fellows?”
Herman Beckman turned in his chair and stared at his son. Then he
laughed. “Now, that's a fine question to come from the honour man of a
law school! I hope, Fritz, that your oration to-night is going to have a
little more sense in it than that.”
The calling up of his oration made him reach out another clutching
hand to the vanished reporter. “But it's farcical, father, to be always
interviewed by a paper nobody reads.”
“Nobody--_reads_?”
“Why, nobody cares anything about the _Leader_. It's dead.”
Herman Beckman looked at his son sharply; something about him seemed
strange. He decided that he was nervous about the commencement
programme. Fritz had the one oration.
The boy had opened the drawer of his study table and was fingering some
papers he had taken out.
“Sure you know it?” the man asked with affectionate parental anxiety.
“Oh, I know it all right,” Fred answered grimly, and again the father
decided that he was nervous about the thing. He wasn't just like
himself.
The man walked to the window and stood looking across at the university
buildings. Colleges had always meant much to Herman Beckman. The very
day Fritz was born he determined that the boy was to go to college. It
was good to witness the fulfilment of his dreams. He turned his glance
to the comfortable room.
“Pretty decent comfortable sort of place, isn't it, father?” Fred asked,
following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the
student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an
inevitable part of the acquirement of learning.
It made his father laugh. “Yes, my boy, I should call it decent--and
comfortable.” He grew thoughtful after that.
“Pretty different from the place you had, father?”
“Oh--me? My place to study was any place I could find. Sometimes on top
of a load of hay, lots of times by the light of the logs. I've studied
in some funny places, Fritz.”
“Well, you _got_ there, father!” the boy burst out with feeling. “By
Jove, there aren't many of them _know_ the things you know!”
“I know enough to know what I don't know,” said the old man, a little
sadly. “I know enough to know what I missed. I wanted to go to college.
No one will ever know how I wanted to! I began to think I'd never feel
right about it. But I have a notion that when I sit there to-night
listening to you, Fritz, knowing that you're speaking for two hundred
boys, half of whose fathers did go to college, I think I'm going to feel
better about it then.”
The boy turned away. Something in the kindly words seemed as the cut of
a whip across his face.
“Well, Fritz,” his father continued, getting into his coat, “I'll
be going downtown. Leave you to put on an extra flourish or two.” He
laughed in proud parental fashion. “Anyway, I have some things to see
about.”
The boy stood up. “Father, I have something to tell you.” He said it
shortly and sharply.
The father stood there, puzzled.
“You won't like my oration to-night, father.”
And still the man did not speak. The words would not have bothered him
much--it was the boy's manner.
“In fact, father, you're going to be desperately disappointed in it.”
The dull red was creeping into the man's cheeks. He was one to have
little patience with that thing of not doing one's work. “Why am I going
to be disappointed? This is no time to shirk! You should--”
“Oh, you'll not complain of the time and thought I've put on it,”
the boy broke in with a short, hard laugh. “But, you see, father--you
see”--his armour had slipped from him--“it doesn't express--your views.”
“Did I ever say I wanted you to express 'my views'? Did I bring you up
to be a mouthpiece of mine? Haven't I told you to _think_?” But with a
long, sharp glance at his boy anger gave way. “Come, boy”--going
over and patting him on the back--“brace up now. You're acting like a
seven-year-old girl afraid to speak her first piece,” and his big laugh
rang out, eager to reassure.
“You won't see it! You won't believe it! I don't suppose you'll
believe it when you hear it!” He turned away, overwhelmed by a sudden
realisation of just how difficult was the thing that lay before him.
The man started toward his son, but instead he walked over and sat down
at the opposite side of the table, waiting. He was beginning to see that
there was something in this which he did not understand.
At last the boy turned to him, fighting back some things, taking on
other things. He gazed at the care-worn, rugged face--face of a worker
and a dreamer, reading in those lines the story of that life, seeing
more clearly than he had ever seen before the beauty and futility of it.
Here was the idealist, the man who would give his whole lifetime to a
dream he had dreamed. He loved his father very tenderly as he looked at
him, read him, then.
