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THE PRESIDENT
A Novel by
ALFRED HENRY LEWIS
Author of "The Boss," "Wolfville Days," Etc.
New York
A. S. Barnes and Company
MDCCCCIV
_To ETHEL OVIATT LEWIS_
[Illustration: Across the Senator's Desk]
CONTENTS
I. How Richard Began to Woo
II. How a President is Bred
III. How Mr. Gwynn Dined with the Harleys
IV. How a Speakership was Fought for
V. How Richard was Taught Many Things
VI. How Storri Had a Vivid Imagination
VII. How Richard Gained in Knowledge
VIII. How Storri Wooed Mrs. Hanway-Harley
IX. How Storri Made an Offer of His Love
X. How Storri Plotted a Vengeance
XI. How Mr. Harley Found Himself a Forger
XII. How Mr. Fopling was Inspired
XIII. How the San Reve Gave Storri Warning
XIV. How They Talked Politics at Mr. Gwynn's
XV. How Richard Met Inspector Val
XVI. How Richard Received a Letter
XVII. How Northern Consolidated was Sold
XVIII. How Storri Explored for Gold
XIX. How London Bill Took a Pal
XX. How Storri Foolishly Wrote a Message
XXI. How the Gold Came Down
XXII. How the San Reve Kept Her Storri
XXIII. How Richard and Dorothy Sailed Away
ILLUSTRATIONS
Across the Senator's Desk
One of the Most Reverend of the Senate Walruses
At the Door of the Caucus Room
It was a Kind of Prodigy
That Artist of Pursuit
"Sit Down!" Thundered Mr. Harley
He Held Her Close
"It'll Take Two Months to Dig that Tunnel"
THE PRESIDENT
CHAPTER I
HOW RICHARD BEGAN TO WOO
On this far-away November morning, it being ten by every steeple clock
and an hour utterly chaste, there could have existed no impropriety in
one's having had a look into the rooms of Mr. Richard Storms, said rooms
being second-floor front of the superfashionable house of Mr. Lorimer
Gwynn, Washington, North West. Richard, wrapped to the chin in a
bathrobe, was sitting much at his ease, having just tumbled from the
tub. There was ever a recess in Richard's morning programme at this
point during which his breakfast arrived. Pending that repast, he had
thrown himself into an easy-chair before the blaze which crackled in the
deep fireplace. The sudden sharp weather made the fire pleasant enough.
The apartment in which Richard lounged, and the rooms to the rear
belonging with it, were richly appointed. A fortune had been spilled to
produce those effects in velvets and plushes and pictures and bronzes
and crystals and chinas and lamps and Russia leathers and laces and
brocades and silks, and as you walked the thick rugs you made no more
noise than a ghost. It was Richard's caprice to have his environment the
very lap of splendor, being as given to luxury as a woman.
Against the pane beat a swirl and white flurry of snow, for winter broke
early that year. Richard turned an eye of gray indolence on the window.
The down-come of snow in no sort disquieted him; there abode a bent for
winter in his blood, throughout the centuries Norse, that would have
liked a Laplander. Even his love for pictures ran away to scenes of snow
and wind-whipped wolds with drifts piled high. These, if well drawn, he
would look at; while he turned his back on palms and jungles and things
tropical in paint, the sight of which made him perspire like a harvest
hand. As Richard's idle glance came back from the window, it caught the
brown eyes of Mr. Pickwick considering him through a silvery, fringy
thicket of hair. Mr. Pickwick was said to be royally descended; however
that might have been, indubitably his pedigree harbored somewhere both a
door-mat and a mop.
"Rats!" observed Richard to Mr. Pickwick.
Richard did not say this because it was true, but to show Mr. Pickwick
that the ties which bound them were friendly. On his side, Mr. Pickwick,
albeit he stood well aware how there was never a rat in the room, arose
vivaciously and went snuffling and scuffling behind curtains and beneath
sofas, and all in a mood prodigiously dire.
