The Plum Tree Part 11

XI

BURBANK

It was through Carlotta that I came to know Burbank well.

He was in the House, representing the easternmost district of our state.

I had disliked him when we were boys in the state a.s.sembly together, and, when I met him again in Was.h.i.+ngton, he seemed to me to have all his faults of fifteen years before aggravated by persistence in them.

Finally, I needed his place in Congress for a useful lieutenant of Woodruff's and ordered him beaten for the renomination. He made a bitter fight against decapitation, and, as he was popular with the people of his district, we had some difficulty in defeating him. But when he was beaten, he was of course helpless and hopelessly discredited,--the people soon forget a fallen politician. He "took off his coat" and worked hard and well for the election of the man who had euchred him out of the nomination. When he returned to Was.h.i.+ngton to finish his term, he began a double, desperate a.s.sault upon my friends.h.i.+p. The direct a.s.sault was unsuccessful,--I understood it, and I was in no need of lieutenants. More than I could easily take care of were already striving to serve me, scores of the brightest, most ambitious young men of the state eager to do my bidding, whatever it might be, in the hope that in return I would "take care of" them, would admit them to the coveted inclosure round the plum tree. The plum tree! Is there any kind of fruit which gladdens the eyes of ambitious man, that does not glisten upon some one of its many boughs, heavy-laden with corporate and public honors and wealth?

Burbank's indirect attack, through his wife and Carlotta, fared better.

The first of it I distinctly recall was after a children's party at our house. Carlotta singled out Mrs. Burbank for enthusiastic commendation.

"The other women sent nurses with their children," said she, "but Mrs.

Burbank came herself. She was so sweet in apologizing for coming. She said she hadn't any nurse, and that she was so timid about her children that she never could bring herself to trust them to nurses. And really, Harvey, you don't know how nice she was all the afternoon. She's the kind of mother I approve of, the kind I try to be. Don't you admire her?"

"I don't know her," said I. "The only time I met her she struck me as being--well, rather silent."

"That's it," she exclaimed triumphantly. "She doesn't care a rap for men. She's absorbed in her children and her husband." Then, after a pause, she added: "Well, she's welcome to him. I can't see what she finds to care for."

"Why?" said I.

"Oh, he's distinguished-looking, and polite, offensively polite to women--he doesn't understand them at all--thinks they like deference and flattery, the low-grade mola.s.ses kind of flattery. He has a very nice smile. But he's so stilted and tiresome, always serious,--and such a pose! It's what I call the presidential pose. No doubt he'll be President some day."

"Why?" said I. It is amusing to watch a woman fumble about for reasons for her intuitions.

Carlotta did uncommonly well. "Oh, I don't know. He's the sort of high-average American that the people go crazy about. He--he--_looks_ like a President, that sort of--solemn--no-sense-of-humor, _Sunday_ look,--you know what I mean. Anyhow, he's going to be President."

I thought not. A few days later, while what Carlotta had said was fresh in my mind, he overtook me walking to the capitol. As we went on together, I was smiling to myself. He certainly did look and talk like a President. He was of the average height, of the average build, and of a sort of average facial mold; he had hair that was a compromise among the average shades of brown, gray, and black, with a bald spot just where most men have it.

His pose--I saw that Carlotta was shrewdly right. He was acutely self-conscious, and was acting his pose every instant. He had selected it early in life; he would wear it, even in his nights.h.i.+rt, until death.

He said nothing brilliant, but neither did he say anything that would not have been generally regarded as sound and sensible. His impressive manner of delivering his words made one overvalue the freight they carried. But I soon found, for I studied him with increasing interest, thanks to my new point of view upon him,--I soon found that he had one quality the reverse of commonplace. He had magnetism.

