Chapter 16

Croffut advanced, smiling. "I am fit for my company," thought I as I let him clasp my hand.

"Better tilt Granby's ghost out of that chair, Croffut," said Dominick, as the ex-Senator was seating himself. And in his animal exuberance of delight at his joke and at the whole situation he clapped Roebuck on the shoulder.

Roebuck shrank and winced. Moral humiliation he could shed as an armor-plated turret sheds musket-balls. But a physical humiliation, especially with spectators, sank in and sank deep. Instantly, alarmed lest Dominick had seen and understood, he smiled and said: "That's a vigorous arm of yours, Mr. Dominick."

"Not bad for a man of sixty," said Dominick.

I ate because to eat was a necessary part of my pose of absolute calmness; but I had to force down the food. It seemed to me to embody the banquet there set before my mental appetite. I found I had no stomach for that banquet. It takes the coarse palate of youth or the depraved palate of a more debauched manhood than mine to enjoy such a feast. Yet, less than a year before, I had enjoyed, had delighted in, a far less strenuous contest with these mutineers. As I sat holding down my gorge and acting as if I were at ease, I suddenly wondered what Elizabeth Crosby would think of me if she could see. And then I saw her, with a reality of imagining that startled me--it was as if she were in the doorway; and her eyes lifted to mine in that slow, steady, searching gaze of hers.

I suppose, if a soldier thrusting his saber into the bowels of his enemy on the battle-field were suddenly to see before him his mother or the good and gentle wife or daughter he loved, he would drop the saber and fly to hide himself like a murderer. So, I, overwhelmed, said to myself: "I can not go on! Let these wretches wallow in their own vileness. I shall not wallow with them. I am no swineherd!"

As I was debating how to escape and what one of the many other ways of saving my friends and lieutenants I should adopt, Dominick touched me on the arm. "A word with you, Senator," said he.

He glanced at the others as if he were debating whether he should order them from the table while he talked with me. If he had ordered it, they would have gone. But restrained, perhaps by his crude though reverent sense of convention, he rose and led the way over to a corner.

"I want to tell you, Senator, that as soon as I got on to what this here push was plottin', I wired you askin' an appointment. You'll find the telegram at your house when you go home. I don't stand for no foulin'. I play the game straight. I came because I thought you'd want the party to be represented at such a getherin'."

I saw that he had come to the dinner, doubtful whether any enterprise against me, promising enough for him to risk embarking, could be launched; as soon as I entered the room he, like the rat when the cat interrupted the rat-and-mouse convention to discuss belling it, unceremoniously led the way to safety. But this was not one of those few occasions on which it is wise to show a man that his lies do not fool you. "I am glad to hear you say these things, Dominick," said I. "I am glad you are loyal to the party."

"You can trust me, Senator," said he earnestly.

"I can trust your common sense," said I. And I proceeded to grasp this lucky chance to get away. "I am leaving," I went on, "as soon as the coffee is served. I shall look to you to send these gentlemen home in a proper frame of mind toward the party."

His eyes glistened. Except his growing fortune, nothing delighted him so much as a chance to "rough-house" his eminently respectable "pals." He felt toward them that quaint mixture of envy, contempt and a desire to fight which fills a gamin at sight of a fashionably dressed boy. He put out his big hand and dampened mine with it. "You can count on me, Senator," he said gratefully. "I'll trim 'em, comb and tail-feathers."

"Don't overlook their spurs," said I.

"They ain't got none," said he, "except those you lend 'em."

We returned to a table palled by sullen dread--dread of me, anger against Dominick who, in the courage of his ignorance of the conventionalities which restrained them, had taken the short, straight cut to me and peace. And, as veterans in the no-quarter warfare of ambition, they knew I had granted him peace on no less terms than their heads.

They had all, even Roebuck, been drinking freely in the effort to counteract the depression. But the champagne seemed only to aggravate their gloom except in the case of young Jamieson. He had just succeeded, through the death of his father, to the privilege of levying upon the people of eleven counties by means of trolley franchises which the legislature had granted his father in perpetuity in return for financial services to "the party." It is, by the way, an interesting illustration of the human being's lack of thinking power that a legislature could not give away a small gold-mine belonging to the public to any man for even a brief term of years without causing a revolution, but could and does give away far more valuable privileges to plunder and to tax, and give them away for ever, without causing any real stir. However--young Jamieson's liquor, acting upon a mind that had not had enough experience to appreciate the meaning of the situation, drove him on to insolent taunts and boasts, addressed to his neighbors but intended for me. I ignored him and, when the coffee was served, rose to depart.

Roebuck urged me to stay, followed me to the coat-room, took my coat away from the servant and helped me with it. "I want to see you the first thing in the morning, Harvey," said he.

