Good-bye.”
The brougham rolled off, and Thorndyke stepped aboard a street-car
bound for the West End.
At the Capitol plaza a great crowd got on, among them the two gentlemen
whom Thorndyke affectionately described as his boss and Crane’s boss.
The two men stood together on the platform outside. Both of them
revealed in their faces their mastery of men and affairs, for your
true boss is necessarily a very considerable man. Senator Standiford,
Thorndyke’s boss, had an iron jaw, which was emphasised by a low brow,
but his face was not without a touch of ideality. Senator Bicknell,
Crane’s boss, had likewise a determined face, but his forehead and
eyes betrayed the human weakness which made him like clever men as
his instruments. Both men were millionaires. Senator Standiford lived
in three rooms at a hotel, rode in street-cars, and gave liberally of
his money to campaign funds, charities, and his poor relations, but
was never known to part with an atom of his power if he could help it.
Senator Bicknell fared sumptuously every day, had a splendid house and
gorgeous carriages, only rode in the street-cars for a lark, and was
reported to be a skinflint in money matters, and somewhat foolishly
lavish in giving away his power. The two men exchanged some words
which Thorndyke, wedged inside as he was, could not but hear. Senator
Standiford was saying to his colleague:
“S. M. & L. stock must be going down when _you_ ride in a street-car.”
“I lost one of my coach-horses last night,” replied Senator Bicknell,
“and can’t use my carriage to-day.”
“Misfortunes never come singly,” said Senator Standiford,
enigmatically, then adding, “I suppose it’s in order to congratulate
you on the success of your protégé, Crane, to-day?”
Thorndyke could scarcely keep from laughing at the look of chagrin
which came over Senator Bicknell’s countenance at this.
“Y-yes,” he answered, dubiously.
“Don’t get in a panic,” kept on Senator Standiford, with rude good
humour; “I know how it is with those fellows. Crane thinks from this
day forth that you are a back number, an old fogy, and a dead cock in
the pit. He will go into what he considers a grooming process for the
next four years--oh, I know those fellows! He will kick up a lot of
dust in the gubernatorial convention, will make a great display of not
wanting the nomination, and will bide his time until your term expires.
Then he will find it is a grueling and not a grooming he has had, and
he will get a small bunch of votes, but I don’t think you need take the
fellow seriously just now.”
At this last sentence Senator Bicknell’s face shone like the sun. It
shone the more when Senator Standiford kept on:
“There’s no reason to fear a man who makes a good speech----”
“I am in no fear of any one,” gravely replied Senator Bicknell, who
thought it essential to his dignity to say so much.
“It’s the strong debater who is likely to become formidable. There’s
Thorndyke now--Crane has made the speech--largely Thorndyke’s--but he
is totally unequal to the running fire of debate. Thorndyke could do
him up inside of ten minutes. Luckily for him, the debate will not be
fierce, and Thorndyke will really conduct it.”
“Mr. Thorndyke is a very able man,” said Senator Bicknell, as if
thinking aloud.
“Yes, but totally without ambition,” replied Senator Standiford,
gravely, and Thorndyke, within the car, laughed silently.
It was, however, no laughing matter, but Thorndyke, having chosen his
rôle for better or for worse, could only cleave to it, forsaking all
others. However, he would see Constance Maitland the next day at five
o’clock. There was balm in Gilead, or hasheesh in the pipe, he knew not
exactly which.
_Chapter Four_
GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED
Life is a battle and a march--especially public life. Thorndyke waked
the next morning prepared for both a battle and a march. A glance at
the morning newspapers showed that the country was entirely with the
Congress, and the people, having given their orders, would see to it
that these orders were promptly obeyed. The Continental press of Europe
with few exceptions barked furiously. The French newspapers alone
retained dignity and good sense, pointing out the inevitable trend of
events, and advised that, instead of abusing the United States, they
should be copied in that system which had made them great, not by war,
but by peace. The English newspapers were fair, but in some of them
bitterness was expressed at England being shouldered out of her place
as the greatest of the world-powers by the young giant of the West.
There was in all of them, however, a note of triumph, that this first
place had been lost only to an offshoot of the sturdy parent stock.
