Part 28 (1/2)
At a little after eight the following night, I was in Chicago, was knocking at Suite L in the Auditorium Hotel; I was hearing sounds from within that indicated that the dinner was under way. The door swung back and there stood old Roebuck himself, napkin in hand, his shriveling old face showing that his dollar sense was taking up the strength which his other senses were losing. He was saying cordially, ”Ah, Croffut, you are late--”
Then his dim eyes saw me; he pulled himself up like a train when the air-brakes are clapped on.
”They told me at the office that you were at dinner,” said I in the tone of one who has unintentionally blundered. ”As I was looking for dinner, I rather hoped you'd ask me to join you. But I see that--”
”Come right in,” he said smoothly, but gray as a sheep. ”You'll find some old friends of yours. We're taking advantage of the convention of western manufacturers to have a little reunion.”
I now had a full view of the table. There was a silence that made the creaking of starched evening s.h.i.+rt-bosoms noisy as those men drew long stealthy breaths when breathing became imperative. All my ”clients” and Dominick--he at Roebuck's right. At Roebuck's left there was a vacant chair. ”Shall I sit here?” said I easily.
”That place was reserved--was for--but--” stammered Roebuck.
”For Granby's ghost?” said I pleasantly.
His big lips writhed. And as my glance of greeting to these old friends of mine traveled down one side of the table and up the other, it might have been setting those faces on fire, so brightly did they flare. It was hard for me to keep my disgust beneath the surface. Those ”gentlemen” a.s.sembled there were among the ”leading citizens” of my state; and Roebuck was famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a king of commerce and a philanthropist. Yet, every one of those brains was busy most of its hours with a.s.sa.s.sin-like plottings--and for what purpose?
For ends so petty, so gross and stupid that it was inconceivable how intelligence could waste life upon them, not to speak of the utter depravity and lack of manliness. Liars cheats, bribers; and flaunting the fruits of infamy as honors, as t.i.tles to respect, as gifts from Almighty G.o.d! And here they were, a.s.sembled now for silly plottings against the man whose only offense in their eyes was that he was saving them from themselves--was preventing them from killing the goose that would cheerfully keep on laying golden eggs for the privilege of remaining alive. It was pitiful. It was nauseating. I felt my degradation in stooping to such company.
I spoke to Dominick last. To my surprise he squarely returned my gaze.
His eyes were twinkling, as the eyes of a pig seem to be, if you look straight into its face when it lifts its snout from a full trough.
Presently he could contain the huge volume of his mirth no longer. It came roaring from him in a great coa.r.s.e torrent, shaking his vast bulk and the chair that sustained it, swelling the veins in his face, resounding through the silent room while the waiters literally stood aghast. At last he found breath to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e: ”Well, I'll be good and--d.a.m.ned!”
This gale ripped from the others and whirled away their cloaks of surface-composure. Naked, they suggested a lot of rats in a trap--Dominick jeering at them and antic.i.p.ating the pleasure of watching me torment them. I choked back the surge of repulsion and said to Roebuck: ”Then where _shall_ I sit?”
Roebuck looked, almost wildly, toward the foot of the table. He longed to have me as far from him as possible. Partridge, at the foot of the table, cried out--in alarm: ”Make room for the Senator between you and Mr. Dominick, Roebuck! He ought to be as near the head of the table as possible.”
”No matter where Senator Sayler sits, it's the head of the table,” said Roebuck. His commonplace of courtesy indicated, not recovered self-control, but the cunning of his rampant instinct of self-preservation--that cunning which men so often exhibit in desperate straits, thereby winning credit for cool courage.
”We're a merry company,” said I, as we sat. This, with a glance at Dominick heaving in the subsiding storm of his mirth. My remark set him off again. I glanced at his place to see if he had abandoned his former inflexible rule of total abstinence. There stood his invariable pot of tea. Clearly, it was not drink that enabled him to enjoy a situation which, as it seemed to me, was fully as unattractive for him as for his fellows.
Soon the door opened and in strode Croffut; handsome, picturesque, with his pose of das.h.i.+ng, brave manhood, which always got the crowds into the mood for the frenzy his oratory conjured. Croffut seemed to me to put the climax upon this despicable company--Croffut, one of the great orators of the party, so adored by the people that, but for our overwhelming superiority in the state, I should never have dared eject him from office. Since I ejected him he had not spoken to me. Dominick looked at him, said in a voice that would have flared even the warm ashes of manhood into a furious blaze: ”Go and shake hands with Senator Sayler, Croffut, and sit down.”
Croffut advanced, smiling. ”I am fit for my company,” thought I as I let him clasp my hand.
”Better tilt Granby's ghost out of that chair, Croffut,” said Dominick, as the ex-Senator was seating himself. And in his animal exuberance of delight at his joke and at the whole situation he clapped Roebuck on the shoulder.
Roebuck shrank and winced. Moral humiliation he could shed as an armor-plated turret sheds musket-b.a.l.l.s. But a physical humiliation, especially with spectators, sank in and sank deep. Instantly, alarmed lest Dominick had seen and understood, he smiled and said: ”That's a vigorous arm of yours, Mr. Dominick.”
”Not bad for a man of sixty,” said Dominick.
I ate because to eat was a necessary part of my pose of absolute calmness; but I had to force down the food. It seemed to me to embody the banquet there set before my mental appet.i.te. I found I had no stomach for that banquet. It takes the coa.r.s.e palate of youth or the depraved palate of a more debauched manhood than mine to enjoy such a feast. Yet, less than a year before, I had enjoyed, had delighted in, a far less strenuous contest with these mutineers. As I sat holding down my gorge and acting as if I were at ease, I suddenly wondered what Elizabeth Crosby would think of me if she could see. And then I saw her, with a reality of imagining that startled me--it was as if she were in the doorway; and her eyes lifted to mine in that slow, steady, searching gaze of hers.
I suppose, if a soldier thrusting his saber into the bowels of his enemy on the battle-field were suddenly to see before him his mother or the good and gentle wife or daughter he loved, he would drop the saber and fly to hide himself like a murderer. So, I, overwhelmed, said to myself: ”I can not go on! Let these wretches wallow in their own vileness. I shall not wallow with them. I am no swineherd!”
As I was debating how to escape and what one of the many other ways of saving my friends and lieutenants I should adopt, Dominick touched me on the arm. ”A word with you, Senator,” said he.
He glanced at the others as if he were debating whether he should order them from the table while he talked with me. If he had ordered it, they would have gone. But restrained, perhaps by his crude though reverent sense of convention, he rose and led the way over to a corner.
”I want to tell you, Senator, that as soon as I got on to what this here push was plottin', I wired you askin' an appointment. You'll find the telegram at your house when you go home. I don't stand for no foulin'. I play the game straight. I came because I thought you'd want the party to be represented at such a getherin'.”
I saw that he had come to the dinner, doubtful whether any enterprise against me, promising enough for him to risk embarking, could be launched; as soon as I entered the room he, like the rat when the cat interrupted the rat-and-mouse convention to discuss belling it, unceremoniously led the way to safety. But this was not one of those few occasions on which it is wise to show a man that his lies do not fool you. ”I am glad to hear you say these things, Dominick,” said I. ”I am glad you are loyal to the party.”