_ CHAPTER XVI. THE HANDS ARE DEALT
When Committeeman Wasgatt came into the room in tow of Harlan Thornton he found silence prevailing there. It was silence that was marked by a little restraint. The band outside was quiet now. A human voice was bellowing. It was Arba Spinney's voice--a voice without words.
Wasgatt, short, stout, habitually pop-eyed and nervous, clutched his papers in one hand and held his eyeglasses at arm's-length in the other.
The others were in their chairs now, ranged about the sides of the room. The General, alone, was standing near the table. Wasgatt turned to him after a rapid scrutiny of the make-up of the party.
"I'd like to have the resolutions read," remarked the General, quietly.
"Go ahead, Wasgatt," commanded Presson; and the committeeman advanced to the table under the chandelier and began to read.
The preamble was after the usual stereotyped form; the first sections endorsed the cardinal principles of the party, and Mr. Wasgatt, getting into the spirit of the thing, began to deliver the rounded periods sonorously. General Waymouth leaned slightly over the table, propping himself on the knuckles of his one hand. The light flowed down upon his silvery hair, his features were set in the intentness of listening.
"'We view without favor the demagogic attempts to throttle enterprise, check the proper development of our State, lock up the natural resources away from the fostering hands of commerce and labor, thereby preventing the establishment of industries that will extend their beneficent influence to the workingman, dependent upon his daily wage.'"
"One moment, Wasgatt!" The General tapped a knuckle on the table, and the reader waited.
Waymouth turned his gaze full upon the Senator when he spoke.
"Gentlemen, understand me aright at the start. I'm not here to try to dictate. That would be presumptuous in me, for I am not yet your candidate. To-morrow is not here."
Wasgatt's pop-eyes protruded still more. He stared from man to man, and it became necessary for Thelismer Thornton to take one more into the secret. He did it a bit ungraciously. He had not expected the General to be so blunt and precipitate. The candidate waited patiently until the brief explanation was concluded and Wasgatt had pledged fidelity.
"I want you fully to understand my spirit in this," went on the General. "We'll be honest with each other; we know that the floor of a convention is not the place to discuss the platform frankly; I don't want to wash our linen in public. We'll settle it now between ourselves. That plank, there, comes out of the platform if you expect me to stand on it."
The Senator, challenged by his eyes, spoke.
"You don't take exceptions to honest efforts to develop our State, do you, General Waymouth?"
"I do not. But that proposition, no matter how good it sounds, is the sugar-coated preface to an attempt to steal the undeveloped water-powers of this State."
The Senator's fat neck reddened.
"You may be inclined to modify that rather rash statement, General Waymouth, when I tell you that I suggested the insertion of that resolution."
"I recognized it as yours, Senator. Some time ago my bankers gave me the personnel of the group behind the Universal Development Company. In making my statement, I understand perfectly what legislation that resolution is leading up to."
"Vard," broke in the Duke, conciliatingly, "don't take so much for granted. Why, there are folks suspicious enough to accuse Saint Peter of starting Lent and ticking off Fridays from the meat programme simply because he was in the fish business. Let's not get to fussing about a set of convention resolutions. They're mostly wind, anyway."
But General Waymouth was not appeased.
"I know what resolutions stand for--how much and how little. I'm taking this occasion, gentlemen, to set myself right with you. That resolution will do for a text! I want no taunts later that I led you on into a trap."
He struck the table with the flat of his hand.
"I'm laying my cards face up. Here's my hand! I halt right here on that resolution. I'm certain I know what it means, no matter how it sounds. I'm willing to take my hat and walk out right now. But if I stay--if you promise to nominate me--I propose to have the saying of what kind of a Governor I shall be!"
"That's rather blunt talk to make to gentlemen," protested the Senator, showing a spark of ire.
"At my age there isn't time to make long speeches to shade the facts," returned General Waymouth. He was calm but intensely in earnest.
"Then you are all for reform--one of the new reformers, eh?" inquired the Senator. He cast a look of reproach at Thornton, as though that trusted manager had loosed a tiger on their defenceless party.
