earth I’m going to do with you. How can you break with your father and
everybody and go tracking off into poverty with me?”
“As for that,” began she, “I’ve got something of my own, and----”
She stopped short in horror. What was she saying? Who was talking out
of her mouth and with her voice? She covered her face with her hands.
“I don’t mean it--I’m mad--crazy!” And she was in his arms, with him
caressing her hair.
“You don’t want me,” he said gently, “and I don’t want you. But it
looks as if we’d got to--doesn’t it, Ellen?”
If there had been any abbreviation of her name that she detested more
than any and all others, it had been Ellen. Yet now--in this absurd,
lunatic dream she was having, she liked Ellen--in his voice. It seemed
to be the name she had been waiting for, the name her man would brand
upon her. Ellen. No longer Eleanor Clearwater, but just Ellen--nothing
more.
She laughed hysterically. “I’m glad you didn’t select Ella instead,”
said she. “No doubt I’d have accepted it, but I’d always have felt low.”
They were looking at each other in a dazed way. At the sound of
voices and laughter in the hall, both started and the crimson of
shame deepened and deepened on Miss Clearwater’s cheeks and neck and
shoulders. They faced the others with every sign of confusion and
guilt, neither daring to look at the other. He stammered out phrases
of departure and left, still with not a glance at her. Sayler decided
that he had made an absurd premature proposal and had been sent about
his business--“When he might have had her if he’d kept after her with a
firm tread.”
Out in the cold winter night, George strode along until he was half
way to his hotel. Then he paused and addressed the stars, reeling with
silent laughter!
“What a damn fool I’ve made of myself!”
Another man might have said, “What a fool she made of me!” But George
Helm was no self-excuser, no shifter of responsibilities.
“But I’ve got to put it through,” he went on, still speaking aloud
but addressing the dim landscape in the horizon of which towered the
Capitol. “And since I’ve got to do it, I’ll do it!”
A damn fool!--to take upon his already too heavily burdened shoulders
this extra weight of a woman--and just the kind of woman who could be
heaviest, most useless.
However, instead of walking with bent shoulders, he strode along,
shoulders erect. And presently he was whistling like a boy in a
pasture.
IV
THE MATCH-MAKER
Men--and women--who restrain sentiment to an obscure, uneffectual part
in their own lives take enormous interest in it everywhere else. They
have melting eyes and troublesome noses and throats at sentimental
plays. They give to street beggars and patronize the literature of
slop. They are assiduous matchmakers and want every one--except their
own sons and daughters--to marry for love alone.
There was not a little of this in the composition of Harvey Sayler, the
interesting boss of the Middle West--more interesting than the ordinary
purely commercial boss because he was at heart a bold and reckless
gambler, one who had less interest in the stakes than in the game. He
was in a sentimental mood about George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater.
George Helm, the lean and lank, countrified new orator whom Sayler’s
secret lieutenant, the Democratic state boss Hazelrigg, had discovered
in the State Senate; Eleanor Clearwater, heiress to the notorious--that
is, famous--lumber king and Senator, a lady to her finger tips, fond
of playing with “fine ideas” of all kinds, but helplessly dependent
upon the culture and the luxury that can be got only by acts which
proceed from anything but “fine ideas.” A love affair, an engagement,
a marriage between these two appealed to Sayler’s love of the
sentimentally romantic.
Also, Sayler had a streak of sardonic humor in him. He liked the
mischievous pranks of fate--with the persons and property and destiny
of others. And it seemed to him that the coming together of these two
would be one of fate’s masterpieces at the practical joke. And how old
Clearwater, the risen from farm hand, the intoxicated aristocrat, the
unending snob, would rage and rave!
_Also_--and this was the most important of all, for Sayler never did
anything that wasn’t a move in his game-- Also--he wanted George Helm.
For purposes that need not here be gone into, Sayler had ordered the
Democrats to make a furious assault upon his protégé and ally and
master, the plutocracy. Hazelrigg, obeying orders, had selected Helm
to lead the attack, because Helm was about the only available man
not publicly suspected of crookedness and hypocrisy, was an earnest,
sincere and effective speaker, shrewd and sane. After Sayler heard Helm
speak, Hazelrigg hunted him up at the University Club. Those clubs to
which men of all political faiths can and do belong are most useful for
meetings of this sort. Said Hazelrigg:
“What do you think of him, Senator?”
