The Plum Tree Part 29

He reflected before answering. "That depends," said he. "If _you_ are going to stay on in control in this state, I shall stick to public life, for I believe you will let me have what I call a career. But, if you are going to get out and leave me at the mercy of those fellows, I certainly shan't stay where they can fool the people into turning on me."

"I shall stay on," said I; "and after me, there will be Woodruff--unless, of course, there's some sort of cataclysm."

"A man must take chances," he answered. "I'll take that chance."

We called Woodruff into the consultation. Although he was not a lawyer, he had a talent for taking a situation by the head and tail and stretching it out and holding it so that every crease and wrinkle in it could be seen. And this made him valuable at any conference.

In January we had our big battery loaded, aimed and primed. We unmasked it, and Ferguson fired. I had expected the other side to act stupidly, but I had not hoped for such stupidity as they exhibited. Burbank's year of bathing in presidential flatteries and of fawning on and cringing to the multi-millionaires and their agents hedging him around, had so wrought upon him that he had wholly lost his point of view. And he let his Attorney General pooh-pooh the proceedings,--this in face of the great popular excitement and enthusiasm. It was not until Roebuck's lawyers got far enough into the case against him to see his danger that the administration stopped flying in the teeth of the cyclone of public sentiment and began to pretend enthusiasm, while secretly plotting the mistrial of Ferguson's cases. And not until the United States Attorney General--a vain Goodrich creature whose talents were crippled by his contempt for "the rabble" and "demagoguery"--not until he had it forced upon him that Ferguson could not be counter-mined, did they begin to treat with me for peace.

I shall not retail the negotiations. The upshot was that I let the administration drop the criminal cases against Roebuck in return for the restoration of my power in the national committee of the party to the smallest ejected postmaster in the farthest state. The civil action was pressed by Ferguson with all his skill as a lawyer and a popularity-seeking politician; and he won triumphantly in the Supreme Court--the lower Federal Court with its Power Trust judge had added to his triumph by deciding against him.

Roebuck was, therefore, under the necessity of going through the customary forms of outward obedience to the Supreme Court's order to him to dissolve. He had to get at huge expense, and to carry out at huger, a plan of reorganization. Though he was glad enough to escape thus lightly, he dissembled his content and grumbled so loudly that Burbank's fears were roused and arrangements were made to placate him. The scheme adopted was, I believe, suggested by Vice-President Howard, as shrewd and cynical a rascal as ever lived in the mire without getting s.m.u.tch or splash upon his fine linen of respectability.

For several years there had been a strong popular demand for a revision of the tariff. The party had promised to yield, but had put off redeeming its promise. Now, there arose a necessity for revising the tariff in the interest of "the interests." Some of the schedules were too low; others protected articles which the interests wanted as free raw materials; a few could be abolished without offending any large interests and with the effect of punis.h.i.+ng some small ones that had been n.i.g.g.ard in contributing to the "campaign fund" which maintains the standing army of political workers and augments it whenever a battle is on. Accordingly, a revision of the tariff was in progress. To soothe Roebuck, they gave him a tariff schedule that would enable him to collect each year more than the total of the extraordinary expenses to which I had put him. Roebuck "forgave" me; and I really forgave Burbank.

But I washed my hands of his administration. Not only did I actually stand aloof but also I disa.s.sociated myself from it in the public mind.

When the crash should come, as come it must with such men at the helm, I wished to be in a position successfully to take full charge for the work of repair.

x.x.xII

A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR

Not until late in the spring of his second year did Burbank find a trace of gall in his wine.

From the night of his election parasites and plunderers and agents of plunderers had imprisoned him in the usual presidential fool's paradise.

The organs of the interests and their Congressional henchmen praised everything he did; I and my group of Congressmen and my newspapers, as loyal partizans, bent first of all upon regularity, were silent where we did not praise also. But the second year of a President's first term is the beginning of frank, if guarded, criticism of him from his own side.

For it is practically his last year of venturing to exercise any real official power. The selection of delegates to the party's national convention, to which a President must submit himself for leave to re-submit himself to the people, is well under way before the end of his third year; and direct and active preparations for it must begin long in advance.

Late in that second spring Burbank made a tour of the country, to give the people the pleasure of seeing their great man, to give himself the pleasure of their admiration, and to help on the Congressional campaign, the result of which would be the preliminary popular verdict upon his administration. The thinness of the crowds, the feebleness of the enthusiasm, the newspaper sneers and flings at that oratory once hailed as a model of dignity and eloquence--even he could not accept the smooth explanations of his flatterers. And in November came the party's memorable overwhelming defeat--reducing our majority in the Senate from twenty to six, and subst.i.tuting for our majority of ninety-three in the House an opposition majority of sixty-seven.

I talked with him early in January and was amazed that, while he appreciated the public anger against the party, he still believed himself personally popular. "There is a lull in prosperity," said he, "and the people are peevish." Soon, however, by a sort of endosmosis to which the densest vanity is somewhat subject, the truth began to seep through and to penetrate into him.

