About a month after the Chicago and Fredonia bill was smothered in
committee there appeared upon the threshold of my office, in the
administration building of the Ramsay Company, a man whom at first
glance you might have taken for an exhorter or a collector for some
pious enterprise. But if you had made a study of faces, your second
glance would have cut through that gloze of oily, apologetic appeal.
Behind a thin screen of short gray beard lay a heavy loose mouth, cruel
and strong; above it, a great beak and a pair of pale green eyes,
intensely alive. They were in startling contrast to the apparent
decrepitude of the stooped shambling body, far too small for its
covering of decent but somewhat rusty black.
"Senator Dunkirk," said I, rising and advancing to greet the justly
feared leader of my party. I knew there was an intimate connection
between this visit and the death of his pet project. I thought it safe
to assume that he had somehow stumbled upon Woodruff's tunnelings, and
with that well-trained nose of his had smelled out their origin. But I
need not have disquieted myself; I did not then know how softly Woodruff
moved, sending no warnings ahead, and leaving no trail behind.
For several minutes the Senator and I felt for each other in the dark in
which we both straightway hid. He was the first to give up and reveal
himself in the open. "But I do not wish to waste your time and my own,
Mr. Sayler," he said; "I have come to see you about the threatened split
in the party. You are, perhaps, surprised that I should have come to
you, when you have been so many years out of politics, but I think you
will understand, as I explain myself. You know Mr. Roebuck?"
"I can't say that I _know_ him," I replied. "He is not an easy man to
know--indeed, who is?"
"A very able man; in some respects a great man," Dunkirk went on. "But,
like so many of our great men of business, he can not appreciate
politics,--the difficulties of the man in public life where persuasion
and compromise must be used, authority almost never. And, because I have
resisted some of his impossible demands, he has declared war on the
party. He has raised up in it a faction headed by your old enemy,
Dominick. I need not tell you what a brute, what a beast he is, the
representative of all that is abhorrent in politics."
"A faction headed by Dominick couldn't be very formidable," I suggested.
"But Dominick isn't the nominal leader," replied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is
far too shrewd for that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my
colleague, Croffut,--perhaps you know him? If so, I needn't tell you
what a vain, shallow, venal fellow he is, with his gift of gab that
fools the people."
"I know him," said I, in a tone which did not deny the accuracy of
Dunkirk's description.
"Their object," continued the Senator, "is to buy the control of the
party machinery away from those who now manage it in the interests of
conservatism and fair dealing. If they succeed, the only business
interest that will be considered in this state will be the Power Trust.
And we shall have Dominick, the ignorant brute, lashed on by Roebuck's
appetites, until the people will rise in fury and elect the
opposition,--and you know what _it_ is."
"What you say is most interesting," said I, "but I confess I haven't
imagination enough to conceive a condition of affairs in which anybody
with 'the price' couldn't get what he wanted by paying for it. Perhaps
the business interests would gain by a change,--the other crowd might be
less expensive. Certainly the demands of our party's machine have become
intolerable."
"It astonishes me, Mr. Sayler, to hear you say that,--you, who have been
in politics," he protested, taken aback by my hardly disguised attack
upon him,--for he was in reality "party" and "machine." "Surely, you
understand the situation. We must have money to maintain our
organization, and to run our campaign. Our workers can't live on air;
and, to speak of only one other factor, there are thousands and
thousands of our voters, honest fellows, too, who must be paid to come
to the polls. They wouldn't vote against us for any sum; but, unless we
pay them for the day lost in the fields, they stay at home. Now, where
does our money come from? The big corporations are the only source,--who
else could or would give largely enough? And it is necessary and just
that they should be repaid. But they are no longer content with moderate
and prudent rewards for their patriotism. They make bigger and bigger,
and more and more unreasonable, demands on us, and so undermine our
popularity,--for the people can't be blinded wholly to what's going on.
And thus, year by year, it takes more and more money to keep us in
control."
"You seem to have forgotten my point," said I, smiling. "Why should
_you_ be kept in control? If you go out, the others come in. They
bluster and threaten, in order to get themselves in; but, once they're
elected, they discover that it wasn't the people's woes they were
shouting about, but their own. And soon they are docile 'conservatives'
lapping away at the trough, with nothing dangerous in them but their
appetites."
"Precisely,--their appetites," said he.
"A starved man has to practise eating a long, long time before he can
equal the performances of a trained glutton," I suggested.
