The President Part 12

One day he asked Speaker Frost, whom he met in Senator Hanway's study, his definition of a statesman.

"A statesman," said that epigrammatist, "is a dead politician."

Richard frequented House and Senate galleries; it was interesting to watch the notables transacting their fame. The debates were a cross-fire of deceit. Not a member gave his true reasons for the votes he cast; he gave what he wanted the world to think were his reasons. Finance was on the carpet in that hour, and bimetallism and monometallism, silver versus gold, were in everyone's mouth. Richard saw that the goldbugs hailed from money--lending const.i.tuencies, while the silverbugs were invariably from either money-borrowing const.i.tuencies or const.i.tuencies that had silver to sell. And every man legislated for his district and never for the country; which Richard regarded as an extremely narrow course. Every man talked of the people's interest; every man was thinking of his own interest and striving only to locate the b.u.t.ter on his political bread.

There was a third cla.s.s, made up of those who were neither goldbugs nor silverbugs; they were straddlebugs, and, like the two sides of the s.h.i.+eld, would be gold when looked at by one contingent and silver when viewed by the other. Senator Hanway, whose monk's face seemed to mark him as private secretary of the Genius of Patriotism, was an eminent straddlebug. He was thinking on those delegations that would make up the convention and choose a candidate for the Presidency. The prudent Senator Hanway would be in line with all opinions, and occupied both sides of the money question without becoming the open champion of either.

Not alone did Richard, gazing from the galleries, lose faith in the patriotism of House and Senate men, but he began to doubt the verity of their partisans.h.i.+p. Considering what they did, rather than what they said, he discovered that the true difference between the two great political parties was the difference between cat owls and horned owls, and lay mainly in the noises they made. When it came to deeds, both killed chickens, and both appeared equally ready to pillage the hen roosts of government. As for government--that is to say, the thing controlling and not the thing controlled: it was made up of the President, the Speaker, and a dozen more in Cabinet and Congress; and that was government.

The picture nourished Richard's failing of cynicism, and served to dull that edge of native patriotism which it was a.s.sumed he owned when first he came. He got an impression of government that left him nothing to fight and bleed and die for should the thick mutter of the war-drums call folk to the field. Good politics, as the term is practiced, means bad patriotism, and Was.h.i.+ngton was a nest of politics and nothing else besides. It made decisively a situation, so Richard was driven to conclude, wherein that man should be the best patriot who knew least of his own government; he should fight harder and suffer more cheerfully and die more blithely in its defense in exact proportion to his ignorance of whom and what he was fighting and suffering and dying for.

It was a sullen conclusion surely; but, forced home upon Richard, it taught him a vitriolic harshness that, getting into his letters to flavor all he wrote, gave him national vogue, and added to that mixture of hatred and admiration with which official Was.h.i.+ngton was already beginning to regard him.

Neither did he escape forming certain estimates of Senator Hanway, and the white purity of what motives underlay his public career. For all that, Richard was quite as sedulous as ever to advance our statesman's fortunes; loyalty is abstract, love concrete, and in a last a.n.a.lysis Richard was thinking on Dorothy and not upon the country. Richard, you may have observed, was no whit better, no less selfish, than were those about him; and it is as well to know our faulty young gentleman for what he really was.

Richard not only considered the politics of men, but he studied men themselves. The narrowest of these came from parts of the country where region was important, and where you would have been more thought of for the deeds of your grandfather than for anything that you yourself might do. This was peculiarly true of men from New England, whose intelligence as well as interest seemed continually walking a tight-rope. The New Englander was always and ever the sublimation of a blind, ineffable vanity that went about proposing him as an example to the race. And so consciously self-perfect was he that, while coming to opinions touching others, generally to their disadvantage, he never once bethought him that others might be forming opinions of him. Another New England weakness was to believe in the measure more than in the man, and there was not one from that section who did not think that if you but introduced among negroes or Indians the New England town meeting, those negroes or Indians, thus blessed, would all and instantly become Yankees.

Another sublime provincial whom Richard uncovered was the Southern man.

