The Plum Tree Part 10

There is, to be sure, another kind of instinctively honest man--he who disregards loyalty as well as self-interest in his uprightness. But there are so few of these in practical life that they may be disregarded.

Perhaps I should say something here as to the finances of my combine, though it was managed in the main precisely like all these political-commercial machines that control both parties in all the states, except a few in the South.

My a.s.sessments upon the various members of my combine were sent, for several years, to me, afterward to Woodruff directly, in one thousand, five thousand, and ten thousand dollar checks, sometimes by mail, and at other times by express or messenger.

These checks were always payable to bearer; and I made through Woodruff, for I kept to the far background in all my combine's affairs, an arrangement with several large banks in different parts of the state, including one at the capital, that these checks were to be cashed without question, no matter who presented them, provided there was a certain flourish under the line where the amount was written in figures.

Sometimes these checks were signed by the corporation, and sometimes they were the personal checks of the president or some other high official. Often the signature was that of a person wholly disconnected, so far as the public knew. Once, I remember, Roebuck sent me a thousand dollar check signed by a distinguished Chicago lawyer who was just then counsel to his opponent in a case involving millions, a case which Roebuck afterward won!

Who presented these checks? I could more easily say who did not.

From the very beginning of my control I kept my promise to reduce the cost of the political business to my clients. When I got the machine thoroughly in hand, I saw I could make it cost them less than a third of what they had been paying, on the average, for ten years. I cut off, almost at a stroke, a horde of lobbyists, lawyers, threateners without influence, and hangers-on of various kinds. I reduced the payments for legislation to a system, instead of the shameless, scandal-creating and wasteful auctioneering that had been going on for years.

In fact, so cheaply did I run the machine that I saw it would be most imprudent to let my clients have the full benefit. Cheapness would have made them uncontrollably greedy and exacting, and would have given them a wholly false idea of my value as soon as it had slipped their short memories how dearly they used to pay.

So I continued to make heavy a.s.sessments, and put by the surplus in a reserve fund for emergencies. I thought, for example, that I might some day have trouble with one or more members of my combine; my reserve would supply me with the munitions for forcing insurgents to return to their agreements.

This fund was in no sense part of my private fortune. Nowhere else, I think, do the eccentricities of conscience show themselves more interestingly than in the various att.i.tudes of the various political leaders toward the large sums which the exigencies of commercialized politics place absolutely and secretly under their control. I have no criticism for any of these att.i.tudes.

I have lived long enough and practically enough to learn not to criticize the morals of men, any more than I criticize their facial contour or their physical build. "As many men, so many minds,"--and morals. Wrong, for practical purposes, is that which a man can not cajole or compel his conscience to approve.

It so happened that I had a sense that to use my a.s.sessments for my private financial profits would be wrong. Therefore, my private fortune has been wholly the result of the opportunities which came through my intimacy with Roebuck and such others of the members of my combine as were personally agreeable,--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, not disagreeable, for, in the circ.u.mstances, I naturally saw a side of those men which a friend must never see in a friend. I could not help having toward most of these distinguished clients of mine much the feeling his lawyer has for the guilty criminal he is defending.

X

THE FACE IN THE CROWD

Except the time given to the children,--there were presently three,--my life, in all its thoughts and a.s.sociations, was now politics: at Was.h.i.+ngton, from December until Congress adjourned, chiefly national politics, the long and elaborate arrangements preliminary to the campaign for the conquest of the national fields; at home, chiefly state politics,--strengthening my hold upon the combine, strengthening my hold upon the two political machines. As the days and the weeks, the months and the years, rushed by, as the interval between breakfast and bedtime, between Sunday and Sunday, between election day and election day again, grew shorter and shorter, I played the game more and more furiously.

What I won, once it was mine, seemed worthless in itself, and worth while only if I could gain the next point; and, when that was gained, the same story was repeated. Whenever I paused to reflect, it was to throttle reflection half-born, and hasten on again.

"A silly business, this living, isn't it?" said Woodruff to me.

"Yes,--but--" replied I. "You remember the hare and the hatter in _Alice in Wonderland_. 'Why?' said the hare. 'Why not?' said the hatter. A sensible man does not interrogate life; he lives it."

"H'm," retorted Woodruff.

And we went on with the game,--shuffling, dealing, staking. But more and more frequently there came hours, when, against my will, I would pause, drop my cards, watch the others; and I would wonder at them, and at myself, the maddest of these madmen,--and the saddest, because I had moments in which I was conscious of my own derangement.

