The Ramrodders Part 42

General Waymouth did not take the stump. His age forbade. He remained away from headquarters. But Harlan Thornton was posted there, his vigilant representative and executive. In his att.i.tude toward Harlan the State chairman ran the gamut of cajolery, spleen, wrath, and resentment--and final disgust. It was a situation almost intolerable for Presson. But a chain of circ.u.mstances--events unescapable and unique in politics--bound him to the wheel of the victor.

Harlan understood the chairman's state of mind. Day by day he made his discourse with that gentleman as brief as possible, and he kept away from the Presson home. His action was dictated by a feeling of delicacy, in view of the father's sentiments. Presson treated him in business hours as a prisoner would treat his ball and chain. And Presson showed no desire to take that badge of his servitude home with him. Enduring Harlan in the committee headquarters strained his self-possession daily.

So the young man lied brazenly in reply to the blandly courteous notes of invitation from Mrs. Presson, who continued alert to the promising social qualifications of General Waymouth's chief lieutenant. He pleaded work. It was true in a measure. The day was filled with duties to which he applied himself unflaggingly.

But from the supper-table he hurried out each evening into the country, escaping from the city by the side streets, tramping miles of lane and highway and field. His muscles craved the exertion. The city oppressed him. His unwonted toil within four walls sapped his energy.

One evening he stepped aside from the highway. A horse, trotting smartly, was overtaking him. But the horse did not pa.s.s him. It slowed down to his stride, and Madeleine Presson called him from her trap. She was alone.

"As this is the campaign of 'honesty,' I'll be honest with you," she said. "This is not an accidental meeting. I have been guessing at the roads you might take, and have been on your trail for days. That's a bold confession for a girl to make; but I've got even a bolder request: please climb up here and ride."

He climbed up. He went up with alacrity. From the first of their acquaintance the girl had interested him--and yet it was more than mere interest or feminine attraction. Her culture, her keen a.n.a.lysis of events and men, her knowledge of conditions informed and instructed him.

Her subtle humor and droll insight into the characters of those who attempted to pose in the public eye entertained him, for he lacked humor. But, most of all, her satire gave him a truer perspective. Fresh from the north country, where his knowledge of public men had been limited to the information which newspapers had given him, he had cla.s.sed them wrongly. His own gravity had given them too eminent qualities. The girl, knowing them, had p.r.i.c.ked their a.s.sumptions with good-humored satire, and he looked at them again and found them as she said. As he sat beside her and the horse walked on, he was conscious that in avoiding her he had been depriving himself both of entertainment and valuable instruction. It was a rather selfish reflection, but he could not help it.

"Now, Mr. Harlan Thornton, from what my father says about the house, when he's so angry that he really doesn't know what it is he's saying, I understand you're playing hob with all the traditions of politics. In order to be honest, do you find it necessary to oppose all the things my father wants to do? If you dare to say so you'll be called on to have some very serious conversation with my father's daughter!"

"I don't want any differences with your father--or with you, Miss Presson," he declared, earnestly. "I honestly don't! It all seems to be a mighty mixed-up mess. I sometimes wish I'd stayed back home in the woods. I'm too little a fellow to be in such a big game. I'm afraid I'm so small I can only see one side of it."

"You admit there are two sides?"

"My grandfather and your father have impressed that on me pretty strongly."

"Isn't there any good in the other side? Do you mean to tell me that all the men in politics in this State are wrong except you and old General Waymouth?"

"No, but it's the way of doing things. I guess it's that."

She drew her horse to a stop. The country road was quiet. The hush of the starry August night was over all.

"Mr. Thornton," she said, looking him squarely in the eyes, "with all due respect to the mighty masculine, I believe you are in need of a few suggestions from a woman's standpoint. You haven't acquired the art of flattery. If so, you'd be gallant and say I have just as much ac.u.men as you have honesty."

"I'll say it! It's so!" he protested.

"No, you're too late. I very unmodestly gave myself the compliment. Now I'm going to tell you where you are wrong in this whole matter, Mr.

Thornton. You are reckoning without the human instruments that you must employ. I'll wait just a moment and let that remark sink into your mind.

You are a bit slow about grasping the full purport of remarks, Mr.

Harlan Thornton." There was a touch of her satiric humor in her tone.

"Now, you don't fully understand, even yet. I think I'll have to ill.u.s.trate. I've already told you that I've watched matters pretty closely at the capital. I like to see young men come here with ideals and succeed, but, alas, they do not."

"They let themselves be bought or bribed or bossed, probably," blurted Harlan.

"I'm not talking about that kind. They are too obvious and too common.

I complimented my own self. Now you are insulting yourself by jumping at conclusions. You should have a better opinion of yourself, sir. I have.

I do not believe you could be bought or bossed or even coaxed from what you considered your honest duty. You do not need to a.s.sure me. But you might be _convinced_, Mr. Thornton--convinced by good reasons--that it is not a young man's duty to ruin his own prospects and his own influence by undertaking something as impracticable as though he tried to be a meteor by holding a candle in his hand and jumping off a roof. I could praise his imagination, but not his judgment."

She waited a moment. She gazed at him with sudden sympathy.

