Part 8

“Senator Sayler, too--he has put in a good word for you. He is a great friend of yours--a great and generous admirer. He predicts a future for you--a dazzling future.”

Helm began to murmur a reply, but the catch in his coat seemed somehow to have involved his vocal cords. He put the rustling handkerchief away, but in his pocket it still rustled like a mouse in a waste-paper basket. Helm’s murmurings died in a kind of stifled groan.

“I am an old-fashioned American,” continued Clearwater, passing his hand over his short gray beard in a pompous gesture as if this confession reflected the highest credit upon his courage and upon America. “I believe in the love marriage. I am glad my daughter has chosen--and has been chosen by--a man of the people, a rising, ambitious man, with a career in the making.”

“Thank you, sir,” said George.

Clearwater extended a cigar, which George took--helped him light it--lit one himself. “A very mild smoke,” he explained. “I have Cisneros make it up for me in Havana from a specially selected leaf. If you’d prefer something stronger?”

“No, thank you,” said George.

“Lord Cuffingham--the British ambassador--asked me to let him have a box to send to the King. Personally I have no more respect for a king than I have for a plain American citizen. But we were talking about your wish to marry my daughter.”

“Yes, sir,” said George, a trifle less embarrassed, now that the cigar relieved him of worry about his large, very brown and very powerful hands.

“I shall confess to you, Governor, that if it had not been for the generous words Senator Sayler spoke in your behalf I should have hesitated about giving my consent.”

George forgot his collar, the handkerchief, the coat--all his embarrassments.

“Your speeches in the legislature last winter--such report of them as I got--and in your campaign--I must say in all candor, Governor, that while I appreciate the necessity of pleasing the people, of soothing them by seeming to agree with them--still I must say that you--in fact at times you seemed to go even further than--than their demagogues, in assaults upon property, and wealth and all that has built up the country.”

Helm was leaning forward now, his elbows upon his knees, a fascinating look in his rugged face, in the kind yet somehow inflexible, blue-gray eyes.

“However,” continued Clearwater, “Sayler assures me that you are a sound, safe man--that you have nothing of the demagogue in you--that you stand for the fine old American principle of freedom, of the utmost opportunity.”

“What do you mean by opportunity?” asked George.

Clearwater frowned slightly. “I mean--opportunity,” said he, in the tone of one forbidding further questioning as impertinence.

George settled himself back in his chair with a long sigh. “I see that Senator Sayler has been too kind about me,” said he. “He has given you a false impression of me.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Clearwater curtly.

His look and his voice were a warning that Helm would better draw back if he did not wish to provoke a wrath that had been not without difficulty soothed by Sayler and Eleanor. Helm understood. His eyes had never been kinder or gentler--or more direct--than as he replied:

“There can never be any political sympathy between you and me, Senator. I have made my fight thus far along the lines I believe to be right. I have not said more than I meant, but less.”

Clearwater rose, rage flaming in his cheeks. “I suspected so!” he cried. “I can’t imagine Sayler’s object in trying to deceive me--to trick me into admitting to my family one of this new breed of dangerous young demagogues who want to substitute anarchy and socialism for the republic of the fathers.”

He glowered at George, sitting and staring into space, the look of tragedy, of profound melancholy strong upon his homely, gaunt face. He went on:

“You look like an intelligent man. How can you fly in the face of your common-sense? To get office, to lift yourself, you are willing to rouse the ignorant and the idle to hate and to assault the men whom God has raised up to develop and to guard this country! I was poor myself, and I was anxious to get up in the world. But I’d rather have thrust my right hand into the fire than have lifted it against my country.”

George Helm heaved another long sigh, rose and regarded the old lumber king sadly. Said he:

“I sha’n’t argue with you, sir. We’d only get into a wrangle. I simply couldn’t allow you to misunderstand about me.”

“Why did you come here, at all?” demanded Clearwater. “Did Sayler fool you, too? Has he been trying to make us both puppets in some political game of his? Why should he wish to humiliate me by tricking me into letting my daughter marry a demagogue?”

