Part 48 (1/2)
”It's begun, all right. Jiminy, but you'll have a tough time. They're onto you now. You haven't the ghost of a chance to make a move they won't see before your hand is off the board.”
Gwynne replied with even more than his usual fluency.
”Yes,” replied Colton, with a sigh. ”I guess that's where we'll all bring up. But meanwhile? Are you going to throw me over?”
”It will depend upon yourself. I have no objection to confide to you such plans as I have been able to formulate. Judge Leslie advised me to play about in society, in Was.h.i.+ngton, but I was in no humor for anything of the sort. I had uncommon opportunities to study men and conditions, and I took full advantage of them. I doubt if I shall vote until the next Presidential election. Then, if an independent party of consequence has not been formed, and I see no prospect of working up one in this State, I shall vote the Democratic ticket. As things stand at present, it is the less of two evils, and would at least accomplish a reduction of the tariff, and something towards a redistribution of wealth. I haven't the least doubt that the Democrats, if they get in--unless they have a really good man up their sleeve--will abuse their power quite as much as the Republicans have done; but that will take some time; and meanwhile a new party is sure to grow up, for the best men in the country are thoroughly roused. There's no doubt on that point--and it is a point you would do well to remember. There have been chapters before in the world's history when right has paid.”
”For a while,” said Colton, dubiously. ”The point is now that you are likely to join the Democrats.”
”To vote with them. Theirs are the soundest principles. I stick to that point.”
”I don't question it. I only wish elections weren't two years off; I'd like to get to work.” He took a bag of peanuts from his pocket and began to munch thoughtfully. ”But you are turning me off. What do you mean exactly?”
”I shall have nothing to do with the machine. I shall speak and make propaganda, that is all. My object is not so much to get the Democrats in as the Republicans out. I shall do nothing to split the Democratic party--and play a losing game--unless a really great movement should rise, gather strength, and sweep the country. It is on the cards that there will be such a movement, and I throw myself into it the moment I am persuaded the split will not work to the advantage of the Republicans.”
”How much enthusiasm have you pumped up?”
”Enthusiasm!” Gwynne's eyes roved over his ”fair domain.” Isabel, at least, was not far from its borders! ”I cannot say that I am at boiling-point, but I don't fancy that matters much. I have my work cut out and I shall do it. Perhaps I shall work more disinterestedly without enthusiasm. Certainly I shall be more clear-sighted. If ever there was a time in the history of a country to sink individual ambition, it is now.”
”Gwynne!” said Colton, abruptly. ”What in thunder does it all amount to, anyhow? What difference does it make--will it make a thousand years hence--that you and I are sitting here on the very edge of creation, solemnly discussing the rottenest subject of our little time--American politics? What's the use of the socialists frothing, and nations trying to overturn one another? I had rather die on the spot than that the United States should be conquered for five minutes by j.a.pan or any other Asiatic power, although I could endure the victory of a people that I recognized as our equals. Why are instincts planted so strongly? There may be a reason for a few years; but that's just it, a few mean little years and it is all over. What difference does anything really make, so long as we are comfortable? Everything else, every other instinct, is artificial. My wife is a religious little body and believes in reward and punishment hereafter, that we must spend at least a certain part of our time in this life preparing for the next. I'd like to believe the same, not only to please her, but because I could look forward to meeting my child again; but, somehow, I can't. The present has always been about as much as I could tackle. And I fancy that when I'm through with it, I won't want any more. But although the present whirls so fast that I don't have time for the sort of thinking intellectual people like you and Isabel do, still it does sometimes dash across my mind--that question: 'What is it all for? And why do we sweat through life for what amounts to exactly nothing in the end?'”
”You cannot be sure it amounts to nothing. Sometimes I have the fancy that the entire round globe has just one inhabitant, of which we merely appear to be individual manifestations: that we are, in fact, a part of the earth herself, and she absorbs and casts us forth again, as she rushes along to her own destiny as sentient as ourselves. All the planets are alive in the same way, and they are all racing to see which will make the greatest showing on what we call down here the Judgment Day--that is to say, which shall have produced the most balanced and perfected being; which shall have whirled away the most original sin and sifted out a man, great and good without self-righteousness--to my mind the worst of mortal failings because its correlative, injustice, is the source of most of the unhappiness. That will be the millennium, and having no windmills and evils left to fight, we minute visibilities will welcome deindividualization. Then, no doubt, there will be a grand final battle between the great body of good thus formed, and the evil cast out, but roaming s.p.a.ce and joining forces. If we do our best here we shall win, and be happy ever after. There is no question, that if you follow your higher instincts you are happier in the long run than if you fall a slave to your base and mean; and that, to my mind, is the proof that the highest instincts are meant to be followed to some greater end.”
