to you. What our side needs is another leader such as I’ve tried to
be--one who shows the plutocratic fools their true interest--not to
kill but to pet and fatten the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
Helm was thinking. Sayler felt encouraged. He went on:
“You can make yourself as rich as you please. Or, you can remain
poor, if you like. You can--in fact, you must--keep your independent
following--and increase it. It is the power you can use to keep your
plutocratic clients in order.”
Sayler observed the thoughtful face of the young governor narrowly.
Then he went on:
“There’s plenty of time to consider this proposition of mine. I guess
it will be attractive or not to you according as you decide that you
can or cannot control your plutocratic clients to reasonably, humanly
decent conduct. I think you can. That’s why I make you the offer.”
“You had another matter about which you wished to speak to me?” said
Helm.
“A good guess. Yes--I want to talk T. and M.”
“To-morrow,” said Helm. “Not to-day.”
“I suppose you know that your father-in-law----”
“I’ve learned it.”
“Being a public official, he’s had to keep his corporation connections
very dark indeed. Perhaps I should have told you. But I knew the secret
in a way that made it difficult for me to speak.”
“It didn’t matter,” said Helm, grimly. “I’ve learned in good time.”
Sayler rose. “Your father-in-law telegraphs me that he’ll arrive
to-night.”
“Keep him away from my house until eleven to-morrow.”
“You wish to tell your wife first?”
“No. I shall let him tell her. But no one ought to hear agitating news
before the middle of the morning--after the day is well started but
while there’s still most of the day left for thinking it over.”
Sayler was touched by this evidence of Helm’s minute thoughtfulness
for the woman he loved. “Thank you for that suggestion,” said he.
“I’ve been letting my secretary tell me all sorts of news at any old
time--with disastrous results to my health. My compliments to your
wife. I’m hoping to see her before I go back to Washington.”
* * * * *
At noon the following day Helm left his office--an hour earlier than
usual--and went home. At the sitting-room door he paused. After a brief
hesitation he opened the door and entered. As he expected, there were
his wife and her father. Helm glanced at the troubled face of his wife.
Without greeting his father-in-law he said to her:
“He has told you?”
“It’s true then, George?” replied she.
He nodded.
Clearwater interposed with angry dignity:
“I’ve been laying the whole case before my daughter, sir--your proposed
attempt to disgrace and to ruin me.”
Helm now looked at him. “You have had six warnings,” said he. “You
could have made your corporation obey the laws--or you could have sold
your holdings and gotten away from it.”
“We have disobeyed no laws,” retorted Clearwater. “We have simply
disregarded alleged laws enacted by demagogues to compel us to pay
blackmail or go out of business.”
“Your own lawyers drew the laws,” replied Helm, “and Sayler ordered
them passed six years ago. But they were intended for use against any
rival to your monopoly that might spring up.”
“You’ll let us alone, or you’ll never hold another office in this
state,” cried Clearwater. “I came here to ask my daughter to use her
influence with you to save yourself from destruction. I had forgotten
what an obstinate visionary you were. But I think even you will
hesitate before breaking her heart, bowing her head with shame.”
“I’ve told father,” said Eleanor, “that I haven’t any influence with
you. I’d not venture to speak to you about a political matter--unless I
understood it. And I’ve been so busy with the baby these last two years
that I don’t really know anything any more.”
“Eleanor, I’ve explained it all to you,” said Clearwater, deeply
agitated. “If he goes on, it means disgrace to me. I can punish
him--and I shall. But I’ll have to leave public life.”
Eleanor looked inquiringly at her husband. He said:
“Yes, dear.”
“George, you can’t do that!” cried she.
Helm winced. He said gravely:
“Your father--through his corporation--put it squarely up to me either
to prosecute him or to re-license his corporation for robbing the
people of this state.”
“That’s a lie!” cried Clearwater. “It’s as honest a business as there
is!”
“Yes,” said Helm, “it’s as honest a _big_ business as there is--and as
dishonest.”
“You can’t disgrace _my_ father, George,” said Eleanor. “You can’t send
my cousins to the penitentiary. Why, they’re like my brothers.”
Helm looked gravely at her. He said slowly:
“You are their cousin. You are Senator Clearwater’s daughter. But you
are my wife--you are our son’s mother.”
She was deathly pale, and her eyes looked her terror, as she said
breathlessly:
“_My_ father! Oh, George, you _can’t_!”
“Yes,” said Helm gently. “I can--and I must--and, Ellen, I will.”
“_You_ asking me to choose between you and my father!” exclaimed she.
“No, Ellen,” replied he. “I am your husband. There can’t be any choice
between me and any one else on earth.”
They gazed at each other, he as white as she. But she was trembling,
while he stood like a strong tree. She said:
“Yes--I am yours, George. But--you will give me a wound I’ll never
recover from.”
He said: “It will give _us_ a wound that’ll never heal. But--we’ll
suffer together, my love, as we have been happy together.”