The room being exhaustively searched, Mr. Pickwick came and sat by
Richard, and with yelp and howl, and at intervals a little epileptic
bark, proceeded to disparage all manners and septs of rats, and spake
slightingly of all such vermin deer. Having freed his mind on the
important subject of rats, Mr. Pickwick returned to silence and his
cushion and curled up.
Matzai, the Japanese valet, brought in the breakfast--steak, potatoes,
eggs, toast, marmalade, and coffee. The deft Matzai placed the tray on
the mahogany at Richard's elbow. Richard did not like a multiplicity of
personal attendants. Of the score of souls within the walls of that
house, Richard would meet only Mr. Gwynn and Matzai. This was as the
wisdom of Solomon, since neglect is born of numbers.
Mr. Lorimer Gwynn was a personage--clean and tall and slim and solemn
and sixty years of age. He was as wholly English as Mr. Pickwick was
wholly Skye, and exuded an indomitable respectability from his formal,
shaven face. Rumor had it that Mr. Gwynn was fabulously rich.
It was in June when Mr. Gwynn came to town and leased the house just
vacated by Baron Trenk, late head of the Austrian diplomatic corps. This
leasing of itself half established Mr. Gwynn in a highest local esteem;
his being English did the rest, since in the Capital of America it is
better, socially, to come from anywhere rather than from home. In
addition to those advantages of Baron Trenk's house and an English
emanation, Mr. Gwynn made his advent indorsed to the Washington banks by
the Bank of England; also he was received by the British Ambassador, on
whom he made a call of respect the moment he set foot in town.
It became known that Mr. Gwynn was either widower or bachelor; and at
that, coupled with his having taken a large house, the hope crept about
that in the season he would entertain. The latter thought addressed
itself tenderly to the local appetite, which was ready to be received
wherever there abode good cooks and sound wines. Mr. Gwynn, it should be
mentioned, was duly elected a member of the Metropolitan Club--where he
never went; as was likewise Richard--who was seen there a great deal.
Richard had not come to town until both Mr. Gwynn and his house were
established. When he did appear, it was difficult for the public to fix
him in his proper place. He was reserved and icily taciturn, and that
did not blandly set his moderate years; with no friends and few
acquaintances, he seemed to prefer his own society to that of whomsoever
came about him.
Who was he?
What was he?
What were his relations with Mr. Gwynn?
Surely, Richard could be neither son nor nephew of that English
gentleman. Richard was too obviously the American of full blood; his
high cheekbones, square jaw, and lean, curved nose told of two centuries
of Western lineage. Could it be that Richard was Mr. Gwynn's secretary?
This looked in no wise probable; he went about too much at lordly ease
for that. In the end, the notion obtained that Richard must be a needy
dependent of Mr. Gwynn, and his perfect clothes and the thoroughbred
horse he rode were pointed to as evidences of that gentleman's
generosity. Indeed, Mr. Gwynn was much profited in reputation thereby.
Richard, while not known, was not liked. He wore the air of one
self-centered, and cold to all judgments except his own. This last makes
no friends, but only enemies for him whose position is problematical.
Richard's pose of insolent indifference would have been beautiful in a
gentleman who counted his fortune by millions; in a dollarless beggar
who lived off alms it was detestable. Wherefore, the town, so far as
Richard encountered it, left our silent, supercilious one to himself,
which neglect dove-tailed with his humor and was the precise lonely thing
he sought. This gave still further edge to the public's disregard; no
one likes you to accept with grace what is intended for punishment.
Matzai carried away the breakfast tray, and Richard lighted a cigar.
Matzai returned and stood mute inside the door, awaiting new commands.
Richard pointed through the cigar-smoke to the clock--one of those
soundless, curious creatures of brass and glass and ivory which is wound
but once in four hundred days, and of which the hair-hung pendulum
twists and turns and does not swing.
"In an hour! Eleven o'clock!" said Richard.
At the risk of shaking him in general standing it should be called to
your notice that Richard preceded breakfast with no strong waters.
Richard would drink nothing more generous than coffee, and, speaking in
the sense limited, tobacco was his only vice. Perhaps he stuck to cigars
to retain his hold on earth, and avoid translation before his hour was
ripe.
