GEORGE HELM
THE WORKS OF DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
George Helm
The Price She Paid
The Grain of Dust
The Hungry Heart
The Conflict
The Husband’s Story
White Magic
The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig
The Worth of a Woman
Old Wives for New
Light-fingered Gentry
The Second Generation
The Deluge
The Social Secretary
The Plum Tree
The Cost
The Master Rogue
Golden Fleece
A Woman Ventures
The Great God Success
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK
David Graham Phillips
GEORGE HELM
[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1912, by Hearst’s Magazine
_Published September, 1912_
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BEHIND THE BEARD 1
II. THE CAT’S-PAW 53
III. “THERE GOES A MAN” 98
IV. THE MATCH-MAKER 159
V. SEEING HER FATHER 210
VI. THE TEST 258
GEORGE HELM
I
BEHIND THE BEARD
A comet so dim that it is almost invisible will cause agitated interest
in the heavens where great fixed stars blaze nightly unnoticed.
Harrison was a large Ohio river town, and in its firmament blazed many
and considerable fixed stars--presenting pretty nearly all varieties of
peculiarity in appearance and condition. But when George Helm appeared
everybody concentrated upon him.
“Did you see that young fellow with the red whiskers stumping down Main
Street this afternoon?”--“Did you see that jay in the funny frock coat
and the stove pipe hat?”--“Who’s the big hulking chap that looks as if
he’d just landed from nowhere?”--“I saw the queerest looking mud-dauber
of a lawyer or doctor--or maybe preacher--sitting on the steps of Mrs.
Beaver’s boarding-house.”--“I saw him, too. He had nice eyes--gray and
deep-set--and they twinkled as if he were saying, ‘Yes, I know I’m a
joke of a greenhorn, but I’m human, and I like you, and I’d like you to
like me.’”
In towns, even the busiest of them, there is not any too much to talk
about. Also, there is always any number of girls and widows sharply
on the lookout for bread-winners; and the women easily get the men
into the habit of noting and sizing up newly arrived males. No such
new arrival, whether promising as a provider or not, escapes searching
attention. Certainly there was in young George Helm’s appearance no
grace or beauty to detain the professional glance of a husband-seeker
with a fancy for romantic ornamentation of the business of matrimony.
Certainly also there was in that appearance no suggestion of latent
possibilities of luxury-providing. A plain, serious-looking young
man with darkish hair and a red beard, with a big loosely jointed
body whose legs and arms seemed unduly long. A strong, rather homely
face, stern to sadness in repose, flashing unexpectedly into keen
appreciation of wit and fun when the chance offered. The big hands were
rough from the toil of the fields--so rough that they would remain the
hands of the manual laborer to the end. The cheap, smooth frock suit
and the not too fresh top hat had the air of being their wearer’s only
costume, of having long served in that capacity, of getting the most
prudent care because they could not soon be relieved of duty.
“He lives in the room my boy Tom made out of the attic last summer,”
said Mrs. Beaver, who supported her husband and children by taking in
boarders. “And all he brung with him was in a paper shirt box. He wears
a celluloid collar and cuffs, and he sponges off his coat and vest and
pants every morning before he puts ’em on. So Tom says. He lies awake
half the night reading or writing in bed--sometimes when he reads he
laughs out loud, so you’d think he had company. And he sings hymns and
recites poetry. And, my! how he does eat! Them long legs of his’n is
hollow clear down.”
There is no doubt about the red beard. Since George Helm has become
famous, the legend is that he always had a smooth face. But like most
of the legends about him--like that about his astonishing success
and astounding marriage--this legend of the smooth face is as falsely
inaccurate as most of the stuff that passes for truth about the men
of might who have come up from the deep obscurity of the masses. It
was a hideous red beard--of the irritating shade of bright red with
which brick walls used to be--perhaps in some parts of the world still
are--painted in the spring. It grew patchily. In spots it was straight;
in other spots, curly. It was so utterly out of harmony with his hair
that opinion divided as to which was dyed, and the wonder grew that he
did not dye both to some common and endurable shade.
“What does he wear those whiskers for?”--“How can a man with hair like
that on his face expect to get clients or anything else?” Nevertheless,
public opinion--which is usually wrong about everything, including
its own exaggerated esteem for itself--was wrong in this case. As
soon as a comet ceases to be a visitor and settles down into a fixed
inhabitant with a regular orbit it ceases to attract attention, becomes
obscure, acquires the dangerous habit of obscurity. George Helm, only
twenty-four years old and without money, friends or influence, might
have been driven back to the farm but for that beard.
Successful men feed their egotism with such shallow and silly old
proverbial stuff as, “You can’t keep a good man down,” and “A husky
hog will get its nose to the trough.” But they reckon ill who leave
circumstance out of account in human affairs. And circumstance does
not mean opportunity seen and seized, but opportunity that takes man
by the nape of the neck and forcibly thrusts him into responsibility
and painfully compels him to acquire the education that finally leads
to success. Those who arrive forget that they were not always wise and
able; they forget how hardly they got wisdom and capacity, how fiercely
their native human inertia and stupidity fought against learning. If
some catastrophe--which God forbid!--should wipe out at a stroke all
our leaders--all the geniuses who give us employment, run our affairs,
write our books and newspapers, make our laws, blow the whistles for us
to begin and to stop work, tell us when to go forth and when to come
in out of the rain--if some cataclysm should orphan us entirely of
these our wondrous wise guardians, don’t you suspect that circumstance
would almost overnight create a new set for us, quite as good, perhaps
better? The human race is a vast reservoir of raw material for any and
all human purposes. Let those who find cheer in feeling lonely in their
unique, inborn, inevitable greatness enjoy themselves to their fill.