"You are a straightforward young man, used to winning your way by direct means--axe to the tree, cant-dog to the rolling log, but that isn't the way in politics. I know this preachment from me sounds strange. It may offend you, but you mustn't allow yourself to be offended. You have simply quarrelled with the men who have tried to tell you--it's no use for your grandfather or my father to talk with you. Men do quarrel too easily. I am taking a woman's advantage of you, sir. I said I would ill.u.s.trate. I will. One of the finest young men I ever knew came down to the legislature and started in to expose and hold up every appropriation measure that had the least appearance of being padded. Just straight-out and blunt honesty, you understand. A little affectation, too. A bit of self-advertising as well. But we all excuse a little self-consciousness in youth. Well, he simply became a red rag to the House. They sneered and hissed when he stood up. Just in blind rage they voted for every appropriation he opposed. He did much more harm than he did good. He didn't get his own appropriations for the district he represented. And it killed him in politics and in his law business. The happy people did not acclaim him as their faithful watchdog of the treasury. They merely p.r.o.nounced him a bore with a swelled head. You see, I can talk political talk with all the phrases, Mr. Thornton."

"But he was right, wasn't he--fundamentally right?"

"He _meant_ to be right--that's the term to use. But he forgot that he must use human instruments in order to accomplish anything. And he just failed miserably."

"What would you expect him to do--join in, and be just like the others?

Where would any good come out of anything?"

"Now, you are insisting again that there is good only on one side of the question. That's bigotry. It's what I'm trying to warn you against. Some one has said that life is compromise. It's true of politics, if you're going to get the most out of it. I know what you are undertaking.

General Waymouth hasn't left much to the imagination in his letter. And I've talked with others. And so I know how visionary you are."

"You've talked with Linton--that's the one you've talked with!" declared Harlan, indignantly. "And if he's told you what I have told him in confidence he's more of a sneak than I've already found him out to be."

"Mr. Linton did not consider that you were making any secret of your principles. And you'll excuse me, but I think his principles are exactly as good as yours. You are talking now like the ramrodders. Their first retort to any one who differs with them is to call names."

"But he deserted General Waymouth under fire. He promised, and went back on that promise."

"According to all political good sense and in any other times but these, when men seem to be running wild, General Waymouth was politically out of the game. It's all fine and grand in story-books, Mr. Thornton, for the hero to sacrifice everything for his ideals, but in these very practical days he's only cla.s.sed as a fool and kicked to one side."

"You defend Linton, then? Is that the kind of a man you hold up as a success, Miss Presson?" His grudge showed in his tone.

"You will please understand, sir, that we are not discussing theories just now. This isn't a question of what the world ought to be. It's the plain fact about what a man must be if he's to get results. You and I both have heard your grandfather say many times that he'd like to play politics with angels--if only he could find the angels. It's hard to own up, when you're young, that human nature is just as it is. I understand how you feel. I know you feel it's a very strange thing for me to do--talk to you like this. But I want you to understand that my father has had nothing to do with it."

He turned to her accusingly.

"But I know perfectly well," he said, bitterly, "that it isn't any personal interest you take in me that makes you say it. You don't think enough of me for that." It was resentment so naively boyish that her astonishment checked her remonstrance. He rushed on. "You hold up Linton for me to follow. That's the kind of a man you admire. He's an orator, and he's smart, and he wins. I'm only an accident. You meant that when you said that General Waymouth won out only because matters were mixed up in politics. You don't care anything about me, personally. But you're talking to me because my grandfather asked you to. That's it." He guessed shrewdly.

That outburst betrayed him. This young man from the north country was very human after all, she decided.

"I have said before, this is a campaign of honesty. Your grandfather did ask me to talk to you. I didn't have the heart to refuse him, for I'm very fond of him."

It was an acknowledgment that stung his pride. But more than all, it stirred that vague rancor he had felt the first time he had seen Linton appropriate her.

He did not choose gallant words for reply.

"He has set you on me, has he, to pull me away from what I think is right? He wants me to be like the rest of 'em, eh? I can be an understudy for Herbert Linton and an errand boy for the State machine! I didn't think, Miss Presson, that you--"

"You'd better not go any further, Mr. Harlan Thornton. My affection for an old man who has set his heart on your success has brought me into this affair, and I a.s.sure you I don't enjoy the situation. You are not asked to betray any one, or desert any high moral pinnacle, or do anything else that the moralists say all these fine things about without knowing what they mean half the time. You are reminded of this: that there's only one General Waymouth. There's a sudden big call for him because factions have got into a row with each other. Folks will rally around him for a little while--it's a sort of revival sentiment. But you are not a General Waymouth. He'll be excused by sentiment, you'll simply be branded as one of the common run of ramrodders who try to achieve the impossible with human nature--a disturbing element in State politics--and your career will be spoiled. Now I've delivered my message, and done what I promised your grandfather I'd do."

She turned her horse, and started him back toward town.

There was silence between them for a time.

"So, if I weren't Thelismer Thornton's grandson you wouldn't take any interest in me at all?" he inquired, sourly.

"A very impudent and unnecessary question, Mr. Harlan Thornton. I'm afraid your grandfather is right--you have stayed in the woods too long."

Longer silence.

He was more humble when he spoke again. "I don't want you to think I'm what I may seem to be, Miss Presson. But what is there I can do in politics, just now, different from what I'm doing? I have taken my side with the General. I propose to stay there, of course. But I do not want to have people think I'm a fool. And I haven't heard much else from any one since I started out." There was wistfulness in his voice. He suddenly felt drawn to her. He craved her counsel. It was the mastery of the woman, more worldly-wise. He was bewildered and ashamed. The image of Clare Kavanagh was not dimmed in his soul. She had been with him daily in his thoughts. He knew that he felt affection for her. It was tenderness, desire to protect, the real impulse of the man toward his mate. But the feeling was all unexpressed and incoherent.