It was no pale morality that got between Richard and the wine cup. In
another day at college he had emptied many. But early in his twenties,
Richard discovered that he carried his drink uneasily; it gave a Gothic
cant to his spirit, which, under its warm spell, turned warlike. Once,
having sat late at dinner--this was in that seminary town in France
where he attended school--he bestrode a certain iron lion, the same
strange to him and guarding the portals of a public building. Being thus
happily placed, he drew two huge American six-shooters, whereof his
possession was wrapped in mystery even to himself, and blazed vacuously,
yet ferociously, at the moon. Spoken to by the constabulary who came
flying to the spot, Richard replied with acrimony.
"If you interfere with me," remarked Richard on that explosive occasion,
addressing the French constables, "I'll buy your town and burn it." The
last with a splendid disdain of limitations that was congenital.
Exploits similar to the above taught Richard the futility of alcoholic
things, and thereupon he cultivated a Puritan sobriety upon coffee and
tobacco.
Richard cast the half-burned cigar into the fire. Stepping to the
mantel, he took from it a small metal casket, builded to hold jewels.
What should be those gems of price which the metal box protected?
Richard did not strike one as the man to nurse a weakness for barbaric
adornment. A bathrobe is not a costume calculated to teach one the
wearer's fineness. To say best, a bathrobe is but a savage thing. It is
the garb most likely to obscure and set backward even a Walpole or a
Chesterfield in any impression of gentility. In spite of this primitive
regalia, however, Richard gave forth an idea of elevation, and as though
his ancestors in their civilization had long ago climbed above a level
where men put on gold to embellish their worth. What, then, did that
casket of carved bronze contain?
Richard took from its velvet interior the heel of a woman's shoe and
kissed it. It was a little kissable heel, elegant in fashion; one could
tell how it belonged aforetime to the footwear of a beautiful girl.
Perhaps this thought was aided by the reverent preoccupation of Richard
as he regarded it, for he set the boot-heel on the table and hung over
it in a rapt way that had the outward features of idolatry. It was right
that he should; the little heel spoke of Richard's first strong passion.
You will retrace the year to the 10th of June. Richard, after roving the
Eastern earth for a decade, had just returned to his own land, which he
hardly knew. Throughout those ten years of long idling from one European
city to another, had Richard met the woman he might love, he would have
laid siege to her, conquered her, and brought her home as his wife. But
his instinct was too tribal, too American. Whether it were Naples or
Paris or Vienna or St. Petersburg or Berlin, those women whom he met
might have pleased him in everything save wedlock. In London, and for a
moment, Richard saw a girl he looked at twice. But she straightway drank
beer with the gusto of a barge-man, and the vision passed.
It was the evening after his return, and Richard at the Waldorf sat
amusing himself with those tides of vulgar humanity that ebb and flow in
a stretch of garish corridor known as Peacock Lane. Surely it was a
hopeless place wherein to seek a wife, and Richard had no such thought.
But who shall tell how and when and where his fate will overtake him?
Who is to know when Satan--or a more benevolent spirit--will be hiding
behind the hedge to play good folk a marriage trick? And Richard had
been warned. Once, in Calcutta, price one rupee, a necromancer after
fullest reading of the signs informed him that when he met the woman who
should make a wife to him, she would come upon him suddenly. Wherefore,
he should have kept a brighter watch, expecting the unexpected.
Richard's gaze went following two rustical people--clearly bride and
groom. In a cloudy way he loathed the groom, and was foggily wondering
why. His second thought would have told him that the male of his
species--such is his sublime egotism--feels cheated with every wedding
not his own, and, for an earliest impulse on beholding a woman with
another man, would tear her from that other one by force. Thus did his
skinclad ancestors when time was.
However, Richard had but scanty space wherein either to enjoy his blunt
hatred of that bridegroom or theorize as to its roots. His ear caught a
muffled scream, and then down the wide staircase in front of him a
winsome girl came tumbling.
