THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE
A tall old man was standing by the window in the library, and as he
turned his face away from the light of the sunset, Stephen had a vague
impression that he had seen him before--not in actual life but in some
half-forgotten picture or statue. The Governor's visitor was evidently a
carpenter, with a tall erect figure and a face which had in it a dignity
that belonged less to an individual than to an era. Beneath his abundant
white hair, his large brown eyes still shone with the ardour of a
convert or a disciple, and his blanched, strongly marked features had
the aristocratic distinction and serenity that are found in the faces of
the old who have lived in communion either with profound ideas or with
the simple elemental forces of sky and sea. In spite of his gnarled
hands and the sawdust that had lodged in the frayed creases of his
clothes, he was in his way, Stephen realized, as great a gentleman and
as typical a Virginian as Judge Horatio Lancaster Page. Both men were
the descendants of a privileged order; both were inheritors of a formal
and authentic tradition.
"This is Mr. Darrow," said Vetch in a voice which contained a note of
affectionate deference. "I think he knew your father, Culpeper. Didn't
you tell me, Darrow, that you had known this young man's father?"
"No, sir, I only said I'd worked for him," replied Darrow, with an air
of genial irony which brought the Judge to Stephen's mind again. "That's
a big difference, I reckon. I did some repairs a few years ago on a row
of houses that belonged to Mr. Culpeper; but the business was all
arranged by the agent."
"That was part of the estate, I suppose," explained Stephen. "My father
leaves all that to his agent."
"Yes, I thought as much," replied Darrow simply; and after shaking hands
with his rough, strong clasp, he sat down in a chair by the window.
"They've made a lot of changes inside this house," he remarked. "Before
they added on that part at the back the dining-room used to be in the
basement. I remember doing some work down there when I was a young man
and there was going to be a wedding."
"Well, that long room is very little use to me," returned Vetch. "As far
as I am concerned they might have left the house as it was built." Then
turning abruptly to Stephen, he said sharply: "You heard Gershom's
parting shot at me, didn't you?" There was a gleam of quizzical humour
in his eyes, and Stephen found himself asking, as so many others had
asked before him, "Is the man serious, or is he making a joke? Does he
wish me to receive this as a confidence or with pretended hilarity?"
"Something about telling the crowd?" he answered. "Yes, I heard it."
"We were having a tussle," continued Vetch lightly. "The fat's in the
fire at last."
Stephen laughed drily. "Then I hope you will keep it there."
"You mean you would like an explosion?"
"I mean that anything that could clear up the situation would be
welcome."
At this Vetch turned to Darrow and observed whimsically: "He doesn't
seem to fancy our friend Gershom."
Darrow looked round with a smile from the window. "Well, there are times
when I don't myself," he confessed in his deliberate way. "Of all
bullies, your political bully is the worst. But he is not bad, he is
just foolish. His heart is set on this general strike, and he can't set
his heart on anything without losing his head." As the old man turned
his face back to the sunset, the strong bold lines of his profile
reminded Stephen of the impassive features of an Egyptian carving. Was
this the vague resemblance that had baffled him ever since he had
entered the room?
"To tell the truth," said Stephen frankly, "the fellow strikes me as
particularly obnoxious; but I may be prejudiced."
"I think you are," responded Vetch. "I owe Gershom a great deal. He was
useful to me once, and I recognize my debt; but the fact remains, that I
don't owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!" As he met
Stephen's glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish
candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech: "I like
your face, and I'm going to talk frankly to you."
"You may," replied the young man impulsively. It was impossible to
resist the human quality, the confiding friendliness, of the Governor's
manner. The chances were, he said to himself, that the whole thing was
mere burlesque, one of the successful sleight-of-hand tricks of the
charlatan. In theory he was still sceptical of Gideon Vetch, yet he had
already surrendered every faculty except that impish heretical spectator
that dwelt apart in his brain.