Whenever a new candidate was proposed for Mazarin's service, he used to ask, first of all, "Has he luck?" My first question has been, "Has he magnetism?" and I think mine is the better measure. Such of one's luck as is not the blundering blindness of one's opponents is usually the result of one's magnetism. However, it is about the most dangerous of the free gifts of nature,--which are all dangerous. Burbank's merit lay in his discreet use of it. It compelled men to center upon him; he turned this to his advantage by making them feel, not how he shone, but how they shone. They went away liking him because they had new reasons for being in love with themselves.

I found only two serious weaknesses. The first was that he lacked the moral courage boldly to do either right or wrong. That explained why, in spite of his talents for impressing people both privately and from the platform, he was at the end of his political career. The second weakness was that he was ashamed of his very obscure and humble origin. He knew that his being "wholly self-made" was a matchless political a.s.set, and he used it accordingly. But he looked on it somewhat as the beggar looks on the deformity he exhibits to get alms.

Neither weakness made him less valuable to my purpose,--the first one, if anything, increased his value. I wanted an instrument that was capable, but strong only when I used it.

I wanted a man suitable for development first into governor of my state, and then into a President. I could not have got the presidency for myself, but neither did I want it. My longings were all for power,--the reality, not the shadow. In a republic the man who has the real power must be out of view. If he is within view, a million hands stretch to drag him from the throne. He _must_ be out of view, putting forward his puppets and changing them when the people grow bored or angry with them.

And the President--in all important matters he must obey his party, which is, after all, simply the "interests" that finance it; in unimportant matters, his so-called power is whittled down by the party's leaders and workers, whose requirements may not be disregarded. He shakes the plum tree, but he does it under orders; others gather the fruit, and he gets only the exercise and the "honor."

I had no yearning for puppets.h.i.+p, however exalted the t.i.tle or sonorous the fame; but to be the power that selects the king-puppet of the political puppet-hierarchy, to be the power that selects and rules him,--that was the logical development of my career.

In Burbank I thought I had found a man worthy to wear the puppet robes,--one who would glory in them. He, like most of the other ambitious men I have known, cared little who was behind the throne, provided he himself was seated upon it, the crown on his head and the crowds tossing the hats that shelter their dim-thinking brains. Also, in addition to magnetism and presence, he had dexterity and distinction and as much docility as can be expected in a man big enough to use for important work.

In September I gave him our party nomination for governor. In our one-sided state that meant his election.

As I had put him into the governors.h.i.+p not so much for use there as for use thereafter, it was necessary to protect him from my combine, which had destroyed his two immediate predecessors by over-use,--they had become so unpopular that their political careers ended with their terms.

Protect him I must, though the task would be neither easy nor pleasant.

It involved a collision with my clients,--a square test of strength between us. What was to me far more repellent, it involved my personally taking a hand in that part of my political work which I had hitherto left to Woodruff and his lieutenants.

One does not in person chase and catch and kill and dress and serve the chicken he has for dinner; he orders chicken, and hears and thinks no more about it until it is served. Thus, all the highly disagreeable part of my political work was done by others; Woodruff, admirably capable and most careful to spare my feelings, received the demands of my clients from their lawyers and transmitted them to the party leaders in the legislature with the instructions how the machinery was to be used in making them into law. As I was financing the machines of both parties, his task was not difficult, though delicate.

But now that I began to look over Woodruff's legislative program in advance, I was amazed at the rapacity of my clients, rapacious though I knew them to be. I had been thinking that the independent newspapers--there were a few such, but of small circulation and influence--were malignant in their attacks upon my "friends." In fact, as I soon saw, they had told only a small part of the truth. They had not found out the worst things that were done; nor had they grasped how little the legislature and the governor were doing other than the business of the big corporations, most of it of doubtful public benefit, to speak temperately. An hour's study of the facts and I realized as never before why we are so rapidly developing a breed of multi-millionaires in this country with all the opportunities to wealth in their hands. I had only to remember that the system which ruled my own state was in full blast in every one of the states of the Union.

Everywhere, no sooner do the people open or propose to open a new road into a source of wealth, than men like these clients of mine hurry to the politicians and buy the rights to set up toll-gates and to fix their own schedule of tolls.