It is their privilege. But it is also the privilege of plain men and
twinkling stars to laugh at them.
So, George Helm’s beard may have had more to do with his destiny than
his conventional biographers will ever concede. He ceased to be a
comet. But he did not cease to attract attention. And his awkwardness,
his homeliness and his solitary “statesman’s” suit would not have
sufficed to keep him in the public eye. That preposterous beard was
vitally necessary. It accomplished its mission. The months--the
clientless months--the months of dwindling purse and hope passed.
George Helm remained a figure in Harrison. Some men were noted for the
toilets or the eccentricity or the beauty of their wives, some men
for their fortunes or their fine houses, some men for dog or horse or
high power automobile. George Helm was noted for his beard. It served
as the gathering center for jokes and stories. The whole town knew
all sorts of gossip about that “boy with the whiskers,” for, through
the carmine mask, the boyishness had finally been descried. The local
papers, hard put for matter to fill the space round patent medicine
advertisements and paid news of dry goods, overshoes and canned
vegetables at cut prices, often made paragraphs about the whiskers. And
the heartiest laugh at these jests came from serious, studious George
Helm himself.
“Why don’t you shave ’em, George?”--He was of those men whom everybody
calls by the first name.
“You never happened to see me without ’em?” Helm would reply.
“I’d like to,” was usually the retort.
“Well, I’ve seen myself without ’em--and I guess I’m choosing the
bluntest horn of the dilemma.”
It never occurred to any one in Harrison to wonder why, while George
Helm’s whiskers were a butt, the young man himself was not. When
Rostand made a tragic hero of a man with a comic nose, there was
much outcry at the marvelous genius displayed in the feat. In fact,
that particular matter required no genius at all. There is scarcely
an individual of strongly marked personality who has not some
characteristic, mental or physical, that is absurd, ridiculous. Go
over the list of great men, past and present; note the fantastic,
grotesque physical peculiarities alone. Those attention-arresting
peculiarities helped, you will observe, not hindered, the man in coming
into his own--the pot-belly of little Napoleon, the duck legs of giant
Washington, the drooling and twitching of Sam Johnson.
Try how you will, you cannot make a man ridiculous, unless he is
ridiculous. Lincoln could--and did--play the clown hours at a time.
Yet only shallow fools of conventionality-worshipers for an instant
confused the man and the clever story-actor. Harrison laughed at George
Helm’s whiskers; but it did not, because it could not, laugh at George
Helm.
But, being a shallow-pated town, Harrison fancied it was laughing at
Helm himself. It is the habit of human beings to mistake clothes and
whiskers and all manner of mere externals for men. Occasionally they
discover their mistake. Harrison discovered its mistake.
It nominated George Helm for Circuit Judge. There were two parties
in that district--as there are everywhere else--the Republican and
the Democratic. There was also--as wherever else there is any public
thing to steal--a third party that owned and controlled the other
two. Sometimes this third party “fixes” the race so that Republican
always wins and Democrat always loses; again, it “fixes” the race the
other way; yet again--where there is what is known as an “intelligent
and alert electorate”--this shrewd third party alternately puppets
Republican and Democrat first under the wire--and then how the
aforesaid intelligent and alert people do shout and applaud their own
sagacity and independence!
They say that woman is lacking in the sense of humor. There must be
something in the charge. Otherwise, would she not long ago have laughed
herself to death at the political antics of man?
In Harrison and its surrounding country the sentiment was
overwhelmingly Republican--which meant that the majority of the
“independent” farmers and artisans who were working early and late to
enrich the Railway Trust, the Harvester Trust, the Beef Trust, the
Money Trust, and the rest of the members of the third and only real
party, said, when they sat doddering about politics, “Wall, I reckon
I’ll keep on voting as I shot.” If the community had been Democratic,
the dodder would have been, “I think it’s about time to turn the
rascals out.” Needless to say, the third party cares not a rap which
side wins. The vote goes into the ballot box Republican or Democratic;
it is counted for the third party. In Harrison the Republican
candidates of the third party always won, and its Democratic candidates
were put up simply to make things interesting for the populace and to
give them the feeling that they were sovereign citizens. The Republican
candidate for Circuit Judge, the candidate slated to win in a walk,
was Judge Powers. He had served two terms, to the entire content of the
third party--and, being full of pious talk and solemn flapdoodle about
the “sacredness of the judicial trust in a community of freemen,” to
the entire content of the people. In a hilarious mood the Democratic
machine, casting about for its sacrifice candidate, nominated George
Helm--or, rather, George Helm’s whiskers.
It was a side-splitting joke. Everybody liked George. Everybody knew
about his whiskers--knew him by his whiskers. It bade fair to inject
that humor, so dearly beloved of the American people, into what was
usually a dull campaign. The only trouble was that for the first time
Helm failed to see a joke.