With a dexterity born of a youth more or less replete of football,
Richard sprang forward and caught the girl in his arms. He caught and
held her as though she were feather-light; and that feat of a brutal
strength, even through her fright, worked upon the saved one, who,
remembering her one hundred and thirty pounds, did not think herself
down of thistles.
"Are you hurt?" asked Richard, still holding her lightly close.
Richard looked at the girl; black hair, white skin, lashes of ink, eyes
of blue, rose-leaf lips, teeth white as rice, a spot of red in her
cheeks--the last the fruit of fright, no doubt. He had never seen aught
so beautiful! Even while she was in his arms, the face fitted into his
heart like a picture into its frame, and Richard thought on that prophet
of Calicut.
"Are you injured?" he asked again.
"Thanks to you--no," said the girl.
With a kind of modest energy, she took herself out of his arms, for
Richard had held to her stoutly, and might have been holding her until
now had she not come to her own rescue. For all that, she had leisure to
admire the steel-like grasp and the deep, even voice. Her own words as
she replied came in gasps.
"No," she repeated, "I'm not injured. Help me to a seat."
The beautiful rescued one limped, and Richard turned white.
"Your ankle!" he exclaimed.
"No; my heel," she retorted with a little flutter of a laugh. "My French
heel caught on the stair; it was torn away. No wonder I limp!"
Then came the girl's mother and called her "Dorothy."
Richard, who was not without presence of mind, climbed six steps and
secretly made prize of the baby boot-heel. Perhaps you will think he did
this on the argument by which an Indian takes a scalp. Whatever the
argument, he placed the sweet trophy over that heart which held the
picture of the girl; once there, the boot-heel showed bulgingly foolish
through his coat.
Richard returned to the mother and daughter; the latter had regained her
poise. He introduced himself: "Mr. Richard Storms." The mother gave him
her card: "Mrs. John Harley." She added:
"My name is Hanway-Harley, and this is my daughter, Dorothy Harley.
Hanway is my own family name; I always use it." Then she thanked Richard
for his saving interference in her child's destinies. "Just to think!"
she concluded, and a curdling horror gathered in her tones. "Dorothy,
you might have broken your nose!"
Richard ran a glance over Mrs. Hanway-Harley. She was not coarse, but
was superficial--a woman of inferior ideals. He marveled how a being so
fine as the daughter could have had a no more silken source, and hugged
the boot-heel. The daughter was a flower, the mother a weed. He decided
that the superiority of Dorothy was due to the father, and gave that
absent gentleman a world of credit without waiting to make his
acquaintance.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley said that she lived in Washington. Where did Mr.
Storms live?
"My home has been nowhere for ten years," returned Richard. Then, as he
looked at Dorothy, while his heart took a firmer grip on the picture:
"But I shall live in Washington in a few months."
Dorothy, the saved, beneath whose boot-heel beat Richard's heart, looked
up, and in the blue depths--so Richard thought--shone pleasure at the
news. He could not be certain, for when the blue eyes met the gray ones,
they fell to a furtive consideration of the floor.
"You are to take a house in Washington," said Richard to Mr. Gwynn an
hour later.
Mr. Gwynn bowed.
You who read will now come back to that snow-filled day in November.
Richard relocked his dear boot-heel in the casket; eleven and Matzai had
entered the room together. Matzai laid out Richard's clothes, down to
pin and puff tie. Richard shook off his bathrobe skin and shone forth in
a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of those cotton trousers, cut short
above the knee, which dramatic usage ascribes to fishermen and
buccaneers.
As Richard stood erect, shoulders wide as a viking's, chest arched like
the deck of a whale-back, he might have been a model for the Farnese
Hercules, if that demigod were slimmed down by training and ten years
off his age. He of Farnese should be about forty, if one may go by
looks, while Richard was but thirty. Also, Richard's arms, muscled to
the wrists and as long as a Pict's, would have been out of drawing from
standpoints of ancient art. One must rescue Richard's head; it was not
that nubbin of a head which goes with the Farnese one. Moreover, it
showed wisest balance from base to brow; with the face free of beard and
mustache, while the yellow hair owned no taint of curl--altogether an
American head on Farnese shoulders refined.