Helm flushed, but his voice was gentle as he replied:

“I think you’re unjust to Senator Sayler, sir. He knew that your daughter and I loved each other. He likes both of us, and he knew you’d put your daughter’s happiness above what he probably regards as simply a difference of political opinion.”

“Anarchy and socialism aren’t political opinions,” retorted Clearwater. “They’re criminal, sir, criminal. And I regard any one who holds the ideas you profess--I regard him as a criminal. He _is_ a criminal--an inciter of riot and murder and theft.”

“No doubt you are honest in your opinions, sir,” said George with quiet dignity. “But I must request you not to insult me again. I shall detain you only a moment.”

“I can’t conceive how you dared aspire to _my_ daughter. Did you think _I_ would be impressed by your being a governor?”

Helm’s eyes twinkled humorously. “Hardly,” said he. “They say that you own two or three governors. I know Sayler owns nearly a dozen. No, Senator, I didn’t come to you as a public man but just as a chap who loves your daughter and intends to do the best he knows how to make her not regret having married him. You can see for yourself that I’m not pretty to look at, and haven’t the graces of manner, or any of those things to recommend me to a lady. I don’t know why she’s willing to take me. So far as my side of it’s concerned, of course, as soon as I saw _her_ I couldn’t help wanting her.”

Helm was so ingenuous and winning that in spite of himself Clearwater was mollified somewhat. “I guess Sayler’s responsible for this,” said he, with a grudging graciousness. “Well--we’ve found him out, and as there’s no harm done we can laugh at him.”

“Come to think it over,” said George, “I shouldn’t be surprised if Sayler didn’t have a notion in the back of his head that if he got me married right I’d come round--fall into line and drop my principles.”

Clearwater nodded. “And no doubt you will. But _I_ shall not permit _my_ daughter to be used for any such purpose.” Very graciously, after the manner of the thoroughly virtuous, praising the feeble and halting efforts of a young fellow man essaying the lower reaches of the path of virtue: “I congratulate you on your honesty--on not trying the unprincipled game of hiding your principles. I admire an honest man. It must have cost you a struggle.”

“No,” said George, “I had nothing to lose by speaking out. You are the courageous one, sir--for you might have lost your daughter--if I had been over sensitive and had taken up your hot words.”

Senator Clearwater showed that he was at a loss to understand. Said he:

“At any rate, it’s all settled. I shall explain to my daughter. For I must ask you not to try to see her again.”

Helm looked at him vaguely.

“It would only cause both you and her pain,” explained Clearwater.

“Yes, it will distress us both to disregard your advice,” said Helm.

“My advice?” inquired the puzzled Clearwater.

“You are advising against her marrying me, as I understand it,” explained George. “Of course, we may be mistaken, but we can’t see it that way.”

Clearwater was so astounded that his mouth fell open and gave him some difficulty before it permitted him to say:

“Why--what in the _hell_ do you mean?”

“Now look here, Senator,” remonstrated Helm, “what’s the use of getting excited? You don’t want to lose your daughter. It’s me you don’t like. Well--you need never see me. I’ll go away when you visit our house, and she’ll visit you whenever she wants to and leave me behind. Why shouldn’t we get along peaceably? She’s your only child. She’s all you’ve got. It’ll grieve her to know she’s going against your wishes. Why not make her as easy as you can? I don’t expect you to pretend to like me. But you can just kind of--pass me over. I’ll help.”

Clearwater, warned by a slight vertigo, had seated himself. Said he slowly:

“Do you mean to say, sir, that you think _my_ daughter will marry you?”

“Oh, come now, Senator,” pleaded George, “you know how it was when you went courting. Would your wife have given you up, because her father and mother didn’t like you?”

“Enough of this,” said Clearwater quietly. He rose. “I wish you good day, sir. I wish you to understand that you will not see my daughter again--that she will not marry you--that if she did I’d cut her off without a cent. As you”--with scathing contempt--“have no doubt heard, she has some property of her own. It is very small--very small, sir. And I have control of it until she is thirty--time enough to starve her out and to spare, as she knows----”

“Senator,” interrupted George, “I hope you won’t say these things to her. Do them if you think it right. I shall be glad if you do, as I don’t want my wife beholden to anybody but me. Do them, Senator, but don’t let on to her. She might feel that you didn’t love her. She might--I hate to say it, sir--she might stop loving you herself, if she thought you could put money before love.”

