Lifted Masks Part 19

The man started toward his son, but instead he walked over and sat down at the opposite side of the table, waiting. He was beginning to see that there was something in this which he did not understand.

At last the boy turned to him, fighting back some things, taking on other things. He gazed at the care-worn, rugged face--face of a worker and a dreamer, reading in those lines the story of that life, seeing more clearly than he had ever seen before the beauty and futility of it. Here was the idealist, the man who would give his whole lifetime to a dream he had dreamed. He loved his father very tenderly as he looked at him, read him, then.

"Father," he asked quietly, "are you satisfied with your life?"

The man simply stared--waiting, seeking his bearings.

"You came to this country when you were nineteen years old--didn't you, father?" The man nodded. "And now you're--it's sixty-one, isn't it?"

Again he nodded.

"You've been in America, then, forty-two years. Father, do you think as much of it now as you did forty-two years ago?"

"I don't know what you mean," the man said, searching his son's quiet, pa.s.sionate face. "I can't make you out, Fritz."

"My favourite story as a kid," the boy went on, "was to hear you tell of how you felt when your boat came sailing into New York Harbour, and you saw the first outlines of a country you had dreamed about all through your boyhood, which you had saved pennies for, worked nights for, ever since you were old enough to know the meaning of America. I mean," he corrected, significantly, "the meaning of what you thought was America.

"It's a bully story, father," he continued, with a smile at once tender and hard; "the simple German boy, born a dreamer, standing there looking out at the dim sh.o.r.es of that land he had idealised.

If ever a man came to America bringing it rich gifts, that man was you!"

"Fritz," his father's voice was rendered harsh by mystification and foreboding, "tell me what you're talking about. Come to the point.

Clear this up."

"I'm talking about American politics--your party--having ruined your life! I'm talking about working like a slave all your days and having nothing but a mortgaged farm at sixty-one! I'm talking about playing a losing game! I'm saying, _What's the use?_ Father, I'm telling you that _I'm_ going to join the other party and make some money!"

The man just sat there, staring.

"Well," the boy took it up defiantly, "why not?"

And then he moved, laid a not quite steady hand out upon the table.

"My boy, you're not well. You've studied too hard. Now brace yourself up for to-night, and then we'll go down home and fix you up. What you need, Fritz," he said, trying to laugh, "is the hayfield."

"You're not _seeing_ it!" The boy pushed back his chair and began moving about the room. "The only way I can brace myself up for to-night is to get so mad--father, usually you see things so easily!

Don't you understand? It was my chance, my one moment, my time to strike. It will be years before I get such a hearing again. You see, father, the thing will be printed, and the men I want to have hear it, the men who _own this State_, will be there. One of them is to preside. And the story of it, the worth of it, to them, is that I'm your son. You see, after all," he seized at this wildly, "I'm getting my start on the fact that I'm your son."

"Go on," said the man; the brown of his wind-beaten face had yielded to a tinge of grey. "Just what is it you are going to say?"

"I call it 'The New America,' a lot of this talk about doing things, the glory of industrial America, the true Americans the men of constructive genius, the patriotism of railroad and factory building, a eulogy of railroad officials and corporation presidents," he rushed on with a laugh. "Singing the song of Capital. Father, can't you see _why?_"

The old man had risen. "Tell me this," he said. "None of it matters much, if you just tell me this: You _believe_ these things?

You've thought it all out for yourself--and you _feel_ that way? You're honest, aren't you, Fritz?" He put that last in a whisper.

The boy made no reply; after a minute the man sank back to his chair. The years seemed coming to him with the minutes.

Fred was leaning against the wall. "Father," he said at last, "I hope you'll let me be a little roundabout. It's only fair to me to let me ramble on a little. I've got to put it all right before you or--or--You know, dad,"--he came back to his place by the table, "the first thing I remember very clearly is those men, your party managers, coming down to the farm one time and asking you to run for Governor. How many times is it you've run for Governor, father?" He put the question slowly.

"Five," said the man heavily.

"I don't know which time this was; but you didn't want to. You were sorry when you saw them coming. I heard some of the talk. You talked about your farm, what you wanted to do that summer, how you couldn't afford the time or the money. They argued that you owed it to the party--they always got you there; how no other man could hold down majorities as you could--a man like you giving the best years of his life to holding down majorities! They said you were the one man against whom no personal attack could be made. And when there was so much to fight, anyway--oh, I know that speech by heart! They've made great capital of your honesty and your clean life. In fact, they've held that up as a curtain behind which a great many things could go on. Oh, _you_ didn't know about them; you were out in front of the curtain, but I haven't lived in this town without finding out that they needed your integrity and your clean record pretty bad!

"That was out on the side porch. Mother had brought out some b.u.t.termilk, and they drank it while they talked. You put up a good fight. Your time was money to you at that time of year; a man shouldn't neglect his farm--but you never yet could hold out against that 'needing-you' kind of talk. They knew there was no chance for your election. You knew it. But it takes a man of just your grit to put any snap into a hopeless campaign.

"Mother cried when you went to drive them back to town. You see, I remember all those things. She told about how hard you would work, and how it would do no good--that the State belonged to the other party. She talked about the farm, too, and the addition she had wanted for the house, and how now she wouldn't have it. Mother felt pretty bad that night. She's gone through a lot of those times."

There was a silence.

"You were away a lot that summer, and all fall. You looked pretty well used up when you came home, but you said that you had held down majorities splendidly."

Again there was silence. It was the silences that seemed to be saying the most.

"You had one term in Congress--that's the only thing you ever had.

Then you did so much that they concentrated in your district and saw to it that you never got back. Julius Caesar couldn't have been elected again," he laughed harshly.

