A TRUCE
Gen. Varden Waymouth was elected Governor. In spite of the sullen torpor
of his party managers and the snarls of the Reverend Prouty and his
radical ilk, he surmounted by mere momentum of his party a certain bland
and trustful and destructive indifference of the general public, and won
at the polls. The narrow margin by which he won would have scared a
really loyal and conscientious State Committee. But the before-and-after
gloom of Chairman Presson and his intimates was not caused by any
worriment over the size of the plurality. They were languid spectators.
They felt like dispossessed tenants. They took little interest in the
temple of the party faith.
"When they buried old Zenas Bellew up our way (Zenas weighed three
hundred and fifty, and lived in a cottage about the size of a wood-box)
the undertaker found he couldn't get the coffin into the house or get
Zenas out--not through doors or windows. A half-witted fellow we call
'Simpson's Rooster' spoke up, and said they'd better bury the old man in
the house and move the family out into the coffin." That was Thelismer
Thornton's comment on the political situation in the Republican party on
the morning after the election. The chairman heard it with the gloom of
a mourner. He could see nothing bright in the jest or the prospects.
There was a frigid truce during the four months that elapsed between
the election and the assembling of the legislature.
General Waymouth retired to the brick house in Burnside, and gave ear to
those who promptly made his home the Mecca of the State. There were
office-holders who wanted to hold to their jobs, office-seekers who
suspected that there would be a break in the plans of party patronage;
there were officious gentlemen suggesting new legislation for the next
administration to consider; there were crafty gentlemen trying to
discover what the administration would recommend. The day was full of
cares, duties, annoyances, and the nagging pleadings of persistent
petitioners.
Harlan Thornton, now representative-elect from the Fort Canibas
district, became still more indispensable in General Waymouth's daily
life. Duties at a desk had worn upon him. This everlasting mingling with
men was more to his taste. He had natural adaptability. He was a good
judge of human nature. He had serene good nature. Physique and manner
made him master of many situations at the old brick house that otherwise
would have sadly tried the General's strength and temper. Therefore, his
chief placed greater dependence upon his lieutenant with every day that
passed, solicited his opinions as his knowledge of men increased and his
judgment became worth more, relied upon his instinctive estimates of
character, and shifted many burdens to the broad shoulders that seemed
so well fitted to carry them.
Harlan Thornton was slow to realize what a tremendous power, as
chamberlain, he really exercised in the State.
He awoke to that fact more slowly than did the men who came to solicit.
He did not try to use his power for his own ends. He promptly noted the
deference that men paid him; as promptly he penetrated certain plans
men made to corrupt him, if they could. These attempts were made slyly,
and did not proceed very far. Something in his demeanor prevented the
plotters from openly broaching their desires and their willingness to
make their interests worth his while. They knew that one of the
Thorntons could not be won by money, but they were rather surprised to
find out that he could not be beguiled by other inducements. He was so
big and manly, and he had rapidly become so self-poised, that they did
not realize that in experience he was only a boy, with the ingenuous
faith and simple aims and candor of boyhood. He perceived what he might
win. But the pride of serving General Waymouth loyally was worth more to
him than anything they could offer.
His duties took him often to the State capital. The chairman of the
State Committee was coolly courteous, often gloomily deferential,
sometimes frankly cordial--uneasily trying to find the proper level to
stand on in his intercourse with one who was the grandson of Thelismer
Thornton, and also the chosen confidant of the man who had wrested from
him control of State affairs.
In the case of Madeleine Presson, there was none of this embarrassment.
He saw her often. She met him half-way with a frank interest in his work
and a sympathy which, in those days of truce, did not question his
ideals.
He became a welcome intimate of the Presson household. When he was there
the master himself put aside all the brusqueness he displayed in their
down-town discourse on politics. The girl welcomed him. There were many
hours when they were alone together, in the home or on long drives into
the country. She did not refer to their talk on that evening when she
read to him his lesson on practical politics. He avoided that subject.