“Father,” he asked quietly, “are you satisfied with your life?”
The man simply stared--waiting, seeking his bearings.
“You came to this country when you were nineteen years old--didn't you,
father?” The man nodded. “And now you're--it's sixty-one, isn't it?”
Again he nodded.
“You've been in America, then, forty-two years. Father, do you think as
much of it now as you did forty-two years ago?”
“I don't know what you mean,” the man said, searching his son's quiet,
passionate face. “I can't make you out, Fritz.”
“My favourite story as a kid,” the boy went on, “was to hear you tell of
how you felt when your boat came sailing into New York Harbour, and you
saw the first outlines of a country you had dreamed about all through
your boyhood, which you had saved pennies for, worked nights for, ever
since you were old enough to know the meaning of America. I mean,” he
corrected, significantly, “the meaning of what you thought was America.
“It's a bully story, father,” he continued, with a smile at once tender
and hard; “the simple German boy, born a dreamer, standing there looking
out at the dim shores of that land he had idealised. If ever a man came
to America bringing it rich gifts, that man was you!”
“Fritz,” his father's voice was rendered harsh by mystification and
foreboding, “tell me what you're talking about. Come to the point. Clear
this up.”
“I'm talking about American politics--your party--having ruined your
life! I'm talking about working like a slave all your days and having
nothing but a mortgaged farm at sixty-one! I'm talking about playing a
losing game! I'm saying, _What's the use?_ Father, I'm telling you that
_I'm_ going to join the other party and make some money!”
The man just sat there, staring.
“Well,” the boy took it up defiantly, “why not?”
And then he moved, laid a not quite steady hand out upon the table. “My
boy, you're not well. You've studied too hard. Now brace yourself up
for to-night, and then we'll go down home and fix you up. What you need,
Fritz,” he said, trying to laugh, “is the hayfield.”
“You're not _seeing_ it!” The boy pushed back his chair and began moving
about the room. “The only way I can brace myself up for to-night is
to get so mad--father, usually you see things so easily! Don't you
understand? It was my chance, my one moment, my time to strike. It will
be years before I get such a hearing again. You see, father, the thing
will be printed, and the men I want to have hear it, the men who _own
this State_, will be there. One of them is to preside. And the story of
it, the worth of it, to them, is that I'm your son. You see, after all,”
he seized at this wildly, “I'm getting my start on the fact that I'm
your son.”
“Go on,” said the man; the brown of his wind-beaten face had yielded to
a tinge of grey. “Just what is it you are going to say?”
“I call it 'The New America,' a lot of this talk about doing things, the
glory of industrial America, the true Americans the men of constructive
genius, the patriotism of railroad and factory building, a eulogy of
railroad officials and corporation presidents,” he rushed on with a
laugh. “Singing the song of Capital. Father, can't you see _why?_”
The old man had risen. “Tell me this,” he said. “None of it matters
much, if you just tell me this: You _believe_ these things? You've
thought it all out for yourself--and you _feel_ that way? You're honest,
aren't you, Fritz?” He put that last in a whisper.
The boy made no reply; after a minute the man sank back to his chair.
The years seemed coming to him with the minutes.
Fred was leaning against the wall. “Father,” he said at last, “I hope
you'll let me be a little roundabout. It's only fair to me to let me
ramble on a little. I've got to put it all right before you or--or--You
know, dad,”--he came back to his place by the table, “the first thing I
remember very clearly is those men, your party managers, coming down to
the farm one time and asking you to run for Governor. How many times is
it you've run for Governor, father?” He put the question slowly.
“Five,” said the man heavily.
“I don't know which time this was; but you didn't want to. You were
sorry when you saw them coming. I heard some of the talk. You talked
about your farm, what you wanted to do that summer, how you couldn't
afford the time or the money. They argued that you owed it to the
party--they always got you there; how no other man could hold down
majorities as you could--a man like you giving the best years of his
life to holding down majorities! They said you were the one man against
whom no personal attack could be made. And when there was so much to
fight, anyway--oh, I know that speech by heart! They've made great
capital of your honesty and your clean life. In fact, they've held that
up as a curtain behind which a great many things could go on. Oh, _you_
didn't know about them; you were out in front of the curtain, but I
haven't lived in this town without finding out that they needed your
integrity and your clean record pretty bad!
