_ CHAPTER XXIII. A TRUCE
Gen. Varden Waymouth was elected Governor. In spite of the sullen torpor of his party managers and the snarls of the Reverend Prouty and his radical ilk, he surmounted by mere momentum of his party a certain bland and trustful and destructive indifference of the general public, and won at the polls. The narrow margin by which he won would have scared a really loyal and conscientious State Committee. But the before-and-after gloom of Chairman Presson and his intimates was not caused by any worriment over the size of the plurality. They were languid spectators. They felt like dispossessed tenants. They took little interest in the temple of the party faith.
"When they buried old Zenas Bellew up our way (Zenas weighed three hundred and fifty, and lived in a cottage about the size of a wood-box) the undertaker found he couldn't get the coffin into the house or get Zenas out--not through doors or windows. A half-witted fellow we call 'Simpson's Rooster' spoke up, and said they'd better bury the old man in the house and move the family out into the coffin." That was Thelismer Thornton's comment on the political situation in the Republican party on the morning after the election. The chairman heard it with the gloom of a mourner. He could see nothing bright in the jest or the prospects.
There was a frigid truce during the four months that elapsed between the election and the assembling of the legislature.
General Waymouth retired to the brick house in Burnside, and gave ear to those who promptly made his home the Mecca of the State. There were office-holders who wanted to hold to their jobs, office-seekers who suspected that there would be a break in the plans of party patronage; there were officious gentlemen suggesting new legislation for the next administration to consider; there were crafty gentlemen trying to discover what the administration would recommend. The day was full of cares, duties, annoyances, and the nagging pleadings of persistent petitioners.
Harlan Thornton, now representative-elect from the Fort Canibas district, became still more indispensable in General Waymouth's daily life. Duties at a desk had worn upon him. This everlasting mingling with men was more to his taste. He had natural adaptability. He was a good judge of human nature. He had serene good nature. Physique and manner made him master of many situations at the old brick house that otherwise would have sadly tried the General's strength and temper. Therefore, his chief placed greater dependence upon his lieutenant with every day that passed, solicited his opinions as his knowledge of men increased and his judgment became worth more, relied upon his instinctive estimates of character, and shifted many burdens to the broad shoulders that seemed so well fitted to carry them.
Harlan Thornton was slow to realize what a tremendous power, as chamberlain, he really exercised in the State.
He awoke to that fact more slowly than did the men who came to solicit. He did not try to use his power for his own ends. He promptly noted the deference that men paid him; as promptly he penetrated certain plans men made to corrupt him, if they could. These attempts were made slyly, and did not proceed very far. Something in his demeanor prevented the plotters from openly broaching their desires and their willingness to make their interests worth his while. They knew that one of the Thorntons could not be won by money, but they were rather surprised to find out that he could not be beguiled by other inducements. He was so big and manly, and he had rapidly become so self-poised, that they did not realize that in experience he was only a boy, with the ingenuous faith and simple aims and candor of boyhood. He perceived what he might win. But the pride of serving General Waymouth loyally was worth more to him than anything they could offer.
His duties took him often to the State capital. The chairman of the State Committee was coolly courteous, often gloomily deferential, sometimes frankly cordial--uneasily trying to find the proper level to stand on in his intercourse with one who was the grandson of Thelismer Thornton, and also the chosen confidant of the man who had wrested from him control of State affairs.
In the case of Madeleine Presson, there was none of this embarrassment. He saw her often. She met him half-way with a frank interest in his work and a sympathy which, in those days of truce, did not question his ideals.
