The Ramrodders Part 43

And yet Madeleine Presson, more than ever before, attracted him powerfully. She had the elements that he had never seen and experienced in womankind. Just at that moment she dominated, for his pa.s.sion had betrayed him into a rather puerile outbreak.

Subtle a.n.a.lysis of the emotions was beyond him. He did not understand.

His life had trained him along more primitive lines of selection. But he realized now that he was trying to probe something in his soul that defied his rather limited powers of judging. He had not given his heart unreservedly, he had not pledged himself. Clare Kavanagh had repented of a child's weakness and had run away from him, vaguely hinting that she would forget him. This masterful young woman, driving him back to town, her determined profile outlined against the gloom as he gazed shyly at her, did not appear to be interested in him, except as a rebel to authority and needing chastis.e.m.e.nt.

The child of the woods, as he thought of her, stirred all his tenderness, his sympathy, and the soft ties of long intimacy and understanding bound him.

But this girl, with beauty and brains, on his own level of independence of thought, stirred new desires and ambitions in him. She was helpmate and counsellor. He wondered if newer times and conditions did not demand stronger qualities than mere womanhood in the wife who was to accompany a man into the vicissitudes of public life. Not that he felt that he was more than an humble instrument of the real power. But he fell to considering the subject from the general viewpoint. His own experiences had awakened new ideas that he pondered, having a very provocative suggestion at his side.

Still more humbly he asked her: "If you have been thinking the matter over, Miss Presson, what advice do you give me?"

"I advise you to have a serious talk with your grandfather. He has had much experience. Use your own judgment, too, but be ready to hear the evidence. You have not shown that willingness, yet, so far as I can determine. I haven't any advice of my own to offer. I'll not presume.

Only this: be as honest as you can, but don't be so impractically honest that you chop down all your bridges behind you and neglect to gather timber for the bridges ahead of you."

Even in the gloom she understood that he was puzzled.

"Really, you know, I haven't written any handbook on practical politics, Mr. Thornton," she said, her humor coming to the rescue. "I have talked to you as though I had. But I've only talked to you with a woman's intuition in such matters--and you remember, too, I've seen much of legislative life. You can be good in politics--but, oh, don't be impractical! I want you to succeed."

"You do?"

"I most certainly do." She said it heartily.

No other word pa.s.sed between them until they arrived in front of the hotel.

He reached up, after he had alighted, and grasped her hand. She had impulsively put out her own to meet his.

"I'll try to be--" he began, and then hesitated. He had been pondering.

But his thoughts were still so confused that he could not think of the word that expressed exactly what he desired to make himself.

"Be human," she said, smiling down on him. "You won't find yourself of much use in the world unless you cultivate the faculty of personal contact, and you musn't try to leap into politics in this State right from the pedestal of a demiG.o.d. You may be able to elevate yourself later, but just now, my dear young friend, you should be _reasonable_.

That's a word that means much in handling men and affairs. Now I hope I've softened you so that you will listen to your good grandfather when he has advice for you."

She did not allow herself to be too serious. There was the delicious drawl in her tone that had attracted him at first.

He went to his room and sat down to digest that political philosophy. If some one beside Madeleine Presson had said it, it would have seemed to him like the voice of the temptress. But she had already won his confidence in her sincerity. He wished that he could feel that her interest in him had more of a personal quality than she had admitted. He did not like to remember that it was simply affection for his grandfather that prompted her. He did not understand very well what he was to do to obey her suggestions. He did not understand himself exactly at that moment. But along with his loyalty to General Waymouth a new desire sprang into life within him. He wanted to show Luke Presson's daughter that Harlan Thornton could play the game of practical politics as well as Herbert Linton, and in the end would be more deserving of her respect.

