"Wait a moment, please," he said. "I have always found you very
impartial in your judgments--your clear judgment has been of the highest
usefulness to me many times."
"Thank you," I said. "You are most kind--most generous."
"So," he went on, not dreaming that he might find sarcasm if he searched
for it, "I hope you appreciate why I have refrained from seeing you, as
I wished. I know, Sayler, your friendship was loyal. I know you did
during the campaign what you thought wisest and best. But I feel that
you must see now what a grave mistake you made. Don't misunderstand me,
Harvey. I do not hold it against you. But you must see, no doubt you do
see, that it would not be fair for me, it would not be in keeping with
the dignity of the great office with which the people have intrusted me,
to seem to lend my approval."
I looked straight at him until his gaze fell. Then I said, my voice even
lower than usual: "If you will look at the election figures carefully
you will find written upon them a very interesting fact. That fact is:
In all the doubtful states--the ones that elected you--Scarborough swept
everything where our party has heretofore been strongest; you were
elected by carrying districts where our party has always been weakest.
_And in those districts, James, our money was spent--as you well know._"
I waited for this to cut through his enswaddlings of self-complacence,
waited until I saw its acid eating into him. Then I went on: "I hope you
will never again deceive yourself, or let your enemies deceive you. As
to your plans--the plans for Goodrich and his crowd--I have nothing to
say. My only concern is to have Woodruff's matters--his
pledges--attended to. That I must insist upon."
He lowered his brows in a heavy frown.
"I have your assent?" I insisted.
"Really, Harvey,"--there was an astonishing change from the complacent,
superior voice of a few minutes before,--"I'll do what I can--but--the
responsibilities--the duties of--of my position--"
"You are going to _take_ the office, James," said I. "You can't cheat
the men who _gave_ it to you."
He did not answer.
"I pledged my word," I went on. "You gave the promises. I indorsed for
you. The debts _must_ be met." Never before had I enjoyed using that
ugliest of words.
"You ask me to bring myself into unpopularity with the entire country,"
he pleaded. "Several of the men on your list are ex-convicts. Others are
about to be indicted for election frauds. Many are men utterly without
character--"
"They did _your_ work, James," said I. "I guarantee that in no case will
the unpleasant consequences to you be more than a few disagreeable but
soon forgotten newspaper articles. You haggle over these trifles,
and--why, look at your cabinet list! There are two names on it--two of
the four Goodrich men--that will cost you blasts of public
anger--perhaps the renomination."
"Is _this_ my friend Harvey Sayler?" he exclaimed, grief and pain in
that face which had been used by him for thirty years as the sculptor
uses the molding clay.
"It is," I answered calmly. "And never more your friend than now, when
you have ceased to be a friend to him--and to yourself."
"Then do not ask me to share the infamy of those wretches," he pleaded.
"They are our allies and helpers," I said, "wretches only as I and all
of us in practical politics are wretches. Difference of degree, perhaps;
but not of kind. And, James, if our promises to these invaluable fellow
workers of ours are not kept, kept to the uttermost, you will compel me
and my group of Senators to oppose and defeat your most important
nominations. And I shall myself, publicly, from the floor of the Senate,
show up these Goodrich nominees of yours as creatures of corrupt
corporations and monopolies." I said this without heat; every word of it
fell cold as arctic ice upon his passion.
A long pause, then: "Your promises shall be kept," he assented with
great dignity of manner; "not because you threaten, Harvey, but because
I value your friendship beyond anything and everything. And I may add I
am sorry, profoundly sorry, my selections for the important places do
not please you."
"I think of your future," I said. "You _talk_ of friendship--"
"No, no, Harvey," he protested, with a vehemence of reassurance that
struck me as amusing.
"And," I went on, "it is in friendship, James, that I warn you not to
fill all your crucial places with creatures of the Goodrich crowd. They
will rule your administration, they will drive you, in spite of
yourself, on and on, from excess to excess. You will put the middle West
irrevocably against you. You will make even the East doubtful. You are
paying, paying with your whole future, for that which is already yours.
If you lose your hold on the people, the money-crowd will have none of
you. If you keep the people, the money-crowd will be your very humble
servant."
I happened just then to glance past him at a picture on the wall over
his chair. It was a crayon portrait of his wife, made from an enlarged
photograph--a poor piece of work, almost ludicrous in its distortions of
proportion and perspective. But it touched me the more because it was
such a humble thing, reminiscent of her and his and my lowly beginnings.
And an appeal seemed to go straight to my heart from those eyes that had
so often been raised from the sewing in sympathetic understanding of
the things I was struggling to make her husband see.
I pointed to the picture; he slowly turned round in his chair until he
too was looking at it. "What would _she_ say, Burbank," I asked, "if she
were with us now?"
And then I went on to analyze his outlined administration, to show him
in detail why I thought it would ruin him, to suggest men who were as
good party men as the Goodrich crowd and would be a credit to him and a
help. And he listened with his old-time expression, looking up at his
dead wife's picture all the while. "You must be _popular_, at any cost,"
I ended. "The industrial crowd will stay with the party, no matter what
we do. As long as Scarborough is in control on the other side, we are
their only hope. And so, we are free to seek popularity--and we must
regain it or we're done for. Money won't save us when we've lost our
grip on the rank and file. The presidency can't be bought again for
_you_. If it must be bought next time, another figure-head will have to
be used."
"I can't tell you how grateful I am," was his conclusion after I had put
my whole mind before him and he and I had discussed it. "But there are
certain pledges to Goodrich--"
"Break them," said I. "To keep them is catastrophe."
I knew the pledges he had in the foreground of his thoughts--a St. Louis
understrapper of the New York financial crowd for Secretary of the
Treasury; for Attorney General a lawyer who knew nothing of politics or
public sentiment or indeed of anything but how to instruct corporations
in law-breaking and law-dodging.
He thought a long time. When he answered it was with a shake of the
head. "Too late, I'm afraid, Harvey. I've asked the men and they've
accepted. That was a most untimely illness of yours. I'll see what can
be done. It's a grave step to offend several of the most conspicuous men
in the party."
"Not so serious as to offend the party itself," I replied. "Money is a
great power in politics, but partizanship is a greater."
"I'll think it over," was the most he had the courage to concede. "I
must look at all sides, you know. But, whatever I decide, I thank you
for your candor."
We separated, the best friends in the world, I trying to recover some
few of the high hopes of him that had filled me on election night. "He's
weak and timid," I said to myself, "but at bottom he must have a longing
to be President in fact as well as in name. Even the meanest slave longs
to be a man."
I should have excepted the self-enslaved slaves of ambition. Of all
bondmen, they alone, I believe, not only do not wish freedom, but also
are ever plotting how they may add to their chains.