Richard made no speed with his dressing. What with refusing several
waistcoats--a fastidiousness which opened the slant eyes of Matzai,
being unusual--and what with pausing to smoke a brooding cigar, it stood
roundly twelve before he was ready for the street. One need not call
Richard lazy. He was no one to retire or to rise with the birds; why
should he? "Early to bed and early to rise" is a tradition of the
copybooks. It did well when candlelight was cheap at a dollar the dozen,
but should not belong to a day of electricity no dearer than the sun.
Before going out, Richard crossed to a writing cabinet and pressed a
button, the white disk whereof showed in its mahogany side. It was not
the bell he used for the wheat-hued Matzai, and owned a note peculiar to
itself. As though in response came Mr. Gwynn, irreproachable, austere.
Upon the advent of Mr. Gwynn, one might have observed sundry amazing
phenomena, innocent at that. Mr. Gwynn did not sit down, but stood in
the middle of the room. On the careless other hand, Richard did not
arise from the chair into which he had flung himself, but sat with his
hat on, puffing blue wreaths and tapping his foot with a rattan.
"Mr. Gwynn," quoth Richard, "you will catch the four-o'clock limited to
New York. Talon & Trehawke, Attorneys, Temple Court, have on sale a
majority of the stock of the _Daily Tory_. Buy it; notify those in
present charge of the editorial and business departments of the new
proprietorship. There will be no changes in the personnel of the paper
so far as refers to New York. You are to say, however, that you will
give me charge in Washington. Talon & Trehawke can put you in control,
and forty-eight hours should be enough to carry out my plans. The
balance of the stock you will buy up at your leisure. This is Tuesday;
have the bureau here ready for me by Thursday evening."
Mr. Gwynn inclined his head.
"Can you give me, sir, some notion of what Talon & Trehawke are to
have?" asked Mr. Gwynn.
"Their letter addressed to you--here it is--says that sixty per cent. of
the stock can be had for two millions eight hundred thousand."
"Very good, sir," and Mr. Gwynn bowed deeply.
Richard pulled on his gloves to depart, whereat Mr. Pickwick yelped
frantically from his cushion. Richard tapped Mr. Pickwick with the
lacquered rattan.
"Old man," said Richard, "I am going to take a look at the lady I love."
Mr. Pickwick moaned querulously, while Richard sought the street.
Richard, the day before, dispatched a note and a card to Mrs.
Hanway-Harley and had been told in reply that he might call to-day at
three. Richard decided to repair to the club, and wait for three
o'clock.
Richard, during his week in Washington, had found a deserted corner in
the club and pre-empted it. At those times when he honored the club with
his presence, he occupied this vantage point. From it he was given both
a view of the street and a fair survey of the apartment itself. No one
approached him; his atmosphere was repellant; beyond civil nods,
curtailed to the last limit of civility, his intercourse with his
fellows had not advanced.
On this afternoon as Richard smoked a solitary cigar and reviewed the
thin procession of foot passengers trudging through the snow beneath his
window, he was attracted by the loud talk of a coterie about a table.
The center of the group was Count Storri--a giant Russ. This Storri did
not belong to the Russian legation, did not indeed reside in town, and
had been vouched into the club by one of his countrymen. He had onyx
eyes, with blue-black beard and mustaches which half covered his face,
and hair as raven as his beard. Also he valued himself for that a
favorite dish with him was raw meat chopped fine with peppers and oil.
Storri's education--which was wide--did not suffice to cover up in him
the barbarian, videlicet, the Tartar--which was wider; and when a trifle
uplifted of drink, it was his habit to brag profoundly in purring,
snarling, half-challenging tones. Storri boasted most of his thews,
which would not have disgraced Goliath. He was at the moment telling a
knot of gaping youngsters of monstrous deeds of strength. Storri had
crushed horseshoes in his hand; he had rolled silver pieces into bullets
between thumb and finger.
