An American Politician Part 30

If anything can determine the pa.s.sion of love in a woman, it is the great flood of sympathy that overflows her heart when the man she loves is hurt, or overcome in a great cause. When, for a little moment, that which she thinks strongest and bravest and most manly is struck down and wounded and brought low, her love rises up and is strong within her, and makes her more n.o.ble in the devotion of perfect gentleness than a man can ever be.

"Oh, if only he could have won!" Joe said again and again to herself. "If only he could have won, I would have given anything!"

Sybil came back in a few moments, and saw Joe lying down, still white and apparently far from well. She knelt upon the floor by her side and taking her hands, looked affectionately into her face.

"There is something the matter," she said. "I know--you cannot deceive me--there is something serious the matter. Will you tell me, Joe? Can I do anything at all to help you?" Joe smiled faintly, grateful for the sympathy and for the gentle words of her friend.

"No, Sybil dear. It is nothing--there is nothing you can do. Thanks, dearest--I shall be very well in a little while. It is nothing, really. Is the carriage there?"

A few minutes later, Joe and Ronald were again at Miss Schenectady's house. Joe recovered her self-control on the way, and asked Ronald to come in, an invitation which he cheerfully accepted.

John Harrington had spent the day in a state of anxiety which was new to him. Enthusiastic by nature, he was calm by habit, and he was surprised to find his hand unsteady and his brain not capable of the intense application he could usually command. Ten minutes after the results of the election were known at the State House, he received a note from a friend informing him with expressions of hearty sympathy how the day had gone.

The strong physical sense of pain which accompanies all great disappointments, took hold of him, and he fell back in his seat and closed his eyes, his teeth set and his face pale with the suffering, while his broad hands convulsively grasped the heavy oaken arms of his chair.

It may be that this same bodily agony, which is of itself but the gross reflection in our material selves of what the soul is bearing, is a wholesome provision that draws our finer senses away from looking at what might blind them altogether. There are times when a man would go mad if his mind were not detached from its sorrow by the quick, sharp beating of his bodily heart, and by the keen torture of the physical body, that is like the thrusting of a red-hot knife between breastbone and midriff.

The expression "self-control" is daily in the blatant mouths of preachers and moralists, the very cant of emptiness and folly. It means nothing, nor can any play of words or cunning twisting of conception ever give it meaning. For the "self" is the divine, imperishable portion of the eternal G.o.d which is in man. I may control my limbs and the strength that is in them, and I may force under the appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions of this mortal body, but I cannot myself, for it is myself that controls, being of nature G.o.dlike and stronger than all which is material. And although, for an infinitely brief s.p.a.ce of time, I myself may inhabit and give life to this handful of most changeable atoms, I have it in my supreme power and choice to make them act according to my pleasure. If I become enamored of the body and its ways, and of the subtleties of a fleeting bodily intelligence, I have forgotten to control those things; and having forgotten that I have free will given me from heaven to rule what is mine, I am no longer a man, but a beast. But while I, who am an immortal soul, command the perishable engine in which I dwell, I am in truth a man. For the soul is of G.o.d and forever, whereas the body is a thing of to-day that vanishes into dust to-morrow; but the two together are the living man. And thus it is that G.o.d is made man in us every day.

All that which we know by our senses is but an illusion. What is true of its own nature, we can neither see, nor hear, nor feel, nor taste. It is a matter of time, and nothing more, and whatever palpable thing a man can name will inevitably be dissolved into its const.i.tuent parts, that these may again agglomerate into a new illusion for future ages. But that which is subject to no change, nor disintegration, nor reconstruction, is the immortal truth, to attain to a knowledge and understanding of which is to be saved from the endless shifting of the material and illusory universe.

John Harrington lay in his chair alone in his rooms, while the snow whirled against the windows outside and made little drifts on the sills.

The fire had gone out and the bitter storm beat against the cas.e.m.e.nts and howled in the chimney, and the dusk of the night began to mingle with the thick white flakes, and brought upon the solitary man a great gloom and horror of loneliness. It seemed to him that his life was done, and his strength gone from him. He had labored in vain for years, for this end, and he had failed to attain it. It were better to have died than to suffer the ignominy of this defeat. It were better never to have lived at all than to have lived so utterly in vain. One by one the struggles of the past came up to him; each had seemed a triumph when he was in the glory of strength and hope. The splendid aims of a higher and n.o.bler government, built by sheer truth and n.o.bility of purpose upon the ashes and dust of present corruption, the magnificent purity of the ideal State of which he had loved to dream--all that he had thought of and striven after as most worthy of a true man to follow, dwindled now away into a hollow and mocking image, more false than hollowness itself, poorer and of less substance than a juggler's show.