However, the time had now come when I must a.s.sert myself. I made no radical changes in that first program of Burbank's term. I contented myself with cutting off the worst items, those it would have ruined Burbank to indorse. My clients were soon grumbling, but Woodruff handled them well, placating them with excuses that soothed their annoyance to discontented silence. So ably did he manage it that not until Burbank's third year did they begin to come directly to me and complain of the way they were being "thrown down" at the capitol.

Roebuck, knowing me most intimately and feeling that he was my author and protector, was frankly insistent. "We got almost nothing at the last session," he protested, "and this winter--Woodruff tells me we may not get the only thing we're asking."

I was ready for him, as I was for each of the ten. I took out the list of measures pa.s.sed or killed at the last session in the interest of the Power Trust. It contained seventy-eight items, thirty-four of them pa.s.sed. I handed it to him.

"Yes,--a few things," he admitted, "but all trifles!"

"That little amendment to the Waterways law must alone have netted you three or four millions already."

"Nothing like that. Nothing like that."

"I can organize a company within twenty-four hours that will pay you four millions in cash for the right, and stock besides."

He did not take up my offer.

"You have already had thirteen matters attended to this winter," I pursued. "The one that can't be done--Really, Mr. Roebuck, the whole state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan Christian University are your dummies. It would be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to them, so that they can presently sell it to you for a song."

He reddened. "Newspaper scandal!" he bl.u.s.tered, but changed the subject as soon as he had shown me and re-shown himself that his motives were pure.

I saw that Burbank's last winter was to be crucial. My clients were clamorous, and were hinting at all sorts of dire doings if they were not treated better. Roebuck was questioning, in the most malignantly friendly manner, "whether, after all, Harvey, the combine isn't a mistake, and the old way wasn't the best." On the other hand Burbank was becoming restless. He had so cleverly taken advantage of the chances to do popular things, which I had either made for him or pointed out to him, that he had become something of a national figure. When he got eighty-one votes for the presidential nomination in our party's national convention his brain was dizzied. Now he was in a tremor lest my clients should demand of him things that would diminish or destroy this sapling popularity which, in his dreams, he already saw grown into a mighty tree obscuring the national heavens.

I gave many and many an hour to anxious thought and careful planning that summer and fall. It was only a few days before Doc Woodruff appeared at Fredonia with the winter's legislative program that I saw my way straight to what I hoped was broad day. The program he brought was so outrageous that it was funny. There was nothing in it for the Ramsay interests, but each of the other ten had apparently exhausted the ingenuity of its lawyers in concocting demands that would have wrecked for ever the party granting them.

"Our friends are modest," said I.

"They've gone clean crazy," replied Woodruff. "And if you could have heard them talk! It's impossible to make them see that anybody has any rights but themselves."

"Well, let me have the details," said I. "Explain every item on this list; tell me just what it means, and just how the lawyers propose to disguise it so the people won't catch on."

When he finished, I divided the demands into three cla.s.ses,--the impossible, the possible, and the practicable. "Strike out all the impossible," I directed. "Cut down the possible to the ten that are least outrageous. Those ten and the practicable must be pa.s.sed."

He read off the ten which were beyond the limits of prudence, but not mob-and-hanging matters. "We can pa.s.s them, of course," was his comment.

"We could pa.s.s a law ordering the state house burned, but--"

"Precisely," said I. "I think the consequences will be interesting." I cross-marked the five worst of the ten possibilities. "Save those until the last weeks of the session."

Early in the session Woodruff began to push the five least bad of the bad measures on to the calendar of the legislature, one by one. When the third was introduced, Burbank took the Limited for Was.h.i.+ngton. He arrived in time to join my wife and my little daughter Frances and me at breakfast. He was so white and sunken-eyed and his hands were so unsteady that Frances tried in vain to take her solemn, wondering, pitying gaze from his face. As soon as my study door closed behind us, he burst out, striding up and down.