“Of Helm?” said Sayler. A non-committal smile--and that was all.
“A dangerous man, I’d say,” proceeded Hazelrigg. “He looks like a
farmer and he’s homely as a horse. But there’s nothing of the jay about
that brain of his. And how he does wake up, and wake things up, when he
gets that lanky form of his straight on his big feet.”
Sayler smiled again. He was a loquacious man, like all men of abounding
mentality All lakes that are copiously fed must copiously overflow. But
he had the big man’s usual false reputation for taciturnity. He was
never anything but silent, or at most terse, with understrappers. That
sort of cattle had to be dealt with carefully.
“He’s doing what I asked him to do, too damn well,” said Hazelrigg.
“I’ll have to choke him off.”
Sayler, however, was resolved to give his clients of the plutocracy a
thoroughgoing scare. Said he:
“Oh, why not let him alone for the present, Hazelrigg?” Sayler was one
of those who give orders in the form of interrogative suggestions.
“But he makes me nervous,” objected the Democratic boss. “He’s
spreading like wildfire. I may have to nominate him for governor.”
“Why not?” said Sayler. A sentimental smile; he was thinking of the
“match.”
“But--damn it, he’d likely be elected.”
“Well--a good beating might do my party a world of good. We’ve been in
too long.”
“But--I’m afraid I can’t get any _hold_ on him.”
Sayler deigned no answer but a satirical smile.
“He’d probably make four years of merry hell. A governor can do a lot
in this state. He can _do_; so he doesn’t dare talk without doing, like
most governors.”
“He’d make a good governor,” said Sayler.
“Yes--if I could get some _hold_ on him.”
Sayler’s eyes were amused. Said he--and he had the habit of being
intensely relevant while seeming to be most irrelevant:
“Curious jaw, that young fellow’s got. Did you notice how long it
is from ear to chin? There’s a foolish notion about that--a long
chin is a sign of strength. It means nothing--nor does a short chin.
It’s the length of the jaw that makes persistence--endurance--and
the unafraidness that advances without a tremor where even courage
hesitates. An interesting young man.”
Hazelrigg had never heard so long--or so puzzling--a speech from his
secret chieftain. He said desperately:
“I give you fair warning, Senator, he may make it damned interesting
for _us_ if we aren’t careful.”
Sayler laughed pleasantly. “I wish he would. I’m tired of fighting
mere cranks--or knaves attacking us simply to shake us down. Why is
it, Hazelrigg, that the best can be changed into the worst? To find
an absolutely abandoned woman, don’t look among the girls from the
lower classes. Find one born a lady, bred a lady. To get a chap who’ll
swallow any insult with gusto, who’ll do any kind of dirty work with
pleasure--go among the fallen gentlemen. Several in this club.”
Sayler strolled away. Hazelrigg was laughing--uncomfortably. He said to
himself, “Well, if the Senator was rapping me, he was banging his own
conk, too.”
Sayler had brought Helm and Miss Clearwater together at his house the
night before--had arranged it as soon as their chance meeting in his
presence had revealed to his shrewd eyes that there was something
peculiar in their relations, something unwarranted by so casual an
acquaintance as theirs apparently had been. And when, after he had
seen to it that they were left alone together, he had found them in
a state of nervousness that indicated anything but a smooth session,
he had decided that Helm had made the mistake of proposing too
precipitately--and had been refused. He now went down to the Capitol
to hunt Helm up.
An extraordinary amount of trouble for so distinguished a man to take
about an almost obscure youth of rugged appearance, one he knew hardly
at all. But Sayler was a profound man. It had been said of him that he
had ruined more young men than any man of his time. It was his habit to
seek out any youth who showed, to his acute insight into human nature,
indications of unusual abilities. As there are not many such under our
system of crushing in infancy or near it, all but a very few of the
very strongest or luckiest, he had plenty of time left over for his
other affairs. When he had won the personal liking of such a young man,
he proceeded to show him--by ways of most delicate subtlety--how wise
and sensible and just it was for a man of ambition to come in with the
triumphant classes, and not let any academic sentimentality attach him
to the lost and hopeless and morally doubtful cause of the masses.
For a few years Sayler had drawn about himself, had drawn to the
support of his policy of the earth for the strong and the sly, scores
of the brightest young men of the Middle West. They served him well.
They imbibed his genial philosophy of mingled generosity and cynicism.
