Chapter 26

"Certainly. And it has been my idea that evidence of sane interest in public morals was a pretty good card for--"

"So it would be at any ordinary time. But it's mighty different when the people from one end of the State to the other are howling economy and saying that all expenses must go to bed-rock or they'll know the reason why. There's the practical side of it--look at it f'r a minute. The legislature was elected by these people on a platform promising strictest economy. They're tryin' to carry out their promise faithfully. They turn down and postpone some mighty good plans to advance the progress of the State. They rejuice salaries in various departments"--(one was the exact number)--"heelers come up lookin' f'r jobs, and they send 'em away empty-handed and sore. Old-established institutions, that have been doin' grand work upbuildin' the State f'r years, are told that they must do with a half or three quarters of their appropriations f'r the next two years. You've seen all this happen, Mr. West?"

West admitted that he had.

"Well, now when everything is goin' smooth and promisin', you come along and tell 'em they got to shell out a _hundred_ _thousand dollars_ right away f'r a brand-new institution, with an annual appropriation to keep it up. Now s'pose they do what you tell 'em. What happens? You think there's no poltix at all in this reformatory business, but I can tell you the Republicans won't take such a view as that. They'll say that the party spent a hundred thousand dollars of the people's money in a hard times year, just to make a few more jobs f'r favorites. They'll throw that up at us from every stump in the State. And when our leaders explain that it was done for the maw'l good of the State, they'll give us the laugh--same as they did when we established the Foundling Hospital in '98. Now I tell you the party can't stand any talk of that kind this year. We're on shaky ground right now f'r the same reason that we're all so proud of--spendin' money f'r the maw'l uplift of the State. We either got to slow up f'r awhile or take a licking. That's what all the talk comes down to--one simple question: Will we hold off this big expense f'r just two years, or will we send the old party down to defeat?"

West laughed, not quite comfortably.

In all this dialogue, Mr. Neal had over him the enormous advantage of exact and superior knowledge. To tell the truth, West knew very little about the reformatory situation, and considered it, among the dozens of matters in which he was interested, rather a small issue. Having turned the campaign over to his assistant, he had dismissed it from his mind; and beyond his general conviction that the reformatory would be a good thing for the State, he had only the sketchiest acquaintance with the arguments that were being used pro and con. Therefore Plonny Neal's passionate earnestness surprised him, and Plonny's reasoning, which he knew to be the reasoning of the thoroughly informed State leaders, impressed him very decidedly. Of the boss's sincerity he never entertained a doubt; to question that candid eye was impossible. That Plonny had long been watching him with interest and admiration, West knew very well. It began to look to him very much as though Queed, through excess of sociological zeal, had allowed himself to be misled, and that the paper's advanced position was founded on theory without reference to existing practical conditions.

West keenly felt the responsibility of his post. To safeguard and promote the welfare of the Democratic party had long been a cardinal principle of the paper whose utterances he now controlled. Still, it must be true that Neal was painting the situation in colors altogether too black.

"You're a pretty good stump performer yourself, Plonny. Don't you know that exactly the same argument will be urged two years from now?"

"I know it won't," said Plonny with the calmness of absolute conviction. "A fat legislature _always_ follows a lean one. They come in strips, same as a shoulder of bacon."

"Well! I wouldn't think much of a party whose legs were so weak that a little step forward--everybody knows _it's_ forward--would tumble it over in a heap."

"The party! I ain't thinking of the _party_, Mr. West. I'm thinking," said Neal, the indignation in his voice giving way to a sudden apologetic softness, "of you."

"Me? What on earth have I got to do with it?" asked West, rather touched by the look of dog-like affection in the other's eyes.

"Everything. If the party gets let in for this extravagance, you'll be the man who did it."

There was a silence, and then West said, rather nobly:

"Well, I suppose I will have to stand that. I must do what I think is right, you know, and take the consequences."

"Two years from now," said Mr. Neal, gently, "there wouldn't be no consequences."

"Possibly not," said West, in a firm voice.

"While the consequences now," continued Mr. Neal, still more gently, "would be to put you in very bad with the party leaders. Fine men they are, but they never forgive a man who puts a crimp into the party. You'd be a marked man to the longest day you lived!"

"Well, Plonny! I'm not asking anything of the party leaders--"

"But suppose some of your friends wanted to ask something for _you_?"

Suddenly Plonny leaned over the table, and began speaking rapidly and earnestly.