"You want something of course, every last one of you, even Darrow,"
resumed Vetch, with his charming smile. "I can safely assume that if you
didn't want something, you wouldn't be here. Good Lord, if a man so much
as bows to me in the street without asking a favour, I begin to think
that he is either a half-wit or a ne'er-do-well."
"At least I want nothing for myself," laughed Stephen, a trifle sharply.
"Nor does Darrow, God bless him!--nor, for the matter of that, does
Judge Page. I've got nothing to give you that you would take, and so you
are wishing Berkeley on me for the penitentiary board." The gleam of
humour was still in his eyes and the drollery in his expressive voice.
"We are seeking this for the penitentiary, not for Mr. Berkeley. He is
the man you need."
"For a hobby, yes. That's all right, of course, but, my dear young sir,
you can't run the business of a state as a hobby any more than you can
administer it as a philanthropy."
"Perhaps. But can you administer it successfully without philanthropy?"
At this Darrow turned with a smile. "Can't you see that he is fooling
with you?" he said. "Prison reform is one of his fads--that and the
rights of the indigent aged and orphans and animals and any other mortal
thing that has to live on what he calls the stones of charity. He knows
why you came, and he likes you the better because of it."
"Gershom and I have had a word or two about that board," resumed Vetch;
and as he stopped to strike a match, Stephen noticed that the cigar he
held was of a cheap and strong brand. "Between the Legislature on one
side and that bunch of indefatigable lobbyists on the other, I shan't be
permitted presently to appoint the darkey who waits on my table." The
cigar was lighted now, and to Stephen's sensitive nostrils the air was
rapidly becoming too heavy. Oddly enough, he reflected, nothing had
"placed" Vetch so forcibly as the brand of that cigar.
"That," observed the young man briefly, "is the penalty of political
office."
"So long as I was merely a dark horse," said Vetch, "I was afraid to
pull on the curb; but now that I've won the race, they'll find that I'm
my own master. Won't you smoke?"
Stephen shook his head. "Not now. There is always the next race to be
considered, I suppose."
The Governor's rugged, rather heavy features hardened suddenly until
they looked as if they were formed of some more durable substance than
flesh. Under the thick sandy hair his eyes lost their blueness and
appeared as gray as Stephen had once thought them. "Have you ever
heard," he asked with biting sarcasm, "that I was easy to manage and
that that was why certain people put me in office?"
"Yes, I've heard that." As the young man replied, Darrow turned from the
window and looked at him attentively.
"And may I ask what else you have heard?" inquired Vetch.
Stephen laughed and coloured. "I've heard that it was becoming difficult
to do anything with you."
"Because I have the people behind me?"
"Well, because you think you have the people behind you."
Vetch leaned forward with a confiding movement, and flicked the ashes
of his objectionable cigar on the immaculate sleeve of Stephen's coat.
Yet, even in the careless gesture, a breath of freshness and health, of
mental and physical cleanliness, seemed to emanate like an invigorating
breeze from his robust spirit. "Of course I admit," he said
thoughtfully, "that we are obliged to have some kind of party
organization to begin with. There must be method and policy and all
sorts of team-pulling and log-rolling until you get started. That kind
of thing is useful just as far as it helps and not a step farther. I won
my fight as an Independent--and, by George, I'll remain an Independent!
I've got the upper hand now. I am strong enough to stand alone. If any
party on earth thinks it can manage me--well, I'll show it that I can be
my own party!"
Was it true, what they said of him,--that success had already gone to
his head, that the best way to get rid of him was to give him a
political rope with which he might hang himself? Or was there some solid
foundation of fact in his blustering assumption of power? Was he
actually a force that would have to be reckoned with in the future? From
a mass of confused impressions Stephen could gather nothing clearly
except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man. On the one
side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the
other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was
as real and as intangible as light or colour.
"Do you think that is possible?" he asked sceptically. "In a democracy
like ours is any man so strong that he can stand alone?"
"Well, of course he is not alone as long as he has the support of the
majority."