And in exchange for the support and the power they gave him, he gave
them office and money and fame. He regarded himself as a benefactor.
His young men regarded him as a benefactor. Only cranks denounced him
as a procurer and a rake of the vilest description.
He had seen great possibilities in this big, unformed, young state
senator, with the gift for eloquent clear statement and with the voice
and the eyes that captivated. He purposed to be his benefactor.
Helm was alone in one of the committee rooms, absorbed in the agitated
composition of a letter. There were all the obvious signs that much
time and paper were being consumed in vain. Sayler paused a moment to
look well at his proposed next “victim,” as the cranks would have put
it. That long, lean, powerful form, uncouth yet curiously graceful--and
somehow so intensely magnetic! That huge, rough-looking head, the
strong features, the out-door skin. But Sayler saw only the superb
line of the head, the long reach of the jaw. Said he to himself: “This
fellow _looks_ more worth getting than any I’ve ever tried for.”
He advanced and laid his hand on Helm’s shoulder. Said he, as Helm
looked up, startled:
“I’m going to take a great liberty with you, Helm. I’m somewhat
older--but not old enough to be out of your class. And I’m a friend
of--of _hers_--and I want to be a friend of yours.”
The color flooded poor George’s face. He did not know what to do.
The man-and-woman game was as strange to him as sailor life to
the plainsman. And Sayler had adroitly leaped over the barrier of
sensitiveness which Helm had begun to build about his inmost self as
soon as he had begun to talk.
“I know you’re writing to her,” proceeded the frank and simple Sayler,
“and I’m sure it’s something foolish. The thing to do is to go and face
her. She’s leaving this afternoon.”
“To-day!” exclaimed Helm, puzzled. “She said last night she was staying
a week.”
“She’s leaving--because of you. When a woman thinks highly enough of a
man to fly from him, all he needs do to get her is run her down.”
“She’s leaving?” said Helm. He began to tear up the paper. “Leaving on
my account.” He gave a laugh of relief. “Then it’s all settled, and I
don’t need to write.” He tore the paper into little bits and sent them
to join the mass of similar little bits in the basket. “Evidently she
got her head back this morning--just as I did. I wonder what there is
about night time that makes people so excited and----”
“And courageous,” said Sayler. “I wish I’d had the daring to do the
things the night has urged me to do.”
Helm shook his head laughingly. “The night’s insane, the day’s sane,”
retorted he. “I went crazy last night, Mr. Sayler. I’ve got so
little that I have to skimp to get along at all--and my prospects
of any more money are mighty poor, I can tell you.” With a humorous
twinkle, “You see, I’m not on your side--the buttered side. I’m on
the other side where there isn’t any butter. Anyhow, I’ve no use for
a wife--especially such a wife as that sort of a woman would be. And
she-- Why, she wouldn’t want me as a husband if I was the last man on
earth.”
“Nonsense!” said Sayler. “Under all that trumpery flummery she’s just a
woman, and wants what any other woman wants--a _man_. And I think, my
friend, that you come pretty near to sizing up to that description.”
“She don’t want me, nor I her,” insisted Helm. “It was nothing but
plain lunacy, my asking her to marry me and her accepting.”
Sayler was so astounded that he almost betrayed himself. His eyes
sparkled sentimentally, and he gave the younger man a resounding clap
on the shoulder. Why, the conquest was as good as made! “She accepted
you, Helm, because she wants you. Last night she knew her real mind. By
daylight, she’s full of--of all sorts of pitiful fears. Go save her,
Helm. Go to her. As soon as she’s told her father, and he begins to
fight you, everything’s safe. I know her. She isn’t a quitter, and her
father will say things that will make her wild with rage--and with love
for you.”
By this time neither of these men, drawn together by their many
traits of mind and character in common, had the slightest sense of
strangeness. They felt like old friends. Helm said:
“But _I_ don’t want _her_, Sayler. I’ve got no money for her--no time
for her--no place for her.”
“You love her--don’t you?” said Sayler audaciously.
Helm slowly collapsed into one of his uncouth poses.
“You see--you do. That means--what? Why, that you’ve got to have her. A
man of your sort is no good with a thing like that unsettled.”
Helm reflected. “No,” he finally said. “I’ve put her out of my mind
before, and I can do it again. Whenever I don’t want to think of
anything, I get together so many other things to worry about that there
isn’t room or time to worry about it. She’s flying. Let her fly. That
settles it.”
