THE MAN OF SHADOWS
The dome was a great blot against the stars when, shortly after eight
o'clock that evening, Sylvia entered the capitol.
All night, in the room she had occupied on that far day of her first
visit to Mrs. Owen, Sylvia had pondered. It is not for us to know what
passed in that still chamber between her and her friend; but it was the
way of both women to meet the truth squarely. They discussed facts
impersonally, dispassionately, and what Sylvia had assumed, her old
friend could not controvert. Not what others had done, not what others
might do, but what course Sylvia should follow--this was the crux of the
situation.
"I must think it out; I must think it out," Sylvia kept repeating. At
last Mrs. Owen left her lying dressed on the bed, and all night Sylvia
lay there in the dark. Toward morning she had slept, and later when Mrs.
Owen carried up her breakfast she did not refer to her trouble except to
ask whether there was any news. Mrs. Owen understood and replied that
there was nothing. Sylvia merely answered and said: "Then there is still
time." What she meant by this her kind old friend did not know; but she
had faith in her Sylvia. Dan came, but he saw Mrs. Owen only. Later
Sylvia asked what he had said, and she merely nodded when Rose's story
was repeated. Again she said: "Yes; there is still time."
Sylvia had kept her room all day, and Mrs. Owen had rigidly respected
her wish to be alone. She voluntarily appeared at the evening meal and
talked of irrelevant things: of her school work, of the sale of the
house at Montgomery, of the projected school at Waupegan.
"I'm going out for a while," she said, after an hour in the little
office. "I shan't be gone long, Aunt Sally; don't trouble about me. I
have my key, you know."
When she had gone, Mrs. Owen called one of the colored men from the
stable and gave him a line to Harwood, with a list of places where Dan
might be found. Her message was contained in a single line:--
"Sylvia has left the house. Keep an eye out for her; she told me
nothing."
Sylvia found consolation and courage in the cold night air; her old
friends the stars, whose names she had learned before she knew her
letters, did not leave her comfortless. They had unconsciously
contributed to her gift for seeing life in long vistas. "When you are
looking at the stars," Professor Kelton used to say, "you are not
thinking of yourself." It was not of herself that Sylvia was thinking.
She prolonged her walk, gathering strength as the exercise warmed her
blood, planning what she meant to do, even repeating to herself phrases
she meant to use. So it happened that Mrs. Owen's messenger had found
Dan at the State House and delivered the note, and that Dan, called from
a prolonged conference with Ramsay, saw Sylvia's unmistakable figure as
she reached the top of the stairway, watched her making inquiries of a
lounger, saw men staring at her. It crossed his mind that she was
seeking him, and he started toward her; but she had stopped again to
question one of the idlers in the hall. He saw her knock at a door and
knew it was Bassett's room--a room that for years had been set apart for
the private councils of the senator from Fraser. As Sylvia knocked,
several men came out, as though the interruption had terminated an
interview. The unveiled face of the tall, dark girl called for a second
glance; it was an odd place for a pretty young woman to be seeking
Morton Bassett. They looked at each other and grinned.
A single lamp on a table in the middle of the high-ceilinged room shed a
narrow circle of light that deepened the shadows of the walls. Bassett,
standing by a window, was aware of a lighter step than was usual in this
plotting chamber. He advanced toward the table with his hands in his
pockets, waited till Sylvia was disclosed by the lamp, stopped abruptly,
stared at her with eyes that seemed not to see her. Then he placed a
chair for her, muttering:--
"I thought you would come."
It seemed to her that a sigh broke from him, hidden by the scraping of
the chair across the bare floor. He crossed and recrossed the floor
several times, as though now that she had come he had dismissed her
from his thoughts. Then as he passed near her with slow, heavy step she
spoke.
"I came to talk to you, Mr. Bassett. Please turn on the other lights."
"Pardon me," he said; and she heard his fingers fumbling for the switch
by the door. In a moment the room was flooded from the chandelier
overhead, and he returned, and sat down by the table without looking at
her.
"I shouldn't have come here, but I knew of no other way. It seemed best
to see you to-night."
"It's all right," he replied indifferently.