The night of his nomination the light in Mrs. Beaver’s tiny, stuffy
attic room went out early. And if you could have looked in, you would
have discovered, by the starlight that the big form was lying quite
still in the little bed which sagged and bulged with it. But George
Helm was not asleep. He slept not a wink that whole night. And as soon
as he had finished breakfast he went down to the barber shop at the
corner.
“Bob,” said he to the colored proprietor, “I want a clean shave.”
“What’s that, Mr. Helm?” exclaimed the amazed barber. And two loungers
at the table where the sporting papers were spread out sat up and
stared.
“A clean shave, Bob,” said Helm gravely, seating himself in the chair.
Bob started a broad grin that, with the least encouragement, would
have become a guffaw--and would have echoed throughout the district.
But he did not get the encouragement. Instead, he saw something in
the kind, deep-set gray eyes, in the strong, sad mouth and chin, that
set him soberly to work. The two loungers went outside to laugh and
spread the news. But when they got outside they did not laugh. Why? It
is impossible to explain the psychology of man the mass. They put the
astounding news into currency--but not as a joke. Helm was shaving his
beard. What did it mean?
“Our opponents,” said Judge Powers, “nominated a set of whiskers. The
whiskers have disappeared--so there is no one running against us.”
The jest, being of the species which it is conventional to utter and to
laugh at on stump and after-dinner occasions, got its momentary due of
cackling and braying. But the mirth did not spread. For, before noon
of that first day of the campaign, it had been discovered that the
Democratic machine had not nominated whiskers, but a man.
We are in the habit of regarding a human being as a mere conglomerate
of sundry familiar conventionalities--of dress, of manner, of thought.
We have formed the habit because with an occasional rare exception
a human being is simply that and nothing more. So an individuality
is always a startling apparition--fascinating, perhaps, certainly
terrifying. The coming of a man makes us suddenly aware how few real
men there are--real live men--how most of us are simply patterns of
men who once lived, or, rather, differently proportioned composites of
all past men. The excitement in peaceful Harrison and its somnolent
environs was almost hysterical. For, in all that region, there was not,
there had not been for years--not since the stern, elemental pioneer
days--a real living man. All the specimens of the genus homo were of
the approved type of the past.
George Helm, _man_.
“George,” said Bill Desbrough, who had a law office across the hall in
the same building--the Masonic Temple--“George, where’d you ever get
the notion of those there whiskers you’ve just shed?”
“Oh, the girls,” replied George. “When I was a boy and a youngster the
girls made fun of my face. So I hid it as soon as I could--as well as I
could.”
“The fool women!” exclaimed Desbrough in disgust. “Why, George, you’ve
got a _face_.”
“I’m afraid so,” said George with a rueful grin, passing his hand over
the newly emerged visage.
“Afraid so!” cried Desbrough. “Let me tell you, old man, a face--a real
face--is about the rarest thing in the world. Most so-called faces
are nothing but front sides of heads.” Desbrough looked at the “face”
narrowly, searchingly. “Helm, I believe you are a great man.”
George laughed delightedly and derisively--as a sensible man does at a
compliment. “Oh, shucks!” said he.
“Anyhow,” said Desbrough, “if you’d have produced that face a day
earlier, you’d never have got the nomination. A man with a face never
gets anything from the powers-that-be, without a fight, until he has
put himself squarely on record as being with them. Even then they’re
always a little afraid of him.” Desbrough nodded thoughtfully. “And
they may well be, damn ’em,” he added.
“Well--I’ve got the nomination,” said Helm.
“I wonder what you’ll do with it,” said his friend.
“_I’m_ wondering what it’ll do with _me_,” replied Helm.
Desbrough glanced at him curiously.
George went on to explain. “Yesterday,” said he, “I was a boy of
twenty-five”----
“Is that all you are!” cried Desbrough. “Why, even without the whiskers
I’d have said thirty-five.”
“Oh, I’m one of those chaps who are born old,” laughed Helm. “I had
lines and even wrinkles when I was eighteen. I’ll look younger at forty
than I do now. Mother used to say I reminded her of her father--that he
was homely enough to stop a clock when he was young and kept getting
handsomer as he got older.”
“I know the kind,” said Bill Desbrough, “and it’s the best kind to be.”
“As I was saying,” proceeded George, “yesterday I was a boy. As soon as
those fellows nominated me--they were laughing--they thought it was a
fine old joke--but, Bill, a queer sort of a something happened inside
me. A kind of shock, like a man jumping out of a sound sleep to find
the house afire.”
Desbrough was interestedly watching the face of his friend. Its
expression was indeed strange--the look of power--sad, stern,
inexorable--the look of the men whose wills and passions hurl them on
and on to the conquest of the world. Suddenly it changed, softened.
The human lines round the mobile, handsome mouth appeared. The gray
eyes twinkled and danced. “So you see, Bill,” said he, “the nomination
didn’t lose any time in beginning to do things to me.”
“And the whiskers?”
“Oh, they had to go,” said George simply. “The fight was on, and a
fellow naturally throws away all the foolishness before he jumps in.”
“So you’re going to make a fight?”
“Of course,” said George. “What else is there to do?”
“But you can’t win.”
“You mean I can’t lose. I’ve got nothing _to_ lose.”
About the most dangerous character on this earth is a real man who has
nothing to lose. When the powers-that-be discover such an one, and are
convinced that he is indeed a real man and not a cunning bluff at it,
they hasten to give him something to lose. They don’t feel safe until
he has wife and children, or wealth, or position--something that will
fill one arm and make the other cautious.
