The Plum Tree Part 17

"My men talk him to every incoming delegation. It's well known that he don't want the nomination and has forbidden his friends to vote for him and has pledged them to work against him. Then, too, the bosses and the boys don't like him--to put it mildly. But I think we're making every one feel he's the only man they can put up, with a chance to beat Burbank."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THAT," I REPLIED TO MRS. SANDYS, "IS SENATOR SCARBOROUGH OF INDIANA" p. 226]

My wife and our friends and I dined at the Southern that night. As we were about to leave, the streets began to fill. And presently through the close-packed ma.s.ses came at a walk an open carriage--the storm-center of a roar that almost drowned the music of the four or five bands. The electric lights made the scene bright as day.

"Who is he?" asked the woman at my side--Mrs. Sandys.

She was looking at _the_ man in that carriage--there were four, but there was no mistaking him. He was seated, was giving not the slightest heed to the cheering throngs. His soft black hat was pulled well down over his brows; his handsome profile was stern, his face pale. If that crowd had been hurling curses at him and preparing to tear him limb from limb he would not have looked different. He was smooth-shaven, which made him seem younger than I knew him to be. And over him was the glamour of the world-that-ought-to-be in which he lived and had the power to compel others to live as long as they were under the spell of his personality.

"That," I replied to Mrs. Sandys, "is Senator Scarborough of Indiana."

"What's he so stern about?"

"I'm sure I don't know--perhaps to hide his joy," said I.

But I did know, and my remark was the impulsive fling of envy. He had found out, several weeks before, what a strong undercurrent was running toward him. He was faced by a dilemma--if he did not go to the convention, it would be said that he had stayed away deliberately, and he would be nominated; if he went, to try to prevent his nomination, the enthusiasm of his admirers and followers would give the excuse for forcing the nomination upon him. And as he sat there, with that ominous tumult about him, he was realizing how hard his task was to be.

His companions pushed him a pa.s.sage through the crowds on the sidewalk and in the lobby, and he shut himself away in the upper part of the hotel. When we left, half an hour later, the people were packed before that face of the hotel which displayed the banner of the Indiana delegation, were cheering Scarborough, were clamoring--in vain--for him to show himself.

"But won't he offend them?" asked my wife.

"A crowd loves like a woman," said I. "Indifference only excites it."

"Oh, _I_ never loved that way," protested Mrs. Sandys.

"Then," said my wife, rather sourly I thought, "you and Mr. Sandys have something to live for."

And so we talked no more politics. There may be American women who _really_ like to talk politics, but I never happened to know one with so little sense. It's a pity we men do not imitate our women more closely in one respect. In season and out of season, they never talk anything but business--woman's one business. When other things are being discussed, they listen, or rather, pretend to listen; in reality, their minds are still on their business, and how they shall contrive to bring it back into the conversation with advantage to themselves.

Next day the convention adopted a wishy-washy platform much like Burbank's--if anything, weaker. I saw Goodrich's blight upon it. But the victory cost him dear. That night the delegates realized what a blunder they had made--or thought they realized it after Merriweather and his staff had circulated among them. Few of them had been trusted by Beckett with the secret that, with that platform and with Simpson as the nominee, their party would have the interests behind it, would almost certainly win. They only saw ahead a dull campaign, and no real issue between the parties, and their candidate, if he was Simpson, much the less attractive personality of the two.

The following morning the voting began; and after seven ballots Simpson had thirty-nine votes less than on the first ballot. "It was like a funeral," was the verdict of my disappointed guests that evening. A night of debate and gloom among the politicians and other delegates, and on the opening ballot Merriweather sprung his trap.

The first big doubtful state in the alphabetical list of states is Illinois. When the secretary of the convention called for Illinois'

vote, it was cast solidly for Scarborough.

There was straightway pandemonium. It was half an hour before any one could get a hearing. Then Indiana was called, and Pierson, attorney general of that state and chairman of its delegation, cast its vote as in the other ballots, for Hitchens, its governor. From my box I was watching Scarborough and his immediate friends going from delegation to delegation, and I knew what he was about. When Iowa was called and cast its vote solidly for him I knew he had failed.