He, like the New Englander, was so busy thinking on and revering a past that was dead, that he owned little s.p.a.ce for anything else. There was, however, one characteristic, common to Southern men, which was wanting in folk from other corners of the country. Richard never met a Southern man who remembered, a.s.suming such to be his official station, that he was in Cabinet or Congress, while he never met a Northern or a Western or a New England man who for a moment forgot it.

This amiable democracy on the Southern part, like other good things, has its explanation. Your Southern man, like a squab pigeon, is biggest when he is born. The one first great fact of his nativity is an honor beyond any other which the world can confer. It is as though he were cradled on a peak; and thereafter, wherever his wanderings may take him, and whether into Congress, Cabinet, or White House, he travels always downhill. It is this to account for that benignant urbanity, the inevitable mark of a Southern man, which teaches him faith in you as corollary of completest confidence in himself. It is a beautiful, even though an unreasonable trait, and as such the admiration of Richard recorded it.

Those others, not Southern, educated to a notion of office as a pedestal, were inclined to play the turkey c.o.c.k and spread their tails a trifle. Since that sort of self-conceit never fails to transact itself at the expense of the spectator, Richard looked upon it with no favor, and it drew from him opinions, not of compliment, concerning those by whom it was exhibited. It set him to comparisons which ran much in Southern favor.

After Congressmen and Cabinet men, Richard studied Was.h.i.+ngton itself.

The common condition--speaking now of residents, and not of those who were mere sojourners within the city's walls--he found to be one of idleness, the common trait an insatiable bent for gossip. Government was the sole product of the place, the one grist ground at those mills. No one was made to labor more than six hours of the twenty-four. And the term labor meant no more than one-tenth its definition in any other town. Wherefore, even those most engaged of the citizenry had leisure to settle the world's most perplexing concerns, and they generously devoted it to that purpose.

Nor were they abashed by any insignificance of their personal estate.

Familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds conceit. Those who dwell close to the hub of government, even though they build departmental fires, sweep departmental floors, and empty departmental waste baskets, from nearness of contact and a daily perusal of your truly great, come at last to look upon themselves as beings of tremendous importance--and all after the self-gratulatory example of the thoughtful fly on the chariot wheel in the fable. The least of them beholds a picture of the government in every looking-gla.s.s into which he peers.

Storri talked with Mr. Harley; Mr. Harley talked with Senator Hanway.

These conferences were of Credit Magellan; in particular they had concern with the overthrow of Northern Consolidated. Congress had been in session ten days when Senator Hanway, one morning, asked Richard to call that evening at nine.

"There is something which your paper should print," said Senator Hanway.

Richard was with Senator Hanway in the latter's study sharp upon the hour set. Dorothy was not there; her mother had carried her and the yellow-haired sorceress, Bess, to the theater. It is to be doubted, even if she were free, whether Dorothy's interest in her political studies would have carried her through a night session. Besides, the preoccupied Senator Hanway had begun to observe that Richard looked at Dorothy more than he listened to him, and while he suffered no disturbance by virtue of this discovery, the present was an occasion when he wanted Richard's undivided attention. Once seated, Senator Hanway went to the heart of the affair; he made himself clear, for years of debate had educated him to lucidity. What he desired was a plain, sequential rehearsal in the _Daily Tory_ of those claims and charges against Northern Consolidated.

"Nor will I," observed Senator Hanway, flatteringly confidential, "conceal my reasons. In the first place the charges have been made, and their effect is to injure Northern Consolidated. You will not state that you know these charges to be true; you will say--if you will be so good--that they are of common report. Once in print, I can make them the basis of an investigation. I've no doubt--though you will please say nothing on that point--but what an investigation will disclose how groundless the charges are."

"You are an owner in Northern Consolidated?" asked Richard.

Richard felt no interest beyond a willingness to be of service to Senator Hanway, and only put the question to show attention to his eminent friend.

"No, no owner," replied Senator Hanway; "but to be frank, since I know my confidence is safe, it will a.s.sist me in a certain political matter the name of which I think you can guess."

Senator Hanway's smooth face wore a smile which he intended should prove that he looked upon Richard as one possessing a rightful as well as an intimate knowledge of those White House plans which he cherished.

Richard did not require the a.s.surance; he was ready without it to come to the aid of Senator Hanway, whom he liked if he did not revere.

