THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON
The fire on the Jo Quacca hills was checked at nightfall. Two hundred
beaters and trenchers managed to fight it back and hold it in leash to
feed on the slash of the timber operation. But, like a tiger confined in
its cage, it had reached out through its bars and claimed victims. Three
stands of farm buildings were in ruins.
Harlan Thornton, sooty and weary, left the fire-line as soon as he knew
that the monster had been subdued. He rode about to reassure the owners
that their losses would be made up by himself and his grandfather.
"Keep away from the lawyers," he counselled the losers. "They'll get
half the money out of you if you hire them. We'll settle after
appraisal."
The men that he talked to seemed sullen in spite of his assurances. They
seemed to be repressing taunts or reproaches merely in consideration of
the fact that he was holding the purse-strings. He noted this demeanor,
and feared to ask questions.
Clare Kavanagh rode with him; she had not left his side, even when he
led his crews into perilous places and entreated her to keep back.
And they rode away together down the long stretch of highway from the
hills to the village. Behind them, against the dusk, glowed the red,
last signals of the dying fires: tree-trunks upraised like smouldering
torches, the timbers of the falling buildings tumbling from their props
and sending up showers of sparks. A pale sliver of new moon made the red
of the fires even more baleful, and the two who rode together looked
back and felt the obsession of something they had never experienced
before.
"I am unhappy, Big Boy," sighed the girl. "We have never come back from
our rides like this."
"It has been a wicked day for both of us, child."
"And you cannot call me child after to-day--so my father says." Her
voice was still plaintive, but there was a hint of the old mischief
there. "I'll be sixteen to-morrow--and I didn't know until to-day that
I'd be so sorry that it is so. Ever since I was ten I've been wishing I
could be eighteen without waiting for the years. But I don't know, now,
Harlan. It seemed as though I'd be getting more out of living. I thought
so." Tears were in her voice now. "It seems as though I'd grown up all
of a sudden; and things aren't beautiful and happy and--and as they used
to be--not any more! I've lost something, Harlan. And if growing up is
losing so much, I don't want to grow up."
He listened indulgently and understood this protest of the child. Their
horses walked slowly side by side, and the tired hounds trailed after
them.
"The grown-ups do lose a lot of things out of life, little girl--things
that mean a great deal in childhood. But keep your heart open, and other
things will come."
"Perhaps when I get to be twenty-four years old and as big as you are I
can talk that way, and believe it, too. But just now I'm only a girl
that doesn't believe she's grown up, even if they do tell her so, and
tell her she mustn't be a playmate any longer. And you are not to ride
with me any more, and you are not to come to my house nor may I come to
yours. That's what they say. What are we to do, then?"
She cried her question passionately. He had no answer ready. Platitudes
would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even
on the A B C's of the social code would be wounding her ingenuous faith.
"If this is the way it all turns out, and I can't have your friendship
any longer, what is it that you're going to do or I'm going to do?" she
insisted. "That's losing too much, just because one is grown up."
Tenderness surged in his heart toward this motherless girl--tenderness
in which there was a new quality. But he had no answer for her just
then. He did not understand his own emotions. He was as unsophisticated
as she in the affairs of the heart. His man's life of the woods had kept
him free from women. His friendship with this child, their rides, their
companionship, had been almost on the plane of boy with boy; her
character invited that kind of intimacy.
And so he wondered what to say; for her demand had been explicit, and
she demanded candor in return.
At that moment he welcomed the appearance of even Ivus Niles. That sooty
prophet of ill appeared around a bend in the road ahead. The twilight
shrouded him, but there was no mistaking his stove-pipe hat and his
frock-coat. He was leading his buck sheep, and the hounds rushed forward
clamorously. Niles stopped in the middle of the road, and let them
frolic about him and his emblematic captive.
"The dogs won't hurt you, Niles," Harlan assured him, spurring forward.
"I ain't afraid of dogs, I ain't afraid of wolves, not after what I've
been through with the political Bengal tigers I've been up against
to-day," Niles assured him, sourly. "And your grandfather is the old he
one of the pack. You tell him--"
"You can take your own messages to my grandfather, Niles." He swung his
horse to pass, the girl at his side, but the War Eagle threw up his hand
commandingly.
"I've got a message for you, yourself, then, and you stay here and take
it. He stole our caucus for you to-day, your grandfather did--"
"You don't mean to say I was nominated!"
"That's too polite a word, Mr. Harlan Thornton. I gave you the right one
the first time. He stampeded our caucus by having that fire set on the
Jo Quacca hills. Three sets of farm buildings offered up to the gods of
rotten politics! That's a nice kind of sacrifice, Thornton's grandson!
