Part 9

Clearwater winced before the frankness of his friend, too old to make pretenses and too wise to believe them. Said he:

“Aaron, how can I break it up?”

“Well--in a nominating convention, if you want to beat a popular candidate, you’ve got to have a man to beat him with. It’s the same way in these heart matters. Find another man--one she’ll like better.”

Clearwater groaned. “These damned young nincompoops you find round in society!” he cursed. “Really I can’t blame her for taking the first fellow with jump and ginger.”

Old Tingley nodded. “The altar men--the fellows that’ll marry young girls--do seem to be mighty poor pickings. At least here in Washington--in ‘our set.’”

When Helm entered the presence of Eleanor his manner had lost its frigidness and reserve but none of the gravity. She flung herself into his arms, clung to him passionately with a complete giving up of herself to her love for him. He held her, he caressed her gently, he showed in every look and gesture how deeply he loved her. Yet--if she had not been so intoxicated by her emotions, she would have felt, would have seen that this peculiar young man not only was master of her love but also was master of his own.

“I _knew_ you wouldn’t let anything come between us,” said she. “George, how wonderful it is to love a man one simply couldn’t doubt. Do you feel that way about me?”

“That’s why we’re engaged,” said he. “That’s why we’ve got to marry.”

“Father’ll get over this,” she assured him. Helm shook his head. “No; he’ll be worse and worse--more against me. It can’t possibly be otherwise. When you go with me, you leave him.”

“Let’s not talk about that!” cried she. “Since I’ve got to marry you--the rest doesn’t matter.”

“But you’ve thought about it?” insisted he. “You realize what you’re doing?”

She stopped his lips with her fingers.

He kissed her finger tips and put them aside--with the compelling look of his eyes rather than with his gentle hand. He said:

“You understand you’re leaving your class and coming to mine--and that the war between these two classes is going to be bitter and more bitter until----”

“But that’s a long ways off. George,” she said abruptly, “let’s get married at once--to-day--to-morrow--as soon as we can.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you wish it?”

He smiled tenderly. “I’m married to you already--for good and all.” He held her tightly in his long arms that gave her such a sense of peace and security. “For ever--and ay, Ellen.”

She was sobbing. “Oh--I’m so happy--so happy,” she murmured.

“But you must tell me why you want to marry at once.”

She did not answer.

“Is it because you are nervous about--about divided loyalty?”

She nodded, keeping her face hid.

“Then you do understand? You have thought?”

She nodded. “And I know you’ll do nothing but what you ought to do.”

“What I _have_ to do,” he replied. “I’m going to enforce the laws. I’m going to ask for more laws of the kind that are for the benefit of the whole people--and I’m going to get them.”

“You are going to attack--father?” she said, speaking as if she were compelled.

“Probably you’ve heard of Voltaire’s dilemma?”

“No,” said she.

“Suppose there were a button before you, and by pressing it you could have your heart’s dearest wish--wealth, fame, power, love, happiness--but if you did press that button, instantly a human being away off in China would fall dead. It might be an old man about to die anyhow--or horribly diseased--or some dreadful criminal--or the mother of some baby needing all her love and care--or the father and only support of a family--or some girl like yourself, about to marry and be happy. You would never know whom you had killed; but--some one would be dead. Would you press the button or not?”

“Isn’t that terrible!” said she.

“Well, in these days the gentlemen who are so eager to be very rich have constructed a button--the corporation. It gives them their dearest wish--wealth and power. It removes responsibility away off, beyond their sight. They do not hesitate. They press the button. And then, away off, beyond their sight, so far from them that they can pretend--can make many believe, including themselves--that they really didn’t know and don’t know what the _other_ consequences of pressing the button are--away off there, as the button is pressed, people die, people starve, babies are slaughtered, misery blackens countless lives. The prosperous, respectable gentlemen press the button. And not they, but the corporation grabs public property--bribes public officials--hires men they never see to do their dirty work, their cruel work, their work of shame and death. They press the button--and the dividends pour in--and they ignore and forget the rest.”

