The President Part 7

"Mr. Gwynn," observed Richard, "antic.i.p.ated something of the kind, and I think is prepared to request those officers you name to come to Was.h.i.+ngton."

"They shall be requested, sir; certainly, sir," rasped Mr. Gwynn.

Richard's words seemed ever to reverberate in Mr. Gwynn's n.o.ble interior as in a cavern, and thereafter to issue forth by way of his mouth in the manner of an echo. "Certainly, sir; they shall be requested," repeated the cavernous Mr. Gwynn.

"Now this is highly gratifying," said Senator Hanway. "And you will have them call upon me, too, I've no doubt. You should wire them at once; the caucus, you know, isn't ten days away; Congress convenes on the first Monday of next month."

Senator Hanway, being of a quick intelligence, had by this time found his rightful line. He divided himself fairly; for he gave his entire conversation to Richard while he conferred upon Mr. Gwynn his whole respect. In good truth, the less Mr. Gwynn said and the less he seemed to hear and understand, the more Senator Hanway did him honor in his heart. The rigid witlessness of Mr. Gwynn fairly came over him as the token and sign of an indubitable n.o.bility, and it was with a feeling treading upon reverence for that wonderful man that Senator Hanway arose to go.

"I am much refreshed by this interview," said he, taking Mr. Gwynn's hand and shaking it pump-handlewise. "Your help should insure Mr.

Frost's success. With Mr. Frost Speaker, railway interests will be safe-guarded. And," continued Senator Hanway, quoting from one of his Senate speeches, lifting his voice the while, and falling into a fine declamatory pose, "he who safeguards the railroads, safeguards his country. Patriotism cannot count the debt the nation owes the railroads.

Had it not been for the knitting together of the country by the railroads, bringing into closer touch with one another the West and the East, the South and the North--the wiping out of sectionalism--the annihilation of special interests by making all interests general--all done by the railroads, sir!--this country, broken across the knee of mountain ranges and sawed into regions by great rivers, would ere this have been frittered into fragments; and where we have now the glorious United States--a free and unified people--Europe, who envies as well as fears us, would be gratified by the spectacle of four and perhaps a half dozen different and differing countries, each alien and, doubtless, each hostile to the others." Senator Hanway had reached the door. "And that this condition of disseverment does not exist," cried he, as he bowed with final grace to Mr. Gwynn, who approved stonily, "is due to you, sir; and to gentlemen like you; and to those railways which, like the Anaconda Airline, form the ties that bind us safe against such dismembering possibilities and give us, for war or for peace, absolute coherency as a commonwealth."

CHAPTER V

HOW RICHARD WAS TAUGHT MANY THINGS

Richard went every day at eleven for a brief conference with Senator Hanway. The latter was no wise backward in his use of the columns of the _Daily Tory_. There are so many things concerning both men and measures that statesmen want said, and which, because of their modesty, they themselves hesitate to say, that Senator Hanway, when now through Richard he might tell this story of politics or declare that proposal of state, and still keep his own name under cover, discovered in the _Daily Tory_ a source of relief. So much, in truth, did Senator Hanway, by way of Richard and the _Daily Tory_, contribute to the gayety of the times, that the editor-in-chief was duly scandalized. He aroused himself on the third evening, killed Richard's dispatch, and rebuked that earnest journalist with the following:

"Send news; nothing but news. No one wants your notion of the motives of representatives in fight over Speakers.h.i.+p."

This led to a word or two between Richard and Mr. Gwynn, the upcome being a wire from Mr. Gwynn to the editor desiring him on all occasions and without alteration or addition to print Richard's dispatches. The editor in retort reminded Mr. Gwynn that the _Daily Tory_ had a reputation and a policy: also there were laws of libel. Mr. Gwynn declined to be moved by these high considerations, and reiterated his first command. After that Richard in each issue gave way to an unchecked column letter, which was run sullenly by the editor and never a word displaced.

This daily letter, signed "R. S.," brought Richard mighty comfort; he read it fresh and new each morning with mounting satisfaction. Richard, like other authors, found no literature so good to his palate as his own; and while his stories looked well enough when he wrote them, the types never failed in uncovering charms that had escaped his ken. These were complacent days for Richard the defective; ones to nourish his self-love.