He did not want to risk any further disagreement between them on the
matter of ideals--or, for that matter, on any other subject. Association
with her had become too delightful to be put to the test of discussions
of political methods. He was still drawing upon her fund of worldly
wisdom. There was a little touch of the cynic in her. He became secretly
ashamed of some of his ingenuous beliefs, after she had deftly shown him
the other side of things. She did show him the other side, quite in a
matter-of-fact way. It was not that she was trying to break down his
faith. There was nothing sly nor crafty in her methods of improving his
views. But by informing him, she made him wiser, and, at the same time,
more distrustful of motives, more searching in his investigations of
methods. He began to doubt some of his earlier ideas of what a public
man should be. He felt that his views were broadening. That was a
comfortable way of excusing certain surrenderings to her ideas.
The more he drew from her the more he was drawn to her.
It was not the love that comes with a rush of the emotions and sweeps a
man away.
Through the intellect, through his hunger for information and wider
views, she was making herself indispensable to his welfare and his
ambitions.
And yet Madeleine Presson was not trying to make this young man of the
north country fall in love with her. Her interest in him was first of
all based upon his winning earnestness and the elements of success that
she divined in him, were they properly cultivated. She had studied men
at the capital from childhood. The development of men in public life and
service had been the one theme that she had heard most discussed. Her
impulse of assistance had been directed toward this grandson of
Thelismer Thornton.
But as the days went by, and opportunity gave them their hours together,
they were drawn more closely, each insisting in secret meditation that
it was not love. He found himself gradually rebuilding his creed of
living on the foundation she had laid in that first long talk of
theirs. He had arrived at such a point of belief in her that he was glad
that she had opened his eyes. He was finding men--meeting them by the
hundred--even as she had pictured them to him: selfish, scheming,
crafty, and not understanding in the least his occasional attempts to
meet them on the upper level of perfect candor. For her part, she found
more in this young man than she had expected to find.
Harlan considered Herbert Linton the single jarring note in this new
symphony of mutual interests.
Linton came to the capital with more or less regularity, and called on
the Pressons with fully as much appearance of being entirely at home as
his newer rival. When they were together the girl treated both with
impartial interest and attention. She listened to each in turn, and if
they chose to sit and scowl at each other she did the talking for all
three. Deftly she arranged that they should leave together, and they
always promptly separated as soon as they reached the sidewalk, as
though they were afraid to trust themselves in each other's company.
So the new year came in, and the hordes of lawmakers, lobbyists,
lookers-on, and laymen descended on the State capital.
The first few days of a legislative session, though packed full of
politics and business, rush, and routine, are festival days, after all.
There are the old friends to greet and the new friends to meet. There
are ten spectators to every legislator, and the spectators are on hand
for a good time. Outside of the factional clinches of the House and
Senate caucuses the early days have little serious business.
Presson's great hotel and the lesser lights of the capital's houses of
entertainment were packed to their roofs. The State House on the hill
sent sparkling radiance at night from all its hundreds of windows out
across the snow which loaded the broad lawns. Senator Pownal,
renominated in joint caucus, spoke to crowded floor and galleries on the
second evening. Harlan Thornton, in his seat in the House, listened and
wondered if that convention had not been a dream.
This later convocation seemed so entirely harmonious.
The Republicans ruled House and Senate by safe majorities. Presson,
sauntering about hotel or State House lobby, seemed bland and contented
again. The wounds in the party seemed to have been healed.
On inauguration day Governor Waymouth added to the general spirit of
harmony.
He came unobtrusively to the State House from the modest mansion he had
leased in the capital city for the legislative winter and took his oath
of office before an admiring throng. He had made a confidant of no one
regarding his inaugural speech. There were vague rumors that the
Governor would follow his hand, as he had shown it in his letter of
acceptance, and deliver an inaugural address which would blister the
ears of the politically unregenerate.
In that ancient State House, its accommodations for spectators limited,
there were no hard-and-fast rules regulating admission to the floor.
Harlan Thornton had a chair placed in the aisle beside his seat, and
entertained Madeleine Presson there. He had anticipated Linton, who came
with a similar invitation. Harlan was still enough of a boy to feel
delight in the discomfiture of his rival, and to be gratified by the
open admiration his fellow-members showed for the girl at his side. He
relished the sour looks which Linton sent in that direction.
Under cover of the general buzz and bustle that accompanied the
convening of the joint session of House and Senate for the purpose of
the inauguration the girl rallied him a bit.