He sat drooping, as though the light had in itself a weight that bore
him down. His face was gray; his hands hung impotently from the arms of
his chair. He still did not meet her eyes, which had taken in every line
of his figure, the little details of his dress, even the inconspicuous
pearl pin thrust through the loose ends of his tie. A man opened the
door hurriedly and peered in: Bassett was wanted elsewhere, he said.
Without rising Bassett bade him wait outside. The man seemed to
understand that he was to act as guard, and he began patroling the
corridor. The sound of his steps on the tiles was plainly
distinguishable as he passed the door.
"It's all right now," Bassett explained. "No one will come in here."
He threw his arm over the back of his chair and bent upon Sylvia a
glance of mingled curiosity and indifference.
"I understand," she said quietly, "that nothing has been done. It is
not yet too late. The situation here is as it has been?"
"Yes; if you mean out _there_. They are waiting for me."
"I suppose Mr. Harwood is there, and Mr. Thatcher."
He blinked at the names and changed his position slightly.
"I dare say they are," he answered coldly.
"I thought it best to see you and talk to you; and I'm glad I knew
before it was too late."
His eyes surveyed her slowly now from head to foot. Why was she glad she
had known before it was too late? Her calmness made him uneasy,
restless. It was a familiar characteristic of Morton Bassett that he met
storm and stress stoically. He was prepared for scorn, recrimination,
tears; but this dark-eyed girl, sitting before him in her gray
walking-dress and plain hat with a bunch of scarlet flowers showing
through the veil she had caught up over them, seemed in no danger of
yielding to tears. Her voice fell in cool, even tones. He had said that
he expected her, but she did not know what manner of meeting he had been
counting on in his speculations. After a long look he passed his hand
across his face.
"I hope you haven't thought--you didn't think I should let them bring
you into it."
He spoke as though this were something due her; that she was entitled to
his reassurance that the threatened cataclysm should not drag her down
with him. When she made no reply he seemed to feel that he had not made
himself clear, and he repeated, in other terms, that she need not be
concerned for the outcome; that he meant to shield her.
"Yes; I supposed you would do that; I had expected that."
"And," he went on, as though to anticipate her, to eliminate the
necessity for her further explanations, "you have a right to ask what
you please. Or we can meet again to arrange matters. I am prepared to
satisfy your demands in the fullest sense."
His embarrassment had passed. She had sought the interview, but he had
taken charge of it. Beyond the closed door the stage waited. This was
the briefest interlude before the moment of his triumphant entrance.
Sylvia smiled, an incredulous smile, and shook her head slowly, like a
worn, tired mother whose patience is sorely taxed by a stubborn,
unyielding child at her knee. Her lips trembled, but she bent her head
for a moment and then spoke more quickly than before, as though
overriding some inner spirit that strove rebelliously within her breast.
"I know--almost all I ever need to know. But there are some things you
must tell me now. This is the first--and the last--time that I shall
ever speak to you of these things. I know enough--things I have stumbled
upon--and I have built them up until I see the horror, the blackness.
And I want to feel sure that you, too, see the pity of it all."
Her note of subdued passion roused him now to earnestness, and he framed
a disavowal of the worst she might have imagined. He could calm her
fears at once, and the lines in his face relaxed at the thought that it
was in his power to afford her this relief.
"I married your mother. There was nothing wrong about it. It was all
straight."
"And you thought, oh, you thought I came for that--you believed I came
to have you satisfy me of her honor! I never doubted her!" and she
lifted her head proudly. "And that is what you thought I came for?" The
indignation that flashed in her first stammered sentences died
falteringly in a contemptuous whisper.
Her words had cut him deep; he turned away aimlessly, fingering some
papers on the table beside him. Then he plunged to the heart of the
matter, as though in haste to exculpate himself.
"I never meant that it should happen as it did. I knew her in New York
when we were both students there. My father had been ill a long time; he
was bent upon my marrying the daughter of his old friend Singleton, a
man of wealth and influence in our part of the state. I persuaded your
mother to run away and we were married, under an assumed name,--but it
was a marriage good in law. There's no question of that, you understand.