His facial response to my good-humored raillery was feeble indeed. And
it soon died in a look of depression that made him seem even older and
more decrepit than was his wont. "The same story, wherever I go," said
he sadly. "The business interests refuse to see their peril. And when I,
in my zeal, persist, they,--several of them, Sayler, have grinned at me
and reminded me that the legislature to be elected next fall will choose
my successor! As if my own selfish interests were all I have in mind! I
am old and feeble, on the verge of the grave. Do you think, Mr. Sayler,
that I would continue in public life if it were not for what I conceive
to be my duty to my party? I have toiled too long for it--"
"Your record speaks for itself, Senator," I put in, politely but
pointedly.
"You are very discouraging, Sayler," he said forlornly. "But I refuse to
be discouraged. The party needs you, and I have come to do my duty, and
I won't leave without doing it."
"I have nothing to do with the company's political contributions," said
I. "You will have to see Mr. Ramsay, as usual."
He waved his hand. "Let me explain, please. Roover is about to
resign,--as you probably know, he's been chairman of the party's state
committee for seventeen years. I've come to ask you to take his place."
It was impossible wholly to hide my amazement, my stupefaction. Had he
had the shadowiest suspicion of my plans, of the true inwardness of the
Croffut-Dominick movement, he would as readily have offered me his own
head. In fact, he was offering me his own head; for, with the money and
the other resources at my command, I needed only this place of official
executive of the party to make me master. And here he was, giving me the
place, under the delusion that he could use me as he had been using
Roover.
He must have misread my expression, for he went on: "Don't refuse on
impulse, Sayler. I and the others will do everything to make your duties
as light as possible."
"I should not be content to be a mere figure-head, as Roover has been,"
I warned him. He had come, in his desperation, to try to get the man who
combined the advantages of being, as he supposed, Dominick's enemy and a
member of one of the state's financially influential families. He had
come to cozen me into letting him use me in return for a mockery of an
honor. And I was simply tumbling him, or, rather, permitting him to
tumble himself, into the pit he had dug for me. Still, I felt that I
owed it to my self-respect to give him a chance. "If I take the place, I
shall fill it _to the best of my ability_."
"Certainly, certainly,--we want your ability." Behind his bland, cordial
mask I saw the spider eyes gleaming and the spider claws twitching as he
felt his net quiver under hovering wings. "We want you--we need you,
Sayler. We expect you to do your best."
My best! What would my "best" have been, had I been only what he
thought,--dependent upon him for supplies, surrounded by his
lieutenants, hearing nothing but what he chose to tell me, and able to
execute only such orders as he gave or approved!
"I am sure we can count on you," he urged.
"I will try it," said I, after a further hesitation that was not
altogether show.
He did not linger,--he wished to give me no chance to change my mind and
fly his net. I was soon alone, staring dazedly at my windfall and
wondering if fortune would ever give me anything without attaching to it
that which would make me doubt whether my gift had more of bitter or
more of sweet in it.
Dunkirk announced the selection of a new chairman that very
afternoon,--as a forecast, of course, for there was the formality of my
"election" by the sixty-three members of the state committee to be gone
through. His proposition was well received. The old-line politicians
remembered my father; the Reformers recalled my fight against Dominick;
the business men liked my connection with the Ramsay Company, assuring
stability and regard for "conservatism"; the "boys" were glad because I
had a rich wife and a rich brother-in-law. The "boys" always cheer when
a man with money develops political aspirations.
I did not see Woodruff until I went down to the capital to begin my
initiation. I came upon him there, in the lobby of the Capital City
Hotel. As we talked for a moment like barely-acquainted strangers,
saying nothing that might not have been repeated broadcast, his look was
asking: "How did you manage to trap Dunkirk into doing it?" I never told
him the secret, and so never tore out the foundation of his belief in me
as a political wizard. It is by such judicious use of their few strokes
of good luck that successful men get their glamour of the superhuman. In
the eyes of the average man, who is lazy or intermittent, the result of
plain, incessant, unintermittent work is amazing enough. All that is
needed to make him cry, "Genius!" is a little luck adroitly exploited.
I left Woodruff, to join Dunkirk. "Who is that chap over there,--Doctor
Woodruff?" I asked him.
"Woodruff?" replied the Senator. "Oh, a lobbyist. He does a good deal
for Roebuck, I believe. An honest fellow,--for that kind,--they tell me.
It's always well to be civil to them."
Dunkirk's "initiation" of me into the duties of my office wiped away my
last lingering sense of double, or, at least, doubtful, dealing. He told
me nothing that was not calculated to mislead me. And he was so glib and
so frank and so sympathetic that, had I not known the whole machine from
the inside, I should have been his dupe.
