Albert seemed in an amiable mood as, divesting himself of his outer
garments, he drew up a chair by the fire, offered Seth a cigar from his
case and lighted one himself. He examined Seth’s face by the flame of
the match, as the latter lighted his cigar, and appeared to be satisfied
with the inspection.
“Sit down here,” he said pleasantly. “I want a good long talk with you.
It was too bad to keep you waiting so long, but there was no help for
it. I couldn’t see the people in New York that I wanted to see until
to-day, and it was only by good fortune that I caught the train as it
was. Then we were delayed on the road, of course. If an engineer on this
one-horse line should ever get a train through on time I believe he’d
have a fit, just from the shock of the thing. And then I had to wake
up the man at the livery stable in Thessaly--fancy his being asleep at
eight o’clock!--and he would only bring me as far as the foot of the
hill, because he had been up to a dance all the previous night. But of
course, in my position now, running for office, I couldn’t complain.
Beside, I ought to be used to all these little delights of rural
existence by this time.”
Albert stretched his feet out comfortably on the rail of the stove, and
leaned back in his chair with an air of enjoyment. He had been growing
very stout this past year, Seth noticed, and the bald spot on his crown
had visibly spread. He seemed unwontedly good-natured too--a natural and
proper accompaniment to increasing obesity.
“But all this has nothing to do with my asking you to come here, has it?
Did Workman raise any objections to your coming?”
“No, of course not, after he read your letter.”
The lawyer smiled complacently: “I thought that letter would fetch him.
Of course, my boy, the harshness of the letter was for effect on him,
not on you. It simply gave you a chance to say you had _got_ to come.”
Seth did not find himself wholly clear on this point, but he nodded
assent. Albert looked at him, and seemed a trifle annoyed at having
the conversation all to himself, but he went on after a moment’s pause,
speaking now with good humored gravity:
“First of all, I ought to tell you how proud I have been of your fine
progress on the _Chronicle_. I doubt if there is another young man of
your age in the State who has done so much climbing in so short a time.
I take a real satisfaction in thinking that you are my brother. I can’t
tell you how often I say to myself: ‘Albert Fairchild, the best thing
you ever did in your life, or ever will do, was to give that boy a
chance.’”
This was gall and wormwood to the young man. He had almost succeeded
in regaining the composure so abruptly scattered by Albert’s unexpected
arrival. The fluttering agitation came back now, and brought with it a
painful sense of shame and self-reproach as Albert’s words recalled the
scene which his entrance had interrupted. Seth did not look his brother
in the face, but murmured some commonplace of gratitude. He was glad
that there was a red shade on the lamp; it might conceal his flush of
humiliation.
Albert went on: “But you were not invited here so peremptorily just
to hear this. Brotherly pride and affection are things that don’t need
words--that can be taken for granted--are they not?”
Seth tried to smile, and said, “Yes, of course they are.”
“Well, youngster, I am taking them for granted in your case. Mind, as I
said in my letter, I am not saying a word about gratitude. I don’t want
the thing to be put on that footing at all. Brothers ought to be able
to help each other, and all that, without lugging in the question of
gratitude. I am talking to you as one man should to another who bears
the same name, and was of the same mother. By George! poetry, isn’t it?
Well, the point is this. The time has come when you can help me, help
me immensely. I am not in this fight for myself alone. Personally I
care very little about going to Congress. But I have got the family to
consider, and I am in a position now where I can make a ten-strike for
it. A good deal of it I have created myself. These countrymen up here in
Dearborn County fancy they are shrewd politicians, but it has taken
me, almost a novice in politics, less than two years to get the whole
machinery right under my thumb. It’s in the blood, I tell you! There
wasn’t another manager in this whole section that could hold a candle to
the old Senator, in his day,--and if he could keep track of things now I
imagine he’d admit that his grandson was no slouch.”