"Listen here, Mr. West. I understand your feelings and your position just like they was print, and I was reading them over your shoulder. You're walking with y'r eyes on the skies, and you don't like to look at the ground to see that you don't break nothing as you go forward. Your mind's full of the maw'l idea and desire to uplift the people, and it's kind of painful to you to stop and look at the plain practical way by which things get done. But I tell you that everybody who ever got anything big done in this world, got it done in a practical way. All the big men that you and I admire--all the public leaders and governors and reform mayors and so on--got where they have by doing practical good in a practical way. Now, you don't like me to say that if you do so-and-so, you'll be in bad with the State leaders, f'r that looks to you as if I thought you could be infloonced by what would be your personal advantage. And I honor you f'r them feelin's which is just what I knew you'd had, or I wouldn't be here talkin' to you now. But you mustn't blame others if they ain't as partic'lar, mebbe, as to how things might _look_. You mustn't blame y'r friends--and you've got a sight more of them than you have any idea of--if they feel all broke up to see you get in bad, both for your own sake and f'r the sake of the party."

Plonny's voice trembled with earnestness; West had had no idea that the man admired him so much.

"You want to serve the people, Mr. West? How could you do it better than in public orf'ce. Lemme talk to you straight f'r once--will you? Or am I only offendin' you by buttin' in this way, without having ever been asked?"

West gave his admirer the needed assurance.

"I'm glad of it, f'r I can hardly keep it in my system any longer. Listen here, Mr. West. As you may have heard, there's to be a primary f'r city orf'cers in June. Secret ballot or no secret ballot, the organization's going to win. You know that. Now, who'll the organization put up f'r Mayor? From what I hear, they dassen't put up any old machine hack, same's they been doin' f'r years. They might want to do it, but they're a-scared the people won't stand f'r it. From what little I hear, the feelin's strong that they _got_ to put up some young progressive public-spirited man of the reformer type. Now s'posin' the friends of a certain fine young man, sittin' not a hundred miles from this table, had it in their minds to bring _him_ forward f'r the nomination. This young man might say he wasn't seekin' the orf'ce and didn't want it, but I say public orf'ce is a duty, and no man that wants to serve the people can refuse it, partic'larly when he may be needed to save the party. And now I ask you this, Mr. West: What show would the friends of this young man have, if he had a bad spot on his record? What chance'd there be of namin' to lead the party in the city the _man who had knifed the party in the State_?"

West's chin rested upon his hand; his gaze fell dreamily upon the table-top. Before his mind's eye there had unrolled a favorite vision--a white meadow of faces focussed breathlessly upon a great orator. He recalled himself with a start, a stretch, and a laugh.

"Aren't you wandering rather carelessly into the future, Plonny?"

"If I am," said Mr. Neal, solemnly, "it's because you stand at the crossroads to-day."

* * * * *

West found the office deserted, his assistant being gone for lunch. He finished two short articles begun earlier in the day, and himself departed with an eye to food. Later, he had to attend a couple of board meetings, which ran off into protracted by-talk, and the rainy twilight had fallen before his office knew him again.

Not long after, Queed, already hatted and overcoated to go, pushed open the connecting door and entered. The two chatted a moment of the make-up of next day's "page." Presently West said: "By the bye, written anything about the reformatory?"

"Anything!" echoed Queed, with a faint smile. "You might say that I've written everything about it--the best article I ever wrote, I should say. It's our last chance, you know."

Queed thought of Eva Bernheimer, and a light crept into his ordinarily impassive eye. At the same time, West's ordinarily buoyant face fell a little.

"That so? Let me see how you've handled it, will you?"

"Certainly," said Queed, showing no surprise, though it was many a day since any composition of his had undergone supervision in that office.

It was on the tip of West's tongue to add, "I rather think we've been pressing that matter too hard," but he checked himself. Why should he make any explanation to his assistant? Was it not the fact that he had trusted the young man too far already?

Queed brought his article and laid it on West's desk, his face very thoughtful now. "If there is any information I can give you about the subject, I'll wait."

West hardly repressed a smile. "Thank you, I think I understand the situation pretty well."

Still Queed lingered and hesitated, most unlike himself. Presently he strolled over to the window and looked down unseeingly into the lamp-lit wetness of Centre Street. In fact, he was the poorest actor in the world, and never pretended anything, actively or passively, without being unhappy.

"It's raining like the mischief," he offered uncomfortably.

"Cats and dogs," said West, his fingers twiddling with Queed's copy.

"By the way," said Queed, turning with a poorly done air of casualness, "what is commonly supposed to have become of Henry G. Surface? Do people generally believe that he is dead?"

"Bless your heart, no!" said West, looking up in some surprise at the question. "That kind never die. They invariably live to a green old age--green like the bay-tree."

"I--have gotten very much interested in his story," said Queed, which was certainly true enough. "Where do people think that he is now?"