The three counties constituting that judicial district will not in
many a year forget the first Helm campaign. In its second week Judge
Powers canceled his speaking dates, giving out that he regarded it as
undignified for a judge to descend in the ermine to the political
arena and scramble and tussle for votes. The truth was that George Helm
had driven him to cover because he dared not face the facts of his
judicial record as the young candidate proclaimed it throughout those
counties, on the highways, in the by-ways no less, in town, in village,
in country.
The day he began campaigning George counted his cash, found that in all
the world he had three hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-six
cents. He had been calculating that this money would keep him housed
and fed and officed for about a year longer, assuming that he continued
to be absolutely without clients. Then--he would teach school and toss
hay and stack sacks at the threshing machine until he had put by the
money for another two years’ try. To go into the campaign meant to
use up his resources in two months--for he could not hope to get any
help from the Democratic machine. Its “contributions” from the various
corporations would be used in paying the leaders and their henchmen for
refraining from “doing anything disturbing.”
“Sorry, Mr. Helm,” said Pat Branagan, the local Democratic boss, “but
we can’t spare you a cent for your campaign.”
“So I calculated,” said Helm.
Branagan had changed toward Helm the instant he saw him without a
beard. Branagan had not risen to be boss without learning a thing or
two about human nature and human faces. “There’s no hope for you,”
proceeded he. “And anyhow I think a judicial candidate ought to be
dignified.”
“Oh, I don’t see any objection to his showing himself to the people,”
said George, “and letting them judge whether he’s honest and sensible,
and letting them hear what his notion of justice is--whether he’s for
rich man’s reading of the law or for honest man’s reading of it.”
Branagan puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. If he had been looking
at Helm, he might have seen a covert twinkle in those expressive
gray eyes. But he was not looking at Helm; he didn’t like to look
at him. “Yes, I suppose so, Mr. Helm,” he said. He had called Helm
George--George, with a humorous grin--until Bob Williams, the colored
barber, performed that magic feat. “But there won’t be no money for
meetings. Meetings means hall rent and posters and processions, and
them little knickknacks costs.”
“I guess I can look after that,” said George, crossing and uncrossing
his long legs and smoothing out a tail of his shiny black frock upon
his knee.
“You allow to do some speaking?”
“I’m going to hire a horse and buggy and move about some.”
“That’s good. You may stir up a little law business.”
“Maybe so.”
“Done any orating?”
“Oh, I’ve heard a lot of speeches, and I’ve made a few.”
“Then you know the kind of stuff to hand out to the people.”
“I guess so,” said Helm.
Branagan was obviously relieved when Helm departed--the conference was
held in Pat’s saloon which was the “hang-out” for the politicians and
other disreputables of the town. The first class really included the
last, for there was not a disreputable who was not actively engaged in
“practical” politics. Helm negotiated with the livery-man round the
corner from Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house, got a buggy and a sound
horse for two months at two dollars and a half a day, he to feed the
horse, keep the buggy in repair and do his own driving. The morning of
the second day after he secured the nomination, he opened his campaign.
Two days later--or rather, three nights later--so far into the third
night that it was near the dawn of the third day--a stalled automobile
shot the powerful beams from its acetylene lamps into the woods near
Bixby Cross Roads, about twenty miles to the northeast of Harrison.
The light fell upon a buggy, with the horse taken from the shafts and
hitched to a nearby tree.
“Hi, there--I say!” came in a man’s voice from the darkness of the auto.
This was followed a moment later by, “Well, I’ll be jiggered!” in the
same voice, accompanied by the subdued laughter of two women, on the
rear seat of the auto. The cause of the exclamation was the apparition
of a head above the side of the bed of the buggy, and behind the
seat--the head of a man.
“Why, he’s curled up in his buggy to sleep,” said one of the women in a
low voice.
But the night was still and the voice had the carrying quality; so
George Helm heard distinctly. As he was as shy as any man is apt to be
who feels that he is not attractive to women, the sound of a woman’s
voice--a young woman’s voice--threw him into a panic. He was acutely
conscious of the fact that the frock suit neatly folded was under the
buggy seat, and that he had nothing on over his underclothes but the
lap robe. In his alarm he cried out, “Don’t come any nearer. What do
you want to know?”
“We’ve punctured a tire,” said the man. “And we’ve lost our way. Will
you come and help me?”
“Turn those lights the other way,” said Helm.
There was a chuckle from the direction of the auto, a sound of
suppressed female laughter. The sound rose, swelled until the two
women and their man and presently George Helm were all four laughing
uproariously. The lights turned in another direction. “Thanks,” said
Helm. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
And it was scarcely more than that when he, clad in the frock suit and
carrying the top hat in his hand, advanced toward the auto. “Now--what
can I do for you?” inquired he.
“Do you know how to fit on a tire?” said the man--he was young, about
George’s age--but a person of fashionable dress and manner.
“I don’t know a thing about automobiles,” replied Helm.
“But I do, Bart,” said one of the women--the one with the sweeter
voice. “I can superintend.”
“Are we far from the main road?” said Bart to Helm.
“About a mile and a half.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Barton Hollister.”
The young man spoke the name as if he were certain of its being
recognized. “Oh, yes, I know you, Mr. Hollister. We come from the same
town--Harrison. I’m George Helm.”
