THE EVERLASTING PROBLEM
Day after day, during that session, an old man sat in the executive
chamber of the State House. His face grew as white as his hair. There
were deeper lines in his countenance than mere old age had tooled across
the skin. One after the other the men of the two branches of the
legislature came before him at his summons. He did not entreat of them.
There was no more of that suave political diplomacy in the executive
chamber, after the fashion of the old days of easy rule. This Governor
declared himself to be the mouthpiece of the people of his State. He
showed to the legislators their path toward absolute honesty. He ordered
them to follow it. One or two of the first ones who were called upon the
carpet dared to refuse--attempted to evade. He promptly issued
statements to the press, holding those men up to the people of their
State as traders and tricksters. Voters had always understood that
trades and tricks were in progress in the legislature, and had never
bothered their heads much about the matter. But this incisive showing up
of individuals was new and startling and effective. It afforded no
opportunity for the specious reasoning along mere political lines which
had excused dishonesty in the past.
Protests poured in on the would-be rebels. Their experience warned the
others. The State was in a mood to try reform. The reform was promised
on the usual broad lines. Individuals did not stop to reflect what
effect the suggested legislation would have on their own interests.
Every man was after "the other fellow."
"I'll keep you here until you pass these laws," stated the grim old man
in the executive chamber, "even if you stay here till snow flies again."
Legislators are paid by the session, not by the week. The prospect of
spending the summer fighting an obstinate old man, with the people
behind him, was not alluring when personal expenses were considered.
Even lobbyists and corporations and political considerations fail to
hold sway under such conditions.
The Governor's bills went through.
"They've abolished fees," drawled Thelismer Thornton, one day in the
lobby, "to get square with Constable Emerson Pike up my way. Em went
down to replevin some hens, and after he'd chased each hen a dozen times
around the barn he sat down and charged up mileage to the county. The
rest of this legislation is on the same basis. Here's a legislature
that's like Dave Darrington's hogs. After old Dave lost his voice and
couldn't holler to the hogs, he used to rap on the trough with his cane
at feeding-time. Then a woodpecker made his home in the pig-pen and the
hogs went crazy. Vard Waymouth is all bill! I'd reckoned I'd go home.
But I guess I'll stay and see just how far dam foolishness can go!"
So he patrolled the lobby, puffing everlastingly at his cigar, watching
the activity of Harlan with a disgust that he did not try to conceal and
occasionally flinging a sour remark at that devoted young man.
"A calf leaving the cow to chase a steer," he growled. "He'll know
better when it comes supper-time!"
One day a man halted him. "You may be interested in what's going on in
the House, just now, Mr. Thornton. Your grandson is making a speech."
"Then he _has_ lost his mind!" snapped the Duke. "I'd only suspected it
up to now!"
But when he edged in at the door he discovered that his grandson was not
making the usual spectacle which the untried orator affords. The zeal
which had driven him into the fight was supporting him as he faced the
men who were his associates. He stood at his desk, pale--but
unfaltering. He was talking to them, man to man.
"It has met me to my face, it has followed at my back through all these
weeks," he was saying. "I'm accused of helping to wreck my party. You
know better than that, gentlemen. You know who did the wrecking. It has
been going on for years. And we have been asked to hide the retreat of
the wreckers. I refuse to allow those men who have wrecked our party to
call themselves the true prophets and summon us to follow them. Our
party is not simply the men who hold office for their personal gain. If
making them honest or putting them out is destroying the party, then
let's destroy and rebuild.
"We need to rebuild.
"Up in our woods it's dangerous to leave slash on the ground after a
winter's cutting. The politicians have left a lot of slash in this
State. The fire has got into it. It is burning up the old dead branches
and tops, but it is hurting the standing timber, too--I understand that.
Why not see to it after this that the men who leave political slash
shall not be allowed to operate!
"It's a bad litter, gentlemen, that has been left around the roots of
our prohibitory law. I have introduced the bill that's now under
consideration. It has nothing to do with the principle of
prohibition--the theory of that was threshed out in these chambers
before I was born. But isn't it time, gentlemen, to have a test of the
_practice_ of prohibition?