"The beginning of the righteous reign seems to be sane and sweet, after
all," she said. "Even my father is complacent and purring this morning.
Which has he eaten, do you know--the raven of contention or the dove of
peace?"
"I think every one understands that Governor Waymouth has straightened
matters out for all of us," he replied.
"How? By simply talking about it? As one who should say, 'Let it be
done,' and it was done, and just what was done nobody, nobody knew--but
it was done--something was--and all the folks felt better and went on in
the same old way! Is that it?"
He smiled at her while she teased him; the nature of the armistice that
prevailed, according to outward appearances, was not understood by him.
For several weeks his intimacy with General Waymouth had not been as
close as at the first. Not that there was distrust or even coolness
between them. The veteran still depended on the young man for the
services a trusted lieutenant could render. His plans, however, his
future programme of reorganization--if he had any definite plans--the
General kept to himself. It was not mere reticence. But there was an
atmosphere about the old statesman as though he had withdrawn himself to
a higher altitude to think his thoughts and formulate his plans alone.
If he had heard of the intimacy of Harlan Thornton with the family of
Luke Presson he made no comment on that fact.
"Now what is he going to say in his address?" she asked. "Every one will
know in a few moments. Tell me ahead--tell me the big utterance that
will make the people sit up. I want to be ready to watch their faces!"
"Why, I haven't a single idea what he will say," he blurted.
"Oh, safe repository, I salute you!"
"But I haven't! The Governor hasn't opened his mouth to me!"
"Have a care! One very easily steps from polite diplomacy into very
impolite falsehood. You must always be truthful with me, Harlan."
His eyes grew brighter and his tanned cheeks warm. It was the first time
she had addressed him without hateful formality.
"I propose to tell you the truth, always," he assured her. "But I mean
what I say--the Governor has kept his address to himself."
"I should resent that. It would have been a delicate compliment, and he
owed that much to you. I'm afraid he has been a politician long enough
to be like all the rest--to walk up to power on men as one uses a flight
of stairs, and then to put the stairs behind his back; for one doesn't
walk up-stairs backward."
He flushed more deeply.
"I'm not that kind of a fellow--jealous, or petty, or expecting a great
deal for what little service I can render."
"Put a value on yourself, though," she advised him. "It really isn't
human nature, you know, to pick up the things that are thrown away by
the owners--to pick them up and keep them and value them, I mean. That
applies to purses and all other possessions, including hearts and
loyalty."
He started to say something to her--even though the throng pressed about
them he would have said it; but the voice of the crier at the door
announced what all were waiting for.
"His Excellency the Governor, the Honorable Council, and his Excellency
the Governor-elect and party!"
They filed along in dignified procession down the centre aisle, the
uniforms of the officers of the staff giving a touch of color and
brightness to the formal frock-coats.
The Secretary of State announced the official figures of the vote
electing Varden Waymouth as Governor, and after his sonorous final
phrase, "God save the State of ------," Governor Waymouth repeated the
oath of office administered by a gaunt, sallow lawyer who was the
president of the Senate.
The clerk of the House set a reading-desk on the Speaker's table and
arranged the Governor's manuscript. As the old man read he made a
striking picture. He stood very erect. His snowy hair, the empty sleeve
across his breast, the lines the years had etched on cheeks and brow
gave those who looked on him a little thrill of sympathetic regret that
one so old should be called from the repose of his later years to take
up such public burdens as he had assumed. But his voice was resonant,
his eye was clear. Nature seemed to have given him new strength to meet
what he was now facing. And yet, thought some of those who listened, it
might be that he did not propose to make a martyr of himself, after all.
His address did not threaten or complain. The radicals who sat there
with set teeth and bent brows, hoping to hear denunciation after their
own heart, were disappointed. The politicians who had feared now took
new grip on their hope--it probably was not to be as bad as they had
anticipated.