It goes well with the crowd you're in with. It will smell well in the
nostrils of the people of this State. You ought to be proud of being
made a lawmaker in that way."
It was not reproach--it was insult, sneered in the agitator's bitterest
tone.
"The property of three poor toilers of the soil laid flat in ashes, a
town terrified by danger rushing down through the heavens like the
flight of the war eagle," shouted Niles, declaiming after his accustomed
manner, "and all to put you into a seat in the State House, where you
can keep stealing the few things that your grandfather ain't had time or
strength to steal! You've had your bonfire and your celebration--now go
down and hoist the Star-Spangled Banner over 'The Barracks'--but you'd
better hoist it Union down!"
Harlan dropped off his horse and strode to Niles. He seized him by the
shoulder and shook him roughly, for the man had begun his oratory once
more.
"Enough of that, Niles! Was I chosen in the caucus to-day? I want yes or
no."
"Yes--and after three-quarters of the voters had been stampeded to fight
that fire that was sweeping down on their property! And you--"
Harlan pushed him to one side, leaped upon his horse, and rode away.
The girl jumped her roan to his side.
"It's wicked, Harlan," she gasped, "wicked! I heard him! What are you
going to do?"
That was another of her questions that he found it hard to answer. "I'm
going to find my grandfather, Clare, and I'm going in a great hurry.
Come, I can't talk now, little girl!"
They galloped down the long hill to the bridge, their horses neck and
neck.
"The last ride as playmates!" she cried, as they started. Her voice
broke, pathetically. He did not reply. He was too furiously angry to
trust himself in conversation at that moment, and he rode like a madman,
knowing that she could keep pace with him.
They drew rein at the end of the bridge.
"It's only a bit of a run for you now, little girl. I'll keep on home."
She put her hand out to him and held him for a moment.
"I'm afraid you'll go away to be a big man, after all, Harlan," she
said, dolefully.
"Go in this way? What are you talking about, child?" he demanded,
choking, his fury getting possession of him. "I've been
disgraced--abused. I'll--but I mustn't talk to you now--the wicked words
might slip out."
But she would not loose his hand just then.
"I sent for you to come home because I heard father say that politics is
wicked business. But I didn't know it was as wicked as this. It's no
wonder they can't get the good men like you to go into it. If they could
it would be better, wouldn't it?"
Even in his distress it occurred to him that out of the mouth of this
child was proceeding quaint and unconscious wisdom.
"I wish it wasn't wicked," she went on, wistfully. "I've been thinking
as I rode along that I've been selfish. I'd like to see you a big man
like some of those I've read about. It was selfish of me to say I didn't
want you to get out of the woods and be a big man."
"I couldn't be one," he protested.
"Even a foolish little girl up here in the woods has got faith that you
can--and men who are really big don't forget their old friends. I don't
want you mixed up in any wicked thing, Harlan, but I wouldn't want you
to go away from me thinking I was selfish and jealous. That isn't the
right kind of a friend for any one to have. I've been thinking it over."
He stared at her through the dusk. This sudden flash of worldly wisdom,
this unselfish loyalty in one so young, rather startled him.
"That's real grown-up talk, child," he blurted.
"Is it?" The wan little flicker of a smile that she mustered brought
tears to his eyes. "Maybe it's because I'll be sixteen to-morrow.
Good-night, Big Boy!" This new, womanly seriousness was full of infinite
pathos. She had not released his hand. She bent forward suddenly,
leaning from her saddle, and kissed his cheek. "And good-bye, my
playmate!" she whispered. While his fingers still throbbed with the last
pressure of her hand, the black mouth of the big bridge swallowed her.
He listened to the ringing hoof-beats of her horse till sudden silence
told him she had reached the soft soil on the other shore.
He did not gallop to meet his grandfather. He walked his horse for the
long mile past the scattered houses of the village till he came to "The
Barracks."
When he was still some distance away he saw in the gloom of the porch
the red coal of the Duke's cigar. Even then he did not rush forward to
protest and denounce.
He slipped off his horse, and led him toward the porch. But before he
could speak his grandfather hailed him.
"Run in to your supper, bub. The boys are holding it hot for you. Luke
and I were too hungry to wait."
"I can't eat now--not with what's on _my_ mind."
"Oh, bub--bub! Run along with you! There's plenty of time for talk. I'll
be here when you come out. Get something to eat, now! That's a good
boy!"
