The Plum Tree Part 18

"The rich men--the big corporations--give most of it."

"Why?"

"Patriotism," said I. "To save the nation from our wicked opponent."

"How do Mr. Roebuck and the others get it back?" she pursued, ignoring my pleasantry.

"Get what back?"

"Why the money they advance. They aren't the men to _give_ anything."

I answered with a smile only.

She lapsed into thoughtfulness. When I was a.s.suming that her mind had wandered off to something else she said: "The people must be very stupid--not to suspect."

"Or, the rich men and the corporations very stupid to give," I suggested.

"Do you mean that they don't get it back?" she demanded.

"Of course," said I, "their patriotism must be rewarded. We can not expect them to save the country year after year for nothing."

"I should think not!" she said, adding disgustedly, "I think politics is very silly. And men get excited about it! But _I_ never listen."

Arriving at the "retreat" from the Scarborough convention, I found Burbank much perturbed because Scarborough had been nominated. He did not say so--on the contrary, he expressed in sonorous phrases his satisfaction that there was to be "a real test of strength between conservatism and radicalism." He never dropped his pose, even with me--not even with himself.

"I confess I don't share your cheerfulness," said I. "If Scarborough were a wild man, we'd have a walkover. But he isn't, and I fear he'll be more and more attractive to the wavering voters, to many of our own people. Party loyalty has been overworked in the last few presidential campaigns. He'll go vote-hunting in the doubtful states, but it won't seem undignified. He's one of those men whose dignity comes from the inside and can't be lost."

Burbank was unable to conceal his annoyance--he never could bear praise of another man of his own rank in public life. Also he showed surprise.

"Why, I understood--I had been led to believe--that you--favored his nomination," was his guarded way of telling me he knew I had a hand in bringing it about.

"So I did," replied I. "He was your only chance. He won't be able to get a campaign fund of so much as a quarter of a million, and the best workers of his party will at heart be against him. Simpson would have had--well, Goodrich could and would have got him enough to elect him."

Burbank's eyes twitched. "I think you're prejudiced against Senator Goodrich, Harvey," said he in his gentlest tone. "He is first of all a loyal party man."

"Loyal fiddlesticks!" replied I. "He is agent of the Wall Street crowd--they're his party. He's just the ordinary machine politician, with no more party feeling than--than--" I smiled--"than any other man behind the scenes."

Burbank dodged this by taking it as a jest. He always shed my frank speeches as humor. "Prejudice, prejudice, Harvey!" he said in mild reproof. "We need Goodrich, and--"

"Pardon me," I interrupted. "We do not need him. On the contrary, we must put him out of the party councils. If we don't, he may try to help Scarborough. The Senate's safe, no matter who's elected President; and Goodrich will rely on it to save his crowd. He's a mountain of vanity and the two defeats we've given him have made every atom of that vanity quiver with hatred of us."

"I wish you could have been here when he called," said Burbank. "I am sure you would have changed your mind."

"When does he resign the chairmans.h.i.+p of the national committee?" I asked. "He agreed to plead bad health and resign within two weeks after the convention."

Burbank gave an embarra.s.sed cough. "Don't you think, Harvey," said he, "that, to soothe his vanity, it might be well for us--for you--to let him stay on there--nominally, of course? I know _you_ care nothing for t.i.tles."

Instead of being angered by this attempt to cozen me, by this exhibition of treachery, I felt disgust and pity--how nauseating and how hopeless to try to forward one so blind to his own interests, so easily frightened into surrender to his worst enemies! But I spoke very quietly to him. "The reason you want me to be chairman--for it is you that want and need it, not I--the reason I _must_ be chairman is because the machine throughout the country must know that Goodrich is out and that your friends are in. In what other way can this be accomplished?"

He did not dare try to reply.

I went on: "If he stays at the head of the national committee Scarborough will be elected."

"You are prejudiced, Harvey--"

"Please don't say that again, Governor," I interrupted coldly. "I repeat, Goodrich must give place to me, or Scarborough will be elected."

"You don't mean that you would turn against me?" came from him in a queer voice after a long pause.

"While I was in St. Louis, working to make you President," said I, "you were plotting behind my back, plotting against me and yourself."

"You were at St. Louis aiding in the nomination of the strongest candidate," he retorted, his bitterness distinct though guarded.

"Strongest--yes. But strongest with whom?"

"With the people," he replied.

