet; and that was a great day in Allen's
life. He formed the habit of lying in wait for the poet and walking with
him, discussing Keats and Burns, Stevenson and Kipling, and others of
their common admirations. One day of days the poet took Allen home with
him and read him a new, unpublished poem, and showed him a rare
photograph of Stevenson and the outside of a letter just received from
Kipling, from the uttermost parts of the world. It was a fine thing to
know a poet and to speak with him face to face,--particularly a poet who
sang of his own soil as Allen wished to know it. Still, Allen did not
quite understand how it happened that a poet who wrote of farmers and
country-town folk wore eyeglasses and patent-leather shoes and carried a
folded silk umbrella in all weathers.
The active politicians who crossed his horizon interested Allen greatly;
the rougher and more uncouth they were the more he admired them. They
were figures in the Great Experiment, no matter how sordid or
contemptible Harwood pronounced them. He was always looking for "types"
and "Big" Jordan, the Republican chief, afforded him the greatest
satisfaction. He viewed the local political scene from an angle that
Harwood found amusing, and Dan suggested that it must be because the
feudal taint and the servile tradition are still in our blood that we
submit so tamely to the rule of petty lordlings. In his exalted moments
Allen's ideas shot far into the air, and Dan found it necessary to pull
him back to earth.
"I hardly see a Greek frieze carved of these brethren," Dan remarked one
night as they lounged at the Whitcomb when a meeting of the state
committee was in progress. "These fellows would make you weep if you
knew as much about them as I do. There's one of the bright lights
now--the Honorable Ike Pettit, of Fraser. The Honorable Ike isn't smart
enough to be crooked; he's the bellowing Falstaff of the Hoosier
Democracy. I wonder who the laugh's on just now; he's shaking like a
jelly fish over something."
"Oh, I know him! He and father are great chums; he was at the house for
dinner last night."
"What!"
Harwood was unfeignedly surprised at this. The editor of the "Fraser
County Democrat" had probably never dined at the Bassetts' in his own
town, or at least Dan assumed as much; and since he had gained an
insight into Bassett's affairs he was aware that the physical property
of the "Fraser County Democrat" was mortgaged to Morton Bassett for
quite all it was worth. It was hardly possible that Thatcher was
cultivating Pettit's acquaintance for sheer joy of his society. As the
ponderous editor lumbered across the lobby to where they sat, Dan and
Allen rose to receive his noisily cordial salutations. On his visits to
the capital, arrayed in a tremendous frock coat and with a flapping
slouch hat crowning his big iron-gray head, he was a prodigious figure.
"Boys," he said, dropping an arm round each of the young men, "the
Democratic Party is the hope of mankind. Free her of the wicked bosses,
boil the corruption out of her, and the grand old Hoosier Democracy will
appear once more upon the mountain tops as the bringer of glad tidings.
What's the answer, my lads, to Uncle Ike's philosophy?"
"Between campaigns we're all reformers," said Harwood guardedly. "I feel
it working in my own system."
"Between campaigns," replied the Honorable Isaac Pettit impressively,
"we're all a contemptible lot of cowards, that's what's the matter with
us. Was Thomas Jefferson engaged in manipulating legislatures? Did he
obstruct the will of the people? Not by a long shot he did _not_! And
that grand old patriot, Andrew Jackson, wasn't he satisfied to take his
licker or let it alone without being like a heathen in his blindness,
bowing down to wood and stone carved into saloons and distilleries?"
"It's said by virtuous Republicans that our party is only a tail to the
liquor interests. If you're going back to the Sage of Monticello, how do
you think he would answer that?"
"Bless you, my dear boy; it's not the saloons we try to protect; it's
the plain people, who are entitled to the widest and broadest liberty.
If you screw the lid down on people too tight you'll smother 'em. I'm
not a drinkin' man; I go to church and in my newspaper I preach the
felicities of sobriety and domestic peace. But it's not for me to
dictate to my brother what he shall eat or wear. No, sir! And look here,
don't you try to read me out of the Democratic Party, young man. At
heart our party's as sweet and strong as corn; yea, as the young corn
that leapeth to the rains of June. It's the bosses that's keepin' us
down."
"Your reference to corn throws us back on the distilleries," suggested
Harwood, laughing.