He became friendlier to me, solicitous toward spring--but he clung none the less tightly to Goodrich. The full awakening came in his third summer when the press and the politicians of the party began openly to discuss the next year's nomination and to speak of him as if he were out of the running. He was spending the hot months on the Jersey coast, the flatterers still swarming about him and still a.s.siduous, but their flatteries falling upon ever deafer ears as his mind rivetted upon the hair-suspended sword. In early September he invited me to visit him--my first invitation of that kind in two years and a half. We had three interviews before he could nerve himself to brush aside the barriers between him and me.

"I am about to get together my friends with a view to next year," said he through an uneasy smile. "What do you think of the prospects?"

"What do your friends say?" I asked.

"Oh, of course, I am a.s.sured of a renomination--" He paused, and his look at me made the confident affirmation a dubious question.

"Yes?" said I.

"And--don't you think my record has made me strong?" he went on nervously.

"Strong--with whom?" said I.

He was silent. Finally he laid his hand on my knee--we were taking the air on the ocean drive. "Harvey," he said, "I can count on you?"

I shook my head. "I shall take no part in the next campaign," I said. "I shall resign the chairmans.h.i.+p."

"But I have selected you as my chairman. I have insisted on you. I can't trust any one else. I need others, I use others, but I trust only you."

I shook my head. "I shall resign," I repeated. "What's the matter--won't Goodrich take the place?"

He looked away. "I have not seriously thought of any one but you," he said reproachfully.

I happened to know that the place had been offered to Goodrich and that he had declined it, protesting that I, a Western man, must not be disturbed when the West was vital to the party's success. "My resolution is fixed," said I.

A long silence, then: "Sayler, have you heard anything of an attempt to defeat me for the nomination?"

"Goodrich has decided to nominate Governor Ridgeway of Illinois," said I.

He blanched and had to moisten his dry, wrinkled lips several times before he could speak. "A report of that nature reached me last Thursday," he went on. "For some time I have been perplexed by the Ridgeway talk in many of our organs. I have questioned Goodrich about it--and--I must say--his explanations are not--not wholly satisfactory."

I glanced at him and had instantly to glance away, so plainly was I showing my pity. He was not hiding himself from me now. He looked old and tired and sick--not mere sickness of body, but that mortal sickness of the mind and heart which kills a man, often years before his body dies.

"I have come to the conclusion that you were right about Goodrich, Sayler. I am glad that I took your advice and never trusted him. I think you and I together will be too strong for him."

"You are going to seek a renomination?" I asked.

He looked at me in genuine astonishment. "It is impossible that the party should refuse me," he said.

I was silent.

"Be frank with me, Sayler," he exclaimed at last. "Be frank. Be my friend, your own old self."

"As frank and as friendly as you have been?" said I, rather to remind myself than to reproach him. For I was afraid of the reviving feeling of former years--the liking for his personal charms and virtues, the forbearance toward that weakness which he could no more change than he could change the color of his eyes. His moral descent had put no clear markings upon his pose. On the contrary, he had grown in dignity through the custom of deference. The people pa.s.sing us looked admiration at him, had a new sense of the elevation of the presidential office. Often it takes the trained and searching eye to detect in the majestic facade the evidences that the palace has degenerated into a rookery for pariahs.

"I have done what I thought for the best," he answered, never more direct and manly in manner. "I have always been afraid, been on guard, lest my personal fondness for you should betray me into yielding to you when I ought not. Perhaps I have erred at times, have leaned backward in my anxiety to be fair. But I had and have no fear of your not understanding. Our friends.h.i.+p is too long established, too well-founded." And I do not doubt that he believed himself; the capacity for self-deception is rarely short of the demands upon it.

"It's unfortunate--" I began. I was going to say it was unfortunate that no such anxieties had ever restrained him from yielding to Goodrich. But I hadn't the heart. Instead, I finished my sentence with: "However, it's idle to hold a post-mortem on this case. The cause of death is unimportant. The fact of it is sufficient. No doubt you did the best you could, Mr. President."

My manner was that of finality. It forbade further discussion. He abandoned the finesse of negotiation.

"Harvey, I ask you, as a personal favor, to help me through this crisis," he said. "I ask you, my friend and my dead wife's friend."

No depth too low, no sentiment too sacred! Anger whirled up in me against this miserable, short-sighted self-seeker who had brought to a climax of spoliation my plans to guide the strong in developing the resources of the country. And I turned upon him, intending to overwhelm him with the truth about his treachery, about his attempts to destroy me. For I was now safe from his and Goodrich's vengeance--they had destroyed themselves with the people and with the party. But a glance at him and--how could I strike a man stretched in agony upon his deathbed?

"If I could help you, I would," said I.

"You--you and I together can get a convention that will nominate me," he urged, hope and fear jostling each other to look pleadingly at me from his eyes.

"Possibly," I said. "But--of what use would that be?"

He sank back in the carriage, yellow-white and with trembling hands and eyelids. "Then you don't think I could be elected?" he asked in a broken, breathless way.