Somehow he couldn't begin the attack just then. That tone was too
affectionate, too matter-of-fact. And even then his hand seemed to feel
the pressure of the little fingers that had released him at the bridge,
and the choking feeling was still in his throat.
He gave his horse over to the hostler, and went into the house.
The lamp in the old mess-room thrust its beams only a little way into
the gloom. It shone over the table and left the corners dark. The cookee
brought the food from the kitchen, poured the tea, and then wiped his
hands briskly on his canvas apron.
"I want to shake with you, Mr. Harlan!" He put out his hand, so frankly
confident that he was doing the proper thing that the young man grasped
it. "It was done to 'em good and proper. They tried to pull too hot a
kittle out of the bean-hole that time--sure they did! I congratulate
you! I knowed you'd get into politics some day."
Harlan pulled his hand away, and began to eat.
"Served up hot to 'em--that mess was," chuckled the cookee, on the easy
terms of the familiar in the household. "Nothing like a rousin' fire if
you're going to make the political pot bile in good shape."
He chuckled significantly.
The man pushed the food nearer, for Harlan did not seem to be taking
much interest in his supper.
"I suppose you'll be boardin' at Mr. Presson's hotel when you get down
to the legislature. I had a meal there once. They certainly do put it up
fine. Say, Mr. Harlan, what do you say? Can't you use your pull, and get
me a job as waiter or something down there for the session? Excuse me
for gettin' at it so quick, but I thought I'd hop in ahead of the
rush--they'll all be after you for something, now that you're
nominated."
The young man could not discuss with this cheerful suppliant his
indignant resolve not to be a legislator.
"You'll have to stay home here and look after Grandfather Thornton,
Bob," he hedged.
"Oh, thunder! He's goin' right down to spend the winter with you. Was
tellin' Mr. Presson so when they et just now. Said you'd be needin' a
steerin' committee of just his bigness!"
Harlan got up and kicked his chair from under him. It went over with a
clatter. To his infinite relief he had suddenly recovered some of that
wrathful determination that Ivus Niles's sneers had given him earlier in
the evening.
Thelismer Thornton heard him coming.
"Pretty heavy on his heels, the boy is!" he observed to the State
chairman. "He's been licking his dander around in a circle till he's
got it rearing."
The young man halted, erect before his grandfather, but again the old
man got in the first word.
"I'm going to give you all the time to talk in you want, bub. I was a
little short with you to-day, when I was stirred up, but no more of
that! Say all you want to. And I'm going to give you a little advice
about starting in. Now--now--now! Hold on. I know just how you feel. I
don't blame you for feeling that way. But it had to be done just as I
did it--all of it! Now you ought to start in with me just the way Sol
Lurchin was advised to when he wanted to tackle Cola Jordan, who had
done him on a horse-trade. Sol went to old Squire Bain, and says he to
the Squire, 'I want to stay inside the law in this. I don't want him to
get no legal hold on me. But I want to talk to him. Now, what'll I say
so's to give him what's comin' and still be legal?' 'Well,' says old
Squire, rubbing his hands together, 'you've got to start easy, you know.
You want to start easy, so's to make the climax worth something. Now,
let's see! Well, suppose you walk up to him and say, "You spawn of the
pike-eyed sneak that Herod hired to kill babies, you low-down,
contemptible son of a body-snatcher, you was born a murderer, but lacked
the courage and became a horse-thief!" There, Sol, start in easy like
that and gradually work up to a climax, and you'll have him going--and
all inside the law. Two dollars, please!'"
The Duke leaned back in his chair and nested his head in his big hands.
He gazed up meekly at his chafing grandson.
"Start in easy, bub, like that, and work up to your climax. I know just
how you feel!"
But just at that moment the chairman of the State Committee was laughing
too loudly for any dignified protest to be heard.
"For some reason, grandfather, you seem all at once to have taken me as
a subject for a practical joke," said the young man, stiffly. The
interlude had taken the sharp edge off his indignation, but he was still
bitter. "It may seem a joke to you. To me it seems insult and
persecution. I have attended to business, I've worked hard and made
money for both of us. To-day you've held me up before this section to be
laughed at by some and hated by the rest. I'm glad I've had half an hour
to think it over since I first heard about what happened in that caucus.
I won't say the things to you I intended to say. I'll simply say this:
I'm going to write a letter declining this nomination. I'm going to
publish that letter. And I'm going to say in that letter that I will
not take any office that isn't come at honestly."
"Harlan, sit down." His feet had been in one of the porch chairs. He
pushed it toward his grandson. The young man sat down.