But he was regarding the Honorable Isaac Pettit attentively. Pettit had
changed his manner and stood rocking himself slowly on his heels. He had
been a good deal at the capital of late, and this, together with his
visit to Thatcher's house, aroused Harwood's curiosity. He wondered
whether it were possible that Pettit and Thatcher were conspiring
against Bassett: the fact that he was so heavily in debt to the senator
from Fraser seemed to dispose of his fears. Since his first visit to
Fraserville Dan had heard many interesting and amusing things about the
editor. Pettit had begun life as a lawyer, but had relapsed into rural
journalism after a futile effort to find clients. He had some reputation
as an orator, and Dan had heard him make a speech distinguished by humor
and homely good sense at a meeting of the Democratic State Editorial
Association. Pettit, having once sat beside Henry Watterson at a public
dinner in Louisville, had thereafter encouraged as modestly as possible
a superstition that he and Mr. Watterson were the last survivors of the
"old school" of American editors. One of his favorite jokes was the use
of the editorial "we" in familiar conversation; he said "our wife" and
"our sanctum," and he amused himself by introducing into the "Democrat"
trifling incidents of his domestic life, beginning these items with such
phrases as, "While we were weeding our asparagus bed in the cool of
Tuesday morning, our wife--noble woman that she is--" etc., etc. His
squibs of this character, quoted sometimes in metropolitan newspapers,
afforded him the greatest glee. He appeared occasionally as a lecturer,
his favorite subject being American humor; and he was able to prove by
his scrap-book that he had penetrated as far east as Xenia, Ohio, and as
far west as Decatur, Illinois. Once, so ran Fraserville tradition, he
had been engaged for the lyceum course at Springfield, Missouri, but his
contract had been canceled when it was found that his discourse was
unillumined by the stereopticon, that vivifying accessory being just
then in high favor in that community.
Out of his own reading and reflections Allen had reached the conclusion
that Franklin, Emerson, and Lincoln were the greatest Americans. He
talked a great deal of Lincoln and of the Civil War, and the soldiers'
monument, in its circular plaza in the heart of the city, symbolized for
him all heroic things. He would sit on the steps in the gray shadow at
night, waiting for Dan to finish some task at his office, and Harwood
would find him absorbed, dreaming by the singing, foaming fountains.
Allen spoke with a kind of passionate eloquence of This Stupendous
Experiment, or This Beautiful Experiment, as he liked to call America.
Dan put Walt Whitman into his hands and afterwards regretted it, for
Allen developed an attack of acute Whitmania that tried Dan's patience
severely. Dan had passed through Whitman at college and emerged safely
on the other side. He begged Allen not to call him "camerado" or lift so
often the perpendicular hand. He suggested to him that while it might be
fine and patriotic to declaim
"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,"
from the steps of the monument at midnight, the police might take
another view of the performance. He began to see, however, that beneath
much that was whimsical and sentimental the young fellow was sincerely
interested in the trend of things in what, during this Whitman period,
he called "these states." Sometimes Allen's remarks on current events
struck Harwood by their wisdom: the boy was wholesomely provocative and
stimulating. He began to feel that he understood him, and in his own
homelessness Allen became a resource.
Allen was a creature of moods, and vanished often for days or weeks. He
labored fitfully in his carpenter shop at home or with equal
irregularity at a bench in the shop of Lüders, a cabinetmaker. Dan
sometimes sought him at the shop, which was a headquarters for radicals
of all sorts. The workmen showed a great fondness for Allen, who had
been much in Germany and spoke their language well. He carried to the
shop quantities of German books and periodicals for their enlightenment.
The shop's visitors included several young Americans, among them a
newspaper artist, a violinist in a theatre orchestra, and a linotype
expert. They all wore large black scarfs and called each other
"comrade." Allen earnestly protested that he still believed in the
American Idea, the Great Experiment; but if democracy should fail he was
ready to take up socialism. He talked of his heroes; he said they all
owed it to the men who had made and preserved the Union to give the
existing government a chance. These discussions were entirely
good-humored and Harwood enjoyed them. Sometimes they met in the evening
at a saloon in the neighborhood of the shop where Allen, the son of
Edward Thatcher, whom everybody knew, was an object of special interest.
He would sit on a table and lecture the saloon loungers in German, and
at the end of a long debate made a point of paying the score. He was
most temperate himself, sipping a glass of wine or beer in the
deliberate German fashion.
Allen was a friendly soul and every one liked him. It was impossible not
to like a lad whose ways were so gentle, whose smile was so appealing.
He liked dancing and went to most of the parties--our capital has not
outgrown its homely provincial habit of calling all social
entertainments "parties." He was unfailingly courteous, with a manner
toward women slightly elaborate and reminiscent of other times. There
was no question of his social acceptance; mothers of daughters, who
declined to speak to his father, welcomed him to their houses.
