An American Politician Part 33

"In other words," said Joe, "he is your ideal. He is what you hope to be at his age. He must be very old."

"Yes, he is old. As for his representing my ideal, I think he approaches more nearly to it than any man alive. But you would probably not like him."

"Why?"

"He belongs to a cla.s.s of men whom old-world people especially dislike,"

answered John. "He does not believe in any monarchy, aristocracy, or distinction of birth. He looks upon t.i.tles as a decaying inst.i.tution of barbarous ages, and he confidently a.s.serts that in two or three generations the republic will be the only form of social contract known amongst the inhabitants of the civilized world."

John was watching Joe while he spoke. He was merely talking because it seemed necessary, and he saw that in spite of her a.s.sumed calm she was still greatly agitated. She seemed anxious, however, to continue the conversation.

"It is absurd," said she, "to say that all men are born equal."

"Everything depends on what you mean by the word 'equal.' I mean by it that all men are born with an equal claim to a share in all the essential rights of free citizenship. When a man demands more than that, he is infringing on the rights of others; when he is content with less, he is allowing himself to be robbed."

"But who is to decide just how much belongs to each man?" asked Joe, leaning back wearily against the cushions. She wished now that she had allowed him to call her aunt. It was a fearful strain on her faculties to continue talking upon general subjects and listening to John Harrington's calm, almost indifferent tones.

"The majority decides that," said John.

"But a majority has just decided that you are not to be senator," said Joe. "According to you they were right, were they not?"

"It is necessary that the majority should be free," said John, "and that they should judge of themselves, each man according to his honest belief.

Majorities with us are very frequently produced by a handful of dishonest men, who can turn the scale on either side, to suit their private ends. It is the aim we set before us to protect the freedom of majorities. That is the true doctrine of a republic."

"And for that aim," said Joe, slowly, "you would sacrifice everything?"

"Yes, indeed we would," said John, gravely. "For that end we will sacrifice all that we have to give--the care for personal satisfaction, the hope of personal distinction, the peace of a home and the love of a wife. We seek neither distinction nor satisfaction, and we renounce all ties that could hamper our strength or interfere with the persevering and undivided attention we try to give to our work."

"That is a magnificent programme," said Joe, somewhat incredulously. "Do you not think it is possible sometimes to aim too high? You say 'we seek,'

'we try,' as though there were several of you, or at least, some one besides yourself. Do you believe that such ideas as you tell me of are really and seriously held by any body of men?"

Nothing had seemed too high to Josephine an hour earlier, nothing too exalted, nothing so n.o.ble but that John Harrington might do it, then and there. But a sudden change had come over her, the deadly cold phase of half melancholy unbelief that often follows close upon an unexpected disappointment, so that she looked with distaste on anything that seemed so full of the enthusiasm she had lost. The tears that bad risen so pa.s.sionately to her dimmed eyes were suddenly frozen, and seemed to flow back with chilling force to her heart. She coldly asked herself whether she were mad, that she could have suffered thus for such a man, even ever so briefly. He was a man, she said, who loved an unattainable, fanatic idea in the first place, and who dearly loved himself as well for his own fanaticism's sake. He was a man in whom the heart was crushed, even annihilated, by his intellect, which he valued far too highly, and by his vanity, which he dignified into a philosophy of self-sacrifice. He was aiming at what no man can reach, and though he knew his object to be beyond human grasp, he desired all possible credit for having madly dreamed of anything so high. In the sudden revulsion of her strong pa.s.sion, she almost hated him, she almost felt the power to refute his theories, to destroy his edifice of fantastic morality, and finally to show him that he was a fool among men, and doubly a fool, because he was not even happy in his own folly.

Joe vaguely felt all this, and with it she felt a sense of shame at having so nearly broken down at the news that he was going away. He had thought she was ill; most a.s.suredly he could not have guessed the cause of what he had seen; but nevertheless she had suffered a keen pain, and the tears had come to her eyes. She did not understand it. He might leave her now, if he pleased, and she would not care; indeed, it would be rather a relief if he would go. She no longer asked what she was to him, she simply reflected that, after all was said, he was nothing to her. She felt a quick antagonism to his ideas, to his words, and to himself, and she was willing to show it. She asked him incredulously whether his ideas were really held by others.

"It makes little difference," answered John, "whether they are many or few who think as I do, and I cannot tell how many there may be. The truth is not made truth because many people believe it. The world went round, as Galileo knew, although he alone stood up and said it in the face of mankind, who scoffed at him for his pains."

"In other words, you occupy the position of Galileo," suggested Joe, calmly.

"Not I," said John; "but there are men, and there have been men, in our country who know truths as great as any he discovered, and who have spent their lives in proclaiming them. I _know_ that they are right, and that I am right, and that, however we may fail, others will succeed at last. I know that, come what may, honor and truth and justice will win the day in the end!" His gray eyes glittered as he spoke, and his broad white hands clasped nervously together in his enthusiasm. He was depressed and heartsick at his failure, but it needed only one word of opposition to rouse the strong main thought of his life into the most active expression.

But Joe sat coldly by, her whole nature seemingly changed in the few minutes that had pa.s.sed.

"And all this will be brought about by the measures you advocated the other day," said she with a little laugh. "A civil service, a little tariff reform--that is enough to inaugurate the reign of honor, truth, and justice?"

John turned his keen eyes upon hers. He had begun talking because she had required it of him, and he had been roused by the subject. He remembered the sympathy she had given him, and he was annoyed at her caprice.