CHAPTER XXIII

A TRUCE

Gen. Varden Waymouth was elected Governor. In spite of the sullen torpor of his party managers and the snarls of the Reverend Prouty and his radical ilk, he surmounted by mere momentum of his party a certain bland and trustful and destructive indifference of the general public, and won at the polls. The narrow margin by which he won would have scared a really loyal and conscientious State Committee. But the before-and-after gloom of Chairman Presson and his intimates was not caused by any worriment over the size of the plurality. They were languid spectators.

They felt like dispossessed tenants. They took little interest in the temple of the party faith.

"When they buried old Zenas Bellew up our way (Zenas weighed three hundred and fifty, and lived in a cottage about the size of a wood-box) the undertaker found he couldn't get the coffin into the house or get Zenas out--not through doors or windows. A half-witted fellow we call 'Simpson's Rooster' spoke up, and said they'd better bury the old man in the house and move the family out into the coffin." That was Thelismer Thornton's comment on the political situation in the Republican party on the morning after the election. The chairman heard it with the gloom of a mourner. He could see nothing bright in the jest or the prospects.

There was a frigid truce during the four months that elapsed between the election and the a.s.sembling of the legislature.

General Waymouth retired to the brick house in Burnside, and gave ear to those who promptly made his home the Mecca of the State. There were office-holders who wanted to hold to their jobs, office-seekers who suspected that there would be a break in the plans of party patronage; there were officious gentlemen suggesting new legislation for the next administration to consider; there were crafty gentlemen trying to discover what the administration would recommend. The day was full of cares, duties, annoyances, and the nagging pleadings of persistent pet.i.tioners.

Harlan Thornton, now representative-elect from the Fort Canibas district, became still more indispensable in General Waymouth's daily life. Duties at a desk had worn upon him. This everlasting mingling with men was more to his taste. He had natural adaptability. He was a good judge of human nature. He had serene good nature. Physique and manner made him master of many situations at the old brick house that otherwise would have sadly tried the General's strength and temper. Therefore, his chief placed greater dependence upon his lieutenant with every day that pa.s.sed, solicited his opinions as his knowledge of men increased and his judgment became worth more, relied upon his instinctive estimates of character, and s.h.i.+fted many burdens to the broad shoulders that seemed so well fitted to carry them.

Harlan Thornton was slow to realize what a tremendous power, as chamberlain, he really exercised in the State.

He awoke to that fact more slowly than did the men who came to solicit.

He did not try to use his power for his own ends. He promptly noted the deference that men paid him; as promptly he penetrated certain plans men made to corrupt him, if they could. These attempts were made slyly, and did not proceed very far. Something in his demeanor prevented the plotters from openly broaching their desires and their willingness to make their interests worth his while. They knew that one of the Thorntons could not be won by money, but they were rather surprised to find out that he could not be beguiled by other inducements. He was so big and manly, and he had rapidly become so self-poised, that they did not realize that in experience he was only a boy, with the ingenuous faith and simple aims and candor of boyhood. He perceived what he might win. But the pride of serving General Waymouth loyally was worth more to him than anything they could offer.

His duties took him often to the State capital. The chairman of the State Committee was coolly courteous, often gloomily deferential, sometimes frankly cordial--uneasily trying to find the proper level to stand on in his intercourse with one who was the grandson of Thelismer Thornton, and also the chosen confidant of the man who had wrested from him control of State affairs.

In the case of Madeleine Presson, there was none of this embarra.s.sment.

He saw her often. She met him half-way with a frank interest in his work and a sympathy which, in those days of truce, did not question his ideals.

He became a welcome intimate of the Presson household. When he was there the master himself put aside all the brusqueness he displayed in their down-town discourse on politics. The girl welcomed him. There were many hours when they were alone together, in the home or on long drives into the country. She did not refer to their talk on that evening when she read to him his lesson on practical politics. He avoided that subject.