"How white he is!" said Mrs. Sandys, who was looking at him through opera-gla.s.ses.

I borrowed them and saw that his gaze was fixed on a box on the other side of the huge auditorium, on a woman in that box--I had only to look at her to see which woman. She was beautiful, of that type of charm which the French sum up in the phrase "the woman of thirty." I have heard crowds bellow too often to be moved by it--though the twenty or thirty thousand gathered under that roof were outdoing the cannonade of any thunderstorm. But that woman's look in response to Scarborough's--there was sympathy and understanding in it, and more, infinitely more. He had been crushed for the moment--and I understood enough of his situation to understand what a blow to all his plans this untimely apparent triumph was. She was showing that she too felt the blow, but she was also sending a message of courage to him--one of those messages that transcend words, like music, like the perfumes of flowers and fields, like that which fills us as we look straight up into a clear night sky. I lowered the gla.s.ses and looked away--I could not bear it.

For the moment I hated him--hating myself for it.

I heard Carlotta asking a woman in the box next ours the name of "the woman with the white plume in the big black hat in the seventh box on the other side."

"Mrs. Scarborough," was the answer.

"Oh, is that _she_?" exclaimed Mrs. Sandys, almost s.n.a.t.c.hing her gla.s.ses from me in her eagerness. "You know who she was--John Dumont's widow--you remember him? She must be an unusual person to have attracted two such men."

But Scarborough was nominated now. He waved aside those who tried to take him up and bear him to the platform. He walked down the aisle alone and ascended amid a tense silence; he stood looking calmly out. His face had lost its whiteness of a few minutes before. As he stood there, big and still, a sort of embodiment of fearlessness, I wondered--and I fancy many others were wondering--whether he was about to refuse the nomination. But an instant's thought drove the wild notion from my mind.

He could not strike that deadly blow at his party.

"Fellow delegates," said he--a clearer, more musical voice than his I have never heard--"I thank you for this honor. As you know, I opposed the platform you saw fit to adopt. I have nothing to retract. I do not like it. But, after all, a candidate must be his own platform. And I bring my public record as proof of my pledge--that--" he paused and the silence was tremendous. He went on, each word distinct and by itself--"if I am elected"--a long pause--"I shall obey the Const.i.tution"--another long pause--"I shall enforce the laws!"

He was descending to the aisle before the silence was broken--a feeble, rippling applause, significant of disappointment at what seemed an anti-climax. He had merely repeated in condensed form the oath of office which a President takes at his inauguration. But somehow--no doubt, it was the magic of his voice and his manner and superb presence--those simple words kept on ringing; and all at once--full half a minute must have elapsed, a long time in such circ.u.mstances--all at once the enormous meaning of the two phrases boomed into the brains of those thousands: If this man is elected, there will be a President without fear or favor, and he will really obey the Const.i.tution, will really enforce the laws! That little speech, though only a repet.i.tion of an oath embodied in our century-old supreme law, was a firebrand to light the torch of revolution, of revolution back toward what the republic used to be before differences of wealth divided its people into upper, middle and lower cla.s.ses, before enthroned corporate combinations made equality before the law a mockery, before the development of our vast material resources restored to the intelligent and energetic few their power over the careless and purposeless many.

As the mult.i.tude realized his meaning,--I doubt if many times in all history such a sight and sound has burst upon mortal ears and eyes. For the moment I was daunted; it was impossible not to think that here was the whole people, not to feel that Scarborough had been chosen President and was about to fulfil his pledge. Daunted, yet thrilled too. For, at bottom, are we not all pa.s.sionate dreamers of abstract right and justice?

Then I remembered; and I said to myself, "He has defied the interests.

David has gone out against Goliath--but the Davids do not win nowadays.

I can elect Burbank."