"You don't know much about the practical end of politics, do you?"
"I do not."
"You'll allow that I do?"
"You seem to, if that's what you call this sort of business that has
been going on here to-day."
"Bub, look at the thing from my standpoint for just one moment. I'll
consider it from yours, too--you needn't worry. I want you to be
something in this world besides a lumber-jack. You've got the right
stuff in you. I tried argument with you. You'll have to own up that I
did. It didn't work--now, did it?"
"I told you I didn't want to get into politics. I don't want to get in.
I don't like the company."
"Politics is all right, Harlan, when the right men are in. You are the
kind the people are calling for these days. You're clean, straight,
open-minded, and--"
"Clean and straight! And the people are calling for me!" The young man
broke in wrathfully. "You say that to me after the sort of a caucus you
sprung to-day? If that's what you consider a call from the people, I
don't want to be called that way."
"It was a call, but it had to be _shaded_ by _politics_ a little,"
returned the Duke, serenely.
"If a good man is going into politics, he can go in square."
"Sometimes. But not when the opposition is out to do him with every
dirty trick that's laid down in the back of the political almanac."
"If you wanted to start me, and start me fair and right, why didn't you
let my name go before that caucus to-day, and then hold off your hands?"
"Because if I had you'd have stood about the same chance as a worsted
dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell. Look here, bub, I wish I had
the time; I'd like to tell you how most of the good men I know got their
start in politics. You can be a statesman after you've got your head up
where the sun can shine on it, but you've got to be touching ground to
keep your head up. And if you're touching ground in politics, you'll
find that your shoes are muddy--and you can't help it."
The grandson did not reply. Thornton relighted his cigar. The flare of
the match showed disgust and stubbornness in the features opposite.
"You know Enoch Dudley as well as I do, Harlan. That's the man they put
up. And a man that has let two of his sons be bound out and has turned
back his wife for her own people to support can't hide behind any white
necktie, so far's I'm concerned. Luke and I know where the money came
from that they've been putting in here. We know the men behind, and what
their object is. We know what they are trying to do in the next
legislature. You'll see it all for yourself when the time comes, Harlan.
You'll be up against them. You understand men. I'll only be wasting time
in telling you what you'll see for yourself. Do you want to see a man
like Enoch Dudley representing this district? If you do, go ahead and
write that letter!"
"You'll not do that, Harlan," stated the chairman, with decision. "As it
stands now, whatever they say about this caucus will be simply the
whinings of a licked opposition. We know how to handle that kind of
talk. There isn't a man on our side, from Sylvester to Urban Cobb, who
will open his mouth, even if the thumb-screws are put to him. Harlan,
are you the kind of a fellow that would hold your grandfather up before
the people of this State in any such light? Of course you are not!"
"No, I don't suppose I am," acknowledged the young man. "But I can
decline to run."
The State chairman pulled his chair close, and tapped emphasis on the
candidate's knee.
"No, you can't. It would give 'em the one fact that they need for a
foundation to build their case on. What you've got to do, Harlan, is
accept this nomination, just as it is handed to you. Stand up and fight
for your election like a man. The thing may look rank to you. Politics
usually looks rank to a beginner, who has to get down and fight on the
level of the other fellow. But you'll understand things better after you
get along a little further. If you back out now you're leaving your
grandfather open to attack. Those dogs can only bark, now. If you let
'em past you they'll have a chance to set their teeth in. Harlan, you
think too much of your grandfather to do such a thing as that, don't
you?"
The three of them sat in silence for a while.
"I hate to say anything just now, my boy," said the old man, at last. He
leaned forward, his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Luke has put it to
you a little stronger than I should have done. I don't want to beg you
or coax you. If you think it's too much of a sacrifice to stand by
me--if you want to quit, and can't look at it in any other way, go
ahead. I can fight it out alone. I've had a good many lone fights. I'm
good for one more. But before you say what you're going to say, I've got
a last word to drop in. You know how I've dealt with men in business
matters, my boy."
"But why can't you do the same in politics?" demanded his grandson,
bitterly.
"It's just on that point that I want to put you right. I know pretty
well why you haven't hankered to get into politics, Harlan. You've heard
some of the sneers, slurs, and the gossip. You didn't know much about
it, but you sort of felt ashamed of me on account of politics. Hold on!