Being his first work, and performed under his own tolerant mastery, with none to molest him or make him editorially afraid, it stood scant wonder that he went about the subject of his own sleepless self-congratulations. What Richard needed--and never knew it--was dismissal in rapid succession from at least four newspapers; such a course of journalistic sprouts would have set his feet in proper paths.

Under the circ.u.mstances, however, this improving experience was impossible; missing the benefits thereof, Richard must struggle on as best he might without a bridle.

It was fortunate, when one remembers his blinded ignorance, a condition aggravated by his own acute approval of himself, that Richard had a no more radical guide than was the cautious Senator Hanway. While that designing gentleman--the _Daily Tory_ turning the stone--grinded many a personal ax--_note bene_, never once without exciting the sophisticated wrath of the editor-in-chief--he was no such headlong temper of a man as to invite the paper into foolish extravagancies, whether of statement or of style. As the bug under the chip of the _Daily Tory's_ Was.h.i.+ngton correspondence, Senator Hanway was neither a vindictive nor yet a reckless bug; and the paper, while it became the organ of his ambitions, made some reputational profit by the very melody of those guarded tunes he ground.

Richard, you are not to suppose, went unaware of those employments to which Senator Hanway put him in the vineyard of his policies. He realized the situation and walked therein with wide and willing eyes. It served his tender purpose; it would take him to the Harley house and throw him, perchance, into the society of Dorothy without that dulcet privilege being identified as the true purpose of his call.

One cannot but marvel that Richard should be at the trouble of so much difficult chicane. It is strange that he should so entangle what might have been the simplest of love stories; for you may as well know here as further on that, had Richard laid bare the truth of himself, Mrs.

Hanway-Harley, far from fencing her daughter against him and his addresses, would have taken the door off its hinges to let him in. But Richard, as was heretofore suggested, had been most ignorantly brought up, or rather had been granted no bringing up at all. Moreover, in the sensitive cynicism of his nature, which made a laugh its armor and was harsh for fear of being hurt, our young Democritus had long ago bound himself with vows that he would accept no friends.h.i.+p, win no love, that did not come to him upon his mere and unsupported merits as a man. In his own fas.h.i.+on, so far from being the philosopher he thought, Richard was a knight errant--one as mad and as romantic as the most feather-headed Amadis that ever came out of Gaul; and so he is to make himself a deal of trouble and have himself much laughed at before ever he succeeds in slipping through the fingers of this history to seek obscurity with Dorothy by his side. For all that, it is Richard's due to say that his "R. S." letters attracted polite as well as political attention, and got him much respected and condemned. Also they lodged him high in the esteem of Senator Hanway, who discovered daily new excellencies in him; and this came somewhat to the rescue of Richard one day.

Senator Hanway had a room in a wing of the Harley house which Mrs.

Hanway-Harley called his study. It was a sumptuous apartment, furnished in mahogany and leather, and a bookcase, filled with Congressional Records which n.o.body ever looked at, stood against the wall. Here it was that Senator Hanway held his conferences; it was here he laid his plans and brooded them. When Senator Hanway desired to meet a gentleman and preferred to keep the meeting dark, this study was the scene of that secrecy. In such event, the blinds were drawn to baffle what prying or casual eye might come marching up the street; for in Was.h.i.+ngton, to see two men conversing, is to know nine times in ten precisely what the conversation is about. Commonly, however, the blinds were thrown wide, as though the study's pure proprietor courted a world's scrutiny.

It was in this study that Richard was received by Senator Hanway. There was an outside door; a caller might be admitted from the veranda without troubling the main portals of the Harley house. To save the patience of that journalist, Senator Hanway called Richard's attention to the veranda door, and commissioned him to make use of it. Senator Hanway said that he did not wish to subject one whom he valued so highly, and who was on such near terms with his good friend, Mr. Gwynn, to the slow ceremony which attended a regular invasion of the premises.