“I’ve heard of you,” said young Hollister graciously. “I suppose we’ve
never happened to meet because I’m at home so little. You’ve lost your
way, too?”
“No, I’m making a campaign through the district.”
“Oh--yes. You were nominated by the Democrats for--for----”
Mr. Hollister hesitated awkwardly. “For Circuit Judge,” Helm supplied.
“Against my cousin, Judge Powers. These ladies are my sister Clara and
Miss Clearwater.”
Helm bowed to the ladies, who smiled graciously at him. He could see
their faces now--lovely, delicate faces with the look of the upper
class--the sort of women he had seen only at a distance and had met
only in novels and memoirs.
“The chauffeur was sick and I was ass enough to risk coming without
him,” said Hollister. “Nell, you’ll have to tell us what to do.”
There followed about the most interesting and exciting hour of George
Helm’s life up to that time. Within five minutes Barton Hollister
had shown that he was worse than useless for the work in hand, had
been swept aside by Helm and Miss Clearwater. He smoked and fussed
about and quarreled with his sister, who was in no very good humor
with him--“casting us away in the wilderness at three o’clock in the
morning.” Helm and the girl who knew toiled at removing the tire
and replacing it. She did not know very much; so in the end Helm
became boss and, with her assistance, worked out the problem from its
foundations.
It isn’t easy for an intelligent human being to say so much as three
sentences without betraying his intelligence. And in an emergency the
evidences of superior mind stand out clearly and brilliantly. Thus it
came to pass that in the hour’s work George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater
got a respect each for the other’s intelligence. His respect for her
was so great that he all but forgot her loveliness and her remote
removal from the sphere of his humble, toilsome life. He was tempted
to prolong the task, in spite of the irritation of Clara Hollister’s
railing, peevish voice. But he resisted the temptation and got his
visitors into condition for departure with all the speed he could
command.
They thanked him effusively. There was handshaking all round. Hollister
and his sister urged him to call “soon”--a diplomatic invitation; it
sounded cordial, yet--was safely vague. The automobile departed, and
the candidate for judge was free to resume his repose in the airy
chamber he had selected, to save time and hotel bills.
Two hours later he made a thorough toilet with the assistance of a
convenient spring, hitched up his horse and drove out of the woods
and into the by-road to search for a farm-house and breakfast. After
about a mile, and just before he reached the main road, he saw ahead
of him an auto--the auto. In his shyness he reined in his horse and
looked round for some way to escape. He, the homely, the obscure, the
wretchedly poor, the badly dressed, the grotesque straggler for a
foothold in life--“as ridiculous as a turtle on its back and trying to
get right side up”--what had he to do with those rich, grand, elegant
people? When they saw him in the full light of day, needing a shave and
none too tidy after his interrupted night out, they would humiliate
him with their polite but not to be concealed disdain of him. Bart
Hollister suddenly sprang from the auto and shouted and waved. There
was nothing to do but go on.
Another tire had exploded, and Bart had not dared leave the two girls
alone; besides, he would have been lost the instant he got beyond the
range of the lights. “We’ve been dozing in the car and hoping you’d
come along,” he ended. “I’ll bet you’re cursing the day you ever saw
us. But--couldn’t you help put on another tire?”
A few minutes, and Helm and Eleanor Clearwater were at work again.
But his fingers were much clumsier now, and he was wretchedly
self-conscious. By daylight he saw her to be the loveliest woman--so
he decided--that he had ever seen. About twenty years old, with thick
hair of the darkish neutral shade that borrows each moment new colors
and tints from the light; with very dark gray eyes, so dark that an
observer less keen than Helm might have thought them brown. She was
neither tall nor short, had one of those figures that make you forget
inches, and think only of line and proportion. A good straight nose, a
sweet yet rather haughty mouth. Her hands--he noted them especially as
he and she worked--were delicate, had a singular softness that somehow
contrived to combine with firmness. They were cool to the touch--and
her voice was cool, even when talking intimately with Clara Hollister
and her brother. Not the haughty reserve of caste, but the attractive
human reserve of those to whom friendship and love are not mere words
but deep and lasting emotions.
When he took off his coat to go to work Helm was so thoroughly
flustered that he did not think of his linen--or rather, of his
cotton and celluloid--or of the torn back of his waistcoat, or of the
discolored lining of his coat. But when he was ready to resume the
coat he suddenly saw and felt all these horrors of his now squalid
poverty. She was apparently unaware; but he knew that she too had seen,
had felt. Unconsciously he looked at her with a humble yet proud
appeal--the effort the soul sometimes makes to face directly another
soul, with no misleading veil of flesh and other externals between.
Their eyes met; she colored faintly and glanced away.
Clara and Barton were for dashing straight on home to breakfast--a run
of about three-quarters of an hour. But Miss Clearwater was not for the
risk. “I’m starved,” said she. “I’ve worked hard, with these two tires.
Mr. Helm will find us breakfast in this neighborhood.”
“I was going to ask them to give me something at Jake Hibbard’s, about
half a mile further on,” said Helm. “It’ll be plain food, but pretty
good.”
And it was pretty good--coffee, fresh milk, corn bread, fried chicken
and potatoes, corn cakes and maple syrup. Barton and Clara ate
sparingly. It made George Helm feel closer to the goddess to see that
she ate as enthusiastically as did he. “I never saw you eat like this,
Nell,” said Clara, not altogether admiring.
