The Voice of the People Part 56

When Rann had gone, and the door had slammed after him, Galt turned, with a laugh.

"Shake!" he exclaimed, and as Nicholas grasped his hand, added lightly, "My dear friend, you may as well have a quiet conscience, since you'll never have the senatorship."

Nicholas drew his hand away impatiently. "I'm not beaten yet," he said.

"I'll fight and I'll win, or my name's not Burr! Do you think I'm afraid of a sneak like that? Why, he offered me the senatorship as coolly as if he had it in his pocket!"

Galt laughed. "I'm not sure he hasn't; at any rate he's the power of the ring, and the ring's the power of the party."

"Then I'll fight the ring," said Nicholas, "and, if need be, I'll fight the party. So long as right and the people are with me the party may go hang."

"My dear old Nick, history teaches us that the party hangs the people.

By the way, you've done Webb a good turn; Rann is going to fight you fair and foul--mostly foul."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of Rann, or of Webb."

"Or yet of the devil!" added Galt. "When I come to think of it, I never called you timid. But wait a few days and Rann will have this little pa.s.sage reported to his credit. I'll get ahead of him with the story, or I'll find some c.o.c.ked-up account of it circulating in the lobby. It's easier to blacken the best man than to whiten the worst. Well, I'm going. Good day!"

When the door closed, the governor crossed to the window and stood looking down upon the gray drive beneath the leafless trees. The sun was obscured by a sinister cloud that had blotted out all the fugitive brightness of the morning. A fine moisture was in the air, and the atmosphere hung heavily down the naked slopes, where the gra.s.s was colourless and dead. Beyond the gates, the city was lost in a blurred and melancholy distance, from which several indistinct church spires rose and sank in a sea of fog.

But blue and gray were as one to Nicholas. He was not exhilarated by sunshine nor was he depressed by gloom; only the inner forces of his nature had power to quicken or control his moods. His inspiration, like his destiny, lay within, and so long as he maintained his wonted equilibrium of judgment and desire it was, perhaps, impossible that an outside a.s.sault should severely shake the foundations of his life.

Now, while the glow of his anger still lingered in his brain, it was characteristic of the man that he was feeling a pity for Rann's disappointment--for the discomfiture of one whose methods he despised.

In Rann's place, he felt that he should probably have risen to the charge as Rann rose--implacable, unswerving; but he was not in Rann's place, nor could he be so long as personal reward was less to him than personal honour. Yes, he could pity Rann even while he condemned him.

For an instant--a single instant--he had found himself shrinking from the combat, and in the shock of self-contempt which followed he had hurled the shock of his resentment upon the tempter. In that moment of weakness it had seemed to him an easy thing to let one's self go; to yield to a friendly, if distrusted force; to place gratified ambition above the sting of wounded scruples. Was he infallible that he should make his judgment a law, or without reproach that he should set his conscience as an arbiter?

Then in a sudden illumination he had seen the betrayal of his sophistry, and he had stood his ground--for the strong man is not he who is impervious to weaknesses, but he who, scorning his failures, towers over them. He had felt the temptation and he had wavered, but not for long.

In all his periods of storm and stress he had found that his nature rebounded in the end. Disquietude might waste his ardour; but give him time to reorganise his forces, and his moral energy would triumph at the last.

As he looked out upon the great bronze Washington against the sad-coloured sky, he realised, with a pang like the thrust of homesickness, the isolation in which he stood. An instinctive need to justify himself had risen within him, and with it awoke the knowledge that beyond that uncertain abstraction which he called "the People," he was an alien among his kind. Galt was his friend, Tom Ba.s.sett he could count on, a score of others would stand or fall in his service, but where was the single emotion which bound him to humanity? Where the common claim of kinship which belonged to Galt, to Ba.s.sett, and to all mankind? He had known many men, but he knew not one who was not drawn by some connecting link that was apart from patriotism, or ambition, or desire. Then quickly there came to him, not the judge, who was the parent of his intellect, but the withered little woman, who was not even the mother of his body. The only happiness that rose and set in him was that pitiable happiness that could not think his thoughts or speak his speech. It had never occurred to him that he loved Marthy Burr--his kindness had been wholly compa.s.sionate--it was the knowledge that she loved him that now illuminated her image. It was the old blind craving born again, to be first with somebody--for there are moods in which it is better to be adored by a dog than to adore a divinity. He beheld Eugenia's womanhood as "A sword afar off"; but with him was the eternal commonplace--his stepmother's sharp, pained eyes and shrivelled hands.

He had loved Eugenia until there was nothing left; now he wanted to be loved, if by a dog.

He raised his head and smiled upon the bronze Washington and the sad-coloured sky. In the drive below men were pa.s.sing, and from time to time he recognised a figure. He saw only men down there, and the thought came to him that his was a man's world--only in the outside circle might he catch the flutter of a woman's dress. He turned and went back to his desk and his work.