Richard thanked Senator Hanway, although he could have liked it better had he been less thoughtfully polite. Richard would have preferred the main floor, with whatever delay and formal clatter such entrance made imperative. The more delay and the more clatter, the more chance of seeing Dorothy. It struck him with a dubious chill when Senator Hanway suddenly distinguished him with the freedom of that veranda door--a franchise upon which your statesman laid flattering emphasis, saying that not ten others had been granted it.

This episode of the veranda door befell upon the earliest visit which Richard made in his quality of correspondent of the _Daily Tory_. On that day, being admitted by way of the Harley front door, Richard had the felicity of coming in with the before-mentioned daily sheaf of roses. Richard and the blossom-bearing colored youth entered together, the door making the one opening to admit both; and by this fortunate chance--which Richard the wily had waited around the corner to secure--he was given the joy of seeing and hearing the beautiful Dorothy gurgle over the flowers.

"And to think," cried Dorothy, her nose in the bosom of a rose, "no one knows from whom they come! Mamma thinks Count Storri sends them. It's so good of him, if he does!"

Dorothy's head was bowed over the flowers. As she spoke, however, her blue eye, full of mischief, watched Richard through a silken lock of hair that had fallen forward.

"But you don't think it's Storri?" cried Richard dolorously.

"Oh, no!" returned Dorothy, shaking her head with wise decision, "I don't think it's Count Storri. But of course I wouldn't tell mamma so; she doesn't like to be contradicted. Still," and here Dorothy looked quite wistful, "I wish I knew who did send them."

Before Richard could take up the delicate question of the roses and their origin, there arrived the word of Senator Hanway that he be shown into the study.

"Now that I'm a working journalist, Miss Harley," said Richard, "I shall be obliged to see your uncle every day."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Dorothy, with a fine sympathy; "how hard they drive you poor newspaper people!"

"Still, we go not without our rewards," returned Richard.

Then observing that Senator Hanway's messenger--who had not those reasons for loitering which made slow the feet of Richard--was already halfway down the hall, Richard took Dorothy's small hand in his, and, before she knew her peril or might make an effort to avoid it, rapturously kissed the fingers, not once, not twice, but five times. The very fingers themselves burned with the scandal of it! Following this deed of rapine, Richard went his vandal way; Dorothy's face turned a twin red with the roses.

Dorothy said nothing in rebuke of Richard, and it is to be a.s.sumed that, so flagrant an outrage left her without breath to voice her condemnation. That she was disturbed to the heart is sure, for she went instantly to her friend, the sibyl of the golden locks, for conference, confidence, and consolation.

"Wasn't he wretchedly bold, Bess?" said Dorothy in an awe-stricken whisper.

"Absolutely abandoned!" said Bess.

Then the two sat in silence for ten impressive seconds.

"Bess," remarked Dorothy tentatively, "suppose mamma were to forbid me loving one whom I loved----" Here she broke down, aghast.

"My dear Dorothy," cried the other, surprised into deepest concern, "your mother didn't see him kissing your fingers, did she?"

"Oh, no, Bess," said Dorothy hurriedly, "we were quite alone."

"You foolish girl," returned Bess. "You alarmed me!"

"But really, Bess," persisted Dorothy, "to put it this way: if your mamma insisted, would you give way and marry a man you didn't love?"

"You mean Count Storri," replied Bess. "Now, Dorothy, listen to me. In the first place, you are an arrant hypocrite. You pretend to be soft and powerless and yielding, and to appeal to me for counsel. And all the time you are twice as obstinate as I am, and much less likely to accept a man you don't love, or give up one whom you love."

"Well, Bess," said Dorothy defensively, a bit stricken of these truths, "really, I want your opinions on marriage."

"Oh, that is it! Then snap your fingers in the teeth of command, and marry no man whom you do not love!"

"But the man you love might not want you!" sighed Dorothy.

"The man you love will always want you," declared Bess with firmness.

"How sweet you are!"

"And as for parents making matches for their daughters," continued Bess, unmoved of the tribute, and speaking as one who for long had made a study of the world's domestic affairs, "it is sure to lead to trouble and divorce."

"Is it?" asked Dorothy, appalled.