The Plum Tree Part 25

"That's true of me, Harvey," she said miserably, "but not of you. You don't look a day over forty--you're still a young man, while I--"

She did not need to complete the sentence. I sat on the bed beside her and patted her vaguely. She took my hand and kissed it. And I said--I tried to say it gently, tenderly, sincerely: "People who've been together, as you and I have, see each other always as at first, they say."

She kissed my hand gratefully again. "Forgive me for what I said," she murmured. "You know I didn't think it, really. I've got such a nasty disposition and I felt so down, and--that was the only thing I could find to throw at you."

"Please--_please_!" I protested. "Forgive isn't a word that I'd have the right to use to any one."

"But I must--"

"Now, _I've_ known for years," I went on, "that you were in love with that other man when I asked you to marry me. I might have taunted you with it, might have told you how I've saved him from going to jail for pa.s.sing worthless checks."

This delighted her--this jealousy so long and so carefully hidden. Under cover of her delight I escaped from the witness-stand. And the discovery that evening by Doc Woodruff that my son's ensnarer had a husband living put her in high good humor. "If he'd only come home," said she, adding: "Though, now I feel that he's perfectly safe with her."

"Yes--let them alone," I replied. "He has at least one kind of sense--a sense of honor. And I suspect and hope that he has at bottom common sense too. Let him find her out for himself. Then, he'll be done with her, and her kind, for good."

"I must marry him off as soon as possible," said Carlotta. "I'll look about for some nice, quiet young girl with character and looks and domestic tastes." She laughed a little bitterly. "You men can profit by experience and it ruins us women."

"Unjust," said I, "but injustice and stupidity are the ground plan of life."

We had not long to wait. The lady, as soon as Junior reached the end of his cash, tried to open negotiations. Failing and becoming convinced that he had been cast off by his parents, she threw aside her mask. One straight look into her real countenance was enough for the boy. He fled shuddering--but not to me as I had expected. Instead, he got a place as a clerk in Chicago.

"Why not let him s.h.i.+ft for himself a while?" suggested Woodruff, who couldn't have taken more trouble about the affair if the boy had been his own. "A man never knows whether his feet were made to stand on and walk with, unless he's been down to his uppers."

"I think the boy's got his grandmother in him," said I. "Let's give him a chance."

"He'll make a career for himself yet--like his father's," said Woodruff.

That, with the sincerest enthusiasm. But instinctively I looked at him for signs of sarcasm. And then I wondered how many "successful" men would, in the same circ.u.mstances, have had the same curiously significant instinct.

XXVIII

UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT

It was now less than a month before inauguration. Daily the papers gave probable selections for the high posts under the approaching administration; and, while many of them were attributed to my influence, Roebuck's son as amba.s.sador to Russia was the only one I even approved of. As payments for the services of the plutocracy they were unnecessary and foolishly lavish; as preparations for a renomination and reelection, the two guiding factors in every plan of a President-elect, they were preposterous. They were first steps toward an administration that would make Scarborough's triumph inevitable, in spite of his handicap of idealism.

I sent Woodruff west to find out what Burbank was doing about the places I had pledged--all of them less "honorable" but more lucrative offices which party workers covet. He returned in a few days with the news that, according to the best information he could get through his spies in Burbank's _entourage_, all our pledges would be broken; the Sayler-Burbank machine was to be made over into a Goodrich-Burbank.

I saw that I could not much longer delay action. But I resolved to put it off until the very last minute, meanwhile trying to force Burbank to send for me. My cannonade upon Goodrich in six thousand newspapers, great and small, throughout the West and South, had been reinforced by the bulk of the opposition press. I could not believe it was to be without influence upon the timid Burbank, even though he knew who was back of the attack, and precisely how I was directing it. I was relying--as I afterward learned, not in vain--upon my faithful De Milt to bring to "Cousin James'" attention the outburst of public sentiment against his guide, philosopher and friend, the Wall Street fetch-and-carry.

I had fixed on February fifteenth as the date on which I would telegraph a formal demand for an interview. On February eleventh, he surrendered--he wired, asking me to come. I took a chance; I wired back a polite request to be excused as I had urgent business in Chicago. And twenty-four hours later I pa.s.sed within thirty miles of Rivington on my way to Chicago with Carlotta--we were going to see Junior, hugely proud of himself and his twenty-seven dollars a week. At the Auditorium a telegram waited from Burbank: He hoped I would come as soon as I could; the matters he wished to discuss were most important.