Harlan Thornton listened to the calm, moderate statement of the State's
general financial and political situation with growing sense of mingled
disappointment and relief. His fighting spirit and his knowledge of
conditions, as they had been revealed to him, made him hope that at last
an honest man proposed to clean the temple--entering upon his task with
bared arms and a clarion call. This mild old man, confining himself to
the details of the State's progress and needs, was not exactly the
leader he had expected him to be. And yet Harlan was relieved. He looked
at the girl beside him, and that relief smoothed away his
disappointment. As matters were shaping themselves he no longer
anticipated that he would be driven into pitched battle, forced to fight
intrenched enemies of reform--Luke Presson's face most conspicuous of
all those behind the party wall of privilege. As he listened to the
address he comforted himself with the thought that probably political
disagreements loomed more blackly as a cloud on the horizon than their
real consistency warranted. He was not in retreat--he would not admit
that to himself as he listened. But he felt that compromise and a better
understanding were in the air. There would be no more occasion for
troubled arguments between himself and the girl at his side. He did not
understand exactly in what way it would be done, but he felt that
Governor Waymouth knew how to win his reforms without such party
slaughter as the first engagements hinted at. He put himself into a very
comfortable frame of mind, and the girl at his side, by her mere
presence, added to his belief that this was a pretty good old world,
after all.
He had lost some of his respect for "reform." It had been exemplified
for him mostly by such men as Prouty and his intolerant kind--by Spinney
and his dupes. He felt that he might call decency by some other name,
and arrive at results by the calm and dignified course which Governor
Waymouth now seemed to be pointing out. He suddenly felt a warm
appreciation of the wisdom of Madeleine Presson as she had made that
good sense known to him in their talks.
"For it is by my works, not my words, that I would be judged," concluded
the Governor, solemnly, and bowed to the applause which greeted the end.
Neither Harlan Thornton nor any other listener in the great assembly
hall took those words as signifying anything more than the usual pledge
of faithful performance.
After the dissolving of the joint caucus he escorted Madeleine to the
council-chamber, where the new Governor was holding his impromptu
reception. There were no shadows on the faces which pressed closely
around him. All the politicians of the State were there, eager to be the
first to congratulate him. Their fears had been somewhat allayed. In
political circles it was well understood that Waymouth stood for a
clean-up. It had been hinted that his programme would be drastic. The
members of the machine, more intimately in the secrets of the
convention, had expected that the old Roman would sound the first blast
of the charge in his inaugural address. His moderateness cheered them.
Harlan found congratulation sweetening every comment.
The General received the young couple with marked graciousness.
"Governor Waymouth, you have convinced me to-day that you are the
apostle of universal salvation for the wicked--in politics," said the
girl. "I hope the doctrine will be accepted."
"In that belief you are safe companion for my first disciple," he
returned, humoring her jest. The crowd carried them on.
"I believe that, too," Harlan murmured.
"Universal salvation according to the new political creed?"
"I'm not thinking about politics. I'm not thinking much about anything
else just now except you. During the Governor's address it came over me
suddenly what wise counsel you gave me. If I had you for an adviser all
the rest of my life I could amount to more in the world than I ever can
without you."
She glanced at him sharply.
"I mean that," he insisted. "Will you be my adviser for the rest of my
life?"
It was crude, blunt, and sudden proposal. The throngs were eddying about
them. They were jostled at the moment by the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys of
the legislative concourse. Curious eyes surveyed them. Ears were near
by.
"I can't help saying it here and now," he rushed on. "I--"
"My dear Harlan, you don't mean to say that you are proposing to me here
in the face and eyes of this crowd?" She said it with sudden amazed
mirth dancing in her eyes, but with a note of satire in her tone.
"I do mean it!" He cried it so loudly that men turned their heads to
stare at this earnest young man who was protesting his faith to the
handsome daughter of Luke Presson.
"Hush!" she cried, sharply, and then pulled him along. She spoke low. "I
don't think you have enough humor in you to realize just what you have
done, Harlan. I have found humor lacking in you. You have picked out the
lobby of the State House, in the middle of the biggest crowd of all the
year, as the 'love's bower' for an offer of marriage. You say you mean
it as an offer of marriage. But what you really did was to ask me to
attach myself to you as general adviser. You can hire a clairvoyant who
will do that much for you, and I doubt if you would engage the
clairvoyant as publicly as you have just tried to engage me."
"I understand just what a fool I made of myself," he muttered, huskily.
"But I couldn't wait--and I mean it."