Albert chuckled quietly at the slang word, the expressiveness of which
pleased him, and at the vision of the satisfaction of the departed
ancestor which it suggested. He proceeded:
“I can’t tell you all my plans, but I am in a big combination. I have
made use of my large connections as a lawyer in New York to arrange some
things which would open your eyes if you knew them. It is all settled
that I am going on to a Committee which will be worth while, I can tell
you. And then, once started in the thing, with my grandfather’s name
back of me, there is no telling where I may not climb. A name that has
figured in the blue book as ours has is a tremendous power. The Republic
derides heredity, but the public believes in it. It is human nature,
my boy. And in this rehabilitation of the family name you have as much
concern as I have--in fact more than I have--for you will enjoy even
more than I shall the fame and wealth I am going to get out of this
thing, for the family.”
“Where does the wealth come in, Albert? There is no money honestly to be
made in politics.” Seth had forgotten his earlier embarrassment now, and
the spirit of dispute was rising within him.
“My dear fellow,” said the elder brother, comfortably contemplating
the rings of cigar smoke he was making, “to the wise there is money
everywhere. The word ‘honesty’ in politics is a purely relative term,
just as it is in your line, or in law, or in medicine. If we lawyers
strictly graded our charges by the net value of our services to our
clients, if doctors refused to make all calls upon patients that were
not altogether necessary, and based their bills rigidly upon the
actual good they had done--by George! the poor-houses would have to be
enlarged. Take your own business, for instance, or I ought to call it
a profession, too, I suppose. Are editors invariably candid with their
readers, do you think? Do they always tell the disagreeable truth about
people they make their money from? And don’t they have an open hand
behind the back about the same as other folks do? Occasionally, I admit,
an ass like our brother John does drift into the profession, and retains
his childhood belief that the moon is made of green cheese. But I have
noticed that such fellows as he, who run their papers on an exalted
moral plane, generally come around to borrow money from the ungodly,
toward the close of the year, to make their accounts balance. I am
sorry to see that John and Ansdell have filled your head with all this
nonsense. A newspaper man tearing his shirt in defense of financial
fastidiousness in politics presents rather a comical spectacle, if you
only knew it.”
“You have no right at all to say that!” Seth answered hotly. “I believe
firmly that the newspaper men of this country, considering their
influence and the great temptation to make money out of it, are as
honest a body of men as you can find in America. This conventional talk
about their venality is the cruellest kind of libel, and if you knew
them as I do you wouldn’t lend yourself to circulating it.”
“Oh, I am not entirely without acquaintance in this white-winged
profession of yours,” replied the lawyer, smilingly. “I know Mr.
Mortimer Samboye, for example. I could tell you too, you confiding
youngster, just his figure, and where the cheque, made payable to his
wife, was cashed.”
“If you do know about Samboye, you know what I believe to be the one
exception to the rule in the State. I don’t for a moment believe that
there is another editor whom your people could have bought. It is
an odious exception, to be sure, but exceptions prove the rule. If
journalists and journals were in the market, as you and your machine
friends seem to imagine, there would be no such widespread bolt against
your machine ticket to-day.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?”
The lawyer was getting vexed. He stood up, thrust his hands deep into
his trowsers pockets, and spoke with more sharpness than before.
“You think so! Why, man alive, this same d----d _Chronicle_ of yours
has been in the market since before you were born. I bet you to-day that
Workman would rather plank out five thousand dollars from his own pocket
than let me cross-examine him in the witness box on his recollections of
the _Chronicle’s_ record. Why, that is the very last paper in the State
that has a title to throw stones! Do you want to know when this new
reforming zeal of Workman’s was born? I can tell you. It was the day
that another man (Dick Folts, if you wish names), was appointed to the
Territorial Governorship that Workman wanted for his brother. So you
thought it was only high morality and noble patriotic sentiments that
ailed the _Chronicle_, did you? You never suspected that it was simply
a bad case of brother--that it all happened because Samuel M. Workman of
Toboggan was compelled to continue to adorn a private station? You think
the world is run on kid-gloved, scriptural ethics? It reminds me of
a novel I read here awhile ago. It set out to describe An American
Politician--and in almost every scene in the book where he appeared, he
was drinking tea in some lady’s drawing room, declaiming to the fair sex
on how he was going to reform politics. He thought he was a deuce of a
fellow, and so did the women and the author too. This politician was
a good sample of all your reformers. I tell you, the men who go to
afternoon teas in America, exert no more influence on American politics
than--than a hen who was too refined to scratch in the barn-yard for
worms would exert on the question of female suffrage. Now _don’t_ make
a fool of yourself, Seth. Your predecessor, Samboye, was in no way your
equal--some fellow at the club once, I remember, just hit him off in
a phrase which he had hunted up in the dictionary to sling at him: ‘a
nugipolyloquous numbskull ’--but he knew enough to feather his own
nest, and to take men as they are, and not as the Prophet Jeremiah might
think they ought to be. _Don’t_ make me angry with this pharisaical
nonsense! You are very young yet. You will see things differently when
you have rubbed up against the world a while longer.”