A long silence. He sat in one of his favorite attitudes--body bent forward, elbow on knees, eyes staring at the carpet. She slowly smoothed down first one sleeve of her blouse, then the other. At last she said:

“Yes--that is it. I understand.”

“We can’t take any of that money.”

Again silence. Then she:

“No, George--we can’t.”

“You are _sure_ you understand?”

“Ever since we became engaged I’ve been getting ready to be your wife.”

“You have no secret hope--perhaps unknown to yourself--that I will change--will join your class?”

“For a while--last spring--I had,” she confessed. “But soon--when I knew you better--and understood your speeches--then I didn’t want you to change.” She smiled quizzically--“not even your tailor.”

He looked down at the new suit in which he thought himself almost too fine. But he couldn’t see how characteristically it bunched and bagged upon his figure intolerant of fashionable clothing. “Don’t you like this suit?” he inquired anxiously. “I got it to please you. I hoped you’d like it.”

“I _love_ it,” she declared. “I wouldn’t have you changed one least little bit.”

He rose. “I’ll go get the license. We can marry to-morrow--and start for home. We can stop off and look at Niagara Falls if you like. I’ve never seen it.”

She laughed and hugged him. He thought it was altogether because of the decision about the marriage. “Yes--do let’s take in Niagara,” she said, and she laughed again.

“I’ve got a lot to do before inauguration,” he went on. “After we get to Harrison I may not be able to spend much time with you.”

“How much’ll we have to live on, George?”

“Oh--lots of money. The salary’s eight thousand a year. We’re going to live very simply. I don’t believe in acting the way our governors have been acting lately. We mustn’t forget that we are working for the people--and that they are very poor. I take it that you don’t care for luxury--or you wouldn’t have bothered with me.”

“I don’t care for anything but you,” she said. “And I know what I’m about.”

“Oh, you’ll soon get your bearings, and we’ll be saving money. We’ve got to live after we get out, you know. And I may not be able to make as much as eight thousand at lecturing and law--_my_ kind of law.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said she.

He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. Said he:

“You understand that I mean what I say, Ellen?”

“Yes--George.”

“And that it isn’t going to be any different with me after we’re married.”

“It mustn’t be.”

“Out of your class--into mine--to stay there, Ellen.”

“To stay there. I’ve learned about the men who use the people to step up on, and then turn traitors. I am marrying your life, George. You are not marrying mine--what mine has been.”

They looked at each other gravely. And it was then and there that they took their real marriage vows.

The ceremony in the large drawing-room two days later was less impressive. In fact, it was absurd, as marriage ceremonies in the customary surroundings of pretentiousness usually are--to all who have an unspoiled sense of humor. The fussy and angry father, alternating thoughts of tenderness with longings to slay--the solemn-ass preacher in robes, with affected voice and sycophant manner toward rich Senator Clearwater--the pretty grotesque accidents due to the agitation of Eleanor and the awkwardness of the lank and long governor-elect--the snufflings and weepings of Aunt Louisa, glad Eleanor was making a marriage that improved the prospects of her own grown and married children for a large share of the Clearwater fortune--these and all other absurdities and hypocrisies made the wedding something for the happy pair to joke about on the train.

“How much did you tell Mr. Desbrough to give the clergyman?” she asked.

George blushed. “I was going to give him twenty-five, but Bill said he was such a swell he must have fifty. So I had to let it go at that.”

“Weakening already!” mocked she. “Five dollars would have been too much. He’s a frightful cad--always fawning on rich people and hunting a rich wife--and he a servant of Jesus Christ.”

“You’ll have to look after the money, Ellen,” confessed Helm. “I’m a fool about it. I’ve got mighty little use for the blamed stuff, anyhow. Besides, it’ll give you something to do.”

She looked at him with a shrewd smile.

“You’re going to test me?--isn’t that it?”