He became a welcome intimate of the Presson household. When he was there the master himself put aside all the brusqueness he displayed in their down-town discourse on politics. The girl welcomed him. There were many hours when they were alone together, in the home or on long drives into the country. She did not refer to their talk on that evening when she read to him his lesson on practical politics. He avoided that subject. He did not want to risk any further disagreement between them on the matter of ideals--or, for that matter, on any other subject. Association with her had become too delightful to be put to the test of discussions of political methods. He was still drawing upon her fund of worldly wisdom. There was a little touch of the cynic in her. He became secretly ashamed of some of his ingenuous beliefs, after she had deftly shown him the other side of things. She did show him the other side, quite in a matter-of-fact way. It was not that she was trying to break down his faith. There was nothing sly nor crafty in her methods of improving his views. But by informing him, she made him wiser, and, at the same time, more distrustful of motives, more searching in his investigations of methods. He began to doubt some of his earlier ideas of what a public man should be. He felt that his views were broadening. That was a comfortable way of excusing certain surrenderings to her ideas.
The more he drew from her the more he was drawn to her.
It was not the love that comes with a rush of the emotions and sweeps a man away.
Through the intellect, through his hunger for information and wider views, she was making herself indispensable to his welfare and his ambitions.
And yet Madeleine Presson was not trying to make this young man of the north country fall in love with her. Her interest in him was first of all based upon his winning earnestness and the elements of success that she divined in him, were they properly cultivated. She had studied men at the capital from childhood. The development of men in public life and service had been the one theme that she had heard most discussed. Her impulse of assistance had been directed toward this grandson of Thelismer Thornton.
But as the days went by, and opportunity gave them their hours together, they were drawn more closely, each insisting in secret meditation that it was not love. He found himself gradually rebuilding his creed of living on the foundation she had laid in that first long talk of theirs. He had arrived at such a point of belief in her that he was glad that she had opened his eyes. He was finding men--meeting them by the hundred--even as she had pictured them to him: selfish, scheming, crafty, and not understanding in the least his occasional attempts to meet them on the upper level of perfect candor. For her part, she found more in this young man than she had expected to find.
Harlan considered Herbert Linton the single jarring note in this new symphony of mutual interests.
Linton came to the capital with more or less regularity, and called on the Pressons with fully as much appearance of being entirely at home as his newer rival. When they were together the girl treated both with impartial interest and attention. She listened to each in turn, and if they chose to sit and scowl at each other she did the talking for all three. Deftly she arranged that they should leave together, and they always promptly separated as soon as they reached the sidewalk, as though they were afraid to trust themselves in each other's company.
So the new year came in, and the hordes of lawmakers, lobbyists, lookers-on, and laymen descended on the State capital.
The first few days of a legislative session, though packed full of politics and business, rush, and routine, are festival days, after all. There are the old friends to greet and the new friends to meet. There are ten spectators to every legislator, and the spectators are on hand for a good time. Outside of the factional clinches of the House and Senate caucuses the early days have little serious business.
Presson's great hotel and the lesser lights of the capital's houses of entertainment were packed to their roofs. The State House on the hill sent sparkling radiance at night from all its hundreds of windows out across the snow which loaded the broad lawns. Senator Pownal, renominated in joint caucus, spoke to crowded floor and galleries on the second evening. Harlan Thornton, in his seat in the House, listened and wondered if that convention had not been a dream.
This later convocation seemed so entirely harmonious.
The Republicans ruled House and Senate by safe majorities. Presson, sauntering about hotel or State House lobby, seemed bland and contented again. The wounds in the party seemed to have been healed.
On inauguration day Governor Waymouth added to the general spirit of harmony.
He came unobtrusively to the State House from the modest mansion he had leased in the capital city for the legislative winter and took his oath of office before an admiring throng. He had made a confidant of no one regarding his inaugural speech. There were vague rumors that the Governor would follow his hand, as he had shown it in his letter of acceptance, and deliver an inaugural address which would blister the ears of the politically unregenerate.
In that ancient State House, its accommodations for spectators limited, there were no hard-and-fast rules regulating admission to the floor. Harlan Thornton had a chair placed in the aisle beside his seat, and entertained Madeleine Presson there. He had anticipated Linton, who came with a similar invitation. Harlan was still enough of a boy to feel delight in the discomfiture of his rival, and to be gratified by the open admiration his fellow-members showed for the girl at his side. He relished the sour looks which Linton sent in that direction.
Under cover of the general buzz and bustle that accompanied the convening of the joint session of House and Senate for the purpose of the inauguration the girl rallied him a bit.