Seth also stood up now, with his hands deep in his pockets--a trick of
all the Fairchilds when they were excited.
“I have no desire to make you angry,” he answered, beginning with an
effort at calmness, but soon raising his voice, “and I shouldn’t have
dreamed of inflicting my juvenile views on you if you hadn’t insisted,
even to the point of a threat, on my coming here. I would rather not
argue the thing at all. We regard politics from totally different
standpoints. I believe that your methods and aims--by ‘your’ I mean your
wing of the party--are scandalous, corrupting and ruinous. I believe
that if some check is not put upon the rule of the machine, if the
drift of public acquiescence in debased processes of government is
not stopped, it will soon be too late to save even the form of our
institutions from the dry rot of venality.”
“Seems to me I’ve read all this. Don’t work your old leaders off on me.
Talk sense!” said Albert.
Seth dropped rhetoric: “All this is very real, very big, to me. To you
it is impracticable and meaningless. You don’t at all believe in the
dangers which are so apparent to me. Perhaps if you did you wouldn’t
care. That is all right. I have no desire to convert you, or to debate
the question with you. I simply want to explain that there is no
community of premises, even, between us on this subject. As for your
explanation of the motives underlying the _Chronicle’s_ attitude, I
shan’t contradict you. So far as I am concerned, the matter is not in
argument. It is enough for me that we bolt the State ticket, and occupy
the ground we do. It is no concern of mine by what path we got there.”
Albert had heard his brother through with contemptuous impatience. He
said now, with one foot on the stove hearth, and in a voice which,
by its very coldness of calm, ought to have warned Seth of the temper
underlying it:
“You may bolt the State ticket as much as you d----d please. I don’t
like your doing it, and it will injure you more than any efforts of mine
can make good, but I can’t help it, and it wasn’t for that that I wanted
to see you. But if you bolt _me_, Mr. Seth, or put so much as a straw in
my path, by God! I’ll grind you, and your paper, and everybody
responsible for it, finer than tooth-powder! However--we will exhaust
the other side of the subject first. I’ve had it in mind for a long
while, in fact ever since I first procured you a place there, to buy you
a share in the _Chronicle_. Workman would be glad of the ready money--he
itches for it as much as any living man--and it would be a good thing
for you. Would you like that?”
“You haven’t told me yet what you dragged me up here, away from my work,
for,” said Seth. “You presumably had an object of some sort.”
“Ah, you want to get down to business, do you? You shall have it, in a
nutshell. I want you to see Ansdell, and get him to promise that if I
beat him in the Convention he will support me squarely at the polls; I
want you to get a pledge from Workman that the _Chronicle_ will come out
for me, solid, the day after I am nominated. _That’s_ what I want, and
it is mighty little for _me_ to ask of _you!_ And you may tell Workman
for me that if he and his paper give me the smallest ground for
complaint, and waver in the least in backing me up, I’ll start a paper
in Tecumseh before Christmas that will crush the _Chronicle_ out of
sight. The paper is no good, anyway. I know hundreds of good citizens
who would rejoice to have a decent substitute for it.” The pride of the
editor was wounded. “You seem to worry a good deal about this worthless
paper, at all events,” he said, bitterly.
“Don’t bandy words with me, youngster!” cried Albert, scowling
and pacing the floor. “I want your answer, or the answer of your
employer--yes or no! I’ll have none of your impudence!”
Seth held his temper down. He could not help feeling that his brother,
from the fraternal standpoint at least, had some pretty strong arguments
on his side. He made answer:
“I should have no influence with Ansdell, one way or the other, even if
I talked with him. He knows his own business best, and if he has made up
his mind to a certain course, nothing that I could say would move him.