But where was the elation that thought would have set to swelling in the _me_ of less than two weeks before? And then I began clearly to see that, for me at least, the prize, to be prized, must be fairly won from start to goal; and to be enjoyed, must gladden eyes that would in turn gladden me with the approval and sympathy which only a woman can give and without which a man is alone and indeed forlorn.

XX

PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS

From St. Louis I went direct to Burbank.

His heart had been set upon a grand speech-making tour. He was fond of wandering about, showing himself to cheering crowds; and he had a deep, and by no means unwarranted, confidence in his platform magnetism. At first I had been inclined to give him his way. But the more I considered the matter, the stronger seemed to become the force of the objections--it takes a far bigger man than was Burbank at that stage of his growth not to be cheapened by "steeple-chasing for votes"; also, the coming of the candidate causes jealousy and heart-burnings over matters of precedence, reception and entertainment among the local celebrities, and so he often leaves the party lukewarm where he found it enthusiastic. Further, it uses up local campaign money that ought to be spent in hiring workers at the polls, which is the polite phrase for vote-buying as "retaining-fee" is the polite phrase for bribe.

I decided against the tour and for the highly expensive but always admirable and profitable "pilgrimage plan".

Burbank's own home was at Rivington, and I should have had him visited there, had it not been on a single-track branch-railway which could not handle without danger and discomfort the scores of thousands we were planning to carry to and from him almost daily. So, it was given out that he purposed as far as possible to withdraw from the strife of the campaign and to await the results in the dignified calm in which he wished the voters to determine it. He took--after Woodruff had carefully selected it--a "retired" house "in the country."

And it was in the open country. A farm garden adjoined it on the one side, a wheat field on the other, a large orchard to the rear. The broad meadow in front gave plenty of room for delegations visiting the "standard bearer of the party of patriotism" in his "rural seclusion,"

to hear his simple, spontaneous words of welcome. But for all the remote aspect of the place, it was only five minutes' drive and ten minutes'

walk from a station through which four big railroads pa.s.sed. One of the out-buildings was changed into a telegraph office from which accounts of the enthusiasm of the delegations and of his speeches could be sent to the whole country. On his desk in his little study stood a private-wire telephone that, without danger of leakage, would put him in direct communication either with my study at Fredonia or with Doc Woodruff's privatest private room in the party national headquarters at Chicago.

Thus, our statesman, though he seemed to be aloof, was in the very thick of the fray; and the tens of thousands of his fellow citizens, though they seemed to come almost on their own invitation inspired by uncontrollable enthusiasm for the great statesman, were in fact free excursionists--and a very troublesome, critical, expensive lot they were. But--the public was impressed. It sits in its seat in the theater of action and believes that the play is real, and ignores and forgets the fact that there is a behind-the-scenes.

The party distributed from various centers tons of "literature." And in addition to meetings arranged by state and local committees, a series of huge demonstrations was held in the cities of every doubtful state.

Besides the party's regular speakers, we hired as many "independent"

orators as we could. But all these other branches of the public side of the campaign were subsidiary to the work at the "retreat." It might be called the headquarters of the rank and file of the party--those millions of "principle" voters and workers who were for Burbank because he was the standard-bearer of their party. No money, no bribes of patronage have to be given to them; but it costs several millions to raise that ma.s.s to the pitch of hot enthusiasm which will make each individual in it certain to go to the polls on election day and take his neighbors, instead of staying at home and hoping the party won't lose.

Burbank's work was, therefore, highly important. But the seat of the real campaign was Woodruff's privatest private room in the Chicago headquarters. For, there were laid and were put in the way of execution the plans for acquiring those elements that, in the doubtful states, have the balance of power between the two opposing and about evenly matched ma.s.ses of "principle" voters. I just now recall a talk I had with my wife, about that time. She took no interest in politics and rarely spoke of political matters--and both of us discouraged political talk before the children. One day she said to me: "This campaign of yours and Mr. Burbank's must be costing an awful lot of money."

"A good deal," said I.

"Several millions?"

"This is a big country, and you can't stir it up politically for nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Who gives the money?" she persisted.