"The beginning of the righteous reign seems to be sane and sweet, after all," she said. "Even my father is complacent and purring this morning. Which has he eaten, do you know--the raven of contention or the dove of peace?"
"I think every one understands that Governor Waymouth has straightened matters out for all of us," he replied.
"How? By simply talking about it? As one who should say, 'Let it be done,' and it was done, and just what was done nobody, nobody knew--but it was done--something was--and all the folks felt better and went on in the same old way! Is that it?"
He smiled at her while she teased him; the nature of the armistice that prevailed, according to outward appearances, was not understood by him. For several weeks his intimacy with General Waymouth had not been as close as at the first. Not that there was distrust or even coolness between them. The veteran still depended on the young man for the services a trusted lieutenant could render. His plans, however, his future programme of reorganization--if he had any definite plans--the General kept to himself. It was not mere reticence. But there was an atmosphere about the old statesman as though he had withdrawn himself to a higher altitude to think his thoughts and formulate his plans alone. If he had heard of the intimacy of Harlan Thornton with the family of Luke Presson he made no comment on that fact.
"Now what is he going to say in his address?" she asked. "Every one will know in a few moments. Tell me ahead--tell me the big utterance that will make the people sit up. I want to be ready to watch their faces!"
"Why, I haven't a single idea what he will say," he blurted.
"Oh, safe repository, I salute you!"
"But I haven't! The Governor hasn't opened his mouth to me!"
"Have a care! One very easily steps from polite diplomacy into very impolite falsehood. You must always be truthful with me, Harlan."
His eyes grew brighter and his tanned cheeks warm. It was the first time she had addressed him without hateful formality.
"I propose to tell you the truth, always," he assured her. "But I mean what I say--the Governor has kept his address to himself."
"I should resent that. It would have been a delicate compliment, and he owed that much to you. I'm afraid he has been a politician long enough to be like all the rest--to walk up to power on men as one uses a flight of stairs, and then to put the stairs behind his back; for one doesn't walk up-stairs backward."
He flushed more deeply.
"I'm not that kind of a fellow--jealous, or petty, or expecting a great deal for what little service I can render."
"Put a value on yourself, though," she advised him. "It really isn't human nature, you know, to pick up the things that are thrown away by the owners--to pick them up and keep them and value them, I mean. That applies to purses and all other possessions, including hearts and loyalty."
He started to say something to her--even though the throng pressed about them he would have said it; but the voice of the crier at the door announced what all were waiting for.
"His Excellency the Governor, the Honorable Council, and his Excellency the Governor-elect and party!"
They filed along in dignified procession down the centre aisle, the uniforms of the officers of the staff giving a touch of color and brightness to the formal frock-coats.
The Secretary of State announced the official figures of the vote electing Varden Waymouth as Governor, and after his sonorous final phrase, "God save the State of ------," Governor Waymouth repeated the oath of office administered by a gaunt, sallow lawyer who was the president of the Senate.
The clerk of the House set a reading-desk on the Speaker's table and arranged the Governor's manuscript. As the old man read he made a striking picture. He stood very erect. His snowy hair, the empty sleeve across his breast, the lines the years had etched on cheeks and brow gave those who looked on him a little thrill of sympathetic regret that one so old should be called from the repose of his later years to take up such public burdens as he had assumed. But his voice was resonant, his eye was clear. Nature seemed to have given him new strength to meet what he was now facing. And yet, thought some of those who listened, it might be that he did not propose to make a martyr of himself, after all. His address did not threaten or complain. The radicals who sat there with set teeth and bent brows, hoping to hear denunciation after their own heart, were disappointed. The politicians who had feared now took new grip on their hope--it probably was not to be as bad as they had anticipated.