"I know little about politics. I am merely one of the hundreds of young
men in this State who stand on the outside of politics and want the
opportunity to be honest when we vote. We appeal to the older men of
this State to drop the game for a little while and give us a chance to
start fair. The biggest corporation in this State is the State itself,
and I like to think that all of us, young or old, are partners or
stockholders. I've been brought up in business. We know what we'd all do
in straight business. Why can't we do it in State affairs? Too many
influences surround a legislature to make its work really deliberative.
After the heat and arguments of this session have died away we ought to
have a meeting on a real business basis.
"Let the churches, the grange, the radicals, the liberals, the hotel
men, the liquor men, all send their delegates. Let that assemblage take
thought on a plan which will lift out of politics a question that
doesn't belong there. Let's end civil war on this question. Give the
young men some other picture as their eyes open on the politics of this
State."
It was the earnest, ingenuous appeal of one crying out of the wilderness
of human uncertainty--of one who saw the evils in those attempts of men
to curb greed and appetite--of one earnestly seeking a remedy, but not
clearly understanding that so long as the world shall endure, with men
and women weak and human, some problems must remain unsettled.
"I'll suggest a place for that convention," muttered Thelismer Thornton
to those who stood about him. "Hold it in Purity Park in Paradise!
Settle the rum question!" he sneered. "Noah hadn't been stamping around
on dry ground long enough to get his quilts aired out before he was
drunk on Noah's Three Star! And Japheth probably got mad and passed a
prohibitory law and thought he had the trouble fixed forever."
When the legislature finally adjourned the protestations that had been
wrung out of it promised much in the way of honest reorganization.
Harlan Thornton remained with Governor Waymouth for a time. His
Excellency found him indispensable.
The commissions were at work.
Office-holders whined, taxpayers squirmed. Honesty was greeted
everywhere by wry faces.
But the "Thornton law," its deputies superseding county and city
authority, was the bitterest political pill of all. The results
discouraged the righteous--Governor Waymouth predicted them accurately
with the old-age cynicism of one who understood human nature. The
flagrantly open places were closed. But innumerable dives thereby
secured the business which had gone to the open places in the days of
toleration. An army could not have closed the dives--the proprietors of
which, in most cases, carried their villanous concoctions on their
persons. Express companies were organized for the sole purpose of
dealing in liquors by the parcel system, and the State's liquor
agencies, established under the protection of the prohibitory law
itself, were besieged by patrons who stood in queues of humanity like
buyers at a theatre ticket-window.
Reformation of human nature by mere statute was a failure!
But mere political disaster did not daunt the stern old man who held his
commissioners to their task. The people themselves began to complain of
the cost of the new system of enforcement--the money paid to make them
obey their own laws. When their complaints were loudest the Governor
allowed himself the luxury of a smile.
Reform for the mass. Admirable!
Reform for the individual. Atrocious infringement of personal liberty!
"I cannot make them good," he said to Harlan. "But I can give them such
a picture of their own iniquity that perhaps they'll realize it and make
themselves good. You can't reform folks in this world on much of any
basis except that!"
It was late summer and they were in the garden of the brick house at
Burnside.
Harlan had been at his chief's side day after day, shielding him as much
as possible from those who came to solicit, to threaten, to complain. In
the opportunity given him to meet every man of importance in the State
he had won respect, even regard. His personality removed him from the
ranks of the radicals and relieved him from the imputation that attached
to them. His sincerity was evident. He was frank to express his
disappointment at the results of the legislation he had assisted in
procuring. He listened attentively to the suggestions of others. He made
it plain that he was not unalterably wedded to a law because he had been
instrumental in adding it to the code. He made known to all his
willingness to compromise on everything except honesty, and day by day
he made men understand better the basis of the system advocated by his
chief and himself.
They had burnished the mirror of politics; they held its new and
brighter surface up to the people that they might gaze on themselves.
And in time the people came to realize what service had been done. And,
as they realized it, the name of young Thornton went abroad in the State
from mouth to mouth--men speaking of him as one who was entitled to the
praise that attaches to honesty unsmirched by bigotry.