"I'll call you up, if I have time," said I.

We came out of the cloak-room, his arm linked in mine, and crossed the corner of the dining-room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw up his arm and fluttered his hand in an impertinent gesture of farewell. "So long, Senator Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We'll teach you a lesson in how to treat gentlemen."

The last word--gentlemen--was just clearing his mouth when Dominick's tea-pot, flung with all the force of the ex-prize-fighter's big muscles and big body, landed in the midst of his broad white shirt-bosom. And with the tea-pot Dominick hurled his favorite epithet from his garbage barrel of language. With a yell Jamieson crashed over backward; his flying legs, caught by the table, tilted it; his convulsive kicks sent it over, and half the diners, including Dominick, were floored under it.

All this in a snap of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, wholly infuriated brutes. There is shrewd, sly wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of the cat changed into a queen and how she sprang from her throne at sight of a mouse to pursue it on all fours. The best of us are, after all, animals changed into men by the spell of reason; and in some circumstances, it doesn't take much of a blow to dissolve that spell.

For those men in those circumstances, that blow proved sufficient. Partridge extricated himself, ran round the table and kicked Jamieson in the head--partly in punishment, perhaps, and because he needed just that vent for his rage, but chiefly to get credit with me, for he glanced toward me as he did it. Men, sprawling and squirming side by side on the floor, lashed out with feet and fists, striking each other and adding to the wild dishevelment. The candles set fire to the table-cloth and before the blaze was extinguished burned several in the hair and mustaches.

Dominick, roaring with laughter, came to Roebuck and me standing at the door, both dazed at this magic shift of a "gentlemen's" dinner into a bear-pit. "Granby's ghost is raisin' hell," said he.

But I had no impulse to laugh or to gloat. "Good night," said I to Roebuck and hastened away.

It was the end of the attempt to mine the foundations of my power. But I did not neglect its plain warning. As soon as the legislature assembled, I publicly and strongly advocated the appointment of a joint committee impartially to investigate all the cities of the state, those ruled by my own party no less than those ruled by the opposition. The committee was appointed and did its work so thoroughly that there was a popular clamor for the taking away of the charters of the cities and for ruling them from the state capital. It is hardly necessary to say that my legislature and governor yielded to this clamor. And so the semi-independent petty princes, the urban bosses, lost their independence and passed under my control; and the "collections" which had gone directly to them reached them by way of Woodruff as grants from my machine, instead of as revenues of their own right.

Before this securing of my home power was complete, I had my counter-attack upon the Burbank-Goodrich combine well under way. Immediately on my return to Fredonia from the disastrous dinner, I sent for the attorney general of the state, Ferguson. He was an ideal combination of man and politician. He held to the standards of private morality as nearly as it is possible for a man in active public life to hold to them--far more nearly than most men dare or, after they have become inured, care, to hold. He always maintained with me a firm but tactful independence; he saw the necessity for the sordid side of politics, but he was careful personally to keep clear of smutched or besmutching work. He had as keen an instinct for popularity as a bee has for blossoms; he knew how to do or to direct unpopular things on dark nights with a dark lantern, how to do or to direct popular things in full uniform on a white horse. I have never ordered any man to a task that was not morally congenial; and I was careful to respect Ferguson's notion of self-respect. I sent for him now, and outlined my plan--to bring suits, both civil and criminal, in the Federal courts in the name of the state, against Roebuck and his associates of the Power Trust.

When he had heard, he said: "Yes, Mr. Sayler, we can break up the Power Trust, can cause the indictment and conviction of Mr. Roebuck. I can prevent the United States Attorney General from playing any of the usual tricks and defending the men whom the people think he is vigorously prosecuting. But--"

"But?" said I encouragingly.

"Is this on the level? If I undertake these prosecutions, shall I be allowed to push them _honestly_? Or will there be a private settlement as soon as Roebuck and his crowd see their danger?"

"No matter what happens," I replied, "you shall prosecute at least the civil suits to the end. I give you my word for that."

He thanked me warmly, for he appreciated that I was bestowing upon him an enormous opportunity for national fame.

"And you?" said I. "If you succeed in this prosecution, will you remain in the public service or will you accept the offers the interests will make, and remove to New York and become a rich corporation lawyer?"

He reflected before answering. "That depends," said he. "If _you_ are going to stay on in control in this state, I shall stick to public life, for I believe you will let me have what I call a career. But, if you are going to get out and leave me at the mercy of those fellows, I certainly shan't stay where they can fool the people into turning on me."

"I shall stay on," said I; "and after me, there will be Woodruff--unless, of course, there's some sort of cataclysm."

"A man must take chances," he answered. "I'll take that chance."