This sentiment is often ridiculed as a peculiarly absurd form of
national self-love, but there is, in reality, nothing ridiculous about
it. As long as self-love is a part of nations and individuals, so long
will each nation and each individual strive to share in the general
stock of glory, achievement, and success.
In the American newspapers the man most prominent was Crane. He was
compared to Henry Clay, to Stephen A. Douglas, to any and every
American public man who had early in life made a meteoric rise in
Congress. He was represented as the embodiment of youth with the wisdom
of age. One newspaper reckoned him to be a political Chatterton, and
called him “the Wondrous Boy.” His beauty was lauded, his voice, his
delivery, the fit of his trousers; and one enthusiastic journal in
Indianapolis promptly nominated him for the Presidency. Thorndyke
searched the newspapers carefully, and did not find his own name once
mentioned. He reflected upon Horace Greely’s remark that fame is a
vapour.
Disappointing as it was to him to feel that another had reaped his
harvest, it did not give him acute pain; for he had waked that morning
with the agreeable consciousness which comes occasionally to every
human being, that the world is more interesting to-day than it was
yesterday; that consciousness which illuminates the cold, gray stage of
life, and indicates that the lights are about to be turned up and the
play to begin. The kind tones of Constance Maitland’s voice were still
in Thorndyke’s ears, and the unmistakable look of interest in her soft
eyes had visited him in dreams. He was no nearer marrying her than he
had been at any time during the past eighteen years; the same obstacle
was there--a very large, real, terrifying, and obvious obstacle--but
there was also a sweet and comforting suspicion in his mind that
Constance, as well as himself, had cherished the idyl of their youth.
And then, by daylight, she did not look so preposterously girlish as
she had looked by moonlight and in ball-dress. This gave Thorndyke
considerable pleasure as he brushed the remnants of his hair into
positions where they would do the most good. Her apparent advantage of
him in the matter of youth and good looks had been disturbing to him
at first. She still had much of youth and great good looks, but yet, a
man with scanty hair and a grayish moustache would not look like an old
fool beside her, as he had feared.
Thorndyke, according to his custom, walked to the Capitol. The morning,
like most spring mornings in Washington, was as beautiful as the
first morning in the garden of Eden. He chose unfrequented streets,
and, passing under the long green arcades, had only the trees for his
companionship on his walk.
Instead of reaching the building by way of the plaza, Thorndyke
chose rather to ascend the long flights of steps leading upward from
terrace to terrace on the west front. It is a way little used, but
singularly beautiful, with its marble balustrades, its lush greenness
of shrubbery, and the noble view both of the building and the fair
white city embosomed in trees, spread out like a dream-city before
the eye. Half-way up Thorndyke saw Senator Standiford sitting on one
of the iron benches placed on the falls of the terrace. Thorndyke was
surprised to see him there, and it occurred to him at once that it was
a premeditated meeting on the Senator’s part.
He was a tall, ugly old man with chin-whiskers, but his appearance was
redeemed by the power which spoke from his strongly marked face, and
by his punctilious, old-fashioned dress and extreme neatness. He wore
a silk hat made from a block he had used for thirty years. His coat,
gray and wide-skirted, seemed of the same vintage, and his spotless
collar of antique pattern, and his large black silk necktie might have
been worn by Daniel Webster himself. A big pair of gold spectacles and
a gold-headed cane completed a costume which was admirably harmonious,
and produced the effect of an old lady in 1903 with the side curls and
cap of 1853.
The Senator had a newspaper spread out before him, but as Thorndyke
approached folded it up, pushed his gold spectacles up on his forehead,
and called out:
“Hello! Have you read about the ‘Wondrous Boy’ this morning?”
“I have,” replied Thorndyke, smiling pleasantly as he lifted his hat,
and in response to a silent invitation he seated himself on the bench
by Standiford’s side.
“Great speech, that,” continued the Senator. “At first I was disposed
to give you the credit for all of it--but there’s something in that
fellow Crane. You couldn’t have coached him so well if he hadn’t been
capable of learning.”
“You do me too much honour,” replied Thorndyke, laughing, but with
something like bitterness.