Then I left her up there in the Adirondacks, and went home. My father's
illness was prolonged, and his condition justified me in asking your
mother to wait. She knew the circumstances and agreed to remain away
until I saw my way clear to acknowledging her and taking her home. You
were born up there. Your mother grew impatient and hurt because I could
not go back to her. But I could not--it would have ruined all my chances
at home. When I went to find my wife she had disappeared. She was a
proud woman, and I suppose she had good cause for hating me."
He told the story fully, filling in the gaps in her own knowledge. He
did not disguise the fact of his own half-hearted search for the woman
he had deserted. He even told of the precautions he had taken to assure
himself of the death of Edna Kelton by visiting Montgomery to look at
her grave before his marriage to Hallie Singleton. He had gone back
again shortly before he made the offer to pay for Sylvia's schooling,
and had seen her with her grandfather in the little garden among the
roses.
Outside the guard slowly passed back and forth. Sylvia did not speak;
her seeming inattention vexed and perplexed him. He thought her lacking
in appreciation of his frankness.
"Thatcher knows much of this story, but he doesn't know the whole," he
went on. "He believes it was irregular. He's been keeping it back to
spring as a sensation. He's told those men out there that he can break
me; that at the last minute he will crush me. They're waiting for me
now--Thatcher and his crowd; probably chuckling to think how at last
they've got me cornered. That's the situation. They think they're about
rid of Morton Bassett."
"You left her; you deserted her; you left her to die alone, unprotected,
without even a name. You accepted her loyalty and fidelity, and then
threw her aside; you slunk away alone to her grave to be sure she
wouldn't trouble you again. Oh, it is black, it is horrible!"
Sylvia was looking at him with a kind of awed wonder in her eyes. For an
instant there had been a faint suggestion of contrition in his tone, but
it was overwhelmed by his desire for self-justification. It was of
himself he was thinking, not of the deed in itself, not of the woman he
had left to bear her child in an alien wilderness.
"I tried to do what I could for you. I want you to know that. I meant to
have cared for you, that no harm should come to you," he said, and the
words jarred upon his own ears as he spoke them.
In her face there was less of disdain than of marvel. He wished to
escape from her eyes, but they held him fast. Messengers ran hurriedly
through the corridors; men passed the door talking in tones faintly
audible; but the excitement in the rival camps communicated nothing of
its intensity to this quiet chamber. Men had feared Morton Bassett; this
girl, with her wondering dark eyes, did not fear him. But he was
following a course he had planned for this meeting, and he dared not
shift his ground.
"I don't want you to think that I haven't been grieved to see you
working for your living; I never meant that you should do that.
Hereafter that will be unnecessary; but I am busy to-night. To-morrow,
at any time you say, we will talk of those things."
There was dismissal in his manner and tone. He was anxious to be rid of
her. The color deepened in her olive cheeks, but she bent upon him once
more her patient, wondering, baffling smile.
"Please never propose such a thing again, Mr. Bassett. There is
absolutely nothing of that kind that you can do for me."
"You want to make it hard for me; but I hope you will think better of
that. It is right that I should make the only reparation that is
possible now."
This rang so false and was so palpably insincere that he was relieved
when she ignored it.
"You said a moment ago that your enemies, waiting out there, thought
they had you beaten. I want you to tell me just how you propose to meet
Mr. Thatcher's threat."
"What am I going to do?" he broke out angrily. "I'm going into that
caucus and beat Thatcher's game; I'm going to tell his story first! But
don't misunderstand me; I'm going to protect you. I know men, and those
men will respect me for coming out with it. I haven't been in politics
all these years to be beaten at last by Ed Thatcher. I've pledged votes
enough to-day to give me a majority of three on the next ballot; but
I'll explode Thatcher's bombshell in his own hands. I'm all prepared for
him; I have the documents--the marriage certificate and the whole
business. But you won't suffer; you won't be brought into it. That's
what I'm going to do about it!"
The failure of his declaration to shake her composure disturbed him;
perhaps after all his contemplated _coup_ was not so charged with
electricity as he had imagined. Nothing in his bald statement of his
marriage to her mother and the subsequent desertion had evoked the
reproach, the recrimination, for which he had steeled himself when she
entered the room. He felt his hold upon the interview lessening. He had
believed himself expert in calculating effects, yet apparently she had
heard his announcement, delivered with a brutal directness, without
emotion.