Clearwater watched them with awe. It was the first time in all his life
that he had ever seen love--the reality of love. And the sight was so
overpowering that it overwhelmed his emotions of terror and rage and
hate. When he finally spoke it was with a kind of hysteria:
“My God, Eleanor! If your dead mother could have known that her
daughter----”
Helm put his arm round his wife and interrupted sternly:
“If her dead mother could have seen you at your deviltry through that
corporation--could have seen the starving wretches in your lumber
camps--the blighted children toiling in your mines, the blood and filth
on your dividend dollars, every one of them!”
“He lies, Eleanor!” cried her father. “He is a half-crazed crank----”
“He is my husband, father,” interrupted Eleanor. And very proud she
looked as she said it.
“You will do nothing to help me!” cried her father, in a sudden agony
of fear.
Eleanor was about to reply. Helm shook his head, led her gently toward
the door. He said:
“Leave us alone, please.”
“Eleanor,” shrieked her father, “if you yield to this man, if you give
up your father to be destroyed by him, I shall disinherit you, I shall
curse you. I shall curse you. I shall curse you!”
The daughter shivered from head to foot. Helm bore her firmly on,
released her at the threshold. She cried, “George, let me stay! Please,
dear! Let me talk with both of you. You are both so hard----”
Her voice had been faltering, for again he had fixed her gaze with
those kind, inflexible eyes of his. She became silent. In the hall he
kissed her, released her. Then he returned to the sitting-room, closing
the door behind him. He said to Clearwater, quietly, almost gently:
“You had better tell your corporation to yield. If you don’t, it will
break her heart, as you see.”
“We will not yield!” cried Clearwater, shaking his fist in Helm’s face.
“And after you have actually done your dastardly work, she will hate
you. You think you own her, body and soul. You’ll find out afterward.
She will hate you, she will leave you.”
“She will neither leave me, nor hate me.”
There was in his voice the finality not of mere conviction, but of
truth itself. For he knew--as only those who really love and really
are loved know--what he and his wife were to each other--the union that
is a fusion which not even death can dissolve.
After a pause he went on:
“Shall I tell the attorney-general that formal notice of yielding will
come to-morrow?”
Silence. Then Clearwater sullenly:
“Day after to-morrow.”
Helm reflected, said: “That will do.”
“You have won,” sneered Clearwater. “Not much of a victory. You knew
you could count on her, hard-hearted fool that she is.”
“Count on her?” replied Helm, tranquilly. “As on myself. And I may
add that I knew what _you_ would do. What else could you do, if you
failed to make my wife turn traitor and ask me to dishonor myself that
you might go on robbing. Don’t try to shift and twist out of your
agreement with me. Next time there will be no warning.”
Clearwater reduced himself to the calm fury that is looking forward
with a kind of serenity to a certain and complete revenge. Said he:
“This is the last year you’ll ever hold office in this state--or
anywhere in this country.”
“Then your people have to live decent only about eight months longer,”
was Helm’s amiable rejoinder. “I guess they can manage it.”
“I am going,” said Clearwater, moving toward the door. “I hope I shall
never see either of you again. I shall hound you both into poverty.
Then--if you wish me to take the child, I’ll take it--provided you give
me full possession.”
“I shall remember,” said Helm, simply.
His manner was that of a man who has nothing to say, who will answer
any direct question with unruffled courtesy, who will listen as long
as his visitor wishes to talk, and patiently. Clearwater, discouraged,
cast about for some speech that would help him out of the room. He
could find none. So he abruptly departed, feeling more uncomfortable
than angry. He could not understand his own feelings, his unprecedented
lack of spirit. It did not occur to him that Helm, matchless as a
manager of men, and far Clearwater’s superior in intelligence, might
have been responsible for this puzzling state of his.
As soon as his father-in-law had had time to get clear of the house,
Helm went up to his wife. The “fat one” was solemnly inspecting his
bright blocks in the middle of the floor. Eleanor was sitting by the
window, gazing out into the tree-tops. She slowly became conscious that
her husband was at the threshold. She turned her eyes toward him.
Said he:
“He’s gone. He has agreed to yield. So the prosecution won’t be
necessary.”
Instead of the expression of relief he expected, she looked as if
she had not heard. She came toward him; she laid her hands upon his
shoulders and looked up at him. The “fat one” paused in the inspection
of a block to observe them--his father and mother; he was trying hard
to get acquainted with them, and to make them acquainted with him.
Eleanor said:
“I never knew until to-day what love meant--and that I loved you.”
He laughed gently, and gently kissed her. There were tears in his eyes.
The “fat one” dropped the block and opened wide his mouth and shut
tight his eyes and emitted a lusty howl--the beginning of a series
that was suspended by his lapsing into his bad habit of holding his
breath. Eleanor caught him up and tried to shake him back to howling.
But he continued to hold his breath, to grow a deeper and deeper purple.
“If he only wouldn’t do that!” cried she. “I thought he was cured of
it.”