"See, you children, I will show what a Russian can do!" cried Storri.
Storri came over to the fireplace, the rest at his heels. Taking up the
poker--a round half-inch rod of wrought iron--he seized it firmly by one
end with his left hand and with the right wound it twice about his left
arm. The black spiral reached from hand to elbow; when he withdrew his
arm the club poker was a Brobdingnagian corkscrew.
The youngsters stared wonder-bitten. Then a mighty chatter of
compliments broke forth, and Storri swelled with the savage glory of his
achievement.
Richard, the somber, who did not like noise, shrugged his shoulders.
Storri, by the fireplace, caught the shrug and found it offensive. He
made towards Richard, and offered the right hand, his white teeth
gleaming in a sinister way through the fastnesses of his beard.
"Will you try grips with me?" cried Storri loudly. "Will you shake hands
Russian fashion?"
"No," retorted Richard, all ice and unconcern. "I will not shake your
hand Russian fashion."
Storri broke into an evil grin that made him look like a black panther.
"Some day you must put your fingers into that trap," said he, opening
and closing his broad hand.
Richard making no return, Storri and the others went back to their
decanters.
Richard might have said, and would have believed, that he did not like
Storri because of a Siberian rudeness and want of breeding. It is to be
thought, however, that his antipathy arose rather from having heard the
day before Storri's name coupled with that of Dorothy Harley. The Russ
was a caller at the Harley house, it seemed, and rumor gave it that he
and Mr. Harley were together in speculations. At that Richard hated
Storri with the dull integrity of a healthy, normal animal, just as he
would have hated any man who raised his eyes to Dorothy Harley; for you
are to know that Richard was in a last analysis even more savage than
was Storri himself, and withal as jealously hot as a coal of fire.
Presently Storri departed, and Richard forgot him in a reverie of smoke.
It stood the quarter of three, and Richard took up his walk to the
Harleys'. It was no mighty journey, being but two blocks.
In the Harley drawing room whom should Richard meet but Storri. The Russ
was on the brink of departure. At that meeting Richard's face clouded.
Dorothy was alone with Storri; her mother had been called temporarily
from the room. At sight of Dorothy's flower-like hand in Storri's hairy
paw, Richard's eyes turned jade.
"Mr. Storms," said Dorothy, as Richard paused in the door, "permit me to
present Count Storri."
"Ah!" whispered Storri, beneath his breath, "see now how my word comes
true!"
With that he put out his hand like a threat.
Storri's exultation fell frost-nipped in greenest bud. It was as though
some implacable destiny had seized his hand. In vain did Storri put
forth his last resource of strength--he who crushed horseshoes and
twisted pokers! Like things of steel Richard's fingers closed grimly and
invincibly upon those of Storri. The Russian strove to recover his hand;
against the awful force that held him his boasted strength was as the
strength of children.
Storri looked into Richard's eyes; they were less ferocious, but
infinitely more relentless than his own. There was that, too, in the
other's look which appalled the Tartar soul of Storri--something in the
drawn brow, the eye like agate, the jaw as iron as the hand! And ever
more and a little more that fearful grip came grinding. The onyx eyes
glared in terror; the tortured forehead, white as paper, became spangled
with drops of sweat.
There arose a smothered feline screech as from a tiger whose back is
broken in a deadfall. Richard gave his wrist the shadow of a twist, and
Storri fell on one knee. Then, as though it were some foul thing,
Richard tossed aside Storri's hand, from the nails of which blood came
oozing in black drops as large as grapes.
"What was it?" gasped Dorothy, who had stood throughout the duel like
one planet-struck; "what was it you did?"
"Storri on his knee?" asked Richard with a kind of vicious sweetness.
There was something arctic, something remorselessly glacial, in the man.
It caught and held Dorothy, entrancing while it froze. "Storri on his
knee?" repeated Richard, looking where his adversary was staining a
handkerchief with Tartar blood. "It was nothing. It is a way in which
Russians honor me--that is, Russians whom I do not like!"