"Precisely," said I. "But the people are not going to decide this election. The party lines are to be so closely drawn that money will have the deciding vote. The men who organize and direct industry and enterprise--_they_ are going to decide it. And, in spite of Goodrich's traitorous efforts, the opposition has put up the man who can't get a penny from them."

In fact, I had just discovered that Scarborough had instructed Pierson, whom he had made chairman of his campaign, not to take any money from any corporation even if it was offered. But I thought it wiser to keep this from Burbank.

He sat folding a sheet of paper again and again. I let him reason it out. Finally he said: "I see your point, Harvey. But I practically promised Goodrich--practically asked him to remain--"

I waited.

"For the sake of the cause," he went on when he saw he was to get no help from me, "any and all personal sacrifices must be made. If you insist on having Goodrich's head, I will break my promise, and--"

"Pardon me again," I interrupted. My mood would not tolerate twaddle about "the cause" and "promises" from Burbank--Burbank, whose "cause,"

as he had just shown afresh, was himself alone, and who promised everything to everybody and kept only the most advantageous promises after he had made absolutely sure how his advantage lay. "It's all a matter of indifference to me. If you wish to retain Goodrich, do so. He must not be dismissed as a personal favor to me. The favor is to you. I do not permit any man to thimblerig his debts to me into my debts to him."

Burbank seemed deeply moved. He came up to me and took my hand. "It is not like my friend Sayler to use the word indifference in connection with me," he said. And then I realized how completely the nomination had turned his head. For his tone was that of the great man addressing his henchman.

I did not keep my amus.e.m.e.nt out of my eyes. "James," said I, "indifference is precisely the word. I should welcome a chance to withdraw from this campaign. I have been ambitious for power, _you_ want place. If you think the time has come to dissolve partners.h.i.+p, say so--and trade yourself off to Goodrich."

He was angry through and through, not so much at my bluntness as at my having seen into his plot to help himself at my expense--for, not even when I showed it to him, could he see that it was to his interest to destroy Goodrich. Moral coward that he was, the course of conciliation always appealed to him, whether it was wise or not, and the course of courage always frightened him. He bit his lip and dissembled his anger.

Presently he began to pace up and down the room, his head bent, his hands clasped behind him. After perhaps five minutes he paused to say: "You insist on taking the place yourself, Harvey?"

I stood before him and looked down at him. "Your suspicion that I have also a personal reason is well-founded, James," said I. "I wouldn't put myself in a position where I should have to ask as a favor what I now get as a right. If I help you to the presidency, I must be master of the national machine of the party, able to use it with all its power and against _any one_--" here I looked him straight in the eye--"who shall try to build himself up at my expense. Personally, we are friends, and it has been a pleasure to me to help elevate a man I liked. But there is no friends.h.i.+p in affairs, except where friends.h.i.+p and interest point the same way. It is strange that a man of your experience should expect friends.h.i.+p from me at a time when you are showing that you haven't for me even the friends.h.i.+p of enlightened self-interest."

"Your practice is better than your theory, Harvey," said he, putting on an injured, forgiving look and using his chest tones. "A better friend never lived than you, and I know no other man who gets the absolute loyalty you get." He looked at me earnestly. "What has changed you?" he asked. "Why are you so bitter and so--so unlike your even-tempered self?"

I waved his question aside,--I had no mind to show him my uncovered coffin with its tenant who only slept, or to expose to him the feelings which the erect and fearless figure of Scarborough had set to stirring in me. "I'm careful to choose my friends from among those who can serve me and whom I can therefore serve," I said. "And that is the sentimentalism of the wise. I wish us to remain friends--therefore, I must be able to be as useful to you as you can be useful to me."

"Goodrich shall go," was the upshot of his thinking. "I'll telephone him this afternoon. Is my old friend satisfied?"

"You have done what was best for yourself," said I, with wholly good-humored raillery. And we shook hands, and I went.

I was glad to be alone where I could give way to my weariness and disgust; for I had lost all the joy of the combat. The arena of ambition had now become to me a ring where men are devoured by the beast-in-man after hideous battles. I turned from it, heart-sick. "If only I had less intelligence, less insight," I thought, "so that I could cheat myself as Burbank cheats himself. Or, if I had the relentlessness or the supreme egotism, or whatever it is, that enables great men to trample without a qualm, to destroy without pity, to enjoy without remorse."