“Didn’t you tell me you proposed to her?”
Helm nodded.
“And that she accepted you?”
“But it’s all over,” said Helm.
“By no means,” declared the adroiter man. “She has given you her
promise. She will say nothing because she will not wish to hurt you.
But she’ll keep to her promise until you release her.”
Helm looked dismal. “Is that the way those things are managed?”
“You’ll ruin her life, Helm. You’ve got to go to her--like a man. Don’t
do a cowardly thing--such as silence, or writing a foolish note. Face
her. It’s the only square thing.”
And to Helm it seemed so. He groaned.
“Come along. I’ll go with you, and see that you and she have a chance
for an undisturbed talk.”
“Wait a minute. I want to think.” Helm went to the window and stared
out into the capitol grounds. Sayler seated himself, lit a cigar and
read a newspaper. Never had cake of his been spoiled by messing at the
baking but unbaked dough. Helm took much more than the one minute he
had asked for. When he turned, it was to say with the composure of a
man under control:
“Thank you, Sayler--you’ve done me a good turn. I am nothing of a
lady’s man. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have done something that as
you say would have been contemptible. I’m ready when you are.”
Rarely is there a successful man--even the crude seeker of petty power
rising to foreman of the gang of laborers--who has not, however tough
his skin or hide may seem to be, a supersensitive nervous system, more
acute than that of ordinary men and women, though they may pretend to
the most delicate sensitiveness. Sayler was as sensitive as he seemed
phlegmatic. He never failed to sense the mood of the person he was
with. Therefore, he dropped the subject of Eleanor and talked speeches.
Helm, another man of that same acute sensibility, responded as if
he had no concern in the world beyond discussion of how speeches
should be worked up and delivered. Sayler, deeply interested in the
subject and in the man, led him on to describe his own method, this so
sympathetically--rather than adroitly--that Helm took from his pocket
an old letter on the blank side of whose single sheet he had outlined
the “backbone” of a speech he was to make against a perpetual grant of
a big trolley franchise. The franchise meant, of course, the creation
of a huge mass of stocks and bonds which would enable many generations
of a certain group of the upper class to live luxuriously by taking
impudent toll from the masses in exchange for no service rendered.
“I shall take up the franchise in a series of speeches,” explained
Helm. “In each speech I’ll make one point and only one. That’s always
my method. If you want to dazzle a crowd, you make a speech full of
good points. But if you want to convince them, you take one point and
drive it home with a succession of blows, all on the head of that same
nail.”
Sayler nodded. “Won’t you let me see that ‘backbone’ as you call it?”
he asked.
“Nail is a better name,” said Helm.
“Nail for the lid of the coffin of the trolley franchise grab,” said
Sayler.
“I hope so,” said Helm.
“So do I,” rejoined Sayler.
Helm gave him the sheet of paper and Sayler read in Helm’s minute hand
this series of notes:
Luxurious idlers.
Ladies and gentlemen. The more of them we have the poorer we become.
Proof:
_Comfort_ means wealth and leisure to enjoy--that is, comfort in the
lady and gentleman’s sense of the word.
Leisure to enjoy means little or no labor.
But wealth can be created only by laboring; wealth is nothing but the
proceeds of labor.
Therefore,
To have _comfort_, in the lady and gentleman sense, in the sense in
which our new luxury-mad upper class is determined to have it, means
that one must “appropriate”--that is, steal--the proceeds of the
labor of others.
First corollary: That the more “comfortable” the upper class becomes,
the more of the proceeds of the labor of others it must be stealing.
Second corollary: Since the amount of labor a man can do is
necessarily limited by his strength, then the more of the proceeds
of his labor is stolen from him, the less there is left for him and
the worse off he becomes.
General conclusion: The more ladies and gentlemen we have, the harder
we must work and the poorer we must become.
Sayler read this document through twice. Then he handed it back to
Helm. He was smiling cynically to himself. Said he:
“Q. E. D. But--why did you show it to _me_?”
Helm’s gaze rested gravely upon that of the plutocratic chieftain for
the Middle West. He replied:
“I see that you want to be friends with me. Why, I don’t know. I am
willing--more than willing to be friends with you. But I want you to
have no delusions. I want you to know just where I stand--where I shall
_always_ stand.”