Allen introduced Dan to the households he particularly fancied and they
made calls together on Dan's free evenings or on Sunday afternoons.
Snobbishness was a late arrival among us; any young man that any one
vouched for might know the "nicest" girls. Harwood's social circle was
widening; Fitch and his wife said a good word for him in influential
quarters, and the local Yale men had not neglected him. Allen liked the
theatre, and exercised considerable ingenuity in devising excuses for
paying for the tickets when they took young women of their acquaintance.
He pretended to Dan that he had free tickets or got them at a discount.
His father made him a generous allowance and he bought a motor car in
which he declared Dan had a half interest; they needed it, he said, for
their social adventures.
At the Thatcher house, Harwood caught fitful glimpses of Allen's father,
a bird of passage inured to sleeping-cars. Occasionally Harwood dined
with the father and son and they would all adjourn to Allen's shop on
the third floor to smoke and talk. When Allen gave rein to his fancy and
began descanting upon the grandeur of the Republic and the Beautiful
Experiment making in "these states," Dan would see a blank puzzled look
steal into Thatcher's face. Thatcher adored Allen: he had for him the
deep love of a lioness for her cubs; but all this idealistic patter the
boy had got hold of--God knew where!--sounded as strange to the rich
man as a discourse in Sanskrit.
Thatcher had not been among Bassett's callers in the new office in the
Boordman, but late one afternoon, when Dan was deep in the principles of
evidence, Thatcher came in.
"I'm not expecting Mr. Bassett to-day, if you wish to see him," said
Dan.
"Nope," Thatcher replied indifferently, "I'm not looking for Mort. He's
in Fraserville, I happen to know. Just talking to him on the telephone,
so I rather guessed you were alone, that's why I came up. I want to talk
to you a little bit, Harwood. It must be nearly closing time, so suppose
you lock the door. You see," he continued, idling about the room,
"Mort's in the newspapers a good deal, and not being any such terrible
sinner as he is I don't care to have his labels tacked on me too much.
Not that Mort isn't one of my best friends, you know; but a family man
like me has got to be careful of his reputation."
Harwood opened his drawer and took out a box of cigars. Thatcher
accepted one and lighted it deliberately, commenting on the office as he
did so. He even strolled through the library to the open door of
Bassett's private room beyond. The map of Indiana suspended above
Bassett's desk interested him and he stood leaning on his stick and
surveying it. There was something the least bit insinuating in his
manner. The room, the map, the fact that Morton Bassett of Fraserville
had, so to speak, planted a vedette in the heart of the capital, seemed
to afford him mild, cynical amusement. He drew his hand across his
face, twisted his mustache, and took the cigar from his mouth and
examined the end of it with fictitious interest.
"Well," he ejaculated, "damn it all, why not?"
Harwood did not know why not; but a man as rich as Edward Thatcher was
entitled to his vagaries. Thatcher sank into Bassett's swivel chair and
swung round once or twice as though testing it, meanwhile eyeing the
map. Then he tipped himself back comfortably and dropped his hat into
his lap. His grayish brown hair was combed carefully from one side
across the top in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal his baldness.
"I guess Mort wouldn't object to my sitting in his chair provided I
didn't look at that map too much. Who was the chap that the sword hung
over by a hair--Damocles? Well, maybe that's what that map is--it would
smash pretty hard if the whole state fell down on Mort. But Mort knows
just how many voters there are in every township and just how they line
up election morning. There's a lot of brains in Bassett's head; you've
noticed it?"
"It's admitted, I believe, that he's a man of ability," said Dan a
little coldly.
Thatcher grinned.
"You're all right, Harwood. I know you're all right or Mort wouldn't
have put you in here. I'm rather kicking myself that I didn't see you
first."
"Mr. Bassett has given me a chance I'd begun to fear I shouldn't get;
you see I'm studying law here. Mr. Bassett has made that possible. He's
the best friend I ever had."
"That's good. Bassett usually picks winners. From what I hear of you and
what I've seen I think you're all right myself. My boy has taken quite a
great fancy to you."
Thatcher looked at the end of his cigar and waited for Dan to reply.
"I've grown very fond of Allen. He's very unusual; he's full of
surprises."
"That boy," said Thatcher, pointing his cigar at Dan, "is the greatest
boy in the world; but, damn it all, I don't make him out."
"Well, he's different; he's an idealist. I'm not sure that he isn't a
philosopher!"
Thatcher nodded, as though this were a corroboration of his own
surmises.