Two days later the papers chronicled without comment his opposition to Rann's bill. He was aware that Rann possessed no uncertain influence with the editors of the "Morning Standard," and he was surprised at the apparent indifference displayed by the curt announcement. Did Rann's resentment hang fire? Or was the press prepared to uphold the governor?

On the morning of the same day a member of the legislature with whom he was slightly acquainted came in to congratulate him upon his stand. His name was Saunders, and he was a man of some ability, whom Nicholas had always regarded as a partisan of Webb.

"I've been fighting that bill this whole session," he said emphatically, "and I'd given up all hope of defeating it when you had the pluck to knock it over. You've made enemies, Governor, but you've made friends, and I'm one of them. Give me the man who dares!" He held out his hand as he rose, and Nicholas responded with a hearty grip. Before the legislature closed he found that Saunders spoke the truth--he had made friends as well as enemies. The inborn Anglo-Saxon love of "the man who dares" was with him--a regard for daring for its own heroic sake. The hour was his, and he braved his shifting popularity as he would brave its final outcome.

II

One afternoon in early May, Dudley Webb came out upon his front steps and paused to light a cigar before descending to the street. A spring of happy promise was unfolding, for overhead the poplars bloomed against an enchanted sky. In the shadow of the church across the way, children were romping, their ecstatic trebles floating like bird-song on the air.

With the cigar between his teeth, Dudley heaved a sudden reminiscent sigh--the sigh of a man who possesses an excellent digestion and a complacent conscience. Things had gone well with him of late--the fact that a trivial domestic interest darkened for the moment his serene horizon proved it to be the solitary cloud of a clear day. The cloud in question had gathered in the shape of no less a person than Mrs. Jane Dudley Webb. She had been on a visit to Richmond, and he had seen her only two hours before safely started on her homeward journey. The truth was that Mrs. Webb and Eugenia had a.s.serted for the past two days an implacable hostility, and Dudley's genial efforts at pacification had resulted merely in diverting a share of the unpleasantness upon his own head. It was a lamentable fact that Eugenia, who was amiable to the point of weakness where members of the Battle family were concerned, found it impossible to harmonise with the elder Mrs. Webb. They had disagreed upon such important subjects as Miss Chris's housekeeping and Dudley's moral welfare, until Eugenia, after an inglorious defeat, had relapsed into silence--a silence broken only upon Dudley's return from the station, when she had unbosomed herself of the declaration that she "couldn't stand his mother, and it was as much as she could do to stand him." Dudley had met this alarming outburst with its logical retort, "Hadn't you better see a doctor, Eugie?" whereupon Eugenia had protested that "if she wasn't fit for an asylum, he needn't thank Mrs. Webb," and had dissolved in tears.

At the moment Dudley had experienced a warm recognition of his generosity in refraining from the use of his own endurance of many Battles, as an ill.u.s.tration of the opposite and virtuous course; but upon later reflection he frankly admitted that the cases were by no means similar. It had not occurred to him, he recalled, to deny that Mrs. Webb was singularly trying, though he wondered, half resentfully, why Eugenia could not be brought to regard that lady's foibles from his own gently humorous point of view. He was not in the least disconcerted by his mother's solicitude as to the condition of his soul, or by the fact that she still felt constrained to allude to the governor of the State as "a person of low antecedents." Personally, he was inclined to admire--and frankly to admit it--the ability which had brought Burr into prominence from a position of evident obscurity, while he regarded Mrs.

Webb's eccentric att.i.tude as a kind of antedated comedy. What he objected to was his wife's inability to grasp the keynote of the situation.

It was pleasant to reflect, however, as he leisurely descended the steps, that he had brought Eugenia round by less heroic measures than an a.s.sault upon her family altars. He was glad to think that he had given her a cup of tea instead.

Crossing slowly to Franklin Street, he hesitated an instant on the corner, and turned finally in the direction of his office. There was a nearer way down town, but he always chose this one because experience had taught him that if pretty women were abroad here they would be found. With the same instinct of enjoyment he might have gone out of his way daily to pa.s.s the window of a florist.

As he walked on in the spring sunshine he held his handsome head erect, blowing the smoke of his cigar in the scented air. He moved leisurely, finding life too good to be wasted in rushing. The soft atmosphere; the fragrance of his fine cigar; the beauty of the women he pa.s.sed--these sufficed to bring the glow of animation to his smooth, full face.

Once he stopped to shake hands with pretty Emma Carr, detaining her by a jest and a laugh--and again he paused to exchange a word with Juliet Galt, who was at her window. It was only when he turned into the business street again that he brought his mind to bear upon less engaging subjects.

Then it was that he remembered he had delivered the evening before his most successful oration. He had spoken to a large audience upon "Personal Morality in Politics," and he had received an appreciation that was prolonged and thundering. When it was over some one had called him a "greater orator than Withers," to add quickly, "and a better Democrat than Burr." He could still see the whimsical smile Burr had turned upon the speaker, and he could still feel his own sense of elation.