I know. It has been a kind of shame and pity mixed, like one feels for a
drunkard in the family. This caucus seemed to you like a spree--and you
got mixed into it, and you're angry with me. Listen: there are people in
this world who won't allow that a man is honest in politics unless he
goes about hunting for all the measures that might help him personally
and kills 'em. And the same yellow-skins that howl because he doesn't do
that would turn around and cuss him for seventeen kinds of a fool if he
did, and ruined himself by doing it. I haven't stolen, boy. I've given
my time and my energies to developing this State. I've seen it prosper
and grow big. And I've shared in the prosperity by seeing that my own
interests got their rights along with the rest. I'm where I can look
back. And I can't see where the reputation of being a saint who cut off
his own fingers for a sacrifice would help me get endorsers at the bank
or find friends I could borrow money from. Harlan, boy, I'm an old man.
I can't live much longer. A little reputation of some kind or another
will live after me. I want you to know the right of it. And the only way
for you to find out is to be what I have been. Hearing about it won't
inform you. I want you to meet the men and play the game. I want you to
realize that when I say I've done the best I could, I'm telling you the
truth. Harlan, stand up here with me. Give me your hand. Say that you'll
stand by the old man in this one thing--the biggest he ever has asked of
you. It's a matter between the Thorntons, boy!"
There had been an appeal in his voice that was near wistfulness. And
while he talked the wisdom that had come from the mouth of a child that
evening threaded its own quaint appeal into the argument of the
grandfather. Resentment and obstinacy, if they be tempered with youth,
cannot fight long against affection and the ties of blood.
Harlan took his grandfather's hand.
"That's my boy!" cried the Duke, heartily, and he slipped his arm about
his grandson's shoulders and patted him.
"It straightens things out a good deal," observed Presson, with the
practicality of the politician. "Harlan, you're going to find a winter
at the State House worth while. With your grandfather to set you going
right and post you up, you ought to make good."
"I'd like to have a little light on one point," remarked the young man,
curtly. He felt again the irritating prick of resentment. "What am I to
be down to that legislature--myself, or Thelismer Thornton's grandson?"
"You can't afford to throw good advice over your shoulder," protested
the chairman--"not when it comes from a man that's had fifty years of
experience."
"Hold on, Luke, don't set the boy off on the wrong track. I know how he
feels. Harlan, you're going down there just as I said you're going--with
an open mind, clean hands, good, straight American spirit to do right
just so far as a man in politics can do right! I want you to see for
yourself. If you want my help in anything you shall have it. But it'll
be Gramp advising his boy--not a boss, hectoring. Believe that!"
"You needn't be afraid of the city fellows," advised Presson.
Harlan stood up before them, earnest, intense, determined.
"A fellow placed as I have been has this much advantage over city chaps,
and I'm going to take courage from it," he said: "I've had a chance to
read. There are long evenings in the woods, and I haven't been able or
obliged to kill time at clubs and parties. I have read, Mr. Presson. I
don't know how much good it has done me. That remains to be found out.
Perhaps a fellow who reads and hasn't real experience gets a wrong
viewpoint. But this much I do believe: a man can be honest, himself, in
politics, and can find enough honest men to stand with him. I'm going to
try, at any rate. For if there's any dependence to be put in what I read
there's something serious the matter in public affairs."
"Going to start a reform party, young man?" chuckled the State chairman.
He had seen and tested youthful ideals before in his political
experience.
"I didn't mean it that way. I wasn't talking about myself. I'll be only
a little spoke in the wheel, sir. But I mean to say that when I get to
the State House I'm going to hunt up the men who believe in a square
deal, and I'm going to train with 'em." He spoke a bit defiantly. It was
youth declaring itself. It was a spark from the fire that Ivus Niles had
kindled by his sneers.
"Boy," said the old man, cheerfully, "you're prancing just a bit now.
But you needn't be afraid of me, because I said I'd help you. The first
thing I'll do will be to take you around and introduce you to the men
down in the legislature who are proposing to reform the State. So you
see I mean right!"
The State chairman seemed much amused. He chuckled.
The Duke walked to the end of the porch and gazed up at the Jo Quacca
hills, where the dim, red glow still shone against the sky.
"So it took down three stands of buildings, did it, Harlan?" he called.
"Did you tell the boys we'd settle promptly, and for them to keep away
from the lawyers?"
"I arranged it the best I could and got their promise. But they seem to
know the fire was set on purpose, and are pretty gruff about it."
"Of course the fire was set on purpose--and I have a right to clear my
own land when I want to. But I know how to settle, bub, so as to turn
their vinegar to cream. For when I square a political debt, whether it's
pay or collect, there's no scaling down! Full value--and then a little
over!"
He came back and as he passed he tweaked Harlan's ear.
"It's been a hard day, boy! Come on, let's all three go to bed."