"He has a lot of ideas that are what they call advanced, but it's not
for me to say that he isn't right about them. He talks nonsense some of
the time, but occasionally he knocks me down with a big idea--or his way
of putting a big idea. He doesn't understand a good deal that he sees;
and yet he sometimes says something perfectly staggering."
"He does; by George, he does! Damn it, I took him to see a glassworks
the other day; thought it would appeal to his sense of what you call the
picturesque; but, Lord bless me, he asked how much the blowers were paid
and wanted me to raise their pay on the spot. That was one on me, all
right; I'd thought of giving him the works to play with, but I didn't
have the nerve to offer it to him after that. 'Fraid he'd either turn it
down or take it and bust me."
Thatcher had referred to this incident with unmistakable pride; he was
evidently amused rather than chagrined by his son's scorn of the gift of
a profitable industry. "I offered him money to start a carpenter shop or
furniture factory or anything he wanted to tackle, but he wouldn't have
it. Said he wanted to work in somebody else's shop to get the
discipline. Discipline? That boy never had any discipline in his life!
I've kept my nose to the grindstone ever since I was knee-high to a toad
just so that boy wouldn't have to worry about his daily bread, and now,
damn it all, he runs a carpenter shop on the top floor of a house that
stands me, lot, furniture, and all, nearly a hundred thousand dollars! I
can't talk to everybody about this; my wife and daughters don't want any
discipline; don't like the United States or anything in it except
exchange on London; and here I am with a boy who wears overalls and
tries to callous his hands to look like a laboring man. If you can
figure that out, it's a damn sight more than I can do! It's one on Ed
Thatcher, that's all!"
"If I try to answer you, please don't think I pretend to any unusual
knowledge of human nature; but what I see in the boy is a kind of poetic
attitude toward America--our politics, the whole scheme; and it's a
poetic strain in him that accounts for this feeling about labor. And he
has a feeling for justice and mercy; he's strong for the underdog." "I
suppose," said Thatcher dryly, "that if he'd been an underdog the way I
was he'd be more tickled at a chance to sit on top. When I wore overalls
it wasn't funny. Well, what am I going to do with him?"
"If you really want me to tell you I'd say to let him alone. He's a
perfectly clean, straight, high-minded boy. If he were physically strong
enough I should recommend him to go to college, late as it is for him,
or better, to a school where he would really satisfy what seems to be
his sincere ambition to learn to do something with his hands. But he's
all right as he is. You ought to be glad that his aims are so wholesome.
There are sons of prosperous men right around here who see everything
red."
"That boy," declared Thatcher, pride and love surging in him, "is as
clean as wheat!"
"Quite so; no one could know him without loving him. And I don't mind
saying that I find myself in accord with many of his ideas."
"Sort of damned idealist yourself?"
"I should blush to say it," laughed Dan; "but I feel my heart warming
when Allen gets to soaring sometimes; he expresses himself with great
vividness. He goes after me hard on my _laissez-faire_ notions."
"I take the count and throw up the sponge!"
"Oh, that's a chestnut that means merely that the underdog had better
stay under if he can't fight his way out."
"It seems tough when you boil it down to that; I guess maybe Allen's
right--we all ought to divide up. I'm willing, only"--and he grinned
quizzically--"I'm paired with Mort Bassett."
The light in his cigar had gone out; he swung round and faced the map of
Indiana above Morton Bassett's desk, fumbling in his waistcoat for a
match. When he turned toward Harwood again he blew smoke rings
meditatively before speaking.
"If you're one of these rotten idealists, Harwood, what are you doing
here with Bassett? If that ain't a fair question, don't answer it."
Harwood was taken aback by the directness of the question. Bassett had
always spoken of Thatcher with respect, and he resented the new
direction given to this conversation in Bassett's own office. Dan
straightened himself with dignity, but before he could speak Thatcher
laughed, and fanned the smoke of his cigar away with his hands.
"Don't get hot. That was not a fair question; I know it. I guess Bassett
has his ideals just like the rest of us. I suppose I've got some, too,
though I'd be embarrassed if you asked me to name 'em. I suppose"--and
he narrowed his eyes--"I suppose Mort not only has his ideals but his
ambitions. They go together, I reckon."
"I hope he has both, Mr. Thatcher, but you are assuming that I'm deeper
in his confidence than the facts justify. You and he have been
acquainted so long that you ought to know him thoroughly."