Senator Standiford continued with a dry contortion of the lips which
was meant for a smile:
“But you’ll see, my son, that your friend Crane won’t grow quite
so fast as he thinks he will. In our times public men require the
seasoning of experience before they amount to anything. There’ll be no
more Henry Clays elected to the House of Representatives before they
are thirty. The world was young, then, but we have matured rapidly.
It is true that we have relaxed the rule of the Senate a little, and
allow the new senators to speak in the Senate Chamber at a much earlier
period in their senatorial service than formerly. But speech-making is
a dangerous pastime. Much of the small success I have achieved”--here
Senator Standiford’s face assumed a peculiar expression of solemnity
which made him look like a deacon handing around the church plate--“I
lay to the fact that I never could make a speech in my life, and I
found it out at an early stage in my career. I’m a Presbyterian, as
you know, but in my town I’m classed as a heretic and an iconoclast,
because when they want to call a new preacher and to have him preach
a specimen sermon I always tell the elders, ‘Why do you want to judge
the fellow by the way he talks? It’s the poorest test in the world to
apply to a man. Find out what he can _do_.’ But they won’t listen to
me, of course, and the Fourth Presbyterian Church is perennially filled
by a human wind-bag, who snorts and puffs and blows dust about until
the congregation get tired of him and try another wind-bag. In Congress
wind-bags don’t last.”
“All the same, I wish from the bottom of my heart that I had had
Crane’s chance yesterday and had used it as well,” replied Thorndyke.
“If you had you would have given our junior Senator a bad quarter of an
hour,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely.
Now, in common with all true Senatorial bosses, Standiford had seen
to it that his junior Senator was a man of straw, put in the place in
order that the boss might have two votes in the Senate. Never had the
junior Senator yet voted or acted in opposition to his master; but had
Thorndyke been the junior it would have been another story, and both
men knew it. This caused Thorndyke to remark, coolly:
“He would have no reason to disturb himself--the ass! You have
been kind enough to give me to understand that I am ineligible for
promotion, not being made of putty, as our junior Senator is.”
“Now, now!” remonstrated Senator Standiford, again assuming his air of
a seventeenth-century Puritan. “To hear you anybody would think that
our State organisation didn’t want every first-class man it can get!
We have the highest regard for your services, and we do what we can to
keep you in your present place because we see your usefulness there.”
Senator Standiford punctiliously used the euphemism “we” just as he
gravely consulted all the pothouse politicians and heelers in “the
organisation,” but it did not materially affect the fact that he was
the whole proposition in his own State.
Thorndyke looked full into the deep, calm eyes of the rugged old man
before him, and could not forbear laughing; but there was not the
glimmer of a twinkle in them. Presently the old man said, coolly:
“Suppose I should tell you that I may retire at the end of my term, two
years from now?”
“I should wish to believe anything you say, my dear Senator, but I am
afraid I couldn’t believe that.”
“What a fellow you are! But let me tell you--mind, this is a confidence
between gentlemen--my retirement is not impossible. You know my
daughter, my little Letty----”
As Senator Standiford spoke the name his face softened, and a passion
of parental love shone in his deep-set eyes.
“She is a very remarkable girl, Mr. Thorndyke, very remarkable; and she
loves her old father better than he deserves. I have as good sons as
any man ever had--but that daughter left me by my dead wife is worth to
me everything else on God’s earth. The doctors have been frightening
her about me lately. They tell her I work too hard for my time of
life--that I ought to take a rest, and if I will do it I can add ten
years to my life. Now, you know, the State organisation will never let
me take a rest”--Senator Standiford said this quite seriously--“and
Letty as good as told me six months ago that if I should be re-elected
to the Senate”--the Senator uttered this “if” in a tone of the most
modest deprecation--“_if_ I should be re-elected for another term--as
she wishes me to be--then she wants me to resign. I don’t mind
admitting that if any other human being had said this to me except my
daughter Letty, I should have reckoned myself drunk or crazy to have
listened to it. But my daughter, as I mentioned to you, is a remarkable
girl. Besides, the child is not strong herself, and if she gets to
worrying about me--well, you can see, Mr. Thorndyke, how it is with me.