“That was out on the side porch. Mother had brought out some buttermilk,
and they drank it while they talked. You put up a good fight. Your
time was money to you at that time of year; a man shouldn't neglect his
farm--but you never yet could hold out against that 'needing-you' kind
of talk. They knew there was no chance for your election. You knew it.
But it takes a man of just your grit to put any snap into a hopeless
campaign.
“Mother cried when you went to drive them back to town. You see, I
remember all those things. She told about how hard you would work, and
how it would do no good--that the State belonged to the other party.
She talked about the farm, too, and the addition she had wanted for the
house, and how now she wouldn't have it. Mother felt pretty bad that
night. She's gone through a lot of those times.”
There was a silence.
“You were away a lot that summer, and all fall. You looked pretty
well used up when you came home, but you said that you had held down
majorities splendidly.”
Again there was silence. It was the silences that seemed to be saying
the most.
“You had one term in Congress--that's the only thing you ever had. Then
you did so much that they concentrated in your district and saw to
it that you never got back. Julius Caesar couldn't have been elected
again,” he laughed harshly.
“Father,” the boy went on, after a pause, “you asked me if I were
honest. There are two kinds of honesty. The primitive kind--like
yours--and then the kind you develop for yourself. Do I believe the
things I'm going to say to-night? No--not now. But I'll believe them
more after I've heard the applause I'm sure to get. I'll believe them
still more after I've had my first case thrown to me by our railroad
friends who own this State. More and more after I've said them over in
campaigning next fall, and pretty soon I'll be so sure I believe them
that I really will believe them--and that,” he concluded, flippantly,
“is the new brand of American honesty. Why, any smart man can persuade
himself he's not a hypocrite!”
“My _God!_” it wrenched from the man. “_This?_ If you'd stolen
money--killed a man--but hypocrisy, cant--the very thing I've fought
hardest, hated most! You lived all your life with me to learn _this?_”
“I lived all my life with you to learn what pays, and what doesn't. I
lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of success.”
“I never was sure I was a failure until this hour.”
“Father! Can't you see--”
“Oh, don't _talk_ to me!” cried the old man, rising, reaching out his
fist as though he would strike him. “Son of mine sitting there telling
me he is fixing up a brand of honesty for himself!”
The boy grew quieter as self-restraint left his father. “I mean
that--just that,” he said at last. “Let a man either give or get. If he
gives, let it be to the real thing. There are two Americas. The America
of you dreamers--and then the real America. Yours is an idea--an
idea quite as much as an ideal. I don't think you have the slightest
comprehension of how far apart it is from the real America. The people
who dream of it over in Europe are a great deal nearer it than you
people who work for it here. Father, the spirit of this country flows in
a strong, swift, resistless current. You never got into it at all.
Your kind of idealists influence it about as much--about as much as
red lights burned on the banks of the great river would influence the
current of that river. You're not _of_ it. You came here, throbbing
with the love for America; and with your ideal America you've fought
the real, and you've worked and you've believed and you've sacrificed.
Father, _what's the use?_ In this State, anyway, it's hopeless. It has
been so through your lifetime; it will be through mine.”
The man sat looking at him. He felt that he should say something,
but the words did not come--held back, perhaps, by a sense of their
uselessness. It was not so much what Fred said as it was the look in his
eyes as he said it. There was nothing impetuous or youthful about that
look, nothing to be laughed at or argued away. He had always felt that
Fred had a mind which saw things straight, saw them in their right
relations, and at that moment he had no words to plead for what Fred
called the America of the dreamers.