“You never saw me when I had things I really liked,” replied she.
“The way to get your food to be really tasty,” observed Mrs. Hibbard,
“is to earn it.”
Miss Clearwater deigned to be interested in Mr. Helm’s campaign. “I
know something about politics,” said she. “My father was United States
Senator a few years ago.”
“Oh--you’re George Clearwater’s daughter?” said Helm. He knew all about
Clearwater, the lumber “king” who had bought a seat in the Senate
because his wife thought she’d like Washington socially.
“Yes,” said the girl. “I’m the only child. And you--are you going to be
elected?”
“Judge Powers’s plurality was more than his opponent’s whole vote last
time,” said Helm.
“Then you haven’t much hope?”
“I don’t hope--I work,” said Helm.
As they talked on, he saying nothing beyond what was necessary to
answer the questions put to him, it was curious to see how he, the
homely and the shabby, became the center of interest. His personality
compelled them to think and to talk about him, to revolve round
him--this, though he was shrinking in his shyness and could scarcely
find words or utterance for them.
“What a queer man,” said Clara, when the auto was under way again.
“He’s very dowdy and ugly, but somehow you sort of like him.”
“He’s not so ugly,” said Miss Clearwater.
“Perhaps not--for a man of his class,” said Clara. “I like to meet the
lower-class people once in awhile. They’re very interesting.”
“I guess,” said Miss Clearwater, absently, “that father was a good deal
that sort of a man when he was young.”
Clara laughed. “Oh, nonsense,” she cried. “Your father amounted to
something.”
“He started as a pack peddler.”
Clara would not be outdone in generous candor. “Well--papa was a farm
hand. Don’t all that sort of thing seem terribly far away, Nell? Just
look at _us_. Think of _us_ marrying a man like this Helm.”
Miss Clearwater shivered. “He was pretty dreadful--wasn’t he?”
“I don’t suppose the poor fellow ever had a decent suit in his life--or
ever before met ladies.”
“Yet,” said Miss Clearwater, absent and reflective, “there’s no
telling what he’ll be, before he gets through.”
“Talking about your conquest, Nell?” called Bart from the front seat.
Miss Clearwater colored haughtily. Clara cried, “Don’t be rude, Bart.”
“Rude?” retorted Hollister. “Anyone could see with half an eye that he
was overhead in love with Nell. Wait till he comes to call.”
“Call?” Clara laughed. “He’d never venture to appear at our front door.”
“We’ll go to hear him when he strikes Harrison,” said Bart.
“Indeed we’ll not,” replied his sister. “He’d misunderstand and
presume. Don’t you think so, Nell?”
“Yes,” replied Miss Clearwater promptly--too promptly.
But long before Helm and his campaign reached Harrison there were other
reasons why the Hollisters, indeed all the “best people,” could not
show themselves at a Helm meeting.
The ignorance of the mass of mankind has made government an arrangement
whereunder the many labor for the prosperity of the few. The pretexts
for this scheme and the devices for carrying it out have varied; but
the scheme itself has not varied--and will not vary until the night
of ignorance and the fog of prejudice shall have been rolled away.
All things considered, it is most creditable to human nature and most
significant of the moral power of enlightenment, that the intelligent
few have dealt so moderately with their benighted fellows and have
worked so industriously to end their own domination by teaching their
servitors the way of emancipation; for let it not be forgotten that the
light comes only from above, that the man who has emancipated himself
could always, if he chose, be oppressor. Our modern American version
of this ancient scheme of the few exploiting the many consists of two
essential parts--laws cunningly designed to enable the few to establish
their toll gates upon every road of labor; courts shrewdly officered so
that the judges can, if they will, issue the licenses for the aforesaid
toll gates, which are not as a rule established, but simply permitted,
by the law. The treacherous legislator enacts the slyly worded
authorization; the subservient judge--no, rather, the judge chosen
from, and in sympathy with, the dominant class--reads the permissive
statute as mandatory.
This primer lesson in politics, known to all men who have opportunity
to learn and who see fit to seize the opportunity, was of course known
to George Helm. But he did not content himself with a dry, tiresome,
“courteous” statement of the fact. He brought it home to the people
of those three counties by showing precisely what Judge Powers had
done in his seven years as the people’s high officer of justice--by
relating in detail the favors he had granted to the railways, both
steam and trolley, to the monopolies in every necessity of life. He
also gave an account of Judge Powers’s material prosperity, his rapid
rise to riches in those seven years, and the flourishing condition of
his relatives and intimate friends, the men owning stock in the railway
and other monopolies. In a word, the young candidate made what is known
as a “blatherskite” campaign. In his youth and simplicity he imagined
that, as a candidate, it was his duty to tell the truth to the people.
He did not know the difference between the two kinds of truth--decent
and indecent--decent truth that gives everybody a comfortable sense
of general depravity, and indecent truth that points out specific
instances of depravity, giving names, dates and places.
“Let those who will benefit by Judge Powers’s notion of justice and law
vote for him,” said Helm. “I ask those who will benefit by my notion of
law and justice to vote for me.”
The Democratic machine hastened to disavow Helm’s plainness of speech.
The newspapers, Democratic no less than Republican, ignored him.