Harlan Thornton listened to the calm, moderate statement of the State's general financial and political situation with growing sense of mingled disappointment and relief. His fighting spirit and his knowledge of conditions, as they had been revealed to him, made him hope that at last an honest man proposed to clean the temple--entering upon his task with bared arms and a clarion call. This mild old man, confining himself to the details of the State's progress and needs, was not exactly the leader he had expected him to be. And yet Harlan was relieved. He looked at the girl beside him, and that relief smoothed away his disappointment. As matters were shaping themselves he no longer anticipated that he would be driven into pitched battle, forced to fight intrenched enemies of reform--Luke Presson's face most conspicuous of all those behind the party wall of privilege. As he listened to the address he comforted himself with the thought that probably political disagreements loomed more blackly as a cloud on the horizon than their real consistency warranted. He was not in retreat--he would not admit that to himself as he listened. But he felt that compromise and a better understanding were in the air. There would be no more occasion for troubled arguments between himself and the girl at his side. He did not understand exactly in what way it would be done, but he felt that Governor Waymouth knew how to win his reforms without such party slaughter as the first engagements hinted at. He put himself into a very comfortable frame of mind, and the girl at his side, by her mere presence, added to his belief that this was a pretty good old world, after all.
He had lost some of his respect for "reform." It had been exemplified for him mostly by such men as Prouty and his intolerant kind--by Spinney and his dupes. He felt that he might call decency by some other name, and arrive at results by the calm and dignified course which Governor Waymouth now seemed to be pointing out. He suddenly felt a warm appreciation of the wisdom of Madeleine Presson as she had made that good sense known to him in their talks.
"For it is by my works, not my words, that I would be judged," concluded the Governor, solemnly, and bowed to the applause which greeted the end.
Neither Harlan Thornton nor any other listener in the great assembly hall took those words as signifying anything more than the usual pledge of faithful performance.
After the dissolving of the joint caucus he escorted Madeleine to the council-chamber, where the new Governor was holding his impromptu reception. There were no shadows on the faces which pressed closely around him. All the politicians of the State were there, eager to be the first to congratulate him. Their fears had been somewhat allayed. In political circles it was well understood that Waymouth stood for a clean-up. It had been hinted that his programme would be drastic. The members of the machine, more intimately in the secrets of the convention, had expected that the old Roman would sound the first blast of the charge in his inaugural address. His moderateness cheered them. Harlan found congratulation sweetening every comment.
The General received the young couple with marked graciousness.
"Governor Waymouth, you have convinced me to-day that you are the apostle of universal salvation for the wicked--in politics," said the girl. "I hope the doctrine will be accepted."
"In that belief you are safe companion for my first disciple," he returned, humoring her jest. The crowd carried them on.
"I believe that, too," Harlan murmured.
"Universal salvation according to the new political creed?"
"I'm not thinking about politics. I'm not thinking much about anything else just now except you. During the Governor's address it came over me suddenly what wise counsel you gave me. If I had you for an adviser all the rest of my life I could amount to more in the world than I ever can without you."
She glanced at him sharply.
"I mean that," he insisted. "Will you be my adviser for the rest of my life?"
It was crude, blunt, and sudden proposal. The throngs were eddying about them. They were jostled at the moment by the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys of the legislative concourse. Curious eyes surveyed them. Ears were near by.
"I can't help saying it here and now," he rushed on. "I--"
"My dear Harlan, you don't mean to say that you are proposing to me here in the face and eyes of this crowd?" She said it with sudden amazed mirth dancing in her eyes, but with a note of satire in her tone.
"I do mean it!" He cried it so loudly that men turned their heads to stare at this earnest young man who was protesting his faith to the handsome daughter of Luke Presson.
"Hush!" she cried, sharply, and then pulled him along. She spoke low. "I don't think you have enough humor in you to realize just what you have done, Harlan. I have found humor lacking in you. You have picked out the lobby of the State House, in the middle of the biggest crowd of all the year, as the 'love's bower' for an offer of marriage. You say you mean it as an offer of marriage. But what you really did was to ask me to attach myself to you as general adviser. You can hire a clairvoyant who will do that much for you, and I doubt if you would engage the clairvoyant as publicly as you have just tried to engage me."
"I understand just what a fool I made of myself," he muttered, huskily. "But I couldn't wait--and I mean it."