As for the _Chronicle_ we’ve kept our hands off, thus far, on your
account, and we’ve said nothing at all about your leading the Dearborn
County delegates into the machine camp at the State Convention, although
the whole rest of the State is ringing with it. But I am charged to say
that that is as much as we can do. If you are nominated, we can’t and
won’t support you. It is not a nice thing for me to have to say to you,
but there’s no good mincing matters. Besides, you know--there may be a
way out of it; you may not be nominated to-morrow.”
“All hell can’t prevent it!” The words came forth in an explosion of
wrath. Albert stamped his foot and clenched his fists as Seth had
never seen him do before. He tapped his breast three or four times,
significantly, as if there were something in the pocket to which he was
referring--Seth remembered the gesture long afterward--and repeated that
his nomination was assured. He seemed to dislike his passion, and
strive to restrain it, but the choleric vein between his brows grew more
swollen, and his black, keen eyes flashed more angrily than ever, as he
strode up and down before the stove.
“Yes, and I’ll be elected too! All the white-livered hounds in Adams
County, from my own brother up, shall not stop me! I’ll stump the
district every night and day till election. I’ll speak in Tecumseh--yes,
in Tecumseh, at the biggest meeting money and organisation can get
together--and I’ll handle this whole bolting business so’s to warm the
hearts of honest men all over the State. By God! I’ll shake Workman as a
terrier shakes a rat, in view and hearing of his whole community! Won’t
he squirm though! And won’t the crowd enjoy having him shown up!
And _you_”--there followed some savage personal abuse, profane in
form--“after to-morrow morning, never let me lay eyes on you again!”
“It is not for the pleasure of seeing you that I come here, ever,” Seth
retorted, the words coming quick and fierce. “Be sure I’d never trouble
you again, if you were the only one in this house!”
The lawyer’s eyes sparkled with a sardonic meaning, and Seth, as he
saw it, bit his tongue with impatience at the thoughtless form of his
speech; for he read in this cold, glancing light that nothing had been
lost upon his brother’s perception when he entered the room.
There was a full minute’s silence, in which the two men faced each
other. Albert was busy thinking how to put most effectively the things
he was now moved to say. At last he spoke, coolly, incisively once more,
while Seth, flushed and anxious, pretended to regulate the flame of the
lamp.
“Yes, I have no illusions about the motive of your visits to the farm.
I am not blind; even if I were, others about the house are not. I am not
going to say what you are doubtless expecting. I might point out to you
that a young man who comes to a brother’s house--I will say nothing of
the debt of gratitude he owes him--and steals chances to make love to
that brother’s wife, is a pitiful cur. Stop!”--for Seth had straightened
himself angrily at this epithet, despite his consciousness of
self-reproach.
“I repeat that I _might_ say this--but I will not. I prefer to view it
in another light. I don’t think you are a knave. To be that requires
intelligence. You are a fool,--a conceited, presumptuous, offensive
fool. You set yourself up to judge _me_; you arrogate to yourself airs
of moral superiority, and assume to regulate affairs of State by
the light of your virtue and wisdom--and you have not brains enough
meanwhile to take care of yourself against the cheapest wiles of a silly
woman, who amuses herself with young simpletons just to kill time. You
take upon yourself to lay down the law to a great National party--and
you don’t know enough to see through even so transparent a game as this.
Get out of my sight! I have wasted too much time with you. It annoys me
to think that such an idiot belongs to the family.”
Albert had rightly calculated that he could thus most deeply and surely
wound Seth, but he was mistaken in his estimate of the nature of the
response. If Seth’s vanity was scalded by his brother’s words, he at
least didn’t show it. But he did advance upon Albert with clenched
fists, and gleaming eyes, and shout fiercely at him:
“A man who will speak that way of his wife is a coward and a scoundrel!
And if it is my cousin Isabel he means, he is a liar to boot! If you
were not my brother----”
“If I were not, what then?”
Albert waited a moment for the answer, which the conflict between Seth’s
rage and his half-guilty consciousness choked in the utterance, and then
calmly turned on his heel and left the room, by the same outside door at
which he had entered.
As Seth went upstairs, he heard Isabel’s door close softly. “I wonder
how much of it she heard?” he said to himself.