_ CHAPTER XI. A MAN FROM THE SHADOWS
There was a provoking flavor of mystery about Thelismer Thornton's early movements the next day. His grandson became still more interested. This element in politics appealed to him, for he was young.
They left the city by an early train. The Duke secluded himself and his grandson in a drawing-room of the car.
It was an express--train which did not stop at way stations. But when the conductor came for the tickets the old man inquired whether orders had been issued to have the train held up at a certain siding.
"Yes, sir, to leave two passengers," said the conductor. He was courteous, but he winked at the old politician with the air of one who thought he understood something. He exhibited his telegram from the dispatcher. "Can't be much politics there, Mr. Thornton," he remarked, by way of jest.
"I'm on a fishing-trip," explained the Duke, blandly. And the conductor, who knew that the siding had no fishing water within ten miles of it, went away chuckling in order to applaud the joke of a man of power.
A few hours later the two were let off at the siding and the train hurried on.
There was a farm-house near the railroad. They ate dinner with the farmer and his wife, who seemed to realize that they were entertaining some one out of the ordinary, and were much flustered thereby. Especially did the farmer struggle with his vague memory of personalities, asking many round-about questions and "supposing" many possibilities that the Duke placidly neglected to confirm.
The only definite information the farmer received was that the big elderly man wanted himself and his companion conveyed to Burnside Village by wagon, starting in the late afternoon.
"I'll take you," said the man; "but what sticks me is that you didn't stay right on board that train. It stops at Burnside regular, and it don't stop here at all."
"But it stopped to-day," remarked the Duke.
"I know it did, and that's what sticks me again."
The old man rose from the table and smiled down on him.
"Here's a good cigar, brother. I've often worked out many a puzzle while having a bang-up smoke."
He invited Harlan by a nod of the head, and they went out and strolled in the maple grove behind the house.
"I suppose you think by this time, bub, that I'm in my second childhood, and playing dime novel. But there are some things in politics that have to be done as gentle and careful as picking a rose petal off a school-ma'am's shoulder." The Duke chuckled and smoked for a time. "When I've had a job of that sort to do I haven't even talked to myself, Harlan. So you mustn't think I'm distrustful of you because I don't tell you what's on."
"I'm willing to wait," said his grandson.
"Learn your lesson, Harlan--the one I'm trying to teach you now. I never knew but one man who could keep his mouth shut under all circumstances when he felt it was his duty to do so. That was old Ben Holt. He's dead now. He fell off a bridge on his way to church and didn't holler 'Help!' for fear of breaking the Sabbath. You don't find any more of that kind in these days--not in political matters. I'm not distrusting you, I say, but I'm teaching you the lesson. Keep your mouth shut till it's time to open it. I'm drawing this thing here strong on you, so as to impress it. As for the other fellows--if I had got off the train at Burnside to-day the news would have been in every afternoon paper in the State. They'd only need that one fact to build fifty stories on--all different.
Most of those stories would have hurt; there'd have been one guess, at least, that would kill the scheme. Sit down here, and let's take it easy."
He sat at the foot of a tree, his broad straw hat beside him. He leaned his head against the trunk, and gazed upward and away from his grandson. When the question came it was so irrelevant, so astonishing, that the young man gasped without replying.
"Harlan, how do you stand with the Kavanagh girl?"
The old man smoked on in the silence without removing his gaze from the leaves above his head.
"I want to confess to you, my boy, that your old grandfather made rather a disgraceful exhibition of himself the other day. But as I said then, a man will thrash and swear at a hornet and make an ass of himself, generally, in the operation. The impudent little fool didn't realize what a big matter she was trifling with."
"Grandfather," protested Harlan, manfully, "that's no way to speak of a young lady. You ask me how I stand? I stand this way--I'll not have the child mentioned in any such manner--not in my hearing; and that's with all respect to you, sir."
"Young lady--child? Well, which is she?"
"I don't know," confessed Harlan, ingenuously. "And it doesn't make much difference."
"Sort of ashamed of me, aren't you?" inquired his grandfather. "A man that you've seen all the politicians catering to the last day or so, and small enough to bandy insults with a snippet of a girl! Well, bub, there's a lot of childishness in human nature. It breaks out once in a while. Cuss a tack, and grin and bear an amputation! We'll let the girl alone. I don't seem to get in right when she is mentioned. But I wanted to have you tell me that you don't intend to marry Dennis Kavanagh's daughter. You can't afford to do that, boy! Not with your prospects. And now I'm not saying anything against the girl. We'll leave her out, I say. It's just that she isn't the kind of a woman--when she gets to be a woman--that I want to see mated with you." He burst out: "Dammit, Harlan, I can see where you're going to land in this State if you'll let your old gramp have free rein! And the right kind of a wife is half the battle in what you're going into."