"This isn't quite all, Mr. Bassett," Sylvia began after a moment. "You
have offered me reparation, or what you called by that name. You can't
deny that I have a right to be satisfied with that reparation."
"Certainly; anything in reason. It is for you to name the terms; I
expect you to make them--adequate."
"Let us go back a moment," she began, smiling at the care with which he
had chosen his last word. "Last night I fought out for myself the whole
matter of your scoundrelly, cowardly treatment of my mother. You can
make no reparation to her. The time passed long ago for that. And there
is absolutely nothing you can do for me. I will accept nothing from you,
neither the name you denied to her nor money, now or later. So there is
only one other person whose interest or whose happiness we need
consider."
He stared at her frowning, not understanding. Once more, as on that day
when she had laughed at him, or again when she had taken the affairs of
his own household into her hands, he was conscious of the strength that
lay in her, of her power to drive him back upon himself. Something of
his own masterful spirit had entered into her, but with a difference.
Her self-control, her patient persistence, her sobriety of judgment, her
reasoning mind, were like his own. She was as keen and resourceful as
he, and he was eager for the explanation she withheld, as though,
knowing that she had driven in his pickets, he awaited the charge of her
lines. He bent toward her, feeling her charm, yielding to the
fascination she had for him.
"No," he said gently and kindly. "I don't see; I don't understand you."
She saw and felt the change in him; but she was on guard against a
reaction. He could not know how her heart throbbed, or how it had seemed
for a moment that words would not come to her lips.
"It is to you; it is to yourself that you must make the reparation. And
you must make it now. There may never be a time like this; it is your
great opportunity."
"You think, you ask--" he began warily; and she was quick to see that
the precise moment for the full stroke had not come; that the ground
required preparation.
"I think," she interrupted, smiling gravely, "that you want me to be
your friend. More than that, we have long been friends. And deep down in
your heart I believe you want my regard; you want me to think well of
you. And I must tell you that there's a kind of happiness--for it must
be happiness--that comes to me at the thought of it. Something there is
between you and me that is different; somehow we understand each other."
His response was beyond anything she had hoped for; a light shone
suddenly in his face. There was no doubt of the sincerity of the feeling
with which he replied:--
"Yes; I have felt it; I felt it the first day we met!"
"And because there is this understanding, this tie, I dare to be frank
with you: I mean to make your reparation difficult. But you will not
refuse it; you will not disappoint me. I mean, that you must throw away
the victory you are prepared to win."
He shook his head slowly, but he could not evade the pleading of her
eyes.
"I can't do it; it's too much," he muttered. "It's the goal I have
sought for ten years. It would be like throwing away life itself."
"Yes; it would be bitter; but it would be the first sacrifice you ever
made in your life. You have built your life on lies. You have lurked in
shadows, hating the light. You have done your work in the dark,
creeping, hiding, mocking, vanishing. What you propose doing to-night in
anticipating the blow of your enemy is only an act of bravado. There is
no real courage in that. When you thrust Dan Harwood into the convention
to utter your sneer for you, it was the act of a coward. And that was
contemptible cowardice. You picked him up, a clean young man of ideals,
and tried to train him in your cowardly shadow ways. When the pricking
of your conscience made you feel some responsibility for me, you
manifested it like a coward. You sent a cowardly message to the best man
that ever lived, not knowing, not caring how it would wound him. And you
have been a great thief, stealing away from men the thing they should
prize most, but you have taught them to distrust it--their faith in
their country--even more, their faith in each other! The shadows have
followed you to your own home. You have hidden yourself behind a veil of
mystery, so that your own wife and children don't know the man you are.
You have never been true to anything--not to yourself, not to those who
should be near and dear to you. And you have sneered at the people who
send you here to represent them; you have betrayed them, not once but a
hundred times; and you know it hasn't paid. You are the unhappiest man
in the world. But there's a real power in you, or you could never have
done the things you have done--the mean and vile things. You have brains
and a genius for organizing and managing men. You could never have
lasted so long without the personal qualities that a man must have to
lead men. And you have led them, down and down."
To all appearances she had spoken to dull ears. Occasionally their eyes
had met, but his gaze had wandered away to range the walls. When she
ceased he moved restlessly about the room.
