Part 6

There was pathos in his expression of gratitude. She saw it, understood it--and the tears welled into her eyes. What a lonely, fascinating figure of a man--so different from all other men--so modest about himself--and with such incredibly luminous eyes, tender yet strong. She was looking directly at him. The changing expression of his eyes terrified her--fascinated her. He stood up, and his gesture compelled her to stand also--and to look at him. He stretched out his powerful arm. She tried to draw back; she could not.

“I believe,” said he in an awed, hushed voice, his eyes looking at her wonderingly, “I believe _you_ are the woman.”

He had misunderstood, she said to herself. Then-- “No,” she thought, “I’ve been leading him on. What a foolish, bad thing to do! And he thinks I was in earnest--when nothing could induce me----”

He interrupted her thoughts with, “Yes--you _are_ the woman!”

He had her shoulders in his grasp now and was looking down at her with an expression of sheer amazement, mingled with a tenderness that sent a thrill and a hot wave of--yes, of delight--through her. This man-- She, Eleanor Clearwater, tolerate the touch of this man and--_delight_ in it!

“That is absurd!” she cried hysterically. She looked at him with pleading eyes. “Let me go--please.”

He lifted his hands from her shoulders. Then--how it happened she never could understand--she, trying to draw back, was drawn forward--into his arms--had been kissed by him--was in a whirl of joy, of terror, of wonder, of disbelief in the reality of what was happening. She, who prided herself on never having allowed any man to be in the least familiar with her--she in the arms of this bucolic person whom she hardly knew. It was impossible--it was insane.

“Please let me go,” she said feebly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!”

He was holding her at arm’s length again--this powerful man, with the compelling eyes-- If only he would not look at her so, she might recover herself. He was saying in the sweetest, tenderest voice she had ever heard:

“_You_--for _me_! It simply can’t be, Miss Clearwater.”

“Some woman will care for you--as I told you,” she said in a breathless way. “But not I. You told me once you wouldn’t have me.”

“But I didn’t know you then,” replied he. “Now--I’ve _got_ to have you!”

She gave a cry of dismay. “Oh--don’t say that--please!” she pleaded. “I’m sure you don’t want me.”

“No, I don’t want you,” confessed he, frankly. “I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do with you. How can you break with your father and everybody and go tracking off into poverty with me?”

“As for that,” began she, “I’ve got something of my own, and----”

She stopped short in horror. What was she saying? Who was talking out of her mouth and with her voice? She covered her face with her hands. “I don’t mean it--I’m mad--crazy!” And she was in his arms, with him caressing her hair.

“You don’t want me,” he said gently, “and I don’t want you. But it looks as if we’d got to--doesn’t it, Ellen?”

If there had been any abbreviation of her name that she detested more than any and all others, it had been Ellen. Yet now--in this absurd, lunatic dream she was having, she liked Ellen--in his voice. It seemed to be the name she had been waiting for, the name her man would brand upon her. Ellen. No longer Eleanor Clearwater, but just Ellen--nothing more.

She laughed hysterically. “I’m glad you didn’t select Ella instead,” said she. “No doubt I’d have accepted it, but I’d always have felt low.”

They were looking at each other in a dazed way. At the sound of voices and laughter in the hall, both started and the crimson of shame deepened and deepened on Miss Clearwater’s cheeks and neck and shoulders. They faced the others with every sign of confusion and guilt, neither daring to look at the other. He stammered out phrases of departure and left, still with not a glance at her. Sayler decided that he had made an absurd premature proposal and had been sent about his business--“When he might have had her if he’d kept after her with a firm tread.”

Out in the cold winter night, George strode along until he was half way to his hotel. Then he paused and addressed the stars, reeling with silent laughter!

“What a damn fool I’ve made of myself!”

Another man might have said, “What a fool she made of me!” But George Helm was no self-excuser, no shifter of responsibilities.

“But I’ve got to put it through,” he went on, still speaking aloud but addressing the dim landscape in the horizon of which towered the Capitol. “And since I’ve got to do it, I’ll do it!”

A damn fool!--to take upon his already too heavily burdened shoulders this extra weight of a woman--and just the kind of woman who could be heaviest, most useless.