The world credits me with loving place and power above everything on
earth, but there is something dearer to me than the office of President
of the United States: it is my daughter. And the sweetness and the
tenderness of that child for her old father----”
Here Senator Standiford took out a large red silk handkerchief and blew
a blast like the blast of Roncesvalles.
Being an accomplished judge of men, Senator Standiford, while speaking,
had watched Thorndyke closely. Had he shown any undue elation over
the political prospects indicated by Senator Standiford’s possible
retirement, Thorndyke’s fortunes would have been ruined. But by the
lucky accident of having a good heart he said the most judicious thing
possible.
“I don’t see any indications of overwork in you, Senator. At the same
time I know you do the work of ten men, and I also know the exercise of
power is so dear to you that, from the pound-master in your own town
up to the candidate for President, you give everything your personal
supervision. But as for Miss Standiford’s not being strong--why, I took
her in to dinner less than a month ago, and remarked on her freshness
and beauty. She looked the picture of health and ate more dinner than I
did.”
“Did she?” asked the Senator, anxiously. “What did she eat?”
Thorndyke did not feel in the least like laughing at Senator
Standiford’s inquiry, and answered, promptly:
“Oh, everything. I remember chaffing her about her good appetite.”
“Thank God! The doctors say if she can only eat and live out in the
fresh air and play golf and ride horseback she will be all right.
But, Thorndyke, I swear to you, I am as soft as milk about that girl.
If she goes out to golf I am unhappy for fear she will take cold. If
she rides I am in terror for fear some accident will happen to her.
Ah, Thorndyke, a man is no fit guardian for a girl like that--the
sweetest--the most affectionate----”
Here Senator Standiford again blew his nose violently.
“She has always been very sweet to me,” answered Thorndyke, “although I
believe she thinks me old enough to be her grandfather.”
“She is a very remarkable girl, sir; that I say without the least
partiality,” replied Senator Standiford, earnestly. “She’s a little
wild, having no mother, poor child--but her heart, sir, is in the right
place. And the way she loves her old father is the most splendid,
touching, exquisite thing ever imagined!”
Thorndyke listened attentively, deeply interested in the human side of
a man who had seemed to him to have a very small amount of the purely
human in him. The little story of Letty Standiford’s health and heart
and nature did not strike him as puerile--there was nothing puerile
about Silas Standiford, and his love for this child of his old age
was, in truth, a Titanic passion, strong enough, as he said, to make
him forego the chief object of his existence: power over other men.
Thorndyke really liked and pitied Letty Standiford, living her young
life without guidance, in a manner possible only in America and not
desirable anywhere for a young girl. He had not suspected the delicacy
of her constitution, and after Senator Standiford ceased speaking said:
“I wish, Senator, you could persuade Miss Standiford to be a little
more prudent about her health. The night I dined out with her, when it
came time to go home she was about to pick up her skirts and run two
blocks to your hotel, in her satin slippers, with sleet coming down,
and the streets like glass--this, for a lark. I took her by the arm and
shoved her in a cab, got in myself, and took her home. I thought she
would box my ears before I got there, but I carried my point.”
“She told me about it--she tells me everything; and I thank you for
taking care of the child. You may imagine what I suffer on her account.”
Senator Standiford rose then, and, resting both hands on his
old-fashioned gold-headed stick, he looked full into Thorndyke’s face,
and said, slowly:
“I hope we understand each other, Mr. Thorndyke. We think you a very
strong man, and strong men are liable to become dangerous. The State
organisation wishes you to remain where you are. But in the event
that I should be re-elected and should be forced to resign, I have no
hesitation in saying that unless something unforeseen happens you would
certainly have my personal good wishes toward getting you the party
nomination for Senator.”
“I understand you perfectly, Senator,” replied Thorndyke, with equal
coolness, “and though I admit I think it a shameful state of affairs
that any organisation or any man should have the power to dispose of
any man’s political future, yet it is a fixed fact in our State and
can’t be helped for the present. So far as your personal kindness to
me goes I have the deepest sense of it, and the chances are, on the
strength of what you have just said, that I may one day be senator.”