"No, you don't realize just how much of a fool you are where women are concerned," she returned, judicially. "A woman--a young woman--is generally interested in hearing first of all a little about love and devotion and loyalty, all unselfish and uncalculating. Now be patient! Listen to me! A woman can detect real love. And real love seeks its opportunity sweetly and shyly. It doesn't preface itself with remarks about a woman's brain and advisory ability. I believe it has a lot to say about eyes and hair and lips and such things. However, since you admire me in my capacity as adviser, I'll advise you to be sure that you love a woman before you propose to her, and then when you propose pick out some place that's suitable for convincing her that you do love her. I see mother yonder. Take me to her."
Turning away, flushed and angry, from her demure smile, he became bitterly conscious that even had they been alone, under most favorable circumstances, he would have lacked speech for real love-making. He felt that conviction inwardly. He wondered whether he had the capacity for loving as he had read of men loving. It made him a bit ashamed to think of himself as violently protesting, hungrily pleading. A moment before he had been angry because she doubted his love. He knew that he admired her, respected, desired her. Now he argued with himself, and convinced his soul that his emotions constituted love. And having convinced himself, he determined to seek further opportunity of convincing her. It was truly an academic way of settling matters so riotously impatient of calculation as affairs of the heart, and his determination would have appealed to Miss Presson's sense of the humorous more acutely still had he undertaken to explain his emotions of that moment.
Thelismer Thornton, strolling amiably through the lobby throng, came and put his hand on Harlan's shoulder.
"The best way to make good sugar is to simmer the sap slowly, my boy." Harlan glanced sharply at him, but the Duke was not discussing love. "Vard has got into the simmering stage at last. I reckoned he would. He's too good a politician to boil the kettle over as he started in doing. What's the matter with you? You look as though you'd been listening to a funeral oration instead of an address that has put the party back on Easy Street."
His grandson was careful not to explain the cause of his gloom. He was willing to let politics be answerable.
Chairman Presson, more cheerful than he had been for weeks, came and crowded between them in a cosey, confidential manner.
"Say, the old fellow is getting smoothed down," he chuckled. "That address was milk for babes. He's got good sense. The thin edge of that plurality made him think twice. I reckon he's going to play a safe game after this. I don't know what he wanted to throw such a scare into us early in the game for! But as we get old we get cranky, I suppose. I may be that way myself when I grow older."
"Vard preached the theory to us for all it was worth," commented the Duke, "but I reckon he's up against the practice end of the proposition now--and he was a politician before he was a preacher."
"Hope he'll stay a politician after this. He got onto my nerves. It wasn't necessary to be so almighty emphatic about things going wrong in this State."
"Old Pinkney up our way is always careful to keep an eye out for the drovers," said the Duke. "When he sees one coming he hustles out into the pasture and shifts the poker off'n the breachy critter onto the best one in the bunch. And that's the way he unloads the breachy one. Vard has been wearing the poker the last few weeks, but I don't believe he intends to hook down any fences."
In the eyes of the politicians, therefore, Governor Waymouth had become safe and sane. They construed his earlier declarations as the ambitions of an old man dreaming a dream of perfection. The legislature swung into the routine of its first weeks in the usual fashion. The business consisted of the presentation of bills, acts, and resolves. The daily sessions lasted barely half an hour. The committee hearings had not begun, and the legislators found time hanging heavy on their hands.
Harlan Thornton continued to be a frequent caller at the Presson home. But he did not seem to find an opportunity for a tête-à-tête with Madeleine. She did not show constraint in his presence. She did not avoid him. She treated him with the same frank familiarity. But he did not find himself alone with her. He did not try to force such a situation, in spite of the provocation she had given him once. He was not yet sure that he could command the words that real love might demand for expression. That was his vague excuse to his own heart for delaying--for his heart insisted that he did love her. He had to admit to himself that this was not the headlong passion the poets described, but he consoled himself with the reflection that he was not a poet. So he made the most of her cordial acceptance of him as he was, and felt sure that Herbert Linton had won no more from her. _