Adventures in Friendship Part 16

But such fighting is not for me. I should lose half the joy of the battle, and kill off my adversary before I had begun to like him! It wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all.

"It's a warm day," observes my opponent, and I take a sure measure of his fighting form. I rather like the look of his eye.

"I never saw the corn ripening better," I observe, and let him feel a little of the cunning of the arrangement of my forces.

There is much in the tone of the voice, the cut of the words, the turn of a phrase. I can be your servant with a "Yes sir," or your master with a "No sir."

Thus we warm up to one another--a little at a time--we ma.s.s our forces, each sees the white of his adversary's eyes. I can even see my opponent--with some joy--trotting up his reserves, having found the opposition stronger than he at first supposed.

"I hear," said Mr. Caldwell, finally, with a smile intended to be disarming, "that you are opposing my reelection."

Boom! the cannon's opening roar!

"Well," I replied, also smiling, and not to be outdone in the directness of my thrust, "I have told a few of my friends that I thought Mr.

g.a.y.l.o.r.d would represent us better in Congress than you have done."

Boom! the fight is on!

"You are a Republican, aren't you, Mr. Grayson?"

It was the inevitable next stroke. When he found that I was a doubtful follower of him personally, he marshalled the Authority of the Inst.i.tution which he represented.

"I have voted the Republican ticket," I said, "but I confess that recently I have not been able to distinguish Republicans from Democrats--and I've had my doubts," said I, "whether there is any real Republican party left to vote with."

I cannot well describe the expression on his face, nor indeed, now that the battle was on, hors.e.m.e.n, footmen, and big guns, shall I attempt to chronicle every stroke and counter-stroke of that great conflict.

This much is certain: there was something universal and primal about the battle waged this quiet afternoon on my porch between Mr. Caldwell and me; it was the primal struggle between the leader and the follower; between the representative and the represented. And it is a never-ending conflict. When the leader gains a small advantage the pendulum of civilization swings toward aristocracy; and when the follower, beginning to think, beginning to struggle, gains a small advantage, then the pendulum inclines toward democracy.

And always, and always, the leaders tend to forget that they are only servants, and would be masters. "The unending audacity of elected persons!" And always, and always, there must be a following bold enough to p.r.i.c.k the pretensions of the leaders and keep them in their places!

Thus, through the long still afternoon, the battle waged upon my porch.

Harriet came out and met the Honourable Mr. Caldwell, and sat and listened, and presently went in again, without having got half a dozen words into the conversation. And the bees buzzed, and in the meadows the cows began to come out of the shade to feed in the open land.

Gradually, Mr. Caldwell put off his air of condescension; he put off his appeal to party authority; he even stopped arguing the tariff and the railroad question. Gradually, he ceased to be the great man, Favourably Mentioned for Governor, and came down on the ground with me. He moved his chair up closer to mine; he put his hand on my knee. For the first time I began to see what manner of man he was: to find out how much real fight he had in him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE MOVED HIS CHAIR CLOSER TO MINE"]

"You don't understand," he said, "what it means to be down there at Washington in a time like this. Things clear to you are not clear when you have to meet men in the committees and on the floor of the house who have a contrary view from yours and hold to it just as tenaciously as you do to your views."

Well, sir, he gave me quite a new impression of what a Congressman's job was like, of what difficulties and dissensions he had to meet at home, and what compromises he had to accept when he reached Washington.

"Do you know," I said to him, with some enthusiasm, "I am more than ever convinced that farming is good enough for me."

He threw back his head and laughed uproariously, and then moved up still closer.

"The trouble with you, Mr. Grayson," he said, "is that you are looking for a giant intellect to represent you at Washington."

"Yes," I said, "I'm afraid I am."

"Well," he returned, "they don't happen along every day. I'd like to see the House of Representatives full of Washingtons and Jeffersons and Websters and Roosevelts. But there's a Lincoln only once in a century."

He paused and then added with a sort of wry smile:

"And any quant.i.ty of Caldwells!"

That took me! I liked him for it. It was so explanatory. The armour of political artifice, the symbols of political power, had now all dropped away from him, and we sat there together, two plain and friendly human beings, arriving through stress and struggle at a common understanding.

He was not a great leader, not a statesman at all, but plainly a man of determination, with a fair measure of intelligence and sincerity. He had a human desire to stay in Congress, for the life evidently pleased him, and while he would never be crucified as a prophet, I felt--what I had not felt before in regard to him--that he was sincerely anxious to serve the best interests of his const.i.tuents. Added to these qualities he was a man who was loyal to his friends; and not ungenerous to his enemies.

Up to this time he had done most of the talking; but now, having reached a common basis, I leaned forward with some eagerness.

"You won't mind," I said, "if I give you my view--my common country view of the political situation. I am sure I don't understand, and I don't think my neighbours here understand, much about the tariff or the trusts or the railroad question--in detail. We get general impressions--and stick to them like grim death--for we know somehow that we are right. Generally speaking, we here in the country work for what we get----"

"And sometimes put the big apples at the top of the barrel," nodded Mr.

Caldwell.

"And sometimes put too much salt on top of the b.u.t.ter," I added--"all that, but on the whole we get only what we earn by the hard daily work of ploughing and planting and reaping: You admit that."

"I admit it," said Mr. Caldwell.

"And we've got the impression that a good many of the men down in New York and Boston, and elsewhere, through the advantages which the tariff laws, and other laws, are giving them, are getting more than they earn--a lot more. And we feel that laws must be pa.s.sed which will prevent all that."

"Now, I believe that, too," said Mr. Caldwell very earnestly.

"Then we belong to the same party," I said. "I don't know what the name of it is yet, but we both belong to it."

Mr. Caldwell laughed.

"And I'll appoint you," I said, "my agent in Washington to work out the changes in the laws."

"Well, I'll accept the appointment," said Mr. Caldwell--continuing very earnestly, "if you'll trust to my honesty and not expect too much of me all at once."

With that we both sat back in our chairs and looked at each other and laughed with the greatest good humour and common understanding.

"And now," said I, rising quickly, "let's go and get a drink of b.u.t.termilk."

So we walked around the house arm in arm and stopped in the shade of the oak tree which stands near the spring-house. Harriet came out in the whitest of white dresses, carrying a tray with the gla.s.ses, and I opened the door of the spring-house, and felt the cool air on my face and smelt the good smell of b.u.t.ter and milk and cottage cheese, and I pa.s.sed the cool pitcher to Harriet. And so we drank together there in the shade and talked and laughed.

I walked down with Mr. Caldwell to the gate. He took my arm and said to me:

"I'm glad I came out here and had this talk. I feel as though I understood my job better for it."

"Let's organize a new party," I said, "let's begin with two members, you and I, and have only one plank in the platform."

He smiled.

"You'd have to crowd a good deal into that one plank," he said.

"Not at all," I responded.