“I need no assistance in managing my family,” said Clearwater, in cold fury. He bowed, “Good day, sir.”

Helm hesitated, then bowed with simple dignity and withdrew. Clearwater watched at one of the windows until he saw him walking slowly out of the grounds and down the street--tall and lean, awkwardly dressed. Said Clearwater aloud with an angry sneer: “He looks as if he belonged at the servants’ entrance.” The remark was not without justification, yet Clearwater knew--and the knowledge enraged him--that there was in the air of that figure, in the expression of that face, a quality, far removed from the menial, or even the humble. And it was that quality that made the arrogant and confident old man a little nervous as he awaited the coming of the daughter for whom he had sent as soon as Helm disappeared round the corner.

As Eleanor came in, radiant, expectant, she gave a quick glance round and exclaimed:

“Why, papa, where’s George?”

To “papa” George had up to this time been simply what one man is to another--simply a specimen of the male sex. In this case, not a specimen likely to appeal strongly to the female sex, according to Clearwater’s notion of female likes and dislikes in males. But Eleanor’s look and tone put a sudden very different complexion on the matter. Clearwater abruptly realized that his daughter--this lovely, delicate creature of fine manners, speech and raiment--was in love with the lanky, baggily-dressed fellow, half crank, half knave and altogether detestable.

This discovery, thus all in an instant made real to the father, instead of angering him, threw him into a panic. And out of panic, with its chaos of fermenting emotions, any emotion is as likely to emerge as any other. No one, in a panic, can predict whether he will emerge furious and implacable or trembling and abject. The reason for the panic was his adoration of his daughter. Rarely is there any greater intimacy between father and daughter than friendly acquaintance. But almost always there is a tenacious and worshipful admiration--which, naturally, forbids the frankness of intimacy because each fears that the delusion of the other would be impaired, if not destroyed, should the truth of human weakness come out. The daughter adores the father as the superior type of the superior sex; the father adores the daughter as the embodiment of the female sex’s two awe-inspiring charms, beauty and purity. Clearwater thought his daughter the most beautiful woman in the world, and an angel for purity--certainly, such purity could have no place in the mud-geyser of the world as he knew it. And he was now in terror lest she, idealist, ignorant of the realities, should not understand his attitude toward Helm. No doubt the fellow had talked his theories to her--and they were just the sort of stuff that would appeal to idealism and worldly-ignorance.

“Helm?” said Clearwater, almost as nervous as George had been with his squeaking collar and his rustling handkerchief. “Helm? Oh--he’s gone.”

“But I told him to send for me as soon as you and he had finished.”

“We--that is, he----. Now, Eleanor, you must trust to my judgment about men.”

Eleanor had an expression different from any he had seen before--in her face, in any one’s face. “Father,” she said in a voice that made him quail, though it was neither loud nor in any other obtrusive way emotional, “what did you say to him?”

“He was insulting,” said Clearwater. “He insulted me. His presence was an insult. His ideas are an insult to us both. Eleanor, he is one of those men who go up and down the country denouncing me and men of my sort--all the leading men of the country as robbers, and rousing the passions of the poor and the ignorant against us.”

“You mean he’s a Democrat and you are a Republican,” said Eleanor angrily. “But what do I care for that? I can’t fall in love with a man because he’s a Republican, papa.”

“He’s not a Republican, nor a Democrat,” declared Clearwater. “There are sane, sound men in both parties, and both are one when it comes to questions like law and order, respect for the courts----”

“Father,” interrupted the girl, “_what_ did you say to George? Did you send him away?”

“He is an anarchist, a socialist--a--a demagogue. He insulted me. He----”

“_What_ did he say?” she again interrupted.

“As I’ve told you, he has attacked me--my sort of men--with lies and filth. He has----”

“What did he say here--a while ago--in this room?”

Clearwater, thus cornered, dared not wander too far from the truth. “He said plainly that he meant all he had said--that he had spoken less than he thought. He refused to retract or modify. He was----”

“How like him!” cried Eleanor, with shining eyes. “Do you wonder that I _love_ him, papa!”