He clasped his hands over his forehead, and tried to think, but it was of no use. Everything was vague, broken, crushed, and shapeless. Faces seemed to rise to his disturbed sight, and he wondered whether he had ever known these people; a ghastly weariness as of death was upon him, and his arms fell heavily by his sides. He groaned aloud, and if in that bitter sigh he could have breathed away his existence he would have gladly done it.

Some one entered the room, struck a match, and lit the gas. It was his servant, or rather the joint servant of two or three of the bachelors who lived in the house, a huge, smooth-faced colored man.

"Oh, excuthe _me_, Mister Harrington, I thought you wath out, Thir.

There's two o' them notes for you."

John roused himself, and took the letters without a word. They were both addressed in feminine handwriting. The one he knew, for it was from Mrs.

Wyndham. The other he did not recognize. He opened Mrs. Wyndham's first.

"DEAR MR. HARRINGTON,--Sam and I are very much put out about it, and sympathize most cordially. We think you might like to come and dine this evening, if you have no other invitation, so I write to say we will be all alone and very glad to see you. Cordially yours,

"JANE WYNDHAM."

"P.S. Don't trouble about the answer."

John read the note through and laid it on the table. Then he turned the other missive over in his fingers, and finally tore open the envelope.

It ran as follows:--

"MY DEAR MR. HARRINGTON,--Please don't be surprised at my writing to you in this way. I was at Mrs. Wyndham's this afternoon and heard all about it, and I must write to tell you that I am very, _very_ sorry. It is too horrible to think how bad and wicked and foolish people are, and how they invariably do the wrong thing. I cannot tell you how sorry we all are, because it is just such men as you who are most needed nowadays, though of course I know nothing about politics here. But I am quite sure that all of them _will live to regret it_, and that you will win in the end. Don't think it foolish of me to write, because I'm so angry that I can't in the least help it, and I think everybody ought to.

"Yours in sincerity,"

"JOSEPHINE THORN."

CHAPTER XVII.

John read Joe's note many times over before he quite realized what it contained. It seemed at first a singular thing that she should have written to him, and he did not understand it. He knew her as an enthusiastic and capricious girl who had sometimes laughed at him, and sometimes treated him coldly; but who, again, had sometimes talked with him as though he were an old friend. He called to mind the interest she had taken in his doings of late, and how she had denounced Vancouver as his enemy, and he thought of the long conversation he had had with her on the ice under the cold moonlight. He thought of many a sympathetic glance she had given when he spoke of his aims and intentions, of many a gentle word spoken in praise of him, and which at the time he had taken merely as so much small, good-natured flattery, such as agreeable people deal out to each other in society without any thought of evil nor any especial meaning of good. All these things came back to him, and he read the little note again. It was a kindly word, nothing more, penned by a wild, good-hearted girl, in the scorn of consequence or social propriety. It was nothing but that.

And yet, there was something more in it all--something not expressed in the abbreviated words and hurriedly-composed sentences, but something that seemed to struggle for expression. John's experience of womankind was limited, for he was no lady's man, and had led a life singularly lacking in woman's love or sentiment, though singularly dependent on the friendship of some woman. Nevertheless he knew that Joe's note breathed the essence of a sympathy wider than that of mere every-day acquaintance, and deeper, perhaps, than that of any friendship he had known. He could not have explained the feeling, nor reasoned upon it, but he knew well enough that when he next met Joe it would be on new terms. She had declared herself his friend in a way no longer mistakable, for she must have followed her first impulse in writing such a note, and the impulse must have been a strong one.

For a while he debated whether to answer the note or not, almost forgetting his troubles in the tumult of new thoughts it had suggested to him. A note, thought he, required an answer, on general principles--but such a note as this would be better answered in person than by any pen and paper. He would call and see Joe, and thank her for it. But, again, he knew he could not see her until the next day, and that seemed a long time to wait. It would not have been long under ordinary circ.u.mstances, but in this case it seemed to him an unreasonable delay. He sat down and took a pen in his fingers.