The General smiled--smiled so sweetly that he almost disarmed their resentment.
"No, the Arba Spinneys of this State are the reformers. I'm not under salary to run round and make disturbances in settled order. I'm not a bigot with a single idea, nor a fanatic insisting that the world ought to follow the diet that my dyspepsia imposes upon me. I'm merely an old man, gentlemen, who has got past a lot of the follies of youth and the passions of manhood, and has had a chance to reflect for a few years. I have not asked to return to public life. But if I do return, if you put power into my hands, I propose to render unto the people the things that are the people's, and that term includes every man in this room. It is not a programme that should alarm honest gentlemen!"
There was appeal in the tone--there was a hint of rebuke in that final sentence that troubled the conscience of even Senator Pownal. Thelismer Thornton was in a chair close to him.
"Don't let a few little cranky notions about a platform scare you," he mumbled in the Senator's ear. "You know Vard Waymouth as well as I do. He's safe and all right. Give him his head. You don't want Spinney, do you?"
"But that was devilish insulting," growled Pownal.
"Tipping backward a little, trying to stand straight, that's all. Blast it, a Governor can't run the State. What are you afraid of? You've got a lobby and a legislature, haven't you?"
If Waymouth noticed this
sotto voce conference he gave no sign.
"General," said Pownal, getting hold of himself manfully, even desperately, "the resolution is not essential. I fear you misunderstand what it really means, but we'll not discuss it now. I withdraw it."
The General bowed acknowledgment, and signed to Wasgatt to resume.
"'We believe in dividing the burden of taxation equitably and justly, and will bend our efforts to that end.'"
"That is simply empty vaporing!" cried the General. "And it has been in every platform for twenty years without meaning anything. The platform that I stand on this year must declare for a non-partisan tax commission, empowered to investigate conditions in this State--wild lands, corporations, and all--and report as a basis for new legislation."
In the silence that ensued they could hear Arba Spinney continuing his harangue.
"Gentlemen, you've got to do something in this party to stop the mouths of him and men like him," declared the General, solemnly. "You may make up your minds that you've either got to pay in money, or else you'll pay in votes that mean the bankruptcy of the party."
"I suppose you have the resolution all drawn," suggested Thelismer Thornton, dryly.
"I have, and drawn according to good constitutional law," replied the General. He drew the paper from his breast-pocket.
"Incorporate it, Wasgatt, ready for the final draft, and we'll all go over the thing to-morrow morning." The Duke was grimly laconic. That resolution whacked his pet interests.
Senator Pownal gave the proposer of this prompt surrender a glance of mutual sympathy out of the corner of his eye, but the Duke remained imperturbable. Wasgatt received the paper and went on.
"'We reaffirm our belief in the principle of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, and pledge our earnest efforts to promote temperance.'"
Across the corridor revellers were bawling over and over in chorus:
"'Let's take a drink,
Let's take it now,
God only knows how dry I am!'"
"That's a good thing to reaffirm--I don't mean the song they're singing in that room across there! It's a good thing to pledge ourselves to promote temperance," said the General, "but that isn't the point at issue. I have another plank that I've written for our platform."
He drew a second paper from his pocket.
"Gentlemen, some politicians, more than half a century ago, simply to use a temperance movement for bait in a political campaign, dragged into our party a moral, social, and economic question that belongs to the whole people--not merely to us as a party. Let the people, when the right time comes and they decide the matter differently, make a law that the majority desires and will stand behind. Just now we have in our constitution a law that forbids the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in this State. There is no option in the matter. Just so long as our party, the dominant political power, uses that option, it is in disgrace with all decent men. I--"
There was a knock at the door--the private door.
Harlan started up, but his grandfather pulled him back into his chair.
"Go on, General," he said.