“I'm of the second generation, dad,” the boy went on, at length,
“and the second generation has an ideal of its own, and that ideal is
Success. It took us these forty years to come to understand the spirit
of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an American. We've
translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and
opportunity and success--and that's getting Americanised. Now, father,”
he sought refuge in the tone of every-day things, “you'll get used to
it--won't you? I don't expect you to feel very good about it, but you
aren't going to be broken up about it--are you? After all, father,”
laughing and moving about as if to break the seriousness of things,
“there's nothing criminal about being one of the other fellows--is
there? Just remember that there _are_ folks who even think it's
respectable!” The father had risen and picked up his hat. “No, Fred,” he
said, with a sadness in which there was great dignity, “there is nothing
criminal in it if a man's conviction sends him that way. But to me there
is something--something too sad for words in a man's selling his own
soul.”
“Father! How extravagant! _Why_ is it selling one's soul to sit down
and figure out what's the best thing to do?” He hesitated, hating to
add hurt to hurt, not wanting to say that his father's fight should have
been with the revolutionists, that his life was ineffective because,
seeing his dream from within a dream, his thinking had been muddled. He
only said: “As I say, father, it's a question of giving or getting. I
couldn't even give in your way. And I've seen enough of giving to want
a taste of getting. I want to make things go--and I see my chance. Why
father,” he laughed, trying to turn it, “there's nothing so American as
wanting to make things _go_.”
He looked at him for a long minute. “My boy,” he said, “I fear you are
becoming so American that I am losing you.”
“Father,” the boy pleaded, affectionately, “now don't--”
The old man held up his hand. “You've tried to make me understand it,”
he said, “and succeeded. You can't complain of the way you've succeeded.
I don't know why I don't argue with you--plead; there are things I could
say--should say, perhaps--but something assures me it would be useless.
I feel a good many years older than I did when I came into this room,
but the reason for it is not that you're joining the other party. You
know what I think of the men who control this State, the men with whom
you desire to cast your lot, but I trust the years I've spent fighting
them haven't made a bigot of me. It's not joining their party--it's
_using_ it--makes this the hardest thing I've been called upon to meet.”
“Father, don't look like that! How do you think I am going to get up and
speak tonight with _that_ face before me?”
“You didn't think, did you,” the man laughed bitterly, “that I would
inspire you to your effort?”
The boy stood looking at his father, a strange new fire in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, quietly, tenderly, “you will inspire me. When I get
up before those men tonight I'm going to see the picture of that boy
straining for his first glimpse of New York Harbour. I'm going to think
for just a minute of the things that boy brought with him--things he
has never lost. And then I'll see you as you stand here now---it will be
enough. What I need to do is to get mad. If I falter I'll just think
of some of those times when you came home from your campaigns--how you
looked--what you said. It will bring the inspiration. Father, I figure
it out like this. We're going to get it back. We're going to get what's
coming to us. There's another America than the America of you dreamers.
To yours you have given; from mine I will get. And the irony of
it--don't think I don't see the irony of it--is that I will be called
the real American. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make
the railroads of this State--oh, it sounds like schoolboy talk, but just
give me a little time--I'm going to make the railroads of this State
pay off every cent of that mortgage on your farm! Father,” he finished,
impetuously, in a last appeal, “you're broken up now, disappointed, but
would you honestly want me to travel the road you've traveled?”
“My boy,” answered the old man, and the tears came with it, “I wanted
you to travel the road of an honest man.”
Herman Beckman did not go to the commencement exercises that night.
There was no train home until morning, so he had the night to spend in
town. He was alone, for his friends assumed that he would be out at the
university. But he preferred being alone.
He sat in his room at the hotel, reading. And he could read. Years of
discipline stood him in good stead now. His life had taught him to read
anywhere, at any time. He had never permitted himself the luxury of not
being “in the mood.” It was only the men who had gone to college who
could do that. He _had_ to read. He always carried some little book with
him, for how did a man know that he might not have to wait an hour for
a train somewhere? The man had a simple-minded veneration for knowledge.
He wanted to know about things. And he had never learned to pretend that
he didn't want to know. He quite lacked the modern art of flippancy. He
believed in great books.