However, instead of walking with bent shoulders, he strode along, shoulders erect. And presently he was whistling like a boy in a pasture.

IV

THE MATCH-MAKER

Men--and women--who restrain sentiment to an obscure, uneffectual part in their own lives take enormous interest in it everywhere else. They have melting eyes and troublesome noses and throats at sentimental plays. They give to street beggars and patronize the literature of slop. They are assiduous matchmakers and want every one--except their own sons and daughters--to marry for love alone.

There was not a little of this in the composition of Harvey Sayler, the interesting boss of the Middle West--more interesting than the ordinary purely commercial boss because he was at heart a bold and reckless gambler, one who had less interest in the stakes than in the game. He was in a sentimental mood about George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater. George Helm, the lean and lank, countrified new orator whom Sayler’s secret lieutenant, the Democratic state boss Hazelrigg, had discovered in the State Senate; Eleanor Clearwater, heiress to the notorious--that is, famous--lumber king and Senator, a lady to her finger tips, fond of playing with “fine ideas” of all kinds, but helplessly dependent upon the culture and the luxury that can be got only by acts which proceed from anything but “fine ideas.” A love affair, an engagement, a marriage between these two appealed to Sayler’s love of the sentimentally romantic.

Also, Sayler had a streak of sardonic humor in him. He liked the mischievous pranks of fate--with the persons and property and destiny of others. And it seemed to him that the coming together of these two would be one of fate’s masterpieces at the practical joke. And how old Clearwater, the risen from farm hand, the intoxicated aristocrat, the unending snob, would rage and rave!

_Also_--and this was the most important of all, for Sayler never did anything that wasn’t a move in his game-- Also--he wanted George Helm.

For purposes that need not here be gone into, Sayler had ordered the Democrats to make a furious assault upon his protégé and ally and master, the plutocracy. Hazelrigg, obeying orders, had selected Helm to lead the attack, because Helm was about the only available man not publicly suspected of crookedness and hypocrisy, was an earnest, sincere and effective speaker, shrewd and sane. After Sayler heard Helm speak, Hazelrigg hunted him up at the University Club. Those clubs to which men of all political faiths can and do belong are most useful for meetings of this sort. Said Hazelrigg:

“What do you think of him, Senator?”

“Of Helm?” said Sayler. A non-committal smile--and that was all.

“A dangerous man, I’d say,” proceeded Hazelrigg. “He looks like a farmer and he’s homely as a horse. But there’s nothing of the jay about that brain of his. And how he does wake up, and wake things up, when he gets that lanky form of his straight on his big feet.”

Sayler smiled again. He was a loquacious man, like all men of abounding mentality All lakes that are copiously fed must copiously overflow. But he had the big man’s usual false reputation for taciturnity. He was never anything but silent, or at most terse, with understrappers. That sort of cattle had to be dealt with carefully.

“He’s doing what I asked him to do, too damn well,” said Hazelrigg. “I’ll have to choke him off.”

Sayler, however, was resolved to give his clients of the plutocracy a thoroughgoing scare. Said he:

“Oh, why not let him alone for the present, Hazelrigg?” Sayler was one of those who give orders in the form of interrogative suggestions.

“But he makes me nervous,” objected the Democratic boss. “He’s spreading like wildfire. I may have to nominate him for governor.”

“Why not?” said Sayler. A sentimental smile; he was thinking of the “match.”

“But--damn it, he’d likely be elected.”

“Well--a good beating might do my party a world of good. We’ve been in too long.”

“But--I’m afraid I can’t get any _hold_ on him.”

Sayler deigned no answer but a satirical smile.

“He’d probably make four years of merry hell. A governor can do a lot in this state. He can _do_; so he doesn’t dare talk without doing, like most governors.”

“He’d make a good governor,” said Sayler.

“Yes--if I could get some _hold_ on him.”

Sayler’s eyes were amused. Said he--and he had the habit of being intensely relevant while seeming to be most irrelevant:

“Curious jaw, that young fellow’s got. Did you notice how long it is from ear to chin? There’s a foolish notion about that--a long chin is a sign of strength. It means nothing--nor does a short chin. It’s the length of the jaw that makes persistence--endurance--and the unafraidness that advances without a tremor where even courage hesitates. An interesting young man.”