"Have you got that right kind picked out for me--along with the rest? You talk as though you had."
It was said almost in the tone of insult. It might have been the tone--it might have been that the taunt touched upon the truth: Thelismer Thornton's face flushed. He did not seem to find reply easy.
"There's only this to say, grandfather. I know you're interested in me and in seeing me get ahead in the world. You pushed me into politics, and I'm trying to make good. I'm glad you did it--I'll say that now. I see opportunities ahead if I stay square and honest. But don't you try to push me into marriage. I'm going to do my own choosing there. And that doesn't mean that I'm in love with Clare Kavanagh, or intend to marry Clare Kavanagh, or want to marry her--or that she wants to marry me. That's straight, and I don't want to talk about it any more."
He stood up, and his tone was defiant.
"You'd better take a walk, bub," commended the Duke, quietly. "I'm going to nap for a little while. We may be up late to-night."
He picked up his hat and canted it over his face. "Get back here as early as five o'clock," he said, from under its brim.
They were away in the farmer's carryall at that hour, after a supper of bread-and-milk.
In the edge of the village of Burnside the Duke ordered a halt, and stepped down from the carriage. The evening had settled in and it was dark under the elms.
"Here's five dollars, brother. You've used us all right, and now so long to you."
"But I hain't got you to nowhere yet!" protested the farmer. He had finally decided in his own mind that these were railroad managers planning projects, with an eye on his own farm. He wanted to carry them where he could exhibit them to some one who could inform him.
But the Duke promptly drew Harlan along into the shadows, and a farmer hampered with a two-seated carriage is not equipped for the trail. They heard the complaining squeal of iron against iron as he turned to go back home.
"We've come here to call on a man," stated the Duke, after they had walked for a little time.
"On ex-Governor Waymouth, I suppose," Harlan suggested, quietly.
The old man chuckled.
"How long have you been suspecting that?"
"Ever since I heard Burnside mentioned, of course."
"Good! You guessed and kept still about it. You've got the makings of a politician, and you are learning fast. Now what do you suppose I'm sneaking up on Varden Waymouth in this way for?"
"You said I'd see for myself when the time came. I'm in no hurry, grandfather."
The Duke patted Harlan's shoulder. "You're one of my kind, that's sure, boy. I haven't got to put any patent time-lock onto your tongue. And I can't say that of many chaps in this State. You're a safe man to have along. Come on!"
The house was back from the street a bit--a modest mansion of brick, dignifiedly old. Tall twin columns flanked the front door and supported the roof of the porch. Harlan had never seen the residence of General Waymouth before, but that exterior seemed fitted to the man, such as he knew him to be.
He admitted them himself, when they had waited a few moments after sounding alarm with the ancient knocker. Framed in the door, he was a picturesque figure. His abundant white hair hung straight down over his ears, and curled outward at the ends; his short beard was snowy, but there was healthful ruddiness on his face, and though his figure, tall above the average, stooped a bit, he walked briskly ahead of them into the library, crying delighted welcome over his shoulder. His meeting with Thelismer Thornton had been almost an embrace.
"And this boosting big chap is Harlan--my grand-baby, Vard! Guess you used to see him at 'The Barracks' when he was smaller. Since then he's been trying to outgrow one of our spruce-trees."
The ex-Governor gave Harlan his left hand. The empty sleeve of the right arm was pinned to the shoulder.
"The old Yankee stock doesn't need a step-ladder to stand on to light the moon, so they used to say."
He rolled chairs close to each other and urged them to sit, with the anxious hospitality of the old man who has grown to prize the narrowing circle of his intimates.
"Smoke, Thelismer," he pleaded. "Stretch out and smoke. I always like to see you smoke. You take so much comfort. I sometimes wish I'd learned to smoke. Old age gets lonely once in a while. Perhaps a good cigar might be a consolation."
"So you do get lonesome sometimes, Vard?" inquired the Duke.
"It's a lonesome age when you're eighty, comrade. You probably find it so yourself. There are so few of one's old friends that live to be eighty."
Then they fell into discourse, eager, wistful reminiscences such as come to the lips of old friends who meet infrequently. The young man, sitting close in the circle, listened appreciatively. This courtly old soldier, lawyer, Governor, and kindly gentleman had been to him since boyhood, as he had to the understanding youth of his State, an ideal knight of the old régime. And so the hours slipped past, and he sat listening.