His optimism softened the asperities which men found in the character of
the Governor. He attracted to the grim old man the loyalty of the youth
of the State, and at the same time won that loyalty for himself. He had
come forward at a time when men were ready to accept new ideals, even
if they were obliged to wade to them through such mire as now soiled the
execution of the new laws.
That proposed convention for the unprejudiced consideration of the
liquor laws was taking form. The intemperate radicals were the only ones
declaiming against "compromise with the devil." But the new conditions
were revealing the real colors of those impractical zealots, and it was
plain that their noisy minority would no longer be allowed to bluster
down the truer and more equable spirit of "the best for all the people."
The men and women of the State were taking time to analyze some of those
high-sounding phrases with which so-called temperance had disguised
vicious theories which left human nature out of the equation.
The politicians of the old school remained aloof.
They were pointing to "the wreck of the party."
"And I'll be passed down to history as the wrecker," said the Governor,
talking to Harlan under the big elm. "But you've got strong arms, my
boy. I can see that you'll have much to do in building anew out of the
wreck, you and those who are beginning to appreciate you. I can see a
future of much promise for you, Harlan."
"I'll be politely, but firmly, invited to go back to the woods,"
protested the young man.
"You'll not be allowed to do it," replied the Governor, quietly. "You
have been tested for your honesty. These newer times have eyes to
recognize that quality. And the rogues are being smoked out. But
remember that even the end of time will not find all questions solved.
That thought will have to serve you for consolation."
That was hardly the consolation that would satisfy impetuous youth and
zeal in accomplishment.
But Harlan had been learning lessons in consolation.
The thought of Clare Kavanagh was with him night and day. In spite of
all his searching she remained hidden. He did not confide his grief to
any one. It brought pallor to his face and listlessness in the daily
duties that bore upon him. Governor Waymouth took note at last. And when
the young man asked for permission to go home to the north country for a
time he reluctantly sent him away.
On the eve of his departure, which had been announced by a press that
now followed his movements with the attention accorded to a man of
importance in State affairs, he obeyed a summons from Madeleine Presson.
She put a letter into his hands. It was addressed to Clare Kavanagh.
"You will find her, Harlan," she said, comfortingly. "Love will search
her out. And when you find her, give her this letter. There are words
from woman to woman that woman understands."
Harlan found his grandfather sitting on the broad porch of "The
Barracks," smoking and looking out across the river valley.
The spirit in which he had left that hateful legislature seemed to have
departed from the Duke. The old quizzical glint was in his eyes as he
grasped Harlan's hand. After their greeting they sat together in
silence.
"It's a beautiful game, hey, my boy?" remarked the Duke, at last. "I see
that some of the country papers have already begun to talk of you for
Governor of the State. The editors haven't seen you, but from what
they've heard they probably think you're a hundred years old and have
grown to enormous size!"
"Don't make game of me, grandfather," said Harlan, coloring.
"Oh, I'm only expressing a wicked hope. There are some men in this State
that I'd like to see punished to that extent." He chuckled. "Put me down
for fifty thousand dollars, first subscriber to your campaign fund."
"I can appreciate the humor of that joke," said Harlan. "For I've had a
liberal education in the past year--I've found out just how little I
know." He added wearily, "And I've found out how hard it is to be what
you want to be."
His grandfather tipped his head back into his clasped hands, his
characteristic attitude. He squinted out across the hills.
"Bub," he said, "I had the first real blow of my life the other day. A
man pointed me out on the train and told another man, loud enough so
that I overheard him, that I was Harlan Thornton's grandfather--'and I
forget his first name,' he said, 'it begins with T.'"
They ate supper together in the old mess-hall, back on their former
footing. Word by word it came out of the Duke--his admiration for this
boy who had made his own way. Every blow he had dealt his grandfather's
personal pride had brought the reactionary glow of appreciation of this
scion who could hit so hard and so surely.
He watched him saddle his horse after supper. He did not ask where he
was going.
Harlan did not know. His longing drew him down the long street and
across the big bridge, his horse walking slowly.