Hazelrigg had never heard so long--or so puzzling--a speech from his secret chieftain. He said desperately:

“I give you fair warning, Senator, he may make it damned interesting for _us_ if we aren’t careful.”

Sayler laughed pleasantly. “I wish he would. I’m tired of fighting mere cranks--or knaves attacking us simply to shake us down. Why is it, Hazelrigg, that the best can be changed into the worst? To find an absolutely abandoned woman, don’t look among the girls from the lower classes. Find one born a lady, bred a lady. To get a chap who’ll swallow any insult with gusto, who’ll do any kind of dirty work with pleasure--go among the fallen gentlemen. Several in this club.”

Sayler strolled away. Hazelrigg was laughing--uncomfortably. He said to himself, “Well, if the Senator was rapping me, he was banging his own conk, too.”

Sayler had brought Helm and Miss Clearwater together at his house the night before--had arranged it as soon as their chance meeting in his presence had revealed to his shrewd eyes that there was something peculiar in their relations, something unwarranted by so casual an acquaintance as theirs apparently had been. And when, after he had seen to it that they were left alone together, he had found them in a state of nervousness that indicated anything but a smooth session, he had decided that Helm had made the mistake of proposing too precipitately--and had been refused. He now went down to the Capitol to hunt Helm up.

An extraordinary amount of trouble for so distinguished a man to take about an almost obscure youth of rugged appearance, one he knew hardly at all. But Sayler was a profound man. It had been said of him that he had ruined more young men than any man of his time. It was his habit to seek out any youth who showed, to his acute insight into human nature, indications of unusual abilities. As there are not many such under our system of crushing in infancy or near it, all but a very few of the very strongest or luckiest, he had plenty of time left over for his other affairs. When he had won the personal liking of such a young man, he proceeded to show him--by ways of most delicate subtlety--how wise and sensible and just it was for a man of ambition to come in with the triumphant classes, and not let any academic sentimentality attach him to the lost and hopeless and morally doubtful cause of the masses.

For a few years Sayler had drawn about himself, had drawn to the support of his policy of the earth for the strong and the sly, scores of the brightest young men of the Middle West. They served him well. They imbibed his genial philosophy of mingled generosity and cynicism. And in exchange for the support and the power they gave him, he gave them office and money and fame. He regarded himself as a benefactor. His young men regarded him as a benefactor. Only cranks denounced him as a procurer and a rake of the vilest description.

He had seen great possibilities in this big, unformed, young state senator, with the gift for eloquent clear statement and with the voice and the eyes that captivated. He purposed to be his benefactor.

Helm was alone in one of the committee rooms, absorbed in the agitated composition of a letter. There were all the obvious signs that much time and paper were being consumed in vain. Sayler paused a moment to look well at his proposed next “victim,” as the cranks would have put it. That long, lean, powerful form, uncouth yet curiously graceful--and somehow so intensely magnetic! That huge, rough-looking head, the strong features, the out-door skin. But Sayler saw only the superb line of the head, the long reach of the jaw. Said he to himself: “This fellow _looks_ more worth getting than any I’ve ever tried for.”

He advanced and laid his hand on Helm’s shoulder. Said he, as Helm looked up, startled:

“I’m going to take a great liberty with you, Helm. I’m somewhat older--but not old enough to be out of your class. And I’m a friend of--of _hers_--and I want to be a friend of yours.”

The color flooded poor George’s face. He did not know what to do. The man-and-woman game was as strange to him as sailor life to the plainsman. And Sayler had adroitly leaped over the barrier of sensitiveness which Helm had begun to build about his inmost self as soon as he had begun to talk.

“I know you’re writing to her,” proceeded the frank and simple Sayler, “and I’m sure it’s something foolish. The thing to do is to go and face her. She’s leaving this afternoon.”

“To-day!” exclaimed Helm, puzzled. “She said last night she was staying a week.”

“She’s leaving--because of you. When a woman thinks highly enough of a man to fly from him, all he needs do to get her is run her down.”