Thatcher did not heed this mild rebuke; nor did he resort to
propitiatory speech. His cool way of ignoring Dan's reproach added to
the young man's annoyance; Dan felt that it was in poor taste and
ungenerous for a man of Thatcher's years and position to come into
Bassett's private office to discuss him with a subordinate. He had
already learned enough of the relations of the two men to realize that
perfect amity was essential between them; he was shocked by the
indifference with which Thatcher spoke of Bassett, of whom people did
not usually speak carelessly in this free fashion. Harwood's own sense
of loyalty was in arms; yet Thatcher seemed unmindful that anything
disagreeable had occurred. He threw away his cigar and drew out a fresh
one which he wobbled about in his mouth unlighted. He kept swinging
round in his chair to gaze at the map above Bassett's desk. The tinted
outlines of the map--green, pink, and orange--could not have had for him
any novelty; similar maps hung in many offices and Thatcher was moreover
a native of the state and long familiar with its configuration. Perhaps,
Dan reflected, its juxtaposition to Bassett's desk was what irritated
his visitor, though it had never occurred to him that this had any
significance. He recalled now, however, that when he had arranged the
rooms the map had been hung in the outer office, but that Bassett
himself had removed it to his private room--the only change he had made
in Dan's arrangements. It was conceivable that Thatcher saw in the
position of the map an adumbration of Bassett's higher political
ambition, and that this had affected the capitalist unpleasantly.
Thatcher's manner was that of a man so secure in his own position that
he could afford to trample others under foot if he liked. It was--not to
put too fine a point upon it--the manner of a bully. His reputation for
independence was well established; he was rich enough to say what he
pleased without regard to the consequences, and he undoubtedly enjoyed
his sense of power.
"I suppose I'm the only man in Indiana that ain't afraid of Mort
Bassett," he announced casually. "It's because Mort knows I ain't afraid
of him that we get on so well together. You've been with him long enough
by this time to know that we have some interests together."
Dan, with his fingers interlocked behind his head, nodded carelessly. He
had grown increasingly resentful of Thatcher's tone and manner, and was
anxious to be rid of him.
"Mort's a good deal closer-mouthed than I am. Mort likes to hide his
tracks--better than that, by George, Mort doesn't _make_ any tracks!
Well, every man is bound to break a twig now and then as he goes along.
By George, I tear down the trees like an elephant so they can't miss
me!"
As Dan made no reply to this Thatcher recurred in a moment to Allen and
Harwood's annoyance passed. It was obvious that the capitalist had
sought this interview to talk of the boy, to make sure that Harwood was
sincerely interested in him. Thatcher's manner of speaking of his son
was kind and affectionate. The introduction of Bassett into the
discussion had been purely incidental, but it was not less interesting
because of its unpremeditated interjection. There was possibly some
jealousy here that would manifest itself later; but that was not Dan's
affair. Bassett was beyond doubt able to take care of himself in
emergencies; Dan's admiration for his patron was strongly intrenched in
this belief. The bulkier Thatcher, with the marks of self-indulgence
upon him, and with his bright waistcoat and flashy necktie transcending
the bounds of good taste, struck him as a weaker character. If Thatcher
meditated a break with Bassett, the sturdier qualities, the even, hard
strokes that Bassett had a reputation for delivering, would count
heavily against him.
"I'm glad you get on so well with the boy," Thatcher was saying. "I
don't mind telling you that his upbringing has been a little
unfortunate--too much damned Europe. He's terribly sore because he
didn't go to college instead of being tutored all over Europe. It's
funny he's got all these romantic ideas about America; he's sore at me
because he wasn't born poor and didn't have to chop rails to earn his
way through college and all that. The rest of my family like the money
all right; they're only sore because I didn't make it raising tulips.
But that boy's all right. And see here--" Thatcher seemed for a moment
embarrassed by what was in his mind. He fidgeted in his chair and eyed
Harwood sharply. "See here, Harwood, if you find after awhile that you
don't get on with Bassett, or you want to change, why, I want you to
give me a chance at you. I'd like to put my boy with you, somehow. I'll
die some day and I want to be sure somebody'll look after him. By God,
he's all I got!"
He swung round, but his eyes were upon the floor; he drew out a
handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.
"By George," he exclaimed, "I promised Allen to take you up to Sally
Owen's. You know Mrs. Owen? That's right; Allen said she's been asking
about you. She likes young folks; she'll never be old herself. Allen and
I are going there for supper, and he's asked her if he might bring you
along. Aunt Sally's a great woman. And"--he grinned ruefully--"a good
trader. She has beat me on many a horse trade, that woman; and I always
go back to try it again. You kind o' like having her do you. And I guess
I'm the original easy mark when it comes to horse. Get your hat and come
along. Allen's fixed this all up with her. I guess you and she are the
best friends the boy's got."