”Hm. I have heard a good many theories, first and last, and that sounds as plausible as any.”
”All this is very casually related to American politics, except that we had better clean up when the opportunity is vouchsafed us; for nothing degrades human nature nor r.e.t.a.r.ds civilization so much as politics gone altogether wrong. As far as you are concerned, although it was understood that the compact was to end with my citizens.h.i.+p, I have no thought of ending it unless the conditions I hope for shall crystallize meanwhile. If it seems best to keep the Democratic party unsplit I shall do your canva.s.sing and speaking, for it will make me known, and give me the opportunity to inculcate the principles I purpose to advocate. If you ignore them when you are in office, so much the worse for you, and better for me; for, as I have told you more than once, the moment I am in power I shall devote my energies to pulling you and your like down and out. But I should advise you to join the third party if it arises.”
”No doubt I might, if it were strong enough,” said Colton, frankly. ”I don't propose to play any losing game, and if the Democratic party goes by the board, T. R. Colton doesn't follow. And if a third party came in to stay it would have to have a boss--”
”Not your sort.”
”Oh, well, time enough.” Colton's ill-humor was now somnolent under some two pounds of peanuts. He rose and shook hands with Gwynne. ”Glad to see you looking so well--you're some heavier than when you came to California, by-the-way, and it suits you first rate. Be sure you call on my wife the first time you come to town.”
He declined Gwynne's invitation to dinner, and drove off, looking slothful and amiable once more. But what went on behind that mask, within that long ill-built cranium, Gwynne had never pretended to guess.
Nor, to-day, did he care.
At three o'clock he gave his horse to Abe, was told that the lady of the manor was out walking, and went into the house. He had a fancy to meet her again in the room that harbored the sweetest of his California memories. It was dark and cool. Only one window, looking upon the garden, was open. Beside it was a comfortable chair which he took possession of and looked out into the wild old garden so different from the excessively cultivated plots of Rosewater and his own meagre strips.
There was no veranda on this side of the house, and the great acacia-tree, with its weight of fragrant gold, was but a few feet from the window. The entire garden was enclosed by a hedge of the Castilian roses of which he had heard so much, rare as they now were in California. The dull green leaves and tight little buds could hardly be seen for the ma.s.s of wide fluted roses of a deep old-fas.h.i.+oned pink. And there were large irregular borders covered with the luxuriant green and the blue stars of the periwinkle, beds of marguerites and violets, bushes of lilac and honeysuckles, roses and jasmine. The blended perfumes were overpowering, however delicious; Gwynne had sat up half the night before talking to his mother after a long hot journey; he fell asleep.
Perhaps it was his late conversation, perhaps something more subtle, but he felt himself transported to a void. In a moment he realized that the void was not s.p.a.ce as he knew it, but rigid invisible substance. He slipped along through rocky strata, hearing strange echoes and inhaling the disagreeable odors of healing waters. Suddenly he found himself in a vast hollowed s.p.a.ce, empty but for many pillars. His vision grew keener.
In the very centre of the hall he saw two pillars of a colossal size, and standing between them a being almost as large. This unthinkable giant had an arm about each pillar and strained as Samson had strained at the pillars of the temple. Then a new and powerful force drew him upward once more, and he awoke.
He turned his head towards the dim interior of the room and for a dazed moment thought that he beheld Spring herself. She wore white and had dropped a ma.s.s of wild flowers at her feet; she looked as if rising out of them. Her hat was covered with poppies and wild azalea, and she had a sheaf of b.u.t.tercups and ”blue eyes” in her belt.
”I haven't changed my ideas one bit,” she said, with a shrug, as Gwynne rose and came towards her. ”But I can't help it!”
IX