"You may have this support--I neither affirm nor deny it--but upon what
does it rest? What do you offer the people that is better than the
principles or the promises of the old parties? I heard you speak once,
but you did not answer this question--to my mind the only question that
is vital. You talked a great deal about humanizing industry--a vague
phrase which might mean anything or nothing, since humanity covers all
the vices as well as all the virtues of the race. Benham could use that
phrase as oratorically as you do, for it rolls easily off the tongue and
commits one to nothing."
Vetch's face lost suddenly its rigid gravity, as if he had suffered a
rush of energy to the brain. His eyes became blue again, and as keen as
the blade of a knife.
"I believe, and the people who are with me believe, that I can make
something out of the muddle if I am given a chance," he replied. "Oh, I
know that the reactionaries are in the saddle now--that they have been
ever since they had the war as an excuse to mount! But I know also that
you can no more drive out by law the spirit of liberalism from the
American mind than you can drive out nature with a pitchfork. For a
little while you may think you have got the better of it; but it will
crop out in spite of you. Now, I am a part of returning nature, of the
inevitable rebound toward the spirit of liberalism. In the thought of
the people who voted for me, I stand for the indestructible common sense
of the American mind. I am one of the first signs of the new times."
"And you believe that you prove this," asked Stephen frankly, "by
turning over your power of appointment to a group of self-interested
politicians? You show your ability to govern by evading the first
requirement of good government--that there should be honest and able men
in control of public offices?"
A flicker came and went in the blue eyes. "I told you the other day,"
answered Vetch in a low voice, "that I used the tools at my command, and
I tell you now that I am sometimes forced to use rotten ones. People say
that I am an opportunist; but who has ever discovered any other policy
that deals with life so completely? They say also that I am without
public conscience--another name for opinions that have crystallized into
prejudices. The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me
vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I
employ."
It was the familiar chicanery of the popular leader, the justification
of expediency, that Stephen had always found most repugnant as a
political theory; and while he drew back, repelled and disgusted, he
asked himself if the national conscience, the moral integrity of the
race, was in the keeping of demagogues?
"I am curious to know," he remarked after a moment, "how you are able to
justify the sacrifice of what I regard as common honesty in public
affairs?"
To his surprise, instead of answering directly, Vetch put a personal
question. "Then you think I am not honest? Darrow wouldn't agree with
you."
At this Darrow turned from the window. "Perhaps he doesn't mean what we
do," he said quietly. "I've seen honest men that I knew ought to have
been in prison."
"I am speaking of course of the doctrines you advocate," answered
Stephen. "That seems to me to be, in the jargon of the reformer,
somewhat unethical. Can you, I question, achieve anything important
enough to compensate for what you sacrifice?"
Darrow turned again with his dry laugh. "You speak as if public honesty,
by which I reckon you mean clean elections and unsold offices, were
something we had actually possessed," he said.
"Oh, I know the old proceedings were bad enough," replied Stephen, "but
I am trying to find out how the Governor expects to make them better.
You understand that I am trying merely to see your point of view--to get
at the roots of your theory of government. What you tell me will never
find its way to the public."
"I realize that," said Vetch gravely, and he added with a quick glance
at Darrow: "Do you think if I were not honest that I'd talk to you so
frankly?"
Stephen smiled. "It might be. The political coat has many colours. I
don't mean to be rude, you know, but one good turn in frankness deserves
another."
"I like you the better for that." A cluster of fine lines appeared at
the corners of the Governor's laughing eyes. "But, once for all, you
must get rid of your false impressions of me, and see me as a fact, not
as a kind of social scarecrow. First of all, you think I am an
extremist--well, I am not. I am merely a man of facts. I see the world
as it is and you see it as you wish it to be--that is the difference
between us. I have lived with realities; I know actual conditions--and
you know only what you have been told or imagined. Oh, I admit that you
saw an edge of reality in the trenches; but, after all, life in the
trenches was as abnormal as life in the movies. Each represents an
extreme. What you know of average human life, of hunger and pain and
labour, could be learned in an academy for young ladies. Yet you imagine
that it is experience! You have lived so long in your lily-pond, with
the rushes hemming you in, that when you hear all the frogs croaking on
the same note, you think complacently, 'that is the voice of the
people'. Why, I tell you, man, you are so ignorant of the conditions in
this very town, that Darrow could take you out and show you things that
would make you feel like Robinson Crusoe!"
