"For the sake of the cause," he went on when he saw he was to get no
help from me, "any and all personal sacrifices must be made. If you
insist on having Goodrich's head, I will break my promise, and--"
"Pardon me again," I interrupted. My mood would not tolerate twaddle
about "the cause" and "promises" from Burbank--Burbank, whose "cause,"
as he had just shown afresh, was himself alone, and who promised
everything to everybody and kept only the most advantageous promises
after he had made absolutely sure how his advantage lay. "It's all a
matter of indifference to me. If you wish to retain Goodrich, do so. He
must not be dismissed as a personal favor to me. The favor is to you. I
do not permit any man to thimblerig his debts to me into my debts to
him."
Burbank seemed deeply moved. He came up to me and took my hand. "It is
not like my friend Sayler to use the word indifference in connection
with me," he said. And then I realized how completely the nomination had
turned his head. For his tone was that of the great man addressing his
henchman.
I did not keep my amusement out of my eyes. "James," said I,
"indifference is precisely the word. I should welcome a chance to
withdraw from this campaign. I have been ambitious for power, _you_ want
place. If you think the time has come to dissolve partnership, say
so--and trade yourself off to Goodrich."
He was angry through and through, not so much at my bluntness as at my
having seen into his plot to help himself at my expense--for, not even
when I showed it to him, could he see that it was to his interest to
destroy Goodrich. Moral coward that he was, the course of conciliation
always appealed to him, whether it was wise or not, and the course of
courage always frightened him. He bit his lip and dissembled his anger.
Presently he began to pace up and down the room, his head bent, his
hands clasped behind him. After perhaps five minutes he paused to say:
"You insist on taking the place yourself, Harvey?"
I stood before him and looked down at him. "Your suspicion that I have
also a personal reason is well-founded, James," said I. "I wouldn't put
myself in a position where I should have to ask as a favor what I now
get as a right. If I help you to the presidency, I must be master of the
national machine of the party, able to use it with all its power and
against _any one_--" here I looked him straight in the eye--"who shall
try to build himself up at my expense. Personally, we are friends, and
it has been a pleasure to me to help elevate a man I liked. But there is
no friendship in affairs, except where friendship and interest point the
same way. It is strange that a man of your experience should expect
friendship from me at a time when you are showing that you haven't for
me even the friendship of enlightened self-interest."
"Your practice is better than your theory, Harvey," said he, putting on
an injured, forgiving look and using his chest tones. "A better friend
never lived than you, and I know no other man who gets the absolute
loyalty you get." He looked at me earnestly. "What has changed you?" he
asked. "Why are you so bitter and so--so unlike your even-tempered
self?"
I waved his question aside,--I had no mind to show him my uncovered
coffin with its tenant who only slept, or to expose to him the feelings
which the erect and fearless figure of Scarborough had set to stirring
in me. "I'm careful to choose my friends from among those who can serve
me and whom I can therefore serve," I said. "And that is the
sentimentalism of the wise. I wish us to remain friends--therefore, I
must be able to be as useful to you as you can be useful to me."
"Goodrich shall go," was the upshot of his thinking. "I'll telephone him
this afternoon. Is my old friend satisfied?"
"You have done what was best for yourself," said I, with wholly
good-humored raillery. And we shook hands, and I went.
I was glad to be alone where I could give way to my weariness and
disgust; for I had lost all the joy of the combat. The arena of ambition
had now become to me a ring where men are devoured by the beast-in-man
after hideous battles. I turned from it, heart-sick. "If only I had less
intelligence, less insight," I thought, "so that I could cheat myself as
Burbank cheats himself. Or, if I had the relentlessness or the supreme
egotism, or whatever it is, that enables great men to trample without a
qualm, to destroy without pity, to enjoy without remorse."