"Father," the boy went on, after a pause, "you asked me if I were honest. There are two kinds of honesty. The primitive kind--like yours--and then the kind you develop for yourself. Do I believe the things I'm going to say to-night? No--not now. But I'll believe them more after I've heard the applause I'm sure to get. I'll believe them still more after I've had my first case thrown to me by our railroad friends who own this State. More and more after I've said them over in campaigning next fall, and pretty soon I'll be so sure I believe them that I really will believe them--and that," he concluded, flippantly, "is the new brand of American honesty. Why, any smart man can persuade himself he's not a hypocrite!"

"My _G.o.d!_" it wrenched from the man. "_This?_ If you'd stolen money--killed a man--but hypocrisy, cant--the very thing I've fought hardest, hated most! You lived all your life with me to learn _this?_"

"I lived all my life with you to learn what pays, and what doesn't.

I lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of success."

"I never was sure I was a failure until this hour."

"Father! Can't you see--"

"Oh, don't _talk_ to me!" cried the old man, rising, reaching out his fist as though he would strike him. "Son of mine sitting there telling me he is fixing up a brand of honesty for himself!"

The boy grew quieter as self-restraint left his father. "I mean that--just that," he said at last. "Let a man either give or get. If he gives, let it be to the real thing. There are two Americas. The America of you dreamers--and then the real America. Yours is an idea--an idea quite as much as an ideal. I don't think you have the slightest comprehension of how far apart it is from the real America. The people who dream of it over in Europe are a great deal nearer it than you people who work for it here. Father, the spirit of this country flows in a strong, swift, resistless current. You never got into it at all. Your kind of idealists influence it about as much--about as much as red lights burned on the banks of the great river would influence the current of that river. You're not _of_ it. You came here, throbbing with the love for America; and with your ideal America you've fought the real, and you've worked and you've believed and you've sacrificed. Father, _what's the use?_ In this State, anyway, it's hopeless. It has been so through your lifetime; it will be through mine."

The man sat looking at him. He felt that he should say something, but the words did not come--held back, perhaps, by a sense of their uselessness. It was not so much what Fred said as it was the look in his eyes as he said it. There was nothing impetuous or youthful about that look, nothing to be laughed at or argued away. He had always felt that Fred had a mind which saw things straight, saw them in their right relations, and at that moment he had no words to plead for what Fred called the America of the dreamers.

"I'm of the second generation, dad," the boy went on, at length, "and the second generation has an ideal of its own, and that ideal is Success. It took us these forty years to come to understand the spirit of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and opportunity and success--and that's getting Americanised. Now, father," he sought refuge in the tone of every-day things, "you'll get used to it--won't you? I don't expect you to feel very good about it, but you aren't going to be broken up about it--are you? After all, father," laughing and moving about as if to break the seriousness of things, "there's nothing criminal about being one of the other fellows--is there? Just remember that there _are_ folks who even think it's respectable!" The father had risen and picked up his hat. "No, Fred," he said, with a sadness in which there was great dignity, "there is nothing criminal in it if a man's conviction sends him that way. But to me there is something--something too sad for words in a man's selling his own soul."

"Father! How extravagant! _Why_ is it selling one's soul to sit down and figure out what's the best thing to do?" He hesitated, hating to add hurt to hurt, not wanting to say that his father's fight should have been with the revolutionists, that his life was ineffective because, seeing his dream from within a dream, his thinking had been muddled. He only said: "As I say, father, it's a question of giving or getting. I couldn't even give in your way. And I've seen enough of giving to want a taste of getting. I want to make things go--and I see my chance. Why father," he laughed, trying to turn it, "there's nothing so American as wanting to make things _go_."

He looked at him for a long minute. "My boy," he said, "I fear you are becoming so American that I am losing you."

"Father," the boy pleaded, affectionately, "now don't--"

The old man held up his hand. "You've tried to make me understand it," he said, "and succeeded. You can't complain of the way you've succeeded. I don't know why I don't argue with you--plead; there are things I could say--should say, perhaps--but something a.s.sures me it would be useless. I feel a good many years older than I did when I came into this room, but the reason for it is not that you're joining the other party. You know what I think of the men who control this State, the men with whom you desire to cast your lot, but I trust the years I've spent fighting them haven't made a bigot of me. It's not joining their party--it's _using_ it--makes this the hardest thing I've been called upon to meet."

"Father, don't look like that! How do you think I am going to get up and speak tonight with _that_ face before me?"

"You didn't think, did you," the man laughed bitterly, "that I would inspire you to your effort?"

The boy stood looking at his father, a strange new fire in his eyes.

"Yes," he said, quietly, tenderly, "you will inspire me. When I get up before those men tonight I'm going to see the picture of that boy straining for his first glimpse of New York Harbour. I'm going to think for just a minute of the things that boy brought with him--things he has never lost. And then I'll see you as you stand here now---it will be enough. What I need to do is to get mad. If I falter I'll just think of some of those times when you came home from your campaigns--how you looked--what you said. It will bring the inspiration. Father, I figure it out like this. We're going to get it back. We're going to get what's coming to us. There's another America than the America of you dreamers. To yours you have given; from mine I will get. And the irony of it--don't think I don't see the irony of it--is that I will be called the real American. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make the railroads of this State--oh, it sounds like schoolboy talk, but just give me a little time--I'm going to make the railroads of this State pay off every cent of that mortgage on your farm! Father," he finished, impetuously, in a last appeal, "you're broken up now, disappointed, but would you honestly want me to travel the road you've traveled?"

"My boy," answered the old man, and the tears came with it, "I wanted you to travel the road of an honest man."