He nodded. “I want to find out just what you’ve got to learn. Just because I _had_ to go into this, I didn’t go in blind. I can’t do things that way.”

“I guess we’ve both been doing a lot of thinking since last spring.” She slipped her hand into his. “I don’t know what I’ve got to learn, but I do know that I’m going to learn it.”

He looked at her, with that expression in his eyes which gave her the sense of love and strength and tenderness superhuman. He said:

“Yes--I can count on you, Ellen.”

“As long as you look at me like that,” said she, “I’ll not ever be anything but happy. I’d not be a woman, if I were.”

VI

THE TEST

In the large back yard of the “Executive Mansion” the young governor, George Helm, was wheeling his first born--George Helm, also--up and down the shady central walk in a perambulator of the latest scientific make. The baby was giving the healthy baby’s fascinating exhibition of the fathomless peace and content that can be got only from sleep. The Governor and Bill Desbrough, the state Attorney-General and his one really intimate friend, were talking politics. At the window of the sitting-room sat Eleanor Helm, sewing--when she was not watching the two Georges--_her_ two Georges.

There are two things as brief as any in this world of brevities--the babyhood of her first born to the mother who loves babies, and his term of office to the public man who loves office. It so happened that both these befell the Helms at the same time. George married Eleanor Clearwater, daughter of the lumber king and United States Senator, a few weeks before he was inaugurated; and the first baby came toward the end of the second year of that famous stormy term of his. It was now the spring of his fourth year as governor. Both he and the young woman at the window looked younger than when they married--without the consent which her father dared not publicly withhold, or indeed privately, since he had not the courage to cut himself off from his only child. The reason the hands were turning backward for Helm and his wife was, of course, happiness. A man often loves a woman--a girl--for the possibilities he sees in her which he fancies he can realize. Indeed one of woman’s best beguilements for “leading on” the man she wants is the subtle creating or encouragement of this same fancy. But when a woman really does love a man, she loves him for himself, wishes him to stay exactly as he is. Eleanor had taken the lank, tall, rural-looking impersonation of strength, gentleness and self-unconscious simplicity because that was what she wanted. Having got it and finding that it did not change, she proceeded to be happy. The slovenly woman’s way of being happy is to go to pieces. The energetic and self-respecting woman’s way is to “take a fresh grip.” Mrs. George Helm was younger than she had been since early girlhood. She felt utterly and blissfully irresponsible; had she not her George, and had not he taken everything on his shoulders--except looking after the money-spending, the house--and the baby? The house and the baby were a delight. Looking after the house meant making big George comfortable; looking after the baby meant making little George comfortable. As for the money, that was simple enough. In the first place, there wasn’t much of it; in the second place, George gave it all to her and meekly accepted the small allowance for pocket money--all he was fit to be trusted with.

“Bill,” said George to the lazy friend whom he had made into his political manager and had forced to take the office of Attorney-General--“Bill, you ought to get married. My wife takes all the responsibilities off my shoulders and leaves me free just to have fun.”

Bill was amused. Only a few minutes before Mrs. Helm had told him that a sensible woman--meaning, of course, herself--always chose a man she could trust and then turned over to him all the responsibilities and gave herself up to love and happiness.

George Helm’s reason for looking younger was somewhat different. That is, he got the happiness in a different way. Much is said about the heavy cares of office, and certainly most men in high office do age rapidly. But Helm’s notion of the duties of office was not that usually held by officials. If a man spends his time at secretly doing things which would ruin him, were they found out--if he hides service of thieves and plunderers behind a pretense of public service, naturally he grows old rapidly. Such secrets and such terrors loosen the hair and the teeth, stoop the shoulders, yellow the fat and sag and wrinkle the cheeks. But if a man has no secrets in his public service, if he spends each day in the rejuvenating effort to do the square thing without troubling himself in the least about whether he will be misunderstood, or maligned, or beaten for a second term, he gets younger and happier all the time. For health and vitalizing no other vacation equals the vacation from lying and swindling and double-dealing and plotting that make up the routine of so many lives.