The calm night outside was breathlessly still, except for the drone of insects at the screens, attracted by the glow of the library lamp. A steeple clock clanged its ten sonorous strokes, and still the old men chatted on, and the Duke had not hinted at his errand.
The General suddenly remembered that he had in the cellar some home-made wine, and he asked the young man to come with him, as lamp-bearer.
"The good wife would have thought of that little touch of hospitality long ago, my son," he said, as they walked down the stairs, "but a widower's house with grouchy hired help makes old age still more lonely."
On their return they found the Duke, feet extended, head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling. He was deep in thought, and told Harlan to place his glass on the chair's arm.
"Varden," he said, "eighty isn't old, not for a man like you; and it shouldn't be lonely, that age. I'm still older, and I propose to wear out instead of rust out."
"I don't feel rusty, exactly," returned the General, smiling into his glass. "But when I think of all the marches, Thelismer, of the campaigns, the heartbreaking struggles of the war--of all the cases won and cases lost, the nights of study and days of labor in the law--the fuss and fury of politics--of all the years behind me, I feel as though I'd like to be used as my father used his old boots: Before he took his bed for the last time he went up into the garret of the old farm-house and laid his boots there on their sides. 'Let 'em lie down, now, and rest,' he said. And I've never allowed them to be disturbed."
The Duke still stared at the ceiling.
"Varden, you and I have known each other so long that you don't need as much talk from me as you would from a stranger. When I've asked a thing from you in the past I didn't have to sit down and talk to you an hour about the reasons why I wanted it. You understood that I had a good reason for asking. I'm going to ask just one more thing from you in this life. I'm going to ask it straight from the shoulder. You and I don't need to beat about the bush with each other. I want you to say 'yes,' for if you don't you're abandoning our old State as though she were a widow headed for the almshouse."
Thornton leaned forward, grasped his glass and drained it at a gulp, and then looked the amazed General squarely in the eyes.
"You're going to be nominated as Governor of this State in the next convention, and you've got to accept," he declared. "Now hold on! Just as you understand that I've got good reasons for asking you to do this, just so I understand all that you're going to say in objection. I discount all your objections in advance. I know you haven't lost run of affairs in this State--you know all the mix-up the party is in right now. They're going to beat Dave Everett in convention, General, just as sure as the devil can't freeze his own ice. It's going to be 'Seventy-two all over again. People gone crazy for a change and jumping the wrong way, like grasshoppers in front of a mowing machine. Spinney means the whole rotten thing over again--State treasury looted, tax rate reduced to get a popular hoorah, a floating debt that will make us stagger and keep enterprise out of this State for ten years, petty graft in every State office, and every strap on the party nag busted from snaffle to crupper. Now I want to ask you one question: Do you want Arba Spinney for the next Governor of this State--sitting in the chair that you honored? You know him! You've heard his mouth go. You understand his calibre. Do you want him?"
"No," admitted General Waymouth.
"Well, you're going to get him if you don't accept that nomination. You're going to get him, blab-mouth, mob-rule, mortification, and merry hell--the whole bagful! Do you want that for this State, Vard?"
"Our State can't afford to have such a man," agreed General Waymouth, "but--"
"I'd, myself, rather see a Democrat win at the polls!" shouted Thornton. "But the Democrat that they've got in line is worse than Spinney. It's a popocratic year, and they're all playing that game. But they can't overcome our natural plurality, Varden. It means Spinney if he goes to the polls! It's up to you to stop him. You've got to do it!"
The General rose and walked around the room. His shoulders were stooped a bit more. Then he came and put his hand on Thelismer's shoulder.
"Your faith in what I am and what I might do is worthy of you, my old comrade, even if it exalts my poor powers too much. And I thank you, Thelismer. But I know what I am. I'm only a stranded old man. The younger generation will not think as you do. Go and find some good man there. I'm too weary, Thelismer, too old and too weary--and almost forgotten. Find another man!"
"What's that? Find a man for Governor of this State, groom him, work him out, score him down and shove him under the wire of State Convention a winner inside of two weeks? Varden, you know politics better than that!
You forgotten by the younger generation of this State? Harlan, what have you to say to that?"
The young man stood up. He had listened well and listened long that evening. In the presence of this gracious old knight of the heroic days of history he had felt his heart swelling as he remembered the record that all men of his State knew.
The fervor of his admiration showed so plainly in his glistening eyes that General Waymouth was touched, and waited indulgently.