“She’s leaving?” said Helm. He began to tear up the paper. “Leaving on my account.” He gave a laugh of relief. “Then it’s all settled, and I don’t need to write.” He tore the paper into little bits and sent them to join the mass of similar little bits in the basket. “Evidently she got her head back this morning--just as I did. I wonder what there is about night time that makes people so excited and----”

“And courageous,” said Sayler. “I wish I’d had the daring to do the things the night has urged me to do.”

Helm shook his head laughingly. “The night’s insane, the day’s sane,” retorted he. “I went crazy last night, Mr. Sayler. I’ve got so little that I have to skimp to get along at all--and my prospects of any more money are mighty poor, I can tell you.” With a humorous twinkle, “You see, I’m not on your side--the buttered side. I’m on the other side where there isn’t any butter. Anyhow, I’ve no use for a wife--especially such a wife as that sort of a woman would be. And she-- Why, she wouldn’t want me as a husband if I was the last man on earth.”

“Nonsense!” said Sayler. “Under all that trumpery flummery she’s just a woman, and wants what any other woman wants--a _man_. And I think, my friend, that you come pretty near to sizing up to that description.”

“She don’t want me, nor I her,” insisted Helm. “It was nothing but plain lunacy, my asking her to marry me and her accepting.”

Sayler was so astounded that he almost betrayed himself. His eyes sparkled sentimentally, and he gave the younger man a resounding clap on the shoulder. Why, the conquest was as good as made! “She accepted you, Helm, because she wants you. Last night she knew her real mind. By daylight, she’s full of--of all sorts of pitiful fears. Go save her, Helm. Go to her. As soon as she’s told her father, and he begins to fight you, everything’s safe. I know her. She isn’t a quitter, and her father will say things that will make her wild with rage--and with love for you.”

By this time neither of these men, drawn together by their many traits of mind and character in common, had the slightest sense of strangeness. They felt like old friends. Helm said:

“But _I_ don’t want _her_, Sayler. I’ve got no money for her--no time for her--no place for her.”

“You love her--don’t you?” said Sayler audaciously.

Helm slowly collapsed into one of his uncouth poses.

“You see--you do. That means--what? Why, that you’ve got to have her. A man of your sort is no good with a thing like that unsettled.”

Helm reflected. “No,” he finally said. “I’ve put her out of my mind before, and I can do it again. Whenever I don’t want to think of anything, I get together so many other things to worry about that there isn’t room or time to worry about it. She’s flying. Let her fly. That settles it.”

“Didn’t you tell me you proposed to her?”

Helm nodded.

“And that she accepted you?”

“But it’s all over,” said Helm.

“By no means,” declared the adroiter man. “She has given you her promise. She will say nothing because she will not wish to hurt you. But she’ll keep to her promise until you release her.”

Helm looked dismal. “Is that the way those things are managed?”

“You’ll ruin her life, Helm. You’ve got to go to her--like a man. Don’t do a cowardly thing--such as silence, or writing a foolish note. Face her. It’s the only square thing.”

And to Helm it seemed so. He groaned.

“Come along. I’ll go with you, and see that you and she have a chance for an undisturbed talk.”

“Wait a minute. I want to think.” Helm went to the window and stared out into the capitol grounds. Sayler seated himself, lit a cigar and read a newspaper. Never had cake of his been spoiled by messing at the baking but unbaked dough. Helm took much more than the one minute he had asked for. When he turned, it was to say with the composure of a man under control:

“Thank you, Sayler--you’ve done me a good turn. I am nothing of a lady’s man. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have done something that as you say would have been contemptible. I’m ready when you are.”

Rarely is there a successful man--even the crude seeker of petty power rising to foreman of the gang of laborers--who has not, however tough his skin or hide may seem to be, a supersensitive nervous system, more acute than that of ordinary men and women, though they may pretend to the most delicate sensitiveness. Sayler was as sensitive as he seemed phlegmatic. He never failed to sense the mood of the person he was with. Therefore, he dropped the subject of Eleanor and talked speeches.