"I have drawn a resolution. Here it is: 'As a party, we deplore the fact that temperance, through the so-called prohibitory law, has become a matter of politics, its football to the extent that holders of public office, sworn to enforce the laws, turn from that enforcement in order to cater to public opinion which otherwise might deprive them of office. We declare against this intolerable system of protection of lawbreakers. Until the people shall repeal the law, we, the dominant party of the State and in control of enforcement, do pledge ourselves to faithfully enforce it, employing such law as we now have and invoking new powers through the legislature to assist us, so long as the prohibitory law shall remain in our constitution.'"
It was now Chairman Presson's turn to look uncomfortable.
"Look here, Vard," exploded Thornton, "I've been pretty patient while you've been amputating a few fingers and toes of the Republican party of this State, but I'll be damned if I propose to see you cut its throat."
There was fresh knocking at the door, but the group within the parlor had enough to think about just then without entertaining callers.
"Now you're talking simply about yourselves and your office-holders and your dirty profits. You're calling that mess of nasty confederacy 'Our Party,'" declared General Waymouth, passionately. "When honesty kills a party, let it die--let its men get out and organize another one. But I tell you, you can't kill it by being honest, Thelismer. The trouble is you're sitting here and building for to-night--for to-morrow. I'm a Republican--you can't take that name away from me. But the badge doesn't belong on men who are using that name to cover up a rum-selling business."
Chairman Presson was livid. He leaped from his chair and drove his fist down on the table,
"Now you're insulting me personally!" he shouted.
"I deal in no personalities, sir. So long as I hide myself under the name of Republican and allow this thing to go on as it's going, I'm in the traffic myself; and I don't propose to continue in it--not when I have power placed in my hands."
"By the eternal gods, you won't have the power placed there!" roared the chairman of the State Committee.
Now some one called to them from outside the door, repeating the rapping.
"When you say that, you're confessing that the Republican party is a sneak, Presson," declared the General.
The Duke came along to the table. He ticked his forefinger against the paper that Waymouth was holding.
"Vard, you're pledging yourself in advance of election to the most rabid of the prohibition fanatics."
"I'm pledging myself to obey the one State law that occupies the most space in public attention, causes the most discussion, makes the most row. It's a damnable bloodsucker to be hitched on to any political party! But it's on ours, and I'm going to grab it with both hands!"
"Hold a proxy from the ramrodders, eh?" sneered the State chairman, thoroughly a rebel.
"No, nor from the State rumsellers. If the people of his State want to have rum sold, let 'em vote to have it sold. But as it now stands, they can't enlist me to head the lawbreakers and shield the lawbreaking. I'm through playing the hypocrite!"
"We've got to set ourselves above petty bickerings and personal differences," interposed the Senator, cracking the party whip. "I'm a Republican, first of all!"
"Talk sense, Pownal!" snapped the General, impatiently. "This isn't a political rally. We're grown men and friends that can talk plain. His principles make a Republican--or ought to--not his protestations! And establishing a system of low license and sheriff-made local option under a prohibitory law is unprincipled, and you know it!"
Thelismer Thornton, god of that particular machine that was then grinding so ominously and rattling so badly, felt that he needed a few moments in which to mend belts and adjust cogs. He wanted an opportunity to think a little while. He had discovered a new Waymouth all of a sudden. He wanted to get acquainted with him. He wished to find out whether he would be really as dangerous as his astonishing threats indicated.
The persistent man at the door was now clamorous. The Duke strode that way and flung it open. Whoever it might be, the interruption would give him time to think, to plan, to investigate.
The intruder was the Hon. David Everett. He stepped in, and Thornton relocked the door after him.
Mr. Everett was not amiable. His little eyes snapped from face to face suspiciously. It was immediately and perfectly plain to him that he had forced admission to a conference that had not expected him, did not want him, and was embarrassed at finding him present. In the state of mind they were in, the men in that room would have glowered at any one. Everett detected something more than mere personal resentment at his intrusion--he sniffed a plot against him. There was no hand outstretched to him, no welcome, no explanation offered why these leaders of the party had met thus without intimation to him that anything was afoot. Choleric red suffused his face--it had been gray with passion when he entered, because a corridor filled with curious men is not a happy arena for a candidate shut out of committee headquarters.