“I hope so,” lied Sayler, with a generous manliness that half fooled
himself. “I’m not a zealot like you. I don’t believe in men, in human
nature. I think progress comes through the fierce struggle of brutality
and cunning against the stupid shiftlessness and indolence of mankind.
I admit there are arguments for another view. They happen not to
convince me. But, believing as I do, I am more interested in the game
than in principles. To me it is simply a game. And so, I like to see
good players on both sides. I’d hate to have you come over to our side.
God knows, your side is badly enough off for good players.”
Helm’s smile put into his rugged face a touch of fanaticism--as
tremendous earnestness is called in these days when to be interested in
anything but accumulation and appetite is regarded as eccentric. Said
he:
“My side, as you call it, doesn’t need any players at all. It is
simply--to change the figure--the irresistibly sweeping current. I am
swimming with it, you against it.”
Sayler surprised him by saying reflectively:
“I’ve thought of that. Sometimes I believe it.”
“The right thing--the thing that’s in accord with progress,” said Helm,
“doesn’t need champions. The rainstorm doesn’t need umbrellas. But the
men who’ve got to go out in it--they do.”
Sayler was admiring Helm’s manner. It was not the manner of the
condemned man--at least, if it was, it was that of a condemned man of
the type that tranquilly accepts the inevitable. Yet Sayler knew that
Helm was moving consciously toward one of those crises that put the
souls of men to the cruelest test. Sayler understood him thoroughly
now, understood the strong and tenacious emotions that lay hid, or
rather lay unexposed to any but expert eyes, beneath the surface look
of the homely provincial man--provincial now, rather than bucolic, as
he had been when he first burst upon the astonished and amused town
of Harrison, with his strange red beard, and his much-tailed cheap
broadcloth. “How this man could love a cause or a woman!” thought the
sentimental overlord of bosses and machines. “But,” he added, “neither
is appreciative--or worth loving.”
Where Sayler fell short of greatness was in that near-sightedness
which prevented him from seeing the big truths that dominate the
horizon of life--such truths as that the high happiness is not of
the give-and-take variety but is the capacity for sheer giving. The
deep and serene joy of Helm, secure from all surface storms, was the
possession of a nature capable of _giving_.
Helm had not accomplished his only object. He had simply convinced
Sayler of his value, not in the least of his inflexibility. Sayler
prided himself on thorough knowledge of human nature. Convictions were,
in his opinion, merely the creatures of circumstances. Change Helm’s
circumstances, change his outlook upon the world from the uncomfortable
to the comfortable, and he would become a tower of strength for the
existing order, for the guardianship of the masses by the upper
class--a service for which the masses ought to be glad to pay with part
of their only asset, their labor.
At the suburban house he had taken for that legislature session, Sayler
put Helm--not into the library; he was too tactful to make such a
blunder as to give him the reminiscent surroundings of the previous
evening--but into a home-like little smoking-room, next to the billiard
room. Then he went in search of Eleanor.
Not often is a man able to gratify so many widely differing tastes
as was Sayler by bringing together Helm and Eleanor. It pleased his
natural amiability, his sentimentality, his love of mischief, his
passion for political scheming, his impatience with the pompous and
wearisome pretensions of her father, and several other minor tastes.
Perhaps, as he entered the upstairs sitting-room where Eleanor was
giving orders to her maid, amiability was uppermost in his mind.
Amiability was one of his strongest traits; it is always a strong
trait in the characters of politicians, and expands with use and with
pretense. Said he when the maid had gone:
“George Helm is down stairs.”
Before she could control herself, she had betrayed herself by looking
wildly round to escape.
Sayler ignored and went tranquilly on:
“I told him I was sure you’d be glad to see him. I know what a good
judge of character you are. You must have seen what a remarkable man he
is--about the strongest I’ve come across, among the younger men. He’ll
be nominated for governor next fall--and elected, I suspect. And he’ll
go up--and up. _There’s_ the sort of man you ought to marry, Eleanor.”
“I don’t want to marry _anybody_,” cried she with the pettish anger of
a child.
Sayler made mental note of this sign of nervous tension, and proceeded:
“You are always saying that a husband who had already arrived would be
uninteresting in comparison with one who had the makings of a career in
him, and whom the wife could help--could work with, and go up with.
Here’s your chance--and as good a one as ever was offered a woman.”
Eleanor was listening--was looking at the wily schemer with wistful
eyes. “You’re not joking?” said she.