Well, as for that matter, he was a better Democrat than Burr--if to be a better Democrat meant to place the party will above his personal opinion. After all, what was a party for if not to unite individual effort and to combine individual differences? If organisation was not worth the sacrifice of personal prejudices it might as well dissolve before the next election day. It was, of course, a pity that a man like Burr should dissent from the views of important politicians, but one might as well talk of a ship without officers as of a party without organised leaders. It was a pity from Burr's point of view, he was willing to admit, but so long as Burr would make trouble it was just as well that the ill wind should blow his own side good--he was honestly glad that it had blown Rann's influence in his direction. He had never felt more hopeful of anything in his life than he now felt of the senatorship. Indeed, he was inclined to think that he might have something very like a "walk over."

"Hold on, Webb," a voice called behind him, and a moment later he was joined by Diggs, who congratulated him upon his speech of the evening before. Webb tossed back the congratulations with a laugh. "Yes, it's a popular subject just now," he said. "Since the negroes have stopped voting in large numbers we're even going in for honest elections."

"Well, I reckon it's as well," admitted Diggs. "We used to have some rampant rascality under the old system, I dare say; it took clever trickery to bring in the white rule sometimes. We have a large negro majority down my way, that obliged us to devise original methods of disposing of it. It was fighting the devil with fire, I suppose; but self-preservation was a law long before Universal Suffrage was heard of.

At any rate, I had my hand in it now and then. Once, I remember, on an election day when every darkey in the neighbourhood had turned out to vote, I hit on the idea that the man who was to carry the returns across the river should pretend to get drunk and upset the boat. It was a pretty scheme and would have worked all right, but, will you believe it, the blamed fool got drunk in earnest, and when the boat upset he was caught under it and drowned." He paused an instant and complacently added: "But we lost those returns, all the same."

Webb threw his cigar stump in the gutter and turned to Diggs with a laugh. "That reminds me," he began, and started a story which he finished on his office steps.

When he went home some hours later he found that Eugenia had regained her high good-humour. She was sitting before the fire in her bedroom, her hair flowing in the hands of Delphy, who had moved up from Kingsborough, and was doing a thriving trade as a shampooer. It was her fortnightly custom to pa.s.s from head to head in a round of the Kingsborough colony, promoting an intimate trend of gossip among her patrons.

As Dudley entered, she was seeking to induce Eugenia to consent to an application from one of the many bottles she carried in an ancient travelling bag, which had long since descended to her from General Battle.

"Lawd, Miss Euginny, dis yer ain' gwineter hu't you. Hit ain' nuttin but ker'sene oil nohow. Miss Sally Burwell des let me souse her haid in it de udder day. Hit'll keep you f'om gittin' gray, sho's I live."

"You shan't touch me with it, Delphy. And you ought to be ashamed--I haven't a gray hair. Have I, Dudley?"

Delphy returned the bottle with a sigh, and applied herself to a vigorous brushing of Eugenia's hair.

"You sho is filled out sence I see you, Ma.r.s.e Dudley," she observed at last.

"Yes, I'm getting fat, Delphy," returned Dudley with a laugh. "It's old age, you know. It's a long time since the days when you spanked me with a heavy hand."

"Go 'way f'om yer, Ma.r.s.e Dudley; you know I ain' never spank you none ter hu't. En you ain' er bit too fat ter fit yo' skin, nohow."

Dudley regarded her with a kindly, patriarchal eye as he straightened himself against the mantel. "Any news from down your way, Delphy?" he inquired with interest. "What's become of Moses? Moses was always a friend of mine. He used to bring me a pocketful of peanuts from every picking he went to."

Delphy shook her head, her huge lips tightening. "He's down wid de purple headache," she replied gloomily, "twel he can't smell de diff'ence between er 'possum en er polecat. Yes, suh, Mose he's moughty low down, en' ter dis yer day he ain' never got over Ma.r.s.e Nick Burr's ous'in' you en Miss Euginny outer de cheer you all oughter had down yonder at de cap'tol. I ain' got much use fer Ma.r.s.e Nick myse'f. He's monst'ous hard on po' folks. I ain' been able to rent out mo'n oner my rooms sence he's been down dar. Dat's right, Miss Euginny, yo' hyar's des es dry es I kin git it."

When Delphy had gone, Dudley leaned down and put his arm about Eugenia as he kissed her. "All right, Eugie?" he asked cheerfully. Eugenia returned his caress with a startled pleasure, looking up at him affectionately, fascinated by the glow which hung about him.

"Oh, I really don't think I could do without you, Dudley," she said quickly.

"Well, it's a good thing you don't have to," responded Dudley as he kissed her again.

It was several days after this that Eugenia came to him one evening as he stood before the fire and laid her cool cheek against his arm.