"Oh, in the West somewhere, living like a fat hog off Miss Weyland's money."

Queed's heart lost a beat. An instinct, swift as a reflex, turned him to the window again; he feared that his face might commit treason. A curious contraction and hardening seemed to be going on inside of him, a chilling petrifaction, and this sensation remained; but in the next instant he felt himself under perfect control, and was calmly saying:--

"Why, I thought the courts took all the money he had."

"They took all they could find. If you've studied high finance you'll appreciate the distinction." Amiably West tapped the table-top with the long point of his pencil, and wished that Queed would restore him his privacy. "Everybody thought at the time, you know, that he had a hundred thousand or so put away where the courts never got hold of it. The general impression was that he'd somehow smuggled it over to the woman he'd been living with--his wife", he said. "She died, I believe, but probably our friend Surface, when he got out, hadn't the slightest trouble in putting his hands on the money."

"No, I suppose not. An interesting story, isn't it? You'll telephone if you need anything to-night?"

"Oh, I shan't need anything. The page is shaping up very satisfactorily, I think. Good-night, my dear fellow."

Left alone, West picked up Queed's closely-written sheets, and leaning back in his chair read them with the closest attention. Involuntarily, his intellect paid a tribute to the writer as he read. The article was masterly. The argument was close and swift, the language impassioned, the style piquant. "Where did he learn to write like that!" wondered West. Here was the whole subject compressed into half a column, and so luminous a half column that the dullest could not fail to understand and admire. Two sarcastic little paragraphs were devoted to stripping the tatters from the nakedness of the economy argument, and these Mr. Queed's chief perused twice.

"The talk of a doctrinaire," mused he presently. "The closet philosopher's ideas. How far afield from the real situation ..."

It was a most fortunate thing, he reflected, that he himself had means of getting exact and accurate information at first hand. Suppose that he had not, that, like some editors, he had simply passed this article in without examination and correction. It would have made the _Post_ ridiculous, and decidedly impaired its reputation for common sense and fair play. Whatever should or should not be said, this was certainly no way to talk of honest men, who were trying to conserve the party and who differed from the _Post_ only on an unimportant question of detail.

West leaned back in his chair and stared at the farther wall.... For that was exactly what it was--an unimportant detail. The important thing, the one thing that he himself had insisted on, was that the State should have a reformatory. Whether the State had it now or two years from now, made relatively little difference, except to those who, like his editorial assistant, had sunk themselves in the question till their sense of proportion had deserted them. Was not that a fair statement of the case? Whatever he did, he must not let his views be colored by probable effects upon his own future.... Surely, to wait two brief years for the institution, with the positive assurance of it then, could be no hardship to a State which had got along very well without it for all the years of its lifetime. Surely not. Plonny Neal, whose sharp horse sense he would back against any man in the State, was absolutely sound there.

He tried to consider the question with chill judiciality, and believed that he was doing so. But the fervor which Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for Plonny's knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least resistance.... Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the party was facing a great crisis; and it was in his hand to save or to wreck it. All eyes were anxiously on the _Post_, which wielded the decisive power. The people had risen with the unreasonable demand that progress be checked for a time, because of the cost of it. The leaders had responded to the best of their ability, but necessary expenses were so great that it was going to be a narrow shave at best--so narrow that another hundred thousand spent would land the whole kettle of fish in the fire. The grand old party would go crashing down the precipice. Was not that a criminal price to pay for getting a reformatory institution two years before the people were ready to pay for it? There was the whole question in a nutshell.

The one unpleasant aspect of this view was Sharlee Weyland, the dearest girl in the world. She would be much disappointed, and, for the first moment, would possibly be somewhat piqued with him personally. He knew that women were extremely unreasonable about these things; they looked at affairs from the emotional point of view, from the point of view of the loose, large "effect." But Sharlee Weyland was highly intelligent and sensible, and he had not the smallest doubt of his ability to make her understand what the unfortunate situation was. He could not tell her everything--Plonny had cautioned secrecy about the real gravity of the crisis--but he would tell her enough to show her how he had acted, with keen regrets, from his sternest sense of public duty. It was a cruel stroke of fate's that his must be the hand to bring disappointment to the girl he loved, but after all, would she not be the first to say that he must never put his regard for her preferences above the larger good of City and State? He could not love her, dear, so well, loved he not honor more.