We called Woodruff into the consultation. Although he was not a lawyer, he had a talent for taking a situation by the head and tail and stretching it out and holding it so that every crease and wrinkle in it could be seen. And this made him valuable at any conference.

In January we had our big battery loaded, aimed and primed. We unmasked it, and Ferguson fired. I had expected the other side to act stupidly, but I had not hoped for such stupidity as they exhibited. Burbank's year of bathing in presidential flatteries and of fawning on and cringing to the multi-millionaires and their agents hedging him around, had so wrought upon him that he had wholly lost his point of view. And he let his Attorney General pooh-pooh the proceedings,--this in face of the great popular excitement and enthusiasm. It was not until Roebuck's lawyers got far enough into the case against him to see his danger that the administration stopped flying in the teeth of the cyclone of public sentiment and began to pretend enthusiasm, while secretly plotting the mistrial of Ferguson's cases. And not until the United States Attorney General--a vain Goodrich creature whose talents were crippled by his contempt for "the rabble" and "demagoguery"--not until he had it forced upon him that Ferguson could not be counter-mined, did they begin to treat with me for peace.

I shall not retail the negotiations. The upshot was that I let the administration drop the criminal cases against Roebuck in return for the restoration of my power in the national committee of the party to the smallest ejected postmaster in the farthest state. The civil action was pressed by Ferguson with all his skill as a lawyer and a popularity-seeking politician; and he won triumphantly in the Supreme Court--the lower Federal Court with its Power Trust judge had added to his triumph by deciding against him.

Roebuck was, therefore, under the necessity of going through the customary forms of outward obedience to the Supreme Court's order to him to dissolve. He had to get at huge expense, and to carry out at huger, a plan of reorganization. Though he was glad enough to escape thus lightly, he dissembled his content and grumbled so loudly that Burbank's fears were roused and arrangements were made to placate him. The scheme adopted was, I believe, suggested by Vice-President Howard, as shrewd and cynical a rascal as ever lived in the mire without getting smutch or splash upon his fine linen of respectability.

For several years there had been a strong popular demand for a revision of the tariff. The party had promised to yield, but had put off redeeming its promise. Now, there arose a necessity for revising the tariff in the interest of "the interests." Some of the schedules were too low; others protected articles which the interests wanted as free raw materials; a few could be abolished without offending any large interests and with the effect of punishing some small ones that had been niggard in contributing to the "campaign fund" which maintains the standing army of political workers and augments it whenever a battle is on. Accordingly, a revision of the tariff was in progress. To soothe Roebuck, they gave him a tariff schedule that would enable him to collect each year more than the total of the extraordinary expenses to which I had put him. Roebuck "forgave" me; and I really forgave Burbank.

But I washed my hands of his administration. Not only did I actually stand aloof but also I disassociated myself from it in the public mind. When the crash should come, as come it must with such men at the helm, I wished to be in a position successfully to take full charge for the work of repair.

XXXII

A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR

Not until late in the spring of his second year did Burbank find a trace of gall in his wine.

From the night of his election parasites and plunderers and agents of plunderers had imprisoned him in the usual presidential fool's paradise. The organs of the interests and their Congressional henchmen praised everything he did; I and my group of Congressmen and my newspapers, as loyal partizans, bent first of all upon regularity, were silent where we did not praise also. But the second year of a President's first term is the beginning of frank, if guarded, criticism of him from his own side. For it is practically his last year of venturing to exercise any real official power. The selection of delegates to the party's national convention, to which a President must submit himself for leave to re-submit himself to the people, is well under way before the end of his third year; and direct and active preparations for it must begin long in advance.

Late in that second spring Burbank made a tour of the country, to give the people the pleasure of seeing their great man, to give himself the pleasure of their admiration, and to help on the Congressional campaign, the result of which would be the preliminary popular verdict upon his administration. The thinness of the crowds, the feebleness of the enthusiasm, the newspaper sneers and flings at that oratory once hailed as a model of dignity and eloquence--even he could not accept the smooth explanations of his flatterers. And in November came the party's memorable overwhelming defeat--reducing our majority in the Senate from twenty to six, and substituting for our majority of ninety-three in the House an opposition majority of sixty-seven.

I talked with him early in January and was amazed that, while he appreciated the public anger against the party, he still believed himself personally popular. "There is a lull in prosperity," said he, "and the people are peevish." Soon, however, by a sort of endosmosis to which the densest vanity is somewhat subject, the truth began to seep through and to penetrate into him.