It is not pleasant to suspect that, in some particular instance, one of
your fellow men takes you for a simple-minded fool. To know you are
being so regarded, not in one instance, but in general, is in the
highest degree exasperating, no matter how well your vanity is under
control.
Perhaps I should not have been able to play my part and deceive my
deceiver had I been steadily at headquarters. As it was, I went there
little and then gave no orders, apparently contenting myself with the
credit for what other men were doing in my name. In fact, so obvious did
I make my neglect as chairman that the party press commented on it and
covertly criticized me. Dunkirk mildly reproached me for lack of
interest. He did not know--indeed, he never knew--that his chief
lieutenant, Thurston, in charge at headquarters, had gone over to "the
enemy," and was Woodruff's right-hand man. And it is not necessary for
me to say where Woodruff got the orders he transmitted to Thurston.
My excuse for keeping aloof was that I was about to be transformed into
a man of family. As I was fond of children I had looked forward to this
with more eagerness than I ventured to show to my wife. She might not
have liked it, eager though she was also. As soon as she knew that her
longings were to be satisfied, she entered upon a course of preparation
so elaborate that I was secretly much amused, though I thoroughly
approved and encouraged her. Every moment of her days was laid out in
some duty imposed upon her by the regimen she had arranged after a study
of all that science says on the subject.
As perfect tranquillity was a fundamental of the _régime_, she permitted
nothing to ruffle her. But Ed more than made up for her calm. Two weeks
before the event, she forbade him to enter her presence--"or any part of
the grounds where I'm likely to see you," said she. "The very sight of
you, looking so flustered, unnerves me."
While he and I were waiting in the sitting-room for the news, he turned
his heart inside out.
"I want to tell you, Harvey," said he, "that the--boy or girl--whichever
it is--is to be my heir."
"I shan't hold you to that," I replied with a laugh.
"No,--I'll never marry," he went on. "There was an--an angel. You know
the Shaker settlement?--well, out there."
I looked at him in wonder. If ever there was a man who seemed
unromantic, it was he, heavy and prosaic and so shy that he was visibly
agitated even in bowing to a woman acquaintance.
"I met her," he was saying, "when I was driving that way,--the horse
ran, I was thrown out, and her parents had to take me in and let her
nurse me. You've seen her face,--or faces like it. Most of those
Madonnas over on the other side in all the galleries suggest her.
Well,--her parents were furious,--wouldn't hear of it,--you know Shakers
think marriage and love and all those things are wicked. And she thought
so, too. How she used to suffer! It wore her to a shadow. She wouldn't
marry me,--wouldn't let me so much as touch her hand. But we used to
meet and--then she caught a cold--waiting hours for me, one winter
night, when there'd been a misunderstanding about the place--I was in
one place, she in another. And the cold,--you see, she couldn't fight
against it. And--and--there won't be another, Harvey. All women are
sacred to me for her sake, but I couldn't any more marry than I
could--could stop feeling her sitting beside me, just a little way off,
wrapped in her drab shawl, with her face--like a glimpse through the
gates of Heaven."
Within me up-started the memories that I kept battened down.
"Your children are mine, too, Harvey," he ended.
I took from Carlotta's work-basket an unfinished bit of baby clothing. I
went to him and held it up and pointed to the monogram she had
embroidered on it.
"E. R. S.," he read aloud. Then he looked at me with a queer expression
beginning to form in his eyes.
"Edward Ramsay Sayler, if it's a boy," said I. "Edwina Ramsay Sayler, if
it's a girl."
He snatched the bit of linen from me and buried his face in it.
The baby was a boy,--fortunately, for I don't admire the name Edwina,
and I shouldn't have liked to handicap a child with it. Carlotta and Ed
were delighted, but I felt a momentary keen disappointment. I had wanted
a girl. Girls never leave their parents completely, as boys do. Also I
should rather have looked forward to my child's having a sheltered life,
one in which the fine and beautiful ideals do not have to be molded into
the gross, ugly forms of the practical. I may say, in passing, that I
deplore the entrance of women into the world of struggle. Women are the
natural and only custodians of the ideals. We men are compelled to
wander, often to wander far, from the ideal. Unless our women remain
aloof from action, how are the ideals to be preserved? Man for action;
woman to purify man, when he returns stained with the blood and sin of
battle.
But--with the birth of the first child I began to appreciate how
profoundly right my mother had been about marriage and its source of
happiness. There are other flowers than the rose,--other flowers, and
beautiful, the more beautiful for its absence.