I have often thought on the cause of this dissatisfaction which has never ceased to gird me, and which I have learned girds all men of intelligence who lead an active life. I think it is that such men are like a civilized man who has to live among a savage tribe. To keep alive, to have influence, he must pretend to accept the savage point of view, must pretend to disregard his own knowledge and intelligent methods, must play the game of life with the crude, clumsy counters of caste and custom and creed and thought which the savages regard as fit and proper. Intelligent men of action do see as clearly as the philosophers; but they have to pretend to adapt their mental vision to that of the ma.s.s of their fellow men or, like the philosophers, they would lead lives of profitless inaction, enunciating truths which are of no value to mankind until it rediscovers them for itself. No man of trained reasoning power could fail to see that the Golden Rule is not a piece of visionary altruism, but a sound principle of practical self-interest. Or, could anything be clearer, to one who takes the trouble really to think about it, than that he who advances himself at the expense of his fellow men does not advance, but sinks down into the cla.s.s of murderers for gain, thieves, and all those who seek to advance themselves by injustice? Yet, so feeble is man's reason, so near to the brute is he, so under the rule of brute appet.i.tes, that he can not think beyond the immediate apparent good, beyond to-day's meal.

I once said to Scarborough: "Politics is the science and art of fooling the people."

"That is true, as far as it goes," he said. "If that were all, justice, which is only another name for common sense, would soon be established.

But, unfortunately, politics is the art of playing upon cupidity, the art of fooling the people into thinking they are helping to despoil the other fellow and will get a share of the swag."

And he was right. It is by subtle appeal to the secret and shamefaced, but controlling, appet.i.tes of men that the clever manipulate them. To get a man to vote for the right you must show him that he is voting for the personally profitable. And very slow he is to believe that what is right can be practically profitable. Have not the preachers been preaching the reverse all these years; have they not been insisting that to do right means treasure in Heaven only?

It was in my second term as Senator, toward the middle of it. I was speaking, one afternoon, in defense of a measure for the big contributors, which the party was forcing through the Senate in face of fire from the whole country. Personally, I did not approve the measure.

It was a frontal attack upon public opinion, and frontal attacks are as unwise and as unnecessary in politics as in war. But the party leaders in the nation insisted, and, as the move would weaken their hold upon the party and so improve my own chances, I was not deeply aggrieved that my advice had been rejected. Toward the end of my speech, aroused by applause from the visitors' gallery, I forgot myself and began to look up there as I talked, instead of addressing myself to my fellow Senators. The eyes of a speaker always wander over his audience in search of eyes that respond. My glance wandered, unconsciously, until it found an answering glance that fixed it.

This answering glance was not responsive, nor even approving. It was the reverse,--and, in spite of me, it held me. At first it was just a pair of eyes, in the shadow of the brim of a woman's hat, the rest of the face, the rest of the woman, hid by those in front and on either side.

There was a movement among them, and the whole face appeared,--and I stopped short in my speech. I saw only the face, really only the mouth and the eyes,--the lips and the eyes of Elizabeth Crosby,--an expression of pain, and of pity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBY p. 141]

I drank from the gla.s.s of water on my desk, and went on. When I ventured to look up there again, the face was gone. Had I seen or imagined? Was it she or was it only memory suddenly awakening and silhouetting her upon that background of ma.s.sed humanity? I tried to convince myself that I had only imagined, but I knew that I had seen.

Within me--and, I suppose, within every one else--there is a dual personality: not a good and a bad, as is so often shallowly said; but one that does, and another that watches. The doer seems to me to be myself; the watcher, he who stands, like an idler at the rail of a bridge, carelessly, even indifferently, observing the tide of my thought and action that flows beneath,--who is he? I do not know. But I do know that I have no control over him,--over his cynical smile, or his lip curling in good-natured contempt of me, or his shrug at self-excuse, or his moods when he stares down at the fretting stream with a look of weariness so profound that it is tragic. It was he who was more interested in the thoughts,--the pa.s.sion, the protest, the defiance, and the dread,--which the sight of that face set to boiling within me.

Sometimes he smiled cynically at the turmoil, and at other times he watched it with what seemed to me bitter disgust and disappointment and regret.

While this tempest was struggling to boil over into action, Carlotta appeared. She had never stayed long at Was.h.i.+ngton after the first winter; she preferred, for the children and perhaps for herself, the quiet and the greater simplicity of Fredonia. But--"I got to thinking about it," said she, "and it seemed to me a bad idea for a man to be separated so long from his wife and children--and home influences."

That last phrase was accompanied by one of her queer shrewd looks.

"Your idea is not without merit," replied I judicially.

"What are you smiling at?" she demanded sharply.

"If it was a smile," said I, "it was at myself."

"No, you were laughing at me. You think I am jealous."

"Of what? Of whom?"

She looked fixedly at me and finally said: "I want to tell you two things about myself and you. The first is that I am afraid of you."

"Why?" said I.

"I don't know," she answered.

"And the second confession?"

"That I never trust you."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Yet you are always telling me I am cold."

She laughed shortly. "So is a stick of dynamite," said she.

She stayed on at Was.h.i.+ngton.