He realized that he had been a spectacle inciting interest and some amusement while he was hammering on the door.
One object of the Duke had been attained when he admitted Everett--the wrangling ceased. But the embarrassment was intensified. The situation was more complex.
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen, if I am interrupting serious business," began Everett, intending to force some sort of explanation.
He waited. No one spoke. The others were waiting, too.
The candidate looked from one to the other, and then surveyed Wasgatt and the papers he was clutching. He eyed General Waymouth with much interest and some surprise. He had not been informed of that gentleman's presence in the hotel. The General returned the gaze with serenity, creasing his sheet of manuscript on the table with his thin fingers.
"I expected to be called in when you were ready to go over the platform," continued Everett, sourly. "I'm supposed to know as early as any one, I presume, what it is I'm going to stand on."
Thelismer Thornton decided that it was up to him to speak. He leaned against the table, half sitting on it, and swung his foot.
"You have a perfect right, Dave, to inquire about any platform that you're going to stand on. And when we get your platform ready for you we'll call you in and submit it. But allow me to remind you that you haven't been nominated yet." The band was blaring again outside. "The convention is yet to be held, and has yet to declare its platform."
"I don't expect you to call Arba Spinney in here and consult with him--if that's what your hints mean. But there's no need of your using that 'round-the-barn talk with me, Thelismer. You know that so far as the real Republican party is concerned Spinney is an outsider; I'm the logical candidate, and I demand to be taken into the conference. I don't recognize that there are two Republican candidates before the convention."
"I do," said the Duke, firmly and with significance. He was preparing to resent this autocratic manner.
"Well, I
don't!" cried the State chairman. Secretly he had been offended by Thornton's high-handed assumption of control, ever since their talk on the morning after the Fort Canibas caucus. He had promptly recognized the political sagacity of the old man's plan. In his fear of the Spinney agitation--in his apprehension lest all control should be wrested from his faction of the party--he had been eager to compromise on General Waymouth, hoping that he would prove to be as amenable to party reason as he knew Everett already was. But this intractable old Spartan, with his dictation of party principles that meant the loss of policy, power, and profits, had angered him to his marrow. He was ready to declare himself now, Thornton or mo Thornton. He turned on the Duke.
"Perhaps you can lick me--that's the only way you can get it!" he declared. "But you needn't expect me to stand here and grin and hand it over."
Thornton stared at him understandingly, accepting the challenge.
"There was a man up our way, Luke, who fought two highway robbers a whole hour, and when they had finally torn his clothes all off him, he only had two cents in his pockets. He told the robbers, then, that he hadn't fought to save his two cents, but because he didn't want his financial condition revealed."
Candidate Everett was finding this conversation hard to follow.
"There's something here that isn't on the level, and I suspected it the minute I came into this room. Presson, is the State Committee behind me?"
"It is, and it's behind you to stay," declared the chairman. Again he turned to Thornton.
"It's up to you, now, whether Arba Spinney gets the nomination or not. If you keep on and split us, he gets it; but I shall make it mighty plain to the boys as to whose fault it was, Thelismer."
"What's all this about?" demanded Everett.
Presson hesitated only a moment.
"There was a movement on inside the party to run General Waymouth as a compromise candidate. It has been talked over. I declare myself now. I'm against it. The State Committee stands for you, Everett!"
The candidate revolved slowly on his heels in order to study the faces of all of them. He did not find much enthusiasm to back up Presson's declaration. He realized that he was in the company of those who had been plotting to shelve him, and he had the wit to understand that only their quarrel over some issue had availed to save him from being knifed.
His temper got away from him.
"You've held your nose up pretty high in this world, General Waymouth! Do you call a trick to steal my nomination away from me at the last moment gentlemanly or decent? I've put in my time and my money and my efforts. I've made a campaign. And I've waited for this!"
"You needn't insult the General in that fashion, Dave," broke in Thornton. "Address your talk to me. I'm responsible."