Toward noon of the third day thereafter we were greeting each other--he with an attempt at his old-time cordiality, I without concealment of at least the coldness I felt. But my manner apparently, and probably, escaped his notice. He was now blind and drunk with the incense that had been whirling about him in dense clouds for three months; he was incapable of doubting the bliss of any human being he was gracious to.

He shut me in with him and began confiding the plans he and Goodrich had made--cabinet places, foreign posts, and so forth. His voice, lingering and luxuriating upon the t.i.tles--"my amba.s.sador to his Brittanic Majesty," "my amba.s.sador to the German Emperor," and so on--amused and a little, but only a little, astonished me; I had always known that he was a through-and-through sn.o.b. For nearly an hour I watched his ingenuous, childish delight in bathing himself in himself, the wonderful fountain of all these honors. At last he finished, laid down his list, took off his nose-gla.s.ses. "Well, Harvey, what do you think?" he asked, and waited with sparkling eyes for my enthusiastic approval.

"I see Goodrich drove a hard bargain," said I. "Yet he came on his knees, if you had but realized it."

Burbank's color mounted. "What do you mean, Sayler?" he inquired, the faint beginnings of the insulted G.o.d in his tone and manner.

"You asked my opinion," I answered, "I'm giving it. I don't recall a single name that isn't obviously a Goodrich suggestion. Even the Roebuck appointment--"

"Sayler," he interrupted, in a forbearing tone, "I wish you would not remind me so often of your prejudice against Senator Goodrich. It is unworthy of you. But for my tact--pardon my frankness--your prejudice would have driven him away, and with him a support he controls--"

I showed my amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Don't smile, Sayler," he protested with some anger in his smooth, heavy voice. "You are not the only strong man in the party. And I venture to take advantage of our long friends.h.i.+p to speak plainly to you. I wish to see a united party. One of my reasons for sending for you was to tell you how greatly I am distressed and chagrined by the attacks on Senator Goodrich in our papers."

"Did you have any other reason for sending for me?" said I very quietly.

"That was the princ.i.p.al one," he confessed.

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"What do you mean, Sayler?"

"I thought possibly you might also have wished to tell me how unjust you thought the attacks on me in the eastern papers, and to a.s.sure me that they had only strengthened our friends.h.i.+p."

He was silent.

I rose, threw my overcoat on my arm, took up my hat.

"Wait a moment, please," he said. "I have always found you very impartial in your judgments--your clear judgment has been of the highest usefulness to me many times."

"Thank you," I said. "You are most kind--most generous."

"So," he went on, not dreaming that he might find sarcasm if he searched for it, "I hope you appreciate why I have refrained from seeing you, as I wished. I know, Sayler, your friends.h.i.+p was loyal. I know you did during the campaign what you thought wisest and best. But I feel that you must see now what a grave mistake you made. Don't misunderstand me, Harvey. I do not hold it against you. But you must see, no doubt you do see, that it would not be fair for me, it would not be in keeping with the dignity of the great office with which the people have intrusted me, to seem to lend my approval."

I looked straight at him until his gaze fell. Then I said, my voice even lower than usual: "If you will look at the election figures carefully you will find written upon them a very interesting fact. That fact is: In all the doubtful states--the ones that elected you--Scarborough swept everything where our party has heretofore been strongest; you were elected by carrying districts where our party has always been weakest.

_And in those districts, James, our money was spent--as you well know._"

I waited for this to cut through his enswaddlings of self-complacence, waited until I saw its acid eating into him. Then I went on: "I hope you will never again deceive yourself, or let your enemies deceive you. As to your plans--the plans for Goodrich and his crowd--I have nothing to say. My only concern is to have Woodruff's matters--his pledges--attended to. That I must insist upon."

He lowered his brows in a heavy frown.

"I have your a.s.sent?" I insisted.

"Really, Harvey,"--there was an astonis.h.i.+ng change from the complacent, superior voice of a few minutes before,--"I'll do what I can--but--the responsibilities--the duties of--of my position--"

"You are going to _take_ the office, James," said I. "You can't cheat the men who _gave_ it to you."

He did not answer.

"I pledged my word," I went on. "You gave the promises. I indorsed for you. The debts _must_ be met." Never before had I enjoyed using that ugliest of words.

"You ask me to bring myself into unpopularity with the entire country,"

he pleaded. "Several of the men on your list are ex-convicts. Others are about to be indicted for election frauds. Many are men utterly without character--"