Stephen turned eagerly to the old man at the window. "I am ready for
you, Mr. Darrow."
Darrow nodded with a reluctant assent. "I've got my Ford around the
corner," he answered. "If you would like to go up town with me I can
show you a thing or two that might interest you."
"You mean the conditions in this city?"
"The conditions in all cities. They differ only in the name of the
town."
"He will show you a little--just a little--of what getting back to peace
means," said Vetch earnestly. "By next winter it will be worse, of
course, but it has already begun. The rate of wages is falling--for
wages always fall first--and the cost of living is still as high as in
war times. Rents are going up every day, Darrow can tell you more about
the speculation in rents than I can, and the housing of the
working-classes, both white and coloured, is growing worse. We shall
soon be facing the most serious problem of the system under which we
live, the problem of the unemployed. Already it is beginning. Darrow was
telling me just before you came in of a man in one of the houses where
he has been working--a returned soldier too--who has walked the streets
for weeks in search of work. He has been unable to pay his rent, so of
course he is obliged to move somewhere, if he can find a place to move
into. Oh, I realize perfectly what you are going to say! The brief
prosperity of the war still envelops the labouring man in your mind; and
you are preparing to remind me of the lace curtains and victrolas of
yesterday. Yes, I admit that lace curtains and victrolas are not
necessities. It was a case where nature cropped out in the wrong spot.
Even the working-man may have suppressed desires, you see, and lace
curtains and victrolas may stand not only for the improvidence of the
poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the
economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the
civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!"
As the man's words poured out in his rich, deep voice, Stephen stared at
him in a silence which reminded him humorously of the pause in church
before the sermon began. Was this the reason of Vetch's influence and
authority--this flow of ideas, as from a horn of plenty, that left the
listener both charmed and bewildered?
"I admit it all," rejoined the young man, "except that you have
discovered the remedy."
The Governor laughed and settled back in his big leather-covered chair.
"You think that I blow my own horn too loudly," he continued, "but,
after all, who knows how to blow it half so well as I do? For the same
reason some over-sensitive nerve of yours may wince at my behaviour at
times, my lack of dignity or reserve; but have I ever lost a vote--I put
it to you plainly--or the shadow of a vote by an occasional resort to
spectacular advertising? It pays to advertise in politics, we all know
that!--but it was honest advertising since I never failed to deliver the
goods. I started out to prove my strength and to flay my opponents, and
you tell me, you group of black-coated conservatives, that I make myself
ridiculous because I strike an attitude. The people laughed--but, by
George, they laughed with me! Oh, I know you think that I am wandering
from my point; but I haven't forgotten your question, and I am going to
answer it, if you will give me time. You ask me what I believe--"
"If you could tell me in few words and plainly."
"Well, first of all, I make no pretence. I do not promise to work
miracles. I do not, like your conventional candidates, talk in
platitudes. I do not undertake to achieve a regeneration of politics out
of unregenerate human nature. As long as we have cherries we shall have
blackbirds; as long as we have politics we shall have politicians. I
acknowledge the good and the bad, and all that I promise is to get as
good results as I can out of the mixture. Definitely I stand for a
progressive reorganization of society--for a fairer social order and a
practical system of cooperative industry, the only logical method of
increasing production without reducing the labourer to the old
disorganized slavery. I believe in the trite formula we workers
preach--in the eight-hour day, the old age pension, which is only the
inevitable step from the mother's pension, the gradual nationalization
of mines and railroads. I believe in these things which are the
commonplace of to-morrow; but it is not because of my beliefs that the
people follow me. It is something bigger than all this that catches the
crowd. What the people see in me is not the man who believes, but the
man who acts. I stand to them not for words--though you and Benham think
I've made my way by a gift of tongue--but for deeds--for things
performed as well as planned. Other men can tell them what they want. My
hold over them is that they feel I can get them what they want--a very
big difference! Oh, I use words, I know, like the rest. I have read a
few books, and I can talk as well as any political parrot of the lot
when I get started. But the words I use are living words, if you notice
them. I talk always about the things that I can do, never about the
things that I think. Well, that is my secret--my pose, if you prefer--to
present my argument to the crowd as an act, not as an idea. There are
plenty of imposing statues standing around. What they see in me is a
human being like themselves, one who wants what they want, and who will
fight to the last ditch to get it for them."