"I think I'm the one that is responsible at this stage," insisted General Waymouth. "I'll talk to you, Mr. Everett, if you please. You addressed me. Any Republican in this State is entitled to seek nomination as Governor. It is a worthy and proper ambition. It is an honor that belongs to the people. It isn't a heritage to be passed on from one bunch of politicians to another. It isn't to be bought and bartered. I realize that precedent has given you that impression. But it's a pernicious precedent. It's time to do away with it. That's why I'm here to-night, dipping into slime that I hoped never to be soiled with again. I've been frank with these other gentlemen. I'm going to be frank with you, Mr. Everett. I know you stand for The System. I don't have to tell you what that is. You propose to continue the nullification programme, bar-rooms tolerated on payment of fines, tax reform slicked over, water powers and other State resources peddled out to favorites. It's useless to deny. We've all been in politics together too many years."
Mr. Everett did not deny. It was too intimate a gathering for that.
"This is not the way I'd like to be called to the Governor's chair of my State," went on the General, "but it's the way of politics. I've got to meet you on the politician's level, so far as securing the nomination goes. But I stand here and tell you, Mr. Everett"--he took two steps forward and stood close to the other candidate, and his voice rose--"that I can be a better Governor of this State than you--in the sort of days that are on us now. This is not egotism--it's truth. I say it because I know you and the men behind you as well as I know myself."
"It's a sneak trick, just the same!" shouted Everett.
"So are many tricks in politics--and, God help me, I'm back in politics!" returned the General. He looked them over there in the room, from face to face and eye to eye. "You cannot accuse me of vanity, self-seeking, or ambition at my age, gentlemen. I've been Governor of this State once. I didn't enjoy the experience. I'm going into this thing again simply because I believe that I can put some honesty into public affairs. This State is calling for it. And that object justifies me in what I'm doing. I am a candidate!"
"By ----!" roared Everett, furious, realizing how this candidacy threatened his hopes, "run if you want to. But I'll see to it that these delegates know how you're running--cutting under a man that's made an honest canvass!" He started for the door, tossing his arms above his head--a politician beginning to run amuck.
Presson grabbed his arm and held him back.
"Don't be a lunatic, Dave," he buzzed in his ear. "If you go to advertising this around the hotel to-night you'll be giving Spinney the tip and starting Waymouth's boom for him. Damn it, you want to keep your teeth shut tight and your tongue behind them! There'll be no blabbers go out of this room--I'll see to that! I'll put a dozen members of the State Committee at work on the delegates to-night." He was walking Everett toward the door, getting him out of earshot of the others. "Weymouth has got a platform there that sounds as though it was drawn up by the House Committee of Paradise. He's got to be licked--great Judas, he's
got to be licked! I've got five thousand that the liquor crowd has sent into the State for the campaign, but this is the place to use it--right here now! And it'll be used. Don't you worry, Dave! And keep your mouth shut!"
It was a colloquy that no one else in the room heard--Everett putting in suggestions as the chairman whispered hoarsely in his ear. Harlan Thornton, looking on, guessed what it might be. Linton, at his side, ironically hinted at the possibilities of that hurried conference in the corner. Senator Pownal walked about the room, chewing his short beard and incapable of a word--for his re-election came before the next legislature, and to jump the wrong way now in the gubernatorial matter was political suicide.
Thelismer Thornton remained in his place on the corner of the table, staring reflectively at General Waymouth.
Presson ended his whispered exhortations with a rather savage reference to the manner in which the Duke had involved the campaign. Everett shot a baleful glance at the man who had so cold-bloodedly planned his undoing.
"Look here, Thornton," he called out, as he started for the door, "you and I will have our reckoning later. We use old horses for fox bait up our way, too, but we always make sure that the horses are dead first." He went out and slammed the door.
Thornton did not turn his head. He kept his eyes on Waymouth.
"Vard," he said, "I reckon I haven't been keeping my political charts up to date. I had you down as a peninsula, jutting out
some from the Republican party, but still hitched on to it. I find you're an island, standing all by yourself, and with pretty rocky shores."