As the two men and the baby carriage reached the far end of the walk, Bill said:

“George, it’s a wonder you aren’t wheeling this cart up and down the main street.”

“Too much noise and dust,” replied the governor. “Bad for the fat one.” He usually called his namesake “the fat one.”

“You’ve done about everything else I can think of to get everybody down on you. You’ve made the politicians hate you by forcing through decent primary and election laws. You’ve got the railroads and the big businesses down on you by making them pay taxes and obey the laws. You’ve got the farmers down on you by giving the railroads the excuse of their taxes for raising rates. You’ve got the breweries down on you by shutting up a lot of their doggeries and enforcing an inspection of their beer. You’ve got the merchants down on you by making them toe the mark on false weights and measures. You’ve got the men down on you because they say your ‘honest’ administration has made business bad, and increased the unemployed. You’ve got the women down on you because you and your wife haven’t been social snobs and givers of swell entertainments, as governors and their wives always have been hitherto--and are expected to be.”

George listened, much amused. “No friends left but you, Bill,” said he.

“You haven’t succeeded in pleasing anybody on earth.”

“Except myself,” said Helm.

They had turned and were once more moving toward the house--toward the young woman at the window. “Yourself--and your wife,” said Desbrough.

“I hope so,” said George. He was looking at her. His eyes always changed expression when he looked at her.

“When you took this office, you said you were going to please the people,” pursued Bill.

“To _serve_ the people,” corrected Helm.

“Same thing,” rejoined his friend. “Now--you’ve found out that there isn’t any such thing as the people.”

Helm nodded.

“There are a lot of interests of one kind and another, big and little. The masses are employed by them to produce and are their customers as consumers. The interests rob them, both ways from the Jack.”

Helm nodded.

“There are pluckers and plucked, but there is no such thing as ‘the people.’”

“Not yet,” admitted Helm.

“You’ve been serving something that doesn’t exist.”

Helm nodded.

“The pluckers hate you because you’ve interfered with their game. The plucked hate you because they think you’ve put them in a position where they’ll not be plucked only because they haven’t anything to pluck.”

“They don’t hate me, exactly,” said George.

“You’re right. I withdraw hate. They love you. They go crazy at sight of you. They flock to hear you speak and they cheer you until you have to stop them to get through your speech. But--that doesn’t fool you?”

“Not for a minute,” replied Helm. “They think I mean well but am--dangerous.”

“You hypnotized them two years ago,” Desbrough went on, “and induced them to give you a legislature that had to put through your program. But the pluckers have organized and have put that fox Sayler in charge again--and they’ve got your humble friends of the workshop and the plow good and scared at last.”

“But I didn’t bring you here to-day, Bill, to talk about my political fortunes. What’s become of those Western Timber cases?”

“Those cases you asked me to get up against the Western Timber and Mineral Company?” said Desbrough with a curious change of voice.

“Wait,” said Helm. “My wife wants the baby.”

Desbrough waited. Helm disappeared with the carriage at the half-basement door; Mrs. Helm disappeared from the window. Affairs of state had to wait full ten minutes. Then Helm rejoined his friend with an expression of intense, if somewhat guilty, pleasure that gave the shrewd Attorney-General a clue to what had occurred within. Said Helm, with renewed vigor:

“What about those cases, Bill? You lazy pup! I’ve had to nag at you ever since we got in.”

“Haven’t I done all you asked?” laughed Desbrough.

“Yes--and done it well, Bill. But--how I have had to nag!”

“It’d ’a’ been better for you, if I hadn’t done so much. You’ve tried to set the world straight, George, in one term as governor.”

“You’re wrong there, old man,” replied Helm. “I’ve simply settled each question as it came up. It had to be settled one way or the other. I haven’t had time to do anything but just the things that were squarely put up to me to do.”

Desbrough’s shrug was admission that George had spoken exactly. “I don’t blame you, George,” said he. “But you see how it is. Didn’t I warn you?”