He picked up Queed's article and glanced again at the astonishing words, words which, invested with the _Post's_ enormous prestige, simply kicked and cuffed the party to its ruin. A wave of resentment against his assistant swept through the editor's mind. This was what came of trusting anything to anybody else. If you wanted to be sure that things were done right, do them yourself. Because he had allowed Queed a little rope, that young man had industriously gathered in almost enough to hang, not himself, for he was nothing, but the _Post_ and its editor. However, there was no use crying over spilt milk. What was done was done. Fortunately, the _Post's_ general position was sound; had not the editor himself dictated it? If the expression of that position in cold type had been gradually carried by a subordinate to a more and more violent extreme, to an intemperance of utterance which closely approached insanity, what was it the editor's duty to do? Obviously to take charge himself and swing the position back to a safe and sane mean, exactly where he had placed it to begin with. That was all that was asked of him--to shift back the paper's position to where he had placed it in the beginning, and by so doing to save the party from wreck. Could a sensible man hesitate an instant? And in return....

West's gaze wandered out of the window, and far on into the beyond.... His friends were watching him, silently but fearfully. Who and what these friends were his swift thought did not stay to ask. His glamorous fancy saw them as a great anxious throng, dominant men, yet respectful, who were trembling lest he should make a fatal step--to answer for it with his political life. Public life--he rejected the term political life--was of all things what he was preeminently fitted for. How else could a man so fully serve his fellows?--how so surely and strongly promote the uplift? And Plonny Neal had served notice on him that he stood to-day on the crossroads to large public usefulness. The czar of them all, the great Warwick who made and unmade kings by the lifting of his finger, had told him, as plain as language could speak, that he, West, was his imperial choice for the mayoralty, with all that that foreshadowed.... Truly, he had served his apprenticeship, and was meet for his opportunity. For eight long months he had stood in line, doing his duty quietly and well, asking no favor of anybody. And now at last Warwick had beckoned him and set the mystic star upon his forehead....

Iridescent visionry enwrapped the young man, and he swam in it goldenly. In time his spirit returned to his body, and he found himself leaning back in a very matter-of-fact chair, facing a very plain question. How could the shifting back, the rationalizing, of the paper's position be accomplished with the minimum of shock? How could he rescue the party with the least possible damage to the _Post's_ consistency?

West went to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, pulled out a large folder marked, _Reformatory_, and, returning to his seat, ran hurriedly through the _Post's_ editorials on this subject during the past twelvemonth. Over some of the phrases he ground his teeth. They floated irritatingly in his head as he once more leaned back in his chair and frowned at the opposite wall.

Gradually there took form in his mind a line of reasoning which would appear to grow with some degree of naturalness out of what had gone before, harmonizing the basic continuity of the _Post's_ attitude, and minimizing the change in present angle or point of view. His fertile mind played about it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and perfecting; and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon with fluent ease.

XXVI

_In which Queed forces the Old Professor's Hand, and the Old Professor takes to his Bed._

Raincoat buttoned to his throat, Queed set his face against the steady downpour. It was a mild, windless night near the end of February, foreshadowing the early spring already nearly due. He had no umbrella, or wish for one: the cool rain in his face was a refreshment and a vivifier.

So the worst had come to the worst, and he had been living for nearly a year on Sharlee Weyland's money, stolen from her by her father's false friend. Wormwood and gall were the fruits that altruism had borne him. Two casual questions had brought out the shameful truth, and these questions could have been asked as easily a year ago as now.

Bitterly did the young man reproach himself now, for his criminal carelessness in regard to the sources of Surface's luxurious income. For the better part of a year he had known the old man for an ex-convict whose embezzlings had run high into six figures. Yet he had gone on fatuously swallowing the story that the money of which the old rogue was so free represented nothing but the savings of a thrifty schoolteacher. A dozen things came back to him now to give the lie to that tale. He thought of the costly books that Surface was constantly buying; the expensive repairs he had made in his rented house; the wine that stood on the dinner-table every night; the casual statement from the old man that he meant to retire from the school at the end of the present session. Was there ever a teacher who could live like this after a dozen years' roving work? And the probability was that Surface had never worked at all until, returning to his own city, he had needed a position as a cover and a blind.

Mathematical computations danced through the young man's brain. He figured that their present scale of living must run anywhere from $3500 to $5000 a year. Surface's income from the school was known to be $900 a year. His income from his lodger was $390 a year. This difference between, say $4000 and $1290, was $2710 a year, or 4 per cent on some $70,000. And this tidy sum was being filched from the purse of Charlotte Lee Weyland, who worked for her living at an honorarium of $75 a month.

Queed walked with his head lowered, bent less against the rain than his own stinging thoughts. At the corner of Seventh Street a knot of young men, waiting under a dripping awning for a car that would not come, cried out gayly to the Doc; they were Mercuries; but the Doc failed to respond to their greetings, or even to hear them. He crossed the humming street, northerly, with an experienced sureness acquired since his exploit with the dog Behemoth; and so came into his own section of the town.