He did not want to risk any further disagreement between them on the matter of ideals--or, for that matter, on any other subject. a.s.sociation with her had become too delightful to be put to the test of discussions of political methods. He was still drawing upon her fund of worldly wisdom. There was a little touch of the cynic in her. He became secretly ashamed of some of his ingenuous beliefs, after she had deftly shown him the other side of things. She did show him the other side, quite in a matter-of-fact way. It was not that she was trying to break down his faith. There was nothing sly nor crafty in her methods of improving his views. But by informing him, she made him wiser, and, at the same time, more distrustful of motives, more searching in his investigations of methods. He began to doubt some of his earlier ideas of what a public man should be. He felt that his views were broadening. That was a comfortable way of excusing certain surrenderings to her ideas.

The more he drew from her the more he was drawn to her.

It was not the love that comes with a rush of the emotions and sweeps a man away.

Through the intellect, through his hunger for information and wider views, she was making herself indispensable to his welfare and his ambitions.

And yet Madeleine Presson was not trying to make this young man of the north country fall in love with her. Her interest in him was first of all based upon his winning earnestness and the elements of success that she divined in him, were they properly cultivated. She had studied men at the capital from childhood. The development of men in public life and service had been the one theme that she had heard most discussed. Her impulse of a.s.sistance had been directed toward this grandson of Thelismer Thornton.

But as the days went by, and opportunity gave them their hours together, they were drawn more closely, each insisting in secret meditation that it was not love. He found himself gradually rebuilding his creed of living on the foundation she had laid in that first long talk of theirs. He had arrived at such a point of belief in her that he was glad that she had opened his eyes. He was finding men--meeting them by the hundred--even as she had pictured them to him: selfish, scheming, crafty, and not understanding in the least his occasional attempts to meet them on the upper level of perfect candor. For her part, she found more in this young man than she had expected to find.

Harlan considered Herbert Linton the single jarring note in this new symphony of mutual interests.

Linton came to the capital with more or less regularity, and called on the Pressons with fully as much appearance of being entirely at home as his newer rival. When they were together the girl treated both with impartial interest and attention. She listened to each in turn, and if they chose to sit and scowl at each other she did the talking for all three. Deftly she arranged that they should leave together, and they always promptly separated as soon as they reached the sidewalk, as though they were afraid to trust themselves in each other's company.

So the new year came in, and the hordes of lawmakers, lobbyists, lookers-on, and laymen descended on the State capital.

The first few days of a legislative session, though packed full of politics and business, rush, and routine, are festival days, after all.

There are the old friends to greet and the new friends to meet. There are ten spectators to every legislator, and the spectators are on hand for a good time. Outside of the factional clinches of the House and Senate caucuses the early days have little serious business.

Presson's great hotel and the lesser lights of the capital's houses of entertainment were packed to their roofs. The State House on the hill sent sparkling radiance at night from all its hundreds of windows out across the snow which loaded the broad lawns. Senator Pownal, renominated in joint caucus, spoke to crowded floor and galleries on the second evening. Harlan Thornton, in his seat in the House, listened and wondered if that convention had not been a dream.

This later convocation seemed so entirely harmonious.

The Republicans ruled House and Senate by safe majorities. Presson, sauntering about hotel or State House lobby, seemed bland and contented again. The wounds in the party seemed to have been healed.

On inauguration day Governor Waymouth added to the general spirit of harmony.

He came un.o.btrusively to the State House from the modest mansion he had leased in the capital city for the legislative winter and took his oath of office before an admiring throng. He had made a confidant of no one regarding his inaugural speech. There were vague rumors that the Governor would follow his hand, as he had shown it in his letter of acceptance, and deliver an inaugural address which would blister the ears of the politically unregenerate.

In that ancient State House, its accommodations for spectators limited, there were no hard-and-fast rules regulating admission to the floor.

Harlan Thornton had a chair placed in the aisle beside his seat, and entertained Madeleine Presson there. He had antic.i.p.ated Linton, who came with a similar invitation. Harlan was still enough of a boy to feel delight in the discomfiture of his rival, and to be gratified by the open admiration his fellow-members showed for the girl at his side. He relished the sour looks which Linton sent in that direction.