"You think I am as bad as that?" he asked, pausing by the table and
looking down at her.
"You are as bad--and as good--as that," she replied, the hope that
stirred in her heart lighting her face.
He shrugged his shoulders and sat down.
"You have the wit to see that the old order of things is passing; the
old apparatus you have learned to operate with a turn of the hand is out
of date. Now is your chance to leave the shadow life and begin again.
It's not too late to win the confidence--the gratitude even--of the
people who now distrust and fear you. The day of reckoning is coming
fast for men like you, who have made a mystery of politics, playing it
as a game in the dark. I don't pretend to know much of these things, but
I can see that men of your type are passing out; there would be no great
glory for you in waiting to be the last to go. And there are things
enough for you to do. If you ally yourself with the good causes that cry
for support and leadership, you can be far more formidable than you have
ever been as a skulking trickster; you can lead men up as you have led
them down."
"The change is coming; I have seen it coming," he replied, catching at
the one thing it seemed safest to approve.
But she was not to be thwarted by his acquiescence in generalities. He
saw that she had brought him back to a point whence he must elect his
course, but he did not flinch at the flat restatement of her demand.
"You have done nothing to deserve the senatorship; you are not the
choice of the people of this state. You must relinquish it; you must
give it up!"
The earnestness with which she uttered her last words seemed, to her
surprise, to amuse him.
"You think," he said, "that I should go back and make a new start by a
different route? But I don't know the schedule; my transportation is
good on only one line." And he grinned at his joke.
"Oh, you will have to pay your fare!" she replied quickly. "You've never
done that."
His grin became a smile, and he said: "You want me to walk if I can't
pay my way!"
"Yes," she laughed happily, feeling that her victory was half won; "and
you would have to be careful to stop, look, and listen at the
crossings!"
The allusion further eased the stress of the hour; humor shone in his
gray eyes. He consulted his watch, frowned, bent his eyes upon the
floor, then turned to her with disconcerting abruptness.
"I haven't been half the boss you think me. I've been hedged in,
cramped, and shackled. All these fellows who hop the stick when I say
'Jump' have their little axes I must help grind. I've fooled away the
best years of my life taking care of these little fellows, and I've
spent a lot of money on them. It's become a little monotonous, I can
tell you. It's begun to get on my nerves, for I have a few; and all this
hammering I've taken from the newspapers has begun to make me hot. I
know about as much as they do about the right and wrong of things; I
suppose I know something about government and the law too!"
"Yes," Sylvia assented eagerly.
He readjusted himself in his chair, crossing his legs and thrusting his
hands into his trousers pockets.
"It _would_ be rather cheerful and comfortable," he continued musingly,
as though unburdening himself of old grievances, "to be free to do as
you like once in a lifetime! Those fellows in Thatcher's herd who have
practically sold out to me and are ready to deliver the goods to-night
are all rascals, swung my way by a few corporations that would like to
have me in Washington. It would be a good joke to fool them and elect a
man who couldn't be bought! It's funny, but I've wondered sometimes
whether I wasn't growing tired of the old game."
"But the new game you can play better than any of them. It's the only
way you can find peace."
With a gesture half-bold, half-furtive, he put out his hand and touched
lightly the glove she had drawn off and laid on the table.
"You believe in me; you have some faith left in me?"
"Yes."
Her hand touched his; her dark eyes searched the depths of his
soul--sought and found the shadows there and put them to flight. When
she spoke it was with a tenderness that was new to all his experience of
life; he had not known that there could be balm like this for a bruised
and broken spirit. This girl, seeking nothing for herself, refusing
anything he could offer, had held up a mirror in which he saw himself
limned against dancing, mocking shadows. Nothing in her arraignment had
given him a sharper pang than her reference to his loneliness, his
failure to command sympathy and confidence in his home relationships. No
praise had ever been so sweet to him as hers; she not only saw his
weaknesses and dealt with them unsparingly, but she recognized also the
strength he had wasted and the power he had abused. She saw life in
broad vistas as he had believed he saw it; he was not above a stirring
of pride that she appreciated him and appraised his gifts rightly. He
had long played skillfully upon credulity and ignorance; he had
frittered away his life in contentions with groundlings. It would be a
relief, if it were possible, to deal with his peers, the enlightened,
the far-seeing, and the fearless, who strove for great ends. So he
pondered, while outside the sentinel kept watch like a fate.