Clearwater was taken completely aback. “_You_ approving insults to _me_!” exclaimed he.

“You know you’d have despised him if he had weakened.”

“Eleanor, you don’t understand. This man’s conduct is criminal--is a grave offense against society--is an insult to me--a menace to our property----”

“Don’t try to scare me, papa,” laughed the girl. “You can’t. Maybe I don’t understand his political principles. What do I care for them? It’s a woman’s business to love and then to trust. I love him. So--whatever he says goes with me, you foolish old papa.” And she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him and mussed his carefully arranged beard with her chin.

Clearwater had the shrewd man’s knowledge of human nature, was not without insight into his daughter. It is a mistake to think that men are fooled because they let themselves be cajoled; they are fooled, usually, because they wish to be, because their vanity or their hope or their affection gives their cajoler the aid without which he--or she--would fail. Clearwater was well aware that Eleanor was artfully dodging the real issue. But how does knowledge that his beloved daughter is lovingly artful aid a loving father to corner her and bring her to ways of sense and reason?

“Let my beard alone,” said Clearwater fretfully. But no one would have been deceived; under the fretfulness there was the male, ashamed of his weakness of affection for the female--but none the less weak.

Eleanor laughed and persisted in the mussing and mauling.

“You can’t wheedle me, miss,” declared he.

“Of course I can,” laughed she. “You told me I could have him.”

“I didn’t know what kind of man he was. Now that I know, I forbid it.”

She kissed him. “Then I’ll marry him, anyhow. I’ve simply _got_ to do it, papa. And--as Mr. Sayler says, if you were running for vice-president, or anything, it would be a good thing to have a man like George compelled to keep quiet.”

“He’d attack me just the same.”

“Then he’d do you good. People would simply think less of him for coming out against his wife’s father.”

“I’ll not have such a character in my family,” cried Clearwater desperately. He pushed his daughter away. “I can’t understand your wanting him. After all the money that’s been spent on your education, all the pains that’s been taken!”

“I should think _you’d_ look on my education as a tearing success,” replied she. “It seems to have taught me to appreciate a man. But the education isn’t responsible for that. It’s because I’m _your_ daughter. How could I help despising the men who couldn’t do anything for themselves, who owe everything to others, who live like fleas on a dog, papa--instead of being strong and rising up and up? Like you, papa!”

“Never!” exclaimed Clearwater. “I never was a demagogue, an inciter of class hatreds, a fermenter of envy--telling the shiftless and thoughtless----”

She shook her finger laughingly. “Now, papa! Be careful! I’ve read some of your early speeches--when you were running for Congress and starting unions in the logging camps.”

The red, so difficult to bring to old cheeks, so slow to spread, crept over his whole face. It is fortunate that his daughter did not know the whole of the why of that red--the deep-hidden story of treason to the people who had believed in him, of viler preceding treason to his honester self.

“I was an ignorant fool in those days,” shuffled he. “And this fellow isn’t. He’s intelligent and cunning.”

She was too wise to linger upon this dangerous ground of politics, once she had scored. Away she sped, with a delightfully crafty, “I do believe you think he’s after my money, father. I can see how you might think so. And you’re right to convince yourself. Yes, I understand. You’re putting him to the test. I’m glad of it.”

“What do you mean?” inquired the puzzled father.

She was laughing gayly. “Yes--I see it all. Go ahead, papa. Oppose all you like. Make him feel that you will cut me off if I marry him. I _know_ him. I know he doesn’t need that test. But I can’t blame you for not trusting him. You see, you don’t love him--yet.”

Clearwater was dumfounded. To have his flank thus neatly turned! And that, just as he was about to deliver the final and decisive blow--the threat of cutting her off. He gathered himself together as best he could, whipped up his anger and said:

“But I shall do that very thing.”

She looked at him with sudden, touchingly sweet incredulity. “Oh, no--you couldn’t, papa. Not that I--not that we--want anything from you but your love. But you couldn’t make a base thing like money a test of the love between you and me.”