“Give him to me, mother,” said George, intensely alarmed, though he
knew the baby would come out of it all right. He handled the “fat one”
awkwardly, but it was touching as well as amusing to see the little
creature in those long arms. He and Eleanor shook and patted and
pleaded. But not until they were quite beside themselves did the “fat
one” consent to resume. With a gurgle and gasp he suddenly expelled the
long-held breath in a whoop and a shriek--a hideous sound, but how it
thrilled those two frightened parents!
“I really ought to spank him,” said Ellen with a hysterical laugh. “He
does it on purpose.”
“You fat rascal!” said George, waving a long forefinger at his son.
The fat one seized it and abruptly began to smile. Peace being thus
restored, George--of an analytical mind--said: “Whatever possessed him
to burst out that way?”
Eleanor laughed. “I think he was jealous,” she suggested. She kissed
the “fat one” tenderly. “And he had reason to be,” she added.
They played on the floor with the baby and the blocks--no; they played,
using the baby and the blocks as an excuse. After a while George said:
“How little do you suppose we can live on?”
“Oh, as little as anybody,” replied she carelessly, intent upon the
house of blocks they were making. “You see, so long as we’ve got
ourselves, we don’t need much else. You’re building your side too thin.”
George filled out the lower walls with a second row, like the walls on
her side. Said he:
“Sayler offered me his job--running the two machines.”
Eleanor gave a faint smile of amusement--as much attention as she could
spare for an “outside” matter when she was teaching the “fat one’s”
clumsy hands to lay blocks straight.
“Shall I ask him to dinner when I see him this afternoon, to thank him
and tell him I won’t take it?”
“Yes--do ask him,” said Ellen. “He brought us together--when you were
trying to get away. No, baby, not that way--the long side across.”
“Your father told me he was going to cut you off--and the baby, too,
unless we gave it to him to raise.”
Ellen smiled--amused, a little sad. She said: “Poor papa! He ought to
be ashamed of himself for trying to interfere between you and me.” A
pause of several minutes, filled with building--repairing the ravages
of a wild thrust of the “fat one’s” fists. Then her mind went back to
what he had said.
“I suppose he will cut us off,” observed she. “I knew it would come to
that, when we married. I’m sorry. You might have used the money in your
politics.”
“No,” said George, working steadily away at the castle. “Money’s of no
use in our kind of politics, Ellen. It’s been tried again and again. It
always fails. You see, we’re trying to make everybody see that it’s to
his interest to wake up and work. And the only money we want is what
our people must learn to invest, themselves.”
Eleanor was building a tower now, and delicate work it was. “Wouldn’t
you have let me take it, George, if he had given it to me?”
“No,” said George. “We don’t need it, and we’d not let the baby be
spoiled by it.”
A long and busy pause, then Eleanor: “I’ve known _some_ nice people
with money. But they’d have been nicer, I guess, without it. It’s so
hard to have friends or to be friends if one has money--lots of money.
George Helm, do untwist your legs. You’ll get awful cramps.”
“They’re used to it,” replied the governor and statesman. “Now, listen!
now, fat one!”
And with a wild shout of glee the “fat one” fell upon the finished
castle, fist and foot, and demolished it, and rolled in the ruins with
his father and mother mauling him and each other. The waitress, coming
to announce lunch, caught them. But she was used to it. She laughed at
them and they laughed back at her. On the way down, George said:
“I’ve figured it all out. I could force them to give me a second term.
But I want to get my independent movement under way. So I’ll let Sayler
and Hazelrigg do as they like, and I’ll run independent--and take a
defeat.”
“I’ll be glad to get away from this house,” said Eleanor. “I sometimes
think it’s damp and bad for the baby.”
“Oh, we’ll be back here in a few years, all right,” said George. “I’ve
got a lot of work to do in this job of governor.”
“Well--by that time the baby won’t any longer be a baby----”
She stopped short on the stairway. “Oh, George!” she cried. “Isn’t
that a _frightful_ thought! If we could only keep him as he is--and
ourselves as we are--always!”
George did not like the thought either. But he said cheeringly, “I
guess we’ll find as many things to like in to-morrow as we’ve found in
to-day. Anyhow, let’s hope so.”
She gave his arm a squeeze. “_Hope_ so? We _know_ so! As many things?
More things, George--every day more and more things--to like--to
love--to live for.”
George was suddenly so happy that he carried her and the baby the rest
of the way down stairs--she in one arm, the baby in the other, with
equal ease. What a good old world it was, after all--if one only took
it right! The one thing it lacked was “the people.” If there were a
real “people”--intelligent, persistent, not easily fooled, no longer
conquerable and easy to rob and oppress through their ignorance and
their prejudices--if there were “the people,” refusing to be ruled
except by and for themselves, what a heaven of a world it would become!
Well--the thing to do was to fall to and do his share toward making
this “people.”
They were at lunch--a little table, he, his wife, the baby in a
high-chair. George and Eleanor looked at each other, and their eyes
filled; for the same thought came to both. The “fat one” halted his
spoon on its way to his mouth and looked inquiringly from one to the
other. Said she unsteadily, laughing to keep from crying:
“Don’t, George--don’t look at me like that. We’ll make the baby cry.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.