The next evening Richard's letter carried the story against Northern Consolidated. The afternoon of the day on which it was published, Senator Hanway arose in his place and requested that the article be read by the clerk. That done, he said he was pained and surprised by the publication of such a story, and asked for a committee of three to look into the truth of what was set forth.

"For," observed Senator Hanway, after paying a tribute to Richard and the _Daily Tory_, in which he extolled the honesty and intelligent conservatism of both the paper and its correspondent, "for it is only justice that the charges be sifted. The _Daily Tory_ does not make them on its own behalf; it finds them in the mouths of others. They should be taken up and weighed. If there be aught due the government, we have a right to know and measure it. If the charges are without support--and I have reason to believe that such is the situation--then Northern Consolidated is ent.i.tled to the refutation of a calumny that, whispered in some quarters and talked aloud in others, has borne heavily upon its interests."

No one opposed, and Senator Hanway, with Senators Price and Loot, were selected to be a special committee. They were to send for men and papers, be open or secret in their sessions, and report to the Senate whenever they finished the inquiry. The affair excited no comment, and was forgotten within the hour by all except Storri and Mr. Harley and those others of the osprey pool.

After Richard left Senator Hanway upon the Northern Consolidated evening, he ran plump upon an incident that was to have a last profound effect upon this history. No one not a prophet would have guessed this from the incident's character, for on its ign.o.ble face it was nothing better than just a drunken clash between a Caucasian, and an African triumvirate that had locked horns with him in the street. The Caucasian, moved of liquor and pride of skin, had demanded the entire sidewalk. He enforced his demands by shoving the obstructing Africans into the gutter. The latter, recalling amendments to the organic law of the land favorable to folk of color, objected. In the war that ensued, owing to an inequality of forces, the Caucasian--albeit a gallant soul--was given the bitter side of the argument. Richard came upon them as he rounded a corner; the quartette at the time made a struggling, scrambling, cursing tangle, rolling about the sidewalk.

Being one in whom the race instinct ran powerfully, and who was not untainted of antipathies to red men and yellow men and black men and all men not wholly white, Richard did not pause to inquire the rights and the wrongs of the altercation. He seized upon the topmost person of color and pitched him into the street. Then he pitched another after him. The third, getting some alarming notions of what was going on, arose and fled. None of the three came back; for discretion is not absent from the African, and those whom Richard personally disposed of felt as might ones who had escaped from some malignant providence which they did not think it wise or fitting to further tempt. As for number three, he was pleased to find himself a block away, and did all he might to add to it, like a miser to his h.o.a.rd.

Negroes gone, Richard set the white man on his feet, and asked him how he fared. That gentleman shook himself and announced that he was uninjured. Then he said that he was drunk, which was an unnecessary confidence. It developed that he followed the trade of printer; also that he had just come to town. He had no money, he had no place to sleep; and, what was wonderful to Richard, he appeared in no whit cast down by his bankrupt and bedless state. He had had money; but like many pleasant optimistic members of his mystery of types, he had preferred to spend it in liquor, leaving humdrum questions, such as bed and board, to solve themselves.

"For," said the bedless one, "I'm a tramp printer!" And he flung forth the adjective as though it were a t.i.tle of respect.

Having invested some little exertion in the affairs of the stranger, Richard thought he might as well go forward and invest a little money.

With that he went out of his way to lead the drunken one to a cheap hotel, where the porter took him in charge under contract to put him to bed. The consideration for the latter attention was a quarter paid in hand to the porter; with the proprietor Richard left ten dollars, and orders to give the devious one the change in the morning after deducting for his entertainment.

The rescued printer, clothed and in his right mind, called upon Richard the next afternoon to thank him for his generosity and say that his name was Sands. Mr. Sands, being sober and shaven, with clothes brushed, was in no sense a spectacle of shame. Indeed, there were worse-looking people pa.s.sing laws for the nation. Richard was pleased, and said so.

"If I had a job, I'd go to work," said Mr. Sands, having had, as he expressed it, "his drunk out."

The habit of charity grows upon one like the liquor habit; moreover, if once you help a man, you ever after feel compelled to help him to the end of time. Richard was no exception to these philanthropic laws, and when Mr. Sands declared an eagerness to go to work, brought him to Senator Hanway, who promptly berthed him upon the Government printing office, where he was given a "case," and commenced tossing up types after the manner of a master.