“That I was playing bad politics? Oh, yes. And I knew it. I knew how to get in, Bill. I knew how to stay in. But when it came to a show-down I couldn’t do a dozen rotten things in order to get through one that was half way decent.”

“Well--you’ll go out, and somebody that’s altogether rotten’ll come in.”

“How about those cases?”

“I’ll take them up in a few days.” Desbrough was trying to hide his nervousness from his keen-eyed friend. “Give me another week, George.”

Helm laid a heavy hand on Desbrough’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

Desbrough saw he could not evade. “This Western Timber and Mineral Company--the T. and M., as they call it--it’s a queer sort of holding corporation.”

“It’s the worst thief in this part of the world--a waster and a stealer and a starver.”

“But it’s a clever villain--the cleverest. It’s got safety hooks and lines out in every direction. If you attack it you’ll get a return volley from pretty near everything that has a voice in this state--newspapers, preachers, charity societies of every kind, doctors, lawyers, retailers. It’s wound round everything and everybody.”

“It’s the big waster, the big stealer, the big starver--and the big corruption. Now, it has defied the government of this state--the people.”

“The people doesn’t exist,” Desbrough reminded him.

“It’s got to go.”

“First crack out of the box--as soon as I begin to attack--it will close a lot of plants and throw fifty thousand workers--men, women and children--out of employment.”

“Is that as bad as what it’s doing?”

“No,” admitted Desbrough. “Not one hundredth part as bad. But it’ll _look_ worse. Everybody will think and say it’s worse.”

“What are you afraid of, Bill? I know it isn’t yourself. _What_ is it?”

Desbrough looked steadily at his friend. “You know what the T. & M. is--_who_ it really is?”

“Anybody especial?”

“It’s controlled by--your father-in-law.”

This was by no means the first time that George Helm had been faced with the difficulties necessarily involved in his having married the daughter of one of the leading politico-business traffickers of the Middle West. But theretofore each difficulty had come in some form that enabled him to keep on his course without wounding his wife’s sensibilities, and with no other ill effect than deepening his father-in-law’s secret hatred and detestation. But now the long-dreaded crisis seemed to have come.

“We’ve warned that company several times,” said he, reflecting.

“Five formal warnings,” said Desbrough. “I’ve just given them a sixth. That’s why I’m delaying.”

“Six. That’s too many. We’ve been more than fair.”

“George, if I go ahead--I send two of your wife’s own cousins to the pen--and disgrace her father--drive him out of public life.”

A long silence. Then Helm said quietly:

“Do you think they’ll pay attention to the warning?”

“No,” replied Desbrough. He watched the lines growing slowly taut in George Helm’s rugged face, and hastily added, “Now, see here, old man--for God’s sake _don’t_ do another unpractical thing--the worst yet. The others only wrecked you politically. This’ll wreck your home.”

In the same tranquil way Helm said:

“Have I ever done a single unpractical thing? You know I haven’t. You know--or ought to--that Sayler-- There’s a politician!--he put up the whole game on me. He fixed it so that I’d be forced either to do dirty work or to offend one after another every power in this state and so kill myself politically.”

Desbrough suddenly saw the whole plot--simple, devilish, inevitably successful. And all his love for Helm was concentrated in the deep, passionate fury of his exclamation--“The dirty devil!”

“No use calling names,” rejoined Helm placidly. “He plays his game; we play ours. And anyhow, he has lost.”

“Lost?” echoed Desbrough. “How do you make that out? I think he’s won. Hasn’t he done you up for a second term?”

“Even so, still he has lost,” Helm answered. “His main object was to make us do dirty work. And we haven’t--not yet.”

Desbrough’s eyes shifted. After a pause he said with some constraint:

“You want me to wait till these people have a chance to act on my last warning?”

Helm said:

“I’ll give you an answer to-morrow. You’re all ready to go ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Then--I’ll see you to-morrow.”

And Desbrough did not envy him the rest of that day and the night.

* * * * *