It was plausible; it sounded convincing and logical; and yet, even while
Stephen responded to the Governor's personal touch, some obstinate fibre
of race or inflexible bent of judgment, refused to surrender. Vetch was
probably sincere--it was fairer to give him the benefit of the
doubt--but on the surface at least he was parading a spectacular pose.
The rôle of the Friend of the People has seldom been absent from the
drama of history.
With a glance at the window, where twilight was falling, Stephen rose,
and held out his hand. "I shall remember your frankness," he said, "the
next time I hear you speak. That, I hope, will be soon."
"And you will wait until then to be converted?"
"I shall wait until then to be wholly convinced."
"Well, Darrow may have better results. You go with Darrow?"
"If he will take me?" The deference with which the old man had inspired
the Governor showed in Stephen's manner. "I shall be grateful for a lift
on the way home."
Darrow had risen also; and after shaking hands with Vetch, he looked
back at the younger man from the doorway. "I'll have my Ford round here
in five minutes. Meet me at the nearest gate."
He went out hurriedly; and as Stephen followed him, after the delay of a
few minutes, he found himself face to face with Patty, who was coming
from "the blue room" on the opposite side of the hall.
"I hope you got what you came for," she said gaily.
"I came for nothing," he retorted lightly, "and I'm sure I got it."
"Well, that won't matter so much since it wasn't for yourself," she
mocked. "Nobody ever wants anything for himself in politics. Father
could tell you that."
"He told me a good many things--but not that."
"Did he tell you," she inquired daringly, "why he is falling out with
Julius Gershom?"
"Is he falling out with him?"
"Didn't you see it--and hear it--when you came in?"
"I suspected as much; but after all it was none of my business."
"And you confine your curiosity to your own business?"
"Not entirely," he answered, and wondered if she were experimenting
with the letter "C". "For instance I am curious about you."
Her eyes challenged him with their old defiance. "And I am certainly not
your business."
"I admit that you are not--but that does not decrease my curiosity."
For a moment her smile grew wistful. "And what, I wonder," she asked,
with the faintest quiver of her cherry-coloured lips, "would you like to
know?"
"Oh, everything!" he replied unhesitatingly. There was no longer in his
mind the slightest wish to avoid the approaching flirtation. On the
contrary, he felt he should welcome it, if she would only continue to
look like this. She was not beautiful--yet he realized that she did not
need beauty when she could play so easily with a look or a smile on the
heartstrings. A rush of tenderness overwhelmed his reserve at the very
instant when her lashes trembled and drooped, and she murmured in a
whisper that enchanted him: "Oh, but everything is too little." Though
it was only the old lure of youth and sex, he felt that it was as
divinely fresh and wonderful as first love.
"Is it too little?" he asked, and his voice sounded so far off that it
was faint in his ears.
She raised her lashes and gave him a glance charged with meaning. "That
depends," she answered, and suddenly, without warning, she passed to the
lightest and gayest of tones. "Everything depends on something else,
doesn't it? Now Father is coming out, and I must run upstairs and
dress."
It was a dismissal, he knew, and yet he hesitated. "May I come again
soon?" he asked, and held out his hand.
To his surprise Patty greeted his question with a laugh. "Do you really
like politics so much?" she retorted; and fled lightly toward the
staircase beyond the library.