And so on the night that his son was being graduated from college he sat
in his room at the hotel--cheap room in a mediocre hotel; he had never
learned to feel at home in the rich ones--reading Marcus Aurelius. But
his hand as he turned the pages trembled as the hand of a very old man.
At midnight some reporters came in to ask him what he thought of his
son's oration. They wanted a statement from him.
He told them that he had never believed the sins of a parent should be
visited on a child, and that it was even so with the thought. He had
always contended that a man should do his own thinking. The contention
applied to his son.
“Gamey old brute!” was what one of the reporters said in the elevator.
He could not read Marcus Aurelius after that. He went to bed, but he did
not sleep. Many things passed before him. His anticipations, his dreams
for Fritz, had brought the warmest pleasure of his stern, unrelaxing
life. There was a great emptiness tonight. What was a man to turn to,
think about, when he seemed stripped, not only of the future, but of the
past? He seemed called upon to readjust the whole of his life, giving
up that which he had held dearest. What was left? Daylight found him
turning it over and over.
In the morning he went home. He got away without seeing any of his
friends.
He did not try to read this morning; somehow it seemed there was no use
in trying to read any more. He watched the country through which they
were passing, thinking of the hundreds of times he had ridden over it in
campaigning. He wondered, vaguely, just how much money he had spent on
railroad fare--he had never accepted mileage. Fred's “What's the use?”
kept ringing in his ears. There was something about that phrase which
made one feel very tired and old. It even seemed there was no use
looking out to see how the crops were getting on. _What's the use?
What's the use?_ Was that a phrase one learned in college?
There had been two things to tell “mother” that night. The first was
that he had stopped in town and told Claus Hansen he could have that
south hundred and sixty he had been wanting for two years.
It was not easy to tell the woman who had worked shoulder to shoulder
with him for thirty years, the woman who during those years had risen
with him in the early morning and worked with him until darkness rescued
the weary bodies, that in their old age they must surrender the fruit of
their toil. They would have left just what they had started with. They
had just held their own.
Coming down on the train he had made up his mind that if Hansen were
in town he would tell him that he could have the land. He felt so very
tired and old, so bowed down with Fred's “What's the use?” that he saw
that he himself would never get the mortgage paid off. And Fred had said
something about making the railroads pay it. He did not know just how
the boy figured that out--indeed, he was getting a little dazed about
the whole thing--but if Fritz had any idea of having the railroads pay
off the mortgage on _his_ farm--he couldn't forget how the boy looked
when he said it, face white, eyes burning--he would see to it right now
that there was no chance of that.
He tried not to look at the land as he drove past it on the way home. He
wondered just how much campaign literature it had paid for. He wondered
if he would ever get used to seeing Claus Hansen putting up his hay over
there in that field.
He had felt so badly about telling mother that he told it very bluntly.
And because he felt so sorry for her he said not one kind word, but just
sat quiet, looking the other way.
She was clearing off the table. He heard her scraping out the potato
dish with great care. Then she was coming over to him. She came
awkwardly, hesitatingly--her life had not schooled her in meeting
emotional moments beautifully--but she laid her hand upon him, patted
him on the shoulder as one would a child. “Never mind, papa--never you
mind. It will make it easier for us. There's enough left--and it will
make it easier. We're getting on--we're--” There she broke off abruptly
into a vigorous scolding of the dog, who was lifting covetous nostrils
to a piece of meat.
That was all. And there was no woman in the country had worked harder.
And Martha was ambitious; she liked land, and she did not like Claus
Hansen's wife.
Yes, he had had a good wife.
Then there was that other thing to tell her--about Fritz. That was
harder.
Mother had not gone up to the city to hear Fritz “speak” because her
feet were bothering her, and she could not wear her shoes. He had had a
vague idea of how disappointed she was, though she had said very little
about it. Martha never had been one to say much about things. When he
came back, of course she had wanted to know all about it, and he had put
her off. Now he had to tell her.
It was much harder; and in the telling of it he broke down.
This time she did not come over and pat his shoulder. Perhaps Martha
knew--likely she had never heard the word intuition, but, anyway, she
knew--that it was beyond that.