"Dear Miss Thorn"--he began, and stopped. In America it is more formal to begin without the preliminary "my;" in England the "my" is indispensable, unless people are on familiar terms. John knew this, and reflected that Joe was English. While he was reflecting his eye fell upon a heap of telegraph blanks, and he remembered that he had not given notice of his defeat to the council. He pushed aside the note paper and took a form for a cable dispatch. In a moment Joe was forgotten in the sudden shock that brought his thoughts back to his position. He wrote out a simple message addressed to Z, who was the only one of the three whom he officially knew.

But when he had done that, he fell to thinking about Joe again, and resolved to write the note.

"MY DEAR MISS THORN,--I cannot allow your very friendly words to remain unanswered until tomorrow. It is kind of you to be sorry for the defeat I have suffered, it is kinder still to express your sympathy so directly and so soon. Concerning the circ.u.mstances which brought the contest to such a result, I have nothing to say. It is the privilege of elective bodies to choose as they please, and indeed, that is the object of their existence.

No one has any right to complain of not being elected, for a man who is a candidate knows from the first what he is undertaking, and what manner of men he has to deal with. Personally, I am a man who has fought a fight and has lost it, and however firmly I still believe in the cause which led me to the struggle, I confess that I am disappointed and disheartened at being vanquished. You are good enough to say you believe I shall win in the end; I can only answer that I thank you very heartily indeed for saying so, though I do not think it is likely that any efforts of mine will be attended with success for a long time.

"Believe me, with great grat.i.tude,

"Very sincerely yours,

"JOHN HARRINGTON."

It was a longer note than he had meant to write, in fact it was almost a letter; but he read it over and was convinced he had said what he meant to say, which was always the princ.i.p.al consideration in such matters.

Accordingly the missive was dispatched to its destination. As for Mrs.

Wyndham, John determined to accept her invitation, and to answer it in person by appearing at the dinner-hour. He would not let any one think he was so broken-hearted as to be unable to show himself. He was too strong for that, and he had too much pride in his strength.

He was right in going to Mrs. Wyndham's, for she and her husband were his oldest friends, and he understood well enough what true hearts and what honest loyalty lie sometimes concealed in the bosoms of those brisk, peculiar people, who seem unable to speak seriously for long about the most serious subjects, and whose quaint turns of language seem often so unfit to express any deep feeling. But while he talked with his hosts his own thoughts strayed again and again to Joe, and he wondered what kind of woman she really was. He intended to visit her the next day.

The next day came, however, and yet John did not turn his steps up the hill towards Miss Schenectady's house. It was a cloudless morning after the heavy storm, and the great drifts of snow flashed like heaps of diamonds in the sun. All the air was clear and cold, and the red brick pavements were spotted here and there with white patches left from the shovels of the Irishmen. Sleighs of all sizes were ploughing their way hither and thither, breaking out a track in the heavy ma.s.s that enc.u.mbered the streets. Every one was wrapped in furs, and every one's face was red with the smarting cold.

Joe stayed at home until mid-day, when she went to a luncheon-party of young girls. As usual, they had been sewing for the poor, but Joe thought that she was not depriving the poor people of any very material a.s.sistance by staying away from the more industrious part of the entertainment. The sewing they all did together in a morning did not produce results whereby even the very smallest baby could have been clothed, and the part effected by each separate damsel in this whole was consequently somewhat insignificant. Joe would have stayed at home outright had the weather not been so magnificent, and possibly she thought that she might meet John Harrington on her way to the house of her friend in Dartmouth Street.

Fate, however, was against her, for she had not walked thirty yards down the hill before she was overtaken by Poc.o.c.k Vancouver. He had been standing in one of the semi-circular bay windows of the Somerset Club, and seeing Joe coming down the steep incline, had hurriedly taken his coat and hat and gone out in pursuit of her. Had he suspected in the least how Joe felt toward him, he would have fled to the end of the world rather than meet her.

"Good morning, Miss Thorn," he said, walking rapidly by her side and taking off his hat, "how very early you are to-day."

"It is not early," said Joe, looking at him coldly, "it is nearly one o'clock."

"It would be called early for most people," said Vancouver; "for Mrs.

Wyndham, for instance."

"I am not Mrs. Wyndham," said Joe.

"I am going to see Harrington," remarked Vancouver, who perceived that Joe was not in a good humor. "I am afraid he must be dreadfully cut up about this business."