"Such things are the mere pa.s.sing needs of a time," he said. "The truth, justice, and honor, at which you are pleased to be amused, would insure the execution at all times of what is right and needful. Without a foundation composed of the said truth, justice, and honor, to get what is right and needful is often a matter so stupendous that the half of a nation's blood is drained in accomplishing the task, if even it is accomplished after all. I see nothing to laugh at."

Indeed, Joe was only smiling faintly, but John was so deeply impressed and penetrated by the absolute truth of what he was saying, that he had altogether ceased to make any allowances for Joe's caprice of mood or for the disturbance in her manner that he had so lately witnessed. He was beginning to be angry, and she had never seen him in such a mood.

"The world would be a very nice tiresome place to live in," she said, "if every one always did exactly what is absolutely right. I should not like to live among people who would be always so entirely padded and lined with goodness as they must be in your ideal republic."

"It is a favorite and characteristic notion of modern society to a.s.sociate goodness with dullness, and consequently, I suppose, to connect badness with all that is gay, interesting, and diverting. There is nothing more perverted, absurd, and contemptible than that notion in the whole history of the world."

John was not gentle with an idea when he despised it, and the adjectives fell in his clear utterance like the blows of a sledge-hammer. But as the idea he was abusing had been suggested by Joe, she resented the strong language.

"I am flattered that you should call anything I say by such bad names,"

she said. "I am not good at arguing and that sort of thing. If I were I think I could answer you very easily. Will you please take me back to my aunt?" She rose in a somewhat stately fashion.

John was suddenly aware that he had talked too much and too strongly, and he was very sorry to have displeased her. She had always let him talk as he pleased, especially of late, and she had almost invariably agreed with him in everything he said, so that he had acquired too much confidence. At all events, that was the way he explained to himself the present difficulty.

"Please forgive me, Miss Thorn," he said humbly, as he gave her his arm to leave the room. "I am a very sanguine person, and I often talk great nonsense. Please do not be angry." Joe paused just as they reached the door.

"Angry? I am not angry," she said with sudden gentleness. "Besides, you know, this is--you are really going away?"

"I think so," said John.

"Then, if you do," she said with some hesitation--"if you do, this is good-by, is it not?"

"Yes, I am afraid it is," said John; "but not for long."

"Not for long, perhaps," she answered; "but I would not like you to think I was angry the very last time I saw you."

"No, indeed. I should be very sorry if you were. But you are not?"

"No. Well then"--she held out her hand--"Good-by, then." She had almost hated him a few minutes ago. Half an hour earlier she had loved him. Now her voice faltered a little, but her face was calm.

John took the proffered hand and grasped it warmly. With all her caprice, and despite the strange changes of her manner toward him, she had been a good friend in a bad time during the last days, and he was more sorry to leave her than he would himself have believed.

"Good-by," he said, "and thank you once more, with all my heart, for your friendship and kindness." Their hands remained clasped for a moment; then she took his arm again, and he led her out of the dimly-lighted sitting-room back among the brilliant dancers and the noise and the music and the whirling crowd.

CHAPTER XIX.

A change has come over Boston in four months, since John Harrington and Josephine Thorn parted. The breath of the spring has been busy everywhere, and the haze of the hot summer is ripening the buds that the spring has brought out. The trees on the Common are thick and heavy with foliage, the Public Garden is a carpet of bright flowers, and on the walls of Beacon Street the great creepers have burst into blossom and are stretching long shoots over the brown stone and the iron balconies. There is a smell of violets and flowers in the warm air, and down on the little pond the swan-shaped boats are paddling about with their cargoes of merry children and calico nursery-maids, while the Irish boys look on from the banks and throw pebbles when the policemen are not looking, wishing they had the spare coin necessary to embark for a ten minutes' voyage on the mimic sea.

Unfamiliar figures wander through the streets of the West End, and more than half the houses show by the boarded windows and doors that the owners are out of town.

The migration of the "tax-dodgers" took place on the last day of April; they will return on the second day of December, having spent just six months and one day in their country places, whereby they have shifted the paying of a large proportion of their taxes to more economical regions. It is a very equitable arrangement, for it is only the rich man who can save money in this way, while his poorer neighbor, who has no country-seat to which he may escape, must pay to the uttermost farthing. The system stimulates the impecunious to become wealthy and helps the rich to become richer. It is, therefore, perfectly good and just.

But Boston is more beautiful in the absence of the "tax-dodger" than at any other season. There is a stillness and a peace over the fair city that one may long for in vain during the winter. Business indeed goes on without interruption, but the habitation of the great men of business knows them not. They come up from their cool bowers by the sea, in special trains, in steamers, and in yachts, every morning, and early in the afternoon they go back, so that all day long the broad streets at the west are quiet and deserted, and seem to be basking in the sunshine to recover from the combined strain of the bitter winter and the unceasing gayety that accompanies it.

In the warm June weather Miss Schenectady and Joe still linger in town.

The old lady has no new-fangled notions about taxes, and though she is rich and has a pretty place near Newport, she will not go there until she is ready, no, not for all the tax-gatherers in Ma.s.sachusetts. As for Joe, she does not want to go away. Urgent letters come by every mail entreating her to return to England in time for a taste of the season in London, but they lie unanswered on her table, and often she does not read more than half of what they contain. The books and the letters acc.u.mulate in her room, and she takes no thought whether she reads them or not, for the time is weary on her hands and she only wishes it gone, no matter how.

Nevertheless she will not go home, and she even begs her aunt not to leave Boston yet.