Helm, another man of that same acute sensibility, responded as if he had no concern in the world beyond discussion of how speeches should be worked up and delivered. Sayler, deeply interested in the subject and in the man, led him on to describe his own method, this so sympathetically--rather than adroitly--that Helm took from his pocket an old letter on the blank side of whose single sheet he had outlined the “backbone” of a speech he was to make against a perpetual grant of a big trolley franchise. The franchise meant, of course, the creation of a huge mass of stocks and bonds which would enable many generations of a certain group of the upper class to live luxuriously by taking impudent toll from the masses in exchange for no service rendered.

“I shall take up the franchise in a series of speeches,” explained Helm. “In each speech I’ll make one point and only one. That’s always my method. If you want to dazzle a crowd, you make a speech full of good points. But if you want to convince them, you take one point and drive it home with a succession of blows, all on the head of that same nail.”

Sayler nodded. “Won’t you let me see that ‘backbone’ as you call it?” he asked.

“Nail is a better name,” said Helm.

“Nail for the lid of the coffin of the trolley franchise grab,” said Sayler.

“I hope so,” said Helm.

“So do I,” rejoined Sayler.

Helm gave him the sheet of paper and Sayler read in Helm’s minute hand this series of notes:

Luxurious idlers.

Ladies and gentlemen. The more of them we have the poorer we become.

Proof:

_Comfort_ means wealth and leisure to enjoy--that is, comfort in the lady and gentleman’s sense of the word.

Leisure to enjoy means little or no labor.

But wealth can be created only by laboring; wealth is nothing but the proceeds of labor.

Therefore,

To have _comfort_, in the lady and gentleman sense, in the sense in which our new luxury-mad upper class is determined to have it, means that one must “appropriate”--that is, steal--the proceeds of the labor of others.

First corollary: That the more “comfortable” the upper class becomes, the more of the proceeds of the labor of others it must be stealing.

Second corollary: Since the amount of labor a man can do is necessarily limited by his strength, then the more of the proceeds of his labor is stolen from him, the less there is left for him and the worse off he becomes.

General conclusion: The more ladies and gentlemen we have, the harder we must work and the poorer we must become.

Sayler read this document through twice. Then he handed it back to Helm. He was smiling cynically to himself. Said he:

“Q. E. D. But--why did you show it to _me_?”

Helm’s gaze rested gravely upon that of the plutocratic chieftain for the Middle West. He replied:

“I see that you want to be friends with me. Why, I don’t know. I am willing--more than willing to be friends with you. But I want you to have no delusions. I want you to know just where I stand--where I shall _always_ stand.”

“I hope so,” lied Sayler, with a generous manliness that half fooled himself. “I’m not a zealot like you. I don’t believe in men, in human nature. I think progress comes through the fierce struggle of brutality and cunning against the stupid shiftlessness and indolence of mankind. I admit there are arguments for another view. They happen not to convince me. But, believing as I do, I am more interested in the game than in principles. To me it is simply a game. And so, I like to see good players on both sides. I’d hate to have you come over to our side. God knows, your side is badly enough off for good players.”

Helm’s smile put into his rugged face a touch of fanaticism--as tremendous earnestness is called in these days when to be interested in anything but accumulation and appetite is regarded as eccentric. Said he:

“My side, as you call it, doesn’t need any players at all. It is simply--to change the figure--the irresistibly sweeping current. I am swimming with it, you against it.”

Sayler surprised him by saying reflectively:

“I’ve thought of that. Sometimes I believe it.”

“The right thing--the thing that’s in accord with progress,” said Helm, “doesn’t need champions. The rainstorm doesn’t need umbrellas. But the men who’ve got to go out in it--they do.”

Sayler was admiring Helm’s manner. It was not the manner of the condemned man--at least, if it was, it was that of a condemned man of the type that tranquilly accepts the inevitable. Yet Sayler knew that Helm was moving consciously toward one of those crises that put the souls of men to the cruelest test. Sayler understood him thoroughly now, understood the strong and tenacious emotions that lay hid, or rather lay unexposed to any but expert eyes, beneath the surface look of the homely provincial man--provincial now, rather than bucolic, as he had been when he first burst upon the astonished and amused town of Harrison, with his strange red beard, and his much-tailed cheap broadcloth. “How this man could love a cause or a woman!” thought the sentimental overlord of bosses and machines. “But,” he added, “neither is appreciative--or worth loving.”