If Senator Hanway had been able to probe the future, instead of setting Mr. Sands to work that December afternoon, he would have paid his way to London, had a trans-Atlantic trip been made the price of being rid of him. But a Senator is not a soothsayer, and no impression of the kind once touched him. He got Mr. Sands his billet, and said it gave him pleasure to comply with the request of his young friend, Mr. Storms. To Richard, the hereafter was as opaque as it was to Senator Hanway, and, having seen his protege installed, he walked away unconscious of a morn to dawn when Mr. Sands would recur as an instance of that bread upon the waters which returns after many days.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW STORRI WOOED MRS. HANWAY-HARLEY

Storri was a sensualist to his fingers' ends. Being a sensualist, he was perforce an egotist, and the smallest of his desires became the star by which he laid his course. Through stress of appet.i.tes, as powerful as they were gross, he had grown sharp to calculate, and quick to see. He was controlled and hurried down by currents of a turbid selfishness; nor would he have stopped at any cruelty, balked at any crime, when prompted of what brute hungers kept his soul awake. He might have wept over failure, never from remorse. And Storri had set his savage heart on Dorothy.

Dorothy felt an aversion to Storri, and she could not have told you why.

The mystery of it, however, put no question to her; she yielded with folded hands, pa.s.sive to its influence. She did not hate Storri, she shrunk from him; his nearness chilled her like the nearness of a reptile. Kipling, the matchless, tells how a Russian does not become alarming until he tucks in his s.h.i.+rt, and insists upon himself as the most Eastern of Western peoples instead of the most Western of Eastern peoples. There is truth to sit at the bottom of this. Dorothy would have met Storri with indifference had that n.o.bleman seen fit to catalogue himself, socially, as a Kalmuck Tartar, not of her strain and tribe; she was set a-shudder when made to meet him under conditions which admitted the propriety of marriage between them, should she and he agree. As it stood, Dorothy was alive for flight the moment Storri stepped into her presence; she knew by intuition the foulness of his fiber, and s.h.i.+vered at any threat of contact therewith.

Storri was aware of Dorothy's dislike, since aversion is the one sentiment a woman cannot conceal. The discovery only made him laugh. He was too much the conqueror of women to look for failure here. Should he, Storri, who had been sighed for by the fairest of a dozen stately courts, receive defeat from a little American? Bah! he would have her at his ease, win her at his pleasure! Dorothy's efforts to avoid him gave pursuit a piquancy!

While Storri noted Dorothy's distaste of him, he did not get slightest slant of her tender preference for Richard. As far as he might, Storri had taught himself contempt for Richard. This was not the simplest task; it is hard to despise one whom your heart fears, and before whose glance your own eyes waver and give way. Still, Storri got on with his contempt beyond what one might have imagined. He considered all Americans beneath him, and Richard was an American. There he had an advantage at the start. Also, Richard was of the newspapers. Even those Americans about him, with their own sneers and shoulder-shrugs, showed him how such folk were unworthy genteel countenance. They looked down upon Richard, Storri looked down upon them; the greater included the less, and deductions were easy. Storri arrived at a most happy contempt of Richard as a mathematician gets to the solution of a problem, and, being mercurial, not thoughtful, arranged with himself that Richard was below consideration.

Richard and Storri made no sign of social recognition when their paths crossed by chance. At such times the latter held an att.i.tude of staring superiority--the fellow, perhaps, to that which belonged with Captain Cook when first he saw the Sandwich Islanders. Had Storri been of reflective turn he might have remembered that, as a gustatory finale, those serene islanders roasted the mariner, and made their dinner off him.

Mr. Harley was a busy man, and yet he had no office rooms. This was not his fault; he had once set out to establish himself with such a theater of effort, but Senator Hanway put down his foot.

"No; no office, John!" said that statesman.

Then Senator Hanway, who was as furtive as a mink, called Mr. Harley's attention to the explanation which a narrow world would give. Those office rooms would be pointed to as the market-place where corporations might trade for his, Senator Hanway's, services.

"If you please, we'll have no such argument going about," observed Senator Hanway.