Part 26 (1/2)

”They did _your_ work, James,” said I. ”I guarantee that in no case will the unpleasant consequences to you be more than a few disagreeable but soon forgotten newspaper articles. You haggle over these trifles, and--why, look at your cabinet list! There are two names on it--two of the four Goodrich men--that will cost you blasts of public anger--perhaps the renomination.”

”Is _this_ my friend Harvey Sayler?” he exclaimed, grief and pain in that face which had been used by him for thirty years as the sculptor uses the molding clay.

”It is,” I answered calmly. ”And never more your friend than now, when you have ceased to be a friend to him--and to yourself.”

”Then do not ask me to share the infamy of those wretches,” he pleaded.

”They are our allies and helpers,” I said, ”wretches only as I and all of us in practical politics are wretches. Difference of degree, perhaps; but not of kind. And, James, if our promises to these invaluable fellow workers of ours are not kept, kept to the uttermost, you will compel me and my group of Senators to oppose and defeat your most important nominations. And I shall myself, publicly, from the floor of the Senate, show up these Goodrich nominees of yours as creatures of corrupt corporations and monopolies.” I said this without heat; every word of it fell cold as arctic ice upon his pa.s.sion.

A long pause, then: ”Your promises shall be kept,” he a.s.sented with great dignity of manner; ”not because you threaten, Harvey, but because I value your friends.h.i.+p beyond anything and everything. And I may add I am sorry, profoundly sorry, my selections for the important places do not please you.”

”I think of your future,” I said. ”You _talk_ of friends.h.i.+p--”

”No, no, Harvey,” he protested, with a vehemence of rea.s.surance that struck me as amusing.

”And,” I went on, ”it is in friends.h.i.+p, James, that I warn you not to fill all your crucial places with creatures of the Goodrich crowd. They will rule your administration, they will drive you, in spite of yourself, on and on, from excess to excess. You will put the middle West irrevocably against you. You will make even the East doubtful. You are paying, paying with your whole future, for that which is already yours.

If you lose your hold on the people, the money-crowd will have none of you. If you keep the people, the money-crowd will be your very humble servant.”

I happened just then to glance past him at a picture on the wall over his chair. It was a crayon portrait of his wife, made from an enlarged photograph--a poor piece of work, almost ludicrous in its distortions of proportion and perspective. But it touched me the more because it was such a humble thing, reminiscent of her and his and my lowly beginnings.

And an appeal seemed to go straight to my heart from those eyes that had so often been raised from the sewing in sympathetic understanding of the things I was struggling to make her husband see.

I pointed to the picture; he slowly turned round in his chair until he too was looking at it. ”What would _she_ say, Burbank,” I asked, ”if she were with us now?”

And then I went on to a.n.a.lyze his outlined administration, to show him in detail why I thought it would ruin him, to suggest men who were as good party men as the Goodrich crowd and would be a credit to him and a help. And he listened with his old-time expression, looking up at his dead wife's picture all the while. ”You must be _popular_, at any cost,”

I ended. ”The industrial crowd will stay with the party, no matter what we do. As long as Scarborough is in control on the other side, we are their only hope. And so, we are free to seek popularity--and we must regain it or we're done for. Money won't save us when we've lost our grip on the rank and file. The presidency can't be bought again for _you_. If it must be bought next time, another figure-head will have to be used.”

”I can't tell you how grateful I am,” was his conclusion after I had put my whole mind before him and he and I had discussed it. ”But there are certain pledges to Goodrich--”

”Break them,” said I. ”To keep them is catastrophe.”

I knew the pledges he had in the foreground of his thoughts--a St. Louis understrapper of the New York financial crowd for Secretary of the Treasury; for Attorney General a lawyer who knew nothing of politics or public sentiment or indeed of anything but how to instruct corporations in law-breaking and law-dodging.

He thought a long time. When he answered it was with a shake of the head. ”Too late, I'm afraid, Harvey. I've asked the men and they've accepted. That was a most untimely illness of yours. I'll see what can be done. It's a grave step to offend several of the most conspicuous men in the party.”

”Not so serious as to offend the party itself,” I replied. ”Money is a great power in politics, but partizans.h.i.+p is a greater.”

”I'll think it over,” was the most he had the courage to concede. ”I must look at all sides, you know. But, whatever I decide, I thank you for your candor.”

We separated, the best friends in the world, I trying to recover some few of the high hopes of him that had filled me on election night. ”He's weak and timid,” I said to myself, ”but at bottom he must have a longing to be President in fact as well as in name. Even the meanest slave longs to be a man.”

I should have excepted the self-enslaved slaves of ambition. Of all bondmen, they alone, I believe, not only do not wish freedom, but also are ever plotting how they may add to their chains.

XXIX

A LETTER FROM THE DEAD