“And when you are you won’t be as much down on the State organisation
as you are now,” remarked Senator Standiford, beginning to climb the
marble steps. “You will probably be called a boss yourself.”
“No, I shall not,” answered Thorndyke. “I shouldn’t have the heart to
put men through the mill as I have seen you and Senator Bicknell and a
few others do.”
Senator Standiford professed to regard this as a pleasantry, and so
they entered the Capitol together.
The day was the regular one for the meeting of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, and there was a full attendance, every member
being prompt except the chairman. Ten minutes after the hour struck,
Crane entered. It was almost impossible for a man to have had the
personal triumph he had enjoyed the day before, without showing some
consciousness of it. Thorndyke had expected to see Crane crowing
like chanticleer. Instead, he was remarkably quiet and subdued. He
was greeted with the chaff which senators and representatives indulge
in after the manner of collegians. Several members addressed him as
the “Wondrous Boy,” and others, displaying copies of the Indianapolis
editorial, presented their claims to him for cabinet places and
embassies. One member--the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, a colleague
of Crane’s, who posed as a greenhorn and was really a wit--solemnly
engaged Thorndyke to write him a speech to deliver at the first
seasonable opportunity, but warned him not to make it too much like
the speech of the “Wondrous Boy.” Thorndyke laughed. He had taken no
part in the joking and chaffing. Crane’s face flushed. He did not like
to be reminded of Thorndyke’s share in his success, but he was too
considerable a man to deny it.
The meeting was brief and devoted to routine matters. The debate would
begin directly after the morning hour, and it was supposed it would go
along smoothly. There was, it is true, an able and malevolent person
from Massachusetts who would be likely to stick a knife between the
joints of Crane’s armour, and two or three Southern members who would
be certain to discover an infringement of the Constitution of the
United States in something or other--but these were only the expected
rough spots in an otherwise smooth road.
At two o’clock the debate began. Again were the galleries packed,
though not to the same degree as on the day before. When Crane rose to
defend the report he was loudly applauded. He was interrupted once or
twice by the able and malevolent representative from Massachusetts, who
never disappointed expectations in that particular. And there were some
sly allusions to the Indianapolis newspaper and the “Wondrous Boy.”
This bothered Crane obviously, who had a reasonable and wholesome fear
of ridicule. He had his share of a certain crude humour--God never
makes an American without putting humour of some sort into him--but
Crane’s was not the rapid-fire, give-and-take humour which counts in
debate. He was always afraid of committing some breach of taste and
decorum when he wished to raise a laugh. He remembered certain men
whose remarks had caused a tempest of mirth in the House, but those
same remarks seen in cold type next day had seriously damaged their
authors. It was here that Thorndyke came to Crane’s rescue. While he
sat glowering and fuming and hesitating, Thorndyke stood in the breach
with a good story, full of wit and pith. The House immediately went
into convulsions of laughter. The able and malevolent member from
Massachusetts in vain tried to bring the gentlemen back to a state of
seriousness and disgust with affairs generally. But the turn injected
by Thorndyke into the discussion put everybody into a good humour, the
debate went swimmingly, as it was foreseen, and when the adjournment
came it was plain that the report would be adopted substantially as it
came from the committee.
Thorndyke watched the big clock over the main doorway, and precisely
at four left the chamber, and likewise left Crane to his fate, which,
however, proved to be easy enough. Thorndyke had other business on hand
then.
_Chapter Five_
A RAPTUROUS HOUR WHICH WAS RUDELY INTERRUPTED
When Thorndyke got out of doors the bright morning had changed into a
cold, determined downpour of rain. The gray mists hung over the city
at the foot of the hill, and the summit of the monument was obscured
by sullen driving clouds. Thorndyke’s spirits rose as he surveyed the
gloomy prospect. It was not much of an afternoon for visiting--he
should find Constance alone.
He went to his rooms, dressed, and before five was at Constance
Maitland’s door. The afternoon had grown worse. A sad northeast wind
had been added to the rain; the lilac-bushes in the little lawn at the
side of the house drooped forlornly, and the dejected syringas looked
like young ladies caught out in the rain in their ball-gowns.