"Perhaps so," admitted the General.
"This has been a sort of a heart-to-heart meeting here to-night. In the general honesty I'll be honest myself. I can't support you."
"Then you lack honesty."
"No, but your scheme of honesty takes you right into the king-row of the ramrodders, and I can't train with the bunch that will flock to you. Your theory is good--but the
practice will break your heart just as sure as God hasn't made humans perfect! You'll be up against it! You're going to test man to the limit of his professions--and it isn't a safe operation, if you want to come out with any of your ideals left unsmashed. If you start on that road you'll have to travel it without me."
"Well, there's a little common sense left in the Republican party," snapped Presson. "General Waymouth, you've had considerable many honors in your life, and the party gave 'em to you. That calls for some gratitude. You can show it by keeping your hands off this thing."
"That would have been an argument once, when I was a wheel-horse with my political blinders on; it has been an argument that has kept a good many decent men from doing their duty. It will not work with me now." He put his folded paper into his pocket, and reached and took the other document that he had handed to Wasgatt earlier in the evening. "I'll not disfigure the perfect structure of your platform now, Presson, but I'll see how these sound from the floor of the convention, in spite of your resolutions to shut off free speech! Good-night, gentlemen." He turned to leave, still serene with the poise of one who has experienced all and is prepared for all. "I used to have pretty good luck playing a lone hand in our old card-playing days, Thelismer. I'll see what I can do in politics."
"General Waymouth, have you a few moments to give me if I come to your room now?" inquired Harlan Thornton. "I want to offer my services!"
"I'll join the party too, if I may!" suggested Linton.
Colonel Wadsworth was twisting his imperial with one hand and fingering his Loyal Legion button with the other.
"I'm not the kind that waits for a draft, General," he said. "I didn't in '61. I volunteer now."
General Waymouth smiled, bowed the three ahead of him through the door of the parlor, and softly closed it behind himself and his little party.
"Well, Thelismer," raved the State chairman, "you can certainly take rank, at your time of life and after all you've been through, as a top-notch hell of a politician. You start out to run a State campaign, and you wind up by not being able to run even your grandson!"
"What I started running seems to be still running," said the old man, undisturbed by the attack.
"And it's costing the Republican party something, this mix-up," Presson went on.
"You think it looks expensive, taking the thing right now at apparent face value?"
"Look here! I don't relish humor--not now! I'm not in a humorous mood. You can see what it's costing--blast that infernal band!"
Mr. Spinney's serenaders had not had their fill of music. There was din outside. The tune, "A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night," won a grunt of approval from Mr. Wasgatt, still holding his documents, more pop-eyed than ever.
"Pretty expensive, eh?" said the Duke, lifting his knee between his hands and leaning back on the table. "You heard about--"
"I don't want any more of your cussed stories! Not to-night!" Presson rushed out. He went into the main parlor, where the members of the State Committee were in informal session.
Wasgatt was left with the Duke, and the latter fixed him with benevolent gaze.
"Old Zavanna Dodge, up our way, got to courting two old maids, trying to make up his mind which he'd take--and the one he didn't take sued him for breach o' promise. After Zavanna put in his evidence in court, he sat across from the court-house in the tavern window, waiting for the arguments to be made and the case to be decided. Toward night Squire Enfield, his lawyer, came across. 'How did she end out?' says Zavanna. 'Agin ye--for eight hundred,' says the Squire. 'Pretty expensive, Zav!' Zavanna tucked a spill of whisker between his lips and chewed on it and rocked for a little while. 'Unh huh!' says he, figuring it over. And then he spoke up cheerful: 'Well, Squire, I reckon there's that much difference between the two women.'"
Wasgatt chuckled.
"The point to that is--but no matter! It was to Luke that I was going to show the point."
The old man got his hat from the window-sill and trudged toward the private door, saying, partly to Wasgatt, partly to himself: "I reckon I'll go to bed! Just at this minute the campaign doesn't seem to be needing my help." _