"No, you don't realize just how much of a fool you are where women are
concerned," she returned, judicially. "A woman--a young woman--is
generally interested in hearing first of all a little about love and
devotion and loyalty, all unselfish and uncalculating. Now be patient!
Listen to me! A woman can detect real love. And real love seeks its
opportunity sweetly and shyly. It doesn't preface itself with remarks
about a woman's brain and advisory ability. I believe it has a lot to
say about eyes and hair and lips and such things. However, since you
admire me in my capacity as adviser, I'll advise you to be sure that you
love a woman before you propose to her, and then when you propose pick
out some place that's suitable for convincing her that you do love her.
I see mother yonder. Take me to her."
Turning away, flushed and angry, from her demure smile, he became
bitterly conscious that even had they been alone, under most favorable
circumstances, he would have lacked speech for real love-making. He felt
that conviction inwardly. He wondered whether he had the capacity for
loving as he had read of men loving. It made him a bit ashamed to think
of himself as violently protesting, hungrily pleading. A moment before
he had been angry because she doubted his love. He knew that he admired
her, respected, desired her. Now he argued with himself, and convinced
his soul that his emotions constituted love. And having convinced
himself, he determined to seek further opportunity of convincing her. It
was truly an academic way of settling matters so riotously impatient of
calculation as affairs of the heart, and his determination would have
appealed to Miss Presson's sense of the humorous more acutely still had
he undertaken to explain his emotions of that moment.
Thelismer Thornton, strolling amiably through the lobby throng, came and
put his hand on Harlan's shoulder.
"The best way to make good sugar is to simmer the sap slowly, my boy."
Harlan glanced sharply at him, but the Duke was not discussing love.
"Vard has got into the simmering stage at last. I reckoned he would.
He's too good a politician to boil the kettle over as he started in
doing. What's the matter with you? You look as though you'd been
listening to a funeral oration instead of an address that has put the
party back on Easy Street."
His grandson was careful not to explain the cause of his gloom. He was
willing to let politics be answerable.
Chairman Presson, more cheerful than he had been for weeks, came and
crowded between them in a cosey, confidential manner.
"Say, the old fellow is getting smoothed down," he chuckled. "That
address was milk for babes. He's got good sense. The thin edge of that
plurality made him think twice. I reckon he's going to play a safe game
after this. I don't know what he wanted to throw such a scare into us
early in the game for! But as we get old we get cranky, I suppose. I may
be that way myself when I grow older."
"Vard preached the theory to us for all it was worth," commented the
Duke, "but I reckon he's up against the practice end of the proposition
now--and he was a politician before he was a preacher."
"Hope he'll stay a politician after this. He got onto my nerves. It
wasn't necessary to be so almighty emphatic about things going wrong in
this State."
"Old Pinkney up our way is always careful to keep an eye out for the
drovers," said the Duke. "When he sees one coming he hustles out into
the pasture and shifts the poker off'n the breachy critter onto the best
one in the bunch. And that's the way he unloads the breachy one. Vard
has been wearing the poker the last few weeks, but I don't believe he
intends to hook down any fences."
In the eyes of the politicians, therefore, Governor Waymouth had become
safe and sane. They construed his earlier declarations as the ambitions
of an old man dreaming a dream of perfection. The legislature swung into
the routine of its first weeks in the usual fashion. The business
consisted of the presentation of bills, acts, and resolves. The daily
sessions lasted barely half an hour. The committee hearings had not
begun, and the legislators found time hanging heavy on their hands.
Harlan Thornton continued to be a frequent caller at the Presson home.
But he did not seem to find an opportunity for a tête-à-tête with
Madeleine. She did not show constraint in his presence. She did not
avoid him. She treated him with the same frank familiarity. But he did
not find himself alone with her. He did not try to force such a
situation, in spite of the provocation she had given him once. He was
not yet sure that he could command the words that real love might demand
for expression. That was his vague excuse to his own heart for
delaying--for his heart insisted that he did love her. He had to admit
to himself that this was not the headlong passion the poets described,
but he consoled himself with the reflection that he was not a poet. So
he made the most of her cordial acceptance of him as he was, and felt
sure that Herbert Linton had won no more from her.