He became friendlier to me, solicitous toward spring--but he clung none the less tightly to Goodrich. The full awakening came in his third summer when the press and the politicians of the party began openly to discuss the next year's nomination and to speak of him as if he were out of the running. He was spending the hot months on the Jersey coast, the flatterers still swarming about him and still assiduous, but their flatteries falling upon ever deafer ears as his mind rivetted upon the hair-suspended sword. In early September he invited me to visit him--my first invitation of that kind in two years and a half. We had three interviews before he could nerve himself to brush aside the barriers between him and me.

"I am about to get together my friends with a view to next year," said he through an uneasy smile. "What do you think of the prospects?"

"What do your friends say?" I asked.

"Oh, of course, I am assured of a renomination--" He paused, and his look at me made the confident affirmation a dubious question.

"Yes?" said I.

"And--don't you think my record has made me strong?" he went on nervously.

"Strong--with whom?" said I.

He was silent. Finally he laid his hand on my knee--we were taking the air on the ocean drive. "Harvey," he said, "I can count on you?"

I shook my head. "I shall take no part in the next campaign," I said. "I shall resign the chairmanship."

"But I have selected you as my chairman. I have insisted on you. I can't trust any one else. I need others, I use others, but I trust only you."

I shook my head. "I shall resign," I repeated. "What's the matter--won't Goodrich take the place?"

He looked away. "I have not seriously thought of any one but you," he said reproachfully.

I happened to know that the place had been offered to Goodrich and that he had declined it, protesting that I, a Western man, must not be disturbed when the West was vital to the party's success. "My resolution is fixed," said I.

A long silence, then: "Sayler, have you heard anything of an attempt to defeat me for the nomination?"

"Goodrich has decided to nominate Governor Ridgeway of Illinois," said I.

He blanched and had to moisten his dry, wrinkled lips several times before he could speak. "A report of that nature reached me last Thursday," he went on. "For some time I have been perplexed by the Ridgeway talk in many of our organs. I have questioned Goodrich about it--and--I must say--his explanations are not--not wholly satisfactory."

I glanced at him and had instantly to glance away, so plainly was I showing my pity. He was not hiding himself from me now. He looked old and tired and sick--not mere sickness of body, but that mortal sickness of the mind and heart which kills a man, often years before his body dies.

"I have come to the conclusion that you were right about Goodrich, Sayler. I am glad that I took your advice and never trusted him. I think you and I together will be too strong for him."

"You are going to seek a renomination?" I asked.

He looked at me in genuine astonishment. "It is impossible that the party should refuse me," he said.

I was silent.

"Be frank with me, Sayler," he exclaimed at last. "Be frank. Be my friend, your own old self."

"As frank and as friendly as you have been?" said I, rather to remind myself than to reproach him. For I was afraid of the reviving feeling of former years--the liking for his personal charms and virtues, the forbearance toward that weakness which he could no more change than he could change the color of his eyes. His moral descent had put no clear markings upon his pose. On the contrary, he had grown in dignity through the custom of deference. The people passing us looked admiration at him, had a new sense of the elevation of the presidential office. Often it takes the trained and searching eye to detect in the majestic façade the evidences that the palace has degenerated into a rookery for pariahs.

"I have done what I thought for the best," he answered, never more direct and manly in manner. "I have always been afraid, been on guard, lest my personal fondness for you should betray me into yielding to you when I ought not. Perhaps I have erred at times, have leaned backward in my anxiety to be fair. But I had and have no fear of your not understanding. Our friendship is too long established, too well-founded." And I do not doubt that he believed himself; the capacity for self-deception is rarely short of the demands upon it.

"It's unfortunate--" I began. I was going to say it was unfortunate that no such anxieties had ever restrained him from yielding to Goodrich. But I hadn't the heart. Instead, I finished my sentence with: "However, it's idle to hold a post-mortem on this case. The cause of death is unimportant. The fact of it is sufficient. No doubt you did the best you could, Mr. President."

My manner was that of finality. It forbade further discussion. He abandoned the finesse of negotiation.

"Harvey, I ask you, as a personal favor, to help me through this crisis," he said. "I ask you, my friend and my dead wife's friend."

No depth too low, no sentiment too sacred! Anger whirled up in me against this miserable, short-sighted self-seeker who had brought to a climax of spoliation my plans to guide the strong in developing the resources of the country. And I turned upon him, intending to overwhelm him with the truth about his treachery, about his attempts to destroy me. For I was now safe from his and Goodrich's vengeance--they had destroyed themselves with the people and with the party. But a glance at him and--how could I strike a man stretched in agony upon his deathbed? "If I could help you, I would," said I.

"You--you and I together can get a convention that will nominate me," he urged, hope and fear jostling each other to look pleadingly at me from his eyes.

"Possibly," I said. "But--of what use would that be?"

He sank back in the carriage, yellow-white and with trembling hands and eyelids. "Then you don't think I could be elected?" he asked in a broken, breathless way.