"General, it's only because my grandfather is your old friend and has commanded me that I dare to speak. I simply have a hope. It has become dear to me. I'm hoping for a privilege. I honestly believe that outside of all party preferences there are thousands of young men in this State who will feel proud to have that same privilege--will esteem it one of the honors of their lives. Their fathers had the same honor. And that's to go to the polls and cast a ballot for Gen. Varden Waymouth. It will make politics seem worth while to us, sir."
"Good!" ejaculated the Duke. "You're hearing the voice of the young men of this State now, Varden." He stood up. "Here's my boy for your service. He'll be in the next legislature. Use him. Depend on him. You're old--you've earned your rest. I know it. But here's a loud call for a sacrifice. This boy and such as he can lift a lot of the load. Varden, give me your hand. Say that you'll do it!"
"Let's sit down a moment," said the General, solemn gentleness in his tone. "I have something that it's in my heart to say."
He drew his chair even closer to them. They waited a few moments for him to speak. In that room with its dignity of ancient things, with the silence of the summer night surrounding, that waiting was impressive. Harlan felt the thrill of it. Even his grandfather was gravely anxious. The General leaned forward and put his thin hand on the elder Thornton's knee.
"Thelismer, you yourself link the past with the present, so far as the politics of this State go. You link them even more than I do, for you are active in the present. You have been a strong man--you are strong to-day. But I want to say to you, and this is as friend to friend, you haven't always used that strength right. I know what reply you'd make to that. We've talked it all over many times. You say that you've had to play the game. That's right. And I've played it myself, too. But in the years since then, while I've sat at one side of the arena and looked on, I've had a chance to meditate and a chance to observe. I don't think matters have been running right in this State--and now I'm not speaking of Arba Spinney or his ilk. You come to me to-night and you ask me to be the Governor of this State once more. You want me to come back into the game. You ask me to appeal to the suffrage of the young men who admire what little I've accomplished. I want to warn you. I may be putting it too strong when I call it a warning. I have some ideals to-day. You may not find them to your liking in politics."
"I'm willing to trust in your good judgment and your sense of what is square for all concerned," protested the Duke, stoutly. "In the hot old days I was hot with the rest, Vard. I've mellowed some since."
"You may not find me a safe man, Thelismer. I shall come back out of the shadows with a firm resolve to merit the approval of the young men of this State--and the young men see more clearly than their fathers did."
"I'm not here to-night with bridle or bit or halter, Varden. We need you. The party has got to have you. I know what your name will accomplish in that convention. You shall be Governor of this State without making pledge or promise. Will you stand?"
"I ask you again, Thelismer, if there is no other way?"
"Any other way means Spinney and mob rule."
General Waymouth turned to Harlan. "Go out and tell the honest young men of this State that I will try to satisfy their ideals. That's the only pledge I'll give. I'm afraid I haven't any promise for the old machine, Thelismer." He smiled.
"We don't need any," returned the Duke, briskly. "We know Vard Waymouth. But there's one pledge I do want from you. This whole thing is to be left in my hands so far as announcement goes. My plan of campaign makes that much necessary. We don't want to flush that bunch of birds till we can give 'em both barrels."
"I consent. I'll live in the lingering hope that at the last moment you'll find I won't be needed."
He rose and gave his hand to each in turn, bringing them to their feet.
"Now for bed. Of course, you'll remain here the night."
"No," declared Thornton, decisively. "Out o' here on the midnight! I want to dodge out of Burnside in the dark. We'll walk down to the station now. It's settled. I'll keep you posted."
At the door the General gave Harlan the last word, grasping his hand again.
"You brought me a message from the young men that touched me."
"I spoke for myself, but I believe that all of them would like to have the same opportunity that I had," faltered Harlan. "I know they would. Will you let us come to you at the right time and make it plain?"
"I shall depend upon you in a great many ways in the months to come. You know it's to be a young man's administration by an old man made young again. I'm proud of my first volunteer!"
"He's a good boy, and he's got the makings in him," declared the Duke.
"I've been too long with men not to appreciate a good chief of staff when I see him," laughed the General.
Framed in the big door, with the dim glow of light behind him, he watched them depart.
The Duke walked in the far shadows of the station platform in silence, smoking, until the train whistled.
"Bub, you remember that I told you I'd put you in right," he said, climbing the car steps. "Now follow your hand."
But Harlan Thornton, fresh from that presence, understood that he had pledged a loyalty deeper than the loyalty of mere politics or preferment. _