"Yes," Sylvia was saying slowly, "you can make restitution. But not to
the dead--not to my mother asleep over there at Montgomery, oh, not to
me! What is done is past, and you can't go back. There's no going back
in this world. But you can go on--you can go on and up--"
"No! You don't see that; you don't believe that?"
"Yes, I believe it. The old life--the life of mystery and duplicity is
over; you will never go back to the old way."
"The old way?" he repeated.
"The old unhappy way."
"Up there at the lake you knew I was unhappy; you knew things weren't
right with me?"
"Things weren't right because you were wrong! Success hadn't made you
happy. The shadows kept dancing round you. Mrs. Bassett's troubles came
largely from worrying about you. In time Marian and Blackford will begin
to see the shadows. I should think--I should think"--and he saw that she
was deeply moved--"that a man would want the love of his children; I
should think he would want them to be proud of him."
"His children; yes; I haven't thought enough of that."
She had so far controlled herself, but an old ache throbbed in her
heart. "In college, when I heard the girls talking of their homes, it
used to hurt me more than you can ever know. There were girls among my
friends whose fathers were fine men,--some of them great and famous; and
I used to feel sure that my father would have been like them. I
felt--that I should have been proud of him." And suddenly she flung her
arms upon the table and bowed her face upon them and wept.
He stood beside her, patiently, helplessly. The suggestion of her lonely
girlhood with its hovering shadow smote him the more deeply because it
emphasized the care she had taken to subordinate herself throughout
their talk.
"Do you think you could ever be proud of me?--that you might even care a
little, some day?" he asked, bending over her.
"Oh, if it could be so!" she whispered brokenly, so low that he bent
closer to hear.
The room was very still. Sylvia rose and began drawing on her glove, not
looking at him. She was afraid to risk more; there was, indeed, nothing
more to say. It was for him to make his choice. He was silent so long
that she despaired. Then he passed his hand across his face like one
roused from sleep.
"Wait a moment," he said, "and I will walk home with you."
He went to the door and dispatched the guard on an errand; then he
seated himself at the table and picked up a pad of paper. He was still
writing when Harwood entered. Sylvia and Dan exchanged a nod, but no
words passed between them. They watched the man at the table, as he
wrote with a deliberation that Dan remembered as characteristic of him.
When he had finished, he copied what he had written, put the copy in his
breastpocket and buttoned his coat before glancing at Harwood.
"If I withdraw my name, what will happen?" he asked quietly.
"Ramsay will be nominated, sir," Dan answered.
Bassett studied a moment, fingering the memorandum he had written; then
he looked at Dan quizzically.
"Just between ourselves, Dan, do you really think the Colonel's
straight?"
"If he isn't, he has fooled a lot of people," Dan replied.
He had no idea of what had happened, but he felt that all was well with
Sylvia. It seemed a long time since Bassett had called him Dan!
"Well, I guess the Colonel's the best we can do. I'm out of it. This is
my formal withdrawal. Hand it to Robbins--you know him, of course. It
tells him what I want done. My votes go to Ramsay on the next ballot. I
look to you to see that it's played square. Give the Colonel my
compliments. That's all. Good-night."
* * * * *
Harwood called Robbins from the room where Bassett's men lounged,
waiting for the convening of the caucus, and delivered the message. As
he hurried toward Thatcher's headquarters he paused suddenly, and bent
over the balcony beneath the dome to observe two figures that were
slowly descending one of the broad stairways. Morton Bassett and Sylvia
were leaving the building together. A shout rang out, echoing hollowly
through the corridors, and was followed by scattering cheers from men
who were already hastening toward the senate chamber where the caucus
sessions were held.
Somehow Morton Bassett's sturdy shoulders, his step, quickened to adapt
it to the pace of his companion, did not suggest defeat. Dan still
watched as the two crossed the rotunda on their way to the street.
Bassett was talking; he paused for an instant and looked up at the dome,
as though calling his companion's attention to its height.
Sylvia glanced up, nodded, and smiled as though affirming something
Bassett had said; and then the two vanished from Dan's sight.