His eyes shifted. When a father seriously makes the threat to cut off a son or a daughter, however great the reflection upon the father, it is greater upon the son or daughter. Eleanor Clearwater had lived under her father’s eye all the years of her life. He knew her--knew her character--respected it, feared it, as baser character ever fears finer. And stronger than his aversion to the George Helm sort of man, stronger than his passion for autocratic rule, stronger even than his reverence for his wealth, was--of necessity--his fear lest his daughter should justly estimate him, should lose her delusion as to his true nature.

Our conduct is less a measure of ourselves than of those about us--those whose opinions we respect, those of whom we feel the need. George Clearwater gave up the struggle. Eleanor had won, not because her father doted upon her--for mere doting readily turns toward hate when its object offends--but because he respected her. Said he:

“If you marry him, it’s without my consent. It’s against my wishes.”

His tone of gloomy resignation told her that she had won. She was astonished; for from time to time there had been in his voice a note that set her to quivering with alarm lest she should have to face the alternative of breaking with him or with George Helm. And it seemed to her that in choosing Helm she would show herself selfish, unappreciative of all her father had done for her and would make her love for him look a poor feeble unmasked pretense. Said she demurely:

“You’ll let us marry here?”

He made an angry gesture. “I don’t want a scandal.”

“You being rich,” she went on adroitly, “a story that you were snobbish would be put out, if we married anywhere else.”

“I don’t care a damn what people think or say,” retorted he so violently that she knew her shot had penetrated.

“But I do,” replied she. “I want you to be vice-president, and I’d hate to be even indirectly the cause of anything that might interfere. You remember, Mr. Sayler said my marrying George Helm would make you more attractive as a candidate.”

“You weren’t thinking of marrying anyways soon!” cried he, angry and alarmed.

“George wants us to be inaugurated together. He goes in the first of January.”

Clearwater began to pace the room with quick, nervous steps. “That means right away,” he said.

“Oh, no, papa. In about two weeks.”

He stopped before her. “And what’s to become of _me_?”

“Why, I’ll be with you almost as much as ever. We’ve always been separated most of the time--your fault, not mine. And I’m not going to take Aunt Louisa away from you.”

“You are a heartless girl!”

“Father, for several years you’ve been urging me to marry. I’ve heard you tell dozens of people that you wanted to see your grandchildren.”

At the thought of _his_ grandchildren the children of George Helm, Clearwater became purple and abruptly left the room. Also, he _had_ been urging Eleanor to marry.

About an hour later, as he was at the front door to motor to the club, he met George Helm entering. He was so absorbed in the attempt to conceal his anger and hatred behind a manner of stiff politeness that he did not really look at Helm, therefore did not see Helm’s frigid bow far more ominous than his own lack of cordiality. “Impudent adventurer,” he muttered--when there was not a possibility of Helm’s hearing any faint rumble of that carefully suppressed wrath. He cursed his weakness of paternal affection, marveled at his unaccountable lack of the courage to rise up and put down the whole abominable business.

At the club he took into his confidence old Senator Tingley, his bosom friend and his partner in many a stealthy business adventure which neither would have cared to have had visited by any ray of the sunlight of publicity. Business aside--how often it is necessary to leave out of account a man’s way of making his money!--business aside, Tingley was a kindly old patriarch, as genial as wise. Said he:

“George, it’s the same old story.”

“He’s got her hypnotized,” said Clearwater.

“Don’t talk like a child,” replied Tingley. “Nature’s got her hypnotized. You could have prevented this if you’d married her off pretty soon after she got to the marriageable age. She’s simply obeying nature that refuses to be put off any longer. We parents are damn fools not to realize that our children, even our pure, innocent daughters, are human.”

Clearwater did not see how to deny Tingley’s unromantic but impressively simple and sensible explanation. However, he felt that he owed it to his daughter’s innocence to say something in mitigation. Said he:

“She seems to be in love with him.”

“And probably will be after they’re married. Certainly will be, if he knows his business at all. He’ll have the inside track and it’ll be his fault if he don’t convince her that he, the only man she ever knew, is a wonder of a special creation. She’ll never suspect that all men are pretty much the same.”