But the scandal would not down. The news of Helm’s charges--of his
unparliamentary statements of fact--spread from village to village,
from farm to farm. Within a week it was no longer necessary for him
to distribute handbills and call at farm-houses to announce his
meetings. Wherever he went he found a crowd waiting to hear his simple
conversational appeal to common-sense--and, after hearing, bursting
into cheers. In private, in handshaking and talking with the farmers
and villagers, he was all humor, full of homely, witty stories and
jests. But the moment he stood up as the candidate addressing the
people, the face lost its humor lines, the eyes their twinkle, and he
uttered one plain, serious sentence after another, each making a point
against Judge Powers.
The strong homely face grew rapidly thinner. The deep-set gray eyes
sank still deeper beneath the overhanging brows. As for the frock suit,
it soon became a wretched exhibit from a rag bag. The “respectable”
people--that is, those owning the stocks and bonds of Judge Powers’s
protégé companies--laughed at the fantastic figure, roving about in the
mud-stained buggy. But--“the common people heard him gladly.”
After six weeks of campaigning with farmers and villagers, Helm felt
strong enough to attack the fortress--Harrison. There are those in
Harrison who can still tell in minutest detail of the coming of
Helm--driving slowly, toward mid-day, down the main street--the direct
way to Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house. The top hat was furry and dusty.
The black frock suit was streaked and stained, was wrinkled and mussed.
The big shoulders drooped wearily. But the powerful head was calmly
erect, and there was might in the great, toil-scarred hands that held
the reins on the high bony knees.
Not in the worst days of the whiskers had George Helm been so ludicrous
to look at. But no one laughed. The crowds along the sidewalks gazed
in silence and awe. A _man_ had come to town.
That afternoon he spoke in Court House square--that afternoon, and
again after supper, and twice every day for a week. Never had there
been such crowds at political meetings--and, toward the last, never
such enthusiasm. The suddenness, the strangeness of the attack
paralyzed the opposition. It accepted Judge Powers’s dignified
suggestion--“the fellow is beneath contempt, is unworthy of notice.”
At the end of the week, off went George to the sparser regions again,
repeating the queer triumph of his first tour. And every one was
asking every one else, What are the people going to do? Reichman, the
Republican boss, put this question to Democratic boss Branagan when
they met a few evenings before the election on the neutral ground of
Tom Duffy’s saloon and oyster parlor.
“What do you think the people are going to do?” asked Reichman.
“Dun’ no,” said Branagan. “But I know what _I’m_ goin’ to do.”
This, with a wicked grin and a wink. Said Reichman, “Me, too, Pat.”
And they did it. Not a difficult thing to do at any election, for the
people know little about election machinery, and do not watch--indeed,
what would the poor blind, ignorant creatures find out if they did
watch? Yes, Reichman and his Democratic partner did it. The easiest
thing in the world, when the machinery of both parties is in the same
hands.
The country went strongly for Helm. But Harrison and the three other
towns of the district more than “saved the day for the sanctity of the
ermine and the politics of gentlemen.” Judge Powers was reëlected by
an only slightly reduced plurality. Helm had polled three times as many
votes as any Democratic candidate ever had. But the famous “silent,
stay-at-home voter” had come forth and had saved the republic. That
famous retiring patriot!--so retiring that the census men cannot find
him and the undertaker never buries him. But no matter. He is our
greatest patriot. He always appears when his country needs him.
No one saw Helm on election night. At Mrs. Beaver’s it was said that he
had gone to bed at the usual time. Next day he appeared, looking much
as usual. The gray eyes were twinkling; the humorous lines round the
mouth were ready for action. He went to see Branagan at the saloon.
They sat down to a friendly glass of beer.
“Well, Mr. Helm,” said Branagan, “you lost.”
“The election--yes,” said Helm.
“Everything,” said Branagan.
“Oh, no,” replied George softly. “Next time I may win.”
Branagan’s hard blue eyes looked straight into Helm’s. Said he: “There
ain’t goin’ to be no next time--fur you.”
Helm returned the gaze. “Yes, there is, Pat,” said he.
“Goin’ to make a livin’, practicin’ before Judge Powers--eh?”
“No. I’m going up the State to teach school. But I’m coming back.”
“Oh--hell,” said Pat Branagan--a jeer, but an ill-tempered one.
On his way uptown again George Helm almost walked into Eleanor
Clearwater and Clara Hollister. He lifted his hat and bowed, blushing
deeply. The two girls looked past him. Clara seemed unconscious that
he was there; Eleanor slightly inclined her head--a cold, polite
acknowledgment of the salute of a mistaken stranger.
Helm put on the frayed and frowzled top hat. His embarrassment left
him. With a sweet and simple smile of apology that made the strong
homely face superbly proud, he strode erectly on.
II
THE CAT’S-PAW
Pat Branagan, Democratic boss of Harrison, had said to George Helm,
his defeated nominee for circuit judge: “There ain’t goin’ to be no
next time--fur you.” He had said this in circumstances of extreme
provocation. The young candidate, nominated as a joke, nominated to
help the Republican machine roll up a “monumental majority” for Judge
Powers, judicial agent of the interests owning both party machines--the
young candidate had made a house to house, stump to stump campaign,
had exposed Judge Powers, had forced both machines to commit wholesale
election frauds to prevent his defeat. But Mr. Branagan’s anger had
not been the real cause of his serving notice on the big, homely young
lawyer that he would never get another nomination from the Democratic
party of the city of Harrison. Mr. Branagan did not conduct his life
with his temper. If he had done so, he would not have become boss, but
would have remained a crumb-fed private. He had reasons--reasons of
sound business sense--for “double crossing” George Helm. The Helm sort
of Democrat, attacking corruption, smashing at the Republican machine,
rousing the people to suspect and to reflect and to revolt, was a
dangerous menace to the Branagan income.
“He’s one of them there damned agitators that’s bad for business,”
said Mr. Branagan to his friend and partner, the Republican boss.
“Everything’s running quiet and smooth here, and the people’s
satisfied. If that fellow had his way, they’d be attendin’ to politics
instead of to their jobs.”
“That’s right,” said Reichman. “My people”--meaning the corporations
whose political agent he was--“my people understand you didn’t intend
to do it. They look to you to get rid of him.” Reichman said “my
people” rather than “your people,” because Republican partisans being
overwhelmingly in the majority in that district, the interests had him
for chief political manager, and dealt with the Democratic boss only
through him. If Reichman had been strictly accurate he would not have
said “my people,” but “_the_ people”; for the interests are the only
people who have not power in politics.
“Helm’s leaving, all right,” said Branagan. “That there campaign of his
used up his money. He never had no law business, and he’s smart enough
to know he’ll never get none hereabouts, so long as Powers is on the
bench. So he’s gone up the State to teach school.”
“Well, that’s the last of _him_,” said Reichman. “I’m kind of sorry for
him, Pat. He’s a damn nice young fellow.”
“Yes--and a mighty good stumper, too.” With a grin, “He landed on your
friend the Judge--jaw, solar plexus, kidneys--had him groggy.”
The two bosses laughed uproariously. Then Branagan said: “Yes, George
Helm’s a nice boy. But I don’t like him. If he’d a won out, he’d a made
it hot for me--and for you, too.”
“But he didn’t,” said Reichman. “And he’s all in. I can think well of
the dead.”
“I don’t like him,” growled Branagan. “He fooled me with those crazy
red whiskers of his. I knew what he was the first time I saw him after
he cut ’em off--that was the day after I put him on the ticket. When a
man fools me, he makes me mad.”
“He fooled everybody,” said Reichman soothingly. “And as it has turned
out there’s no harm done. The way we made him walk the plank’ll be
a warning to any other young smart Alecks there are in these parts,
thinking of upsetting things.”
It certainly looked as if George Helm were dead and done for in that
community. But Patrick Branagan was a sensible man. Vain men concern
themselves about likes and dislikes; sensible men, about advantages
and disadvantages. It came to pass in that winter, while George Helm
was teaching school up the State, and saving money for another attempt
as a lawyer, Branagan and Reichman fell out about the division of
the graft. Branagan was a slow thinker, but it gradually penetrated
to him that in George Helm he had a threat wherewith he could, or,
rather, should, extort for himself a larger share of the spoils.
Helm, making a single-handed campaign against both machines--for the
Branagan machine had repudiated him--had carried the district, had
been kept out of office only by the most barefaced frauds in Harrison
and the three large towns. So Branagan told Reichman that unless his
share--in the vice money, in the “campaign contributions” and in the
contracts--were raised to an equality with Reichman’s own share, he
would bring Helm back. Reichman laughed, Branagan insisted. Reichman
grew insulting. Branagan presented an ultimatum. Reichman answered by
cutting Branagan’s third to a fourth.
In May Branagan went up to Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house. Yes, Mr. Helm
had left his address. “And,” said Mrs. Beaver, “he sends me regular
his rent for the room he had.”
“What does he do that for?” said Branagan.
“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Beaver. “He was mighty queer in lots of
ways. No, I can’t nohow work it out why he sends me the two dollars a
week--and him so poor he had to do his own washing and mending--and
wore celluloid.”
But Branagan knew, on second thought. So the young damn fool did intend
to come back--had kept his legal residence in Harrison. Though this
news was altogether satisfactory to Branagan’s plans, it gave him a
qualm. What a stubborn, _dangerous_ chap this boy was! However--his
fear of Helm was vague and remote, his need of him clear and near.
He took the midnight express for the north and was at George Helm’s
boarding-house on the lake front at Saskaween as George, with
breakfast finished and his cigar lighted, was starting out for a stroll.
“I’ll go along,” said Pat. “Throw away that cigar and let me give you a
good one.”
“If it’s like the one you’re smoking,” said George, “it’s not good. But
it’s better than my five-center.”
“I pay a quarter apiece for my cigars,” said Branagan. “And I think I
know a good cigar.”
“You think it’s good because Len Melcher charges you a quarter for it,”
replied Helm.
“What do you know about good cigars, anyhow?” said Branagan, ruffled
that this poor school teacher should presume to be critical.
Helm might have explained that he happened to be one of those people
who are born with intensely acute senses--eyes that see, ears that
hear, nerves of touch, taste and smell that respond where the ordinary
nerve remains inert. But he contented himself with a good-natured laugh
and a cheerful, “Where’s the cigar? And what do you want, Pat?”
Branagan drew the cigar from his well-filled waistcoat pocket. “How’d
you like to go to the State Legislature next winter, as Senator from
down yonder?” he said.
Helm lit the quarter cigar from his “five-center,” strode along in
silence beside his shorter and stouter companion. He finally said: