VII
THE SENTIMENTALISTS
Kent's time from Alameda Square to the capitol was the quickest a floggedcab-horse could make, but he might have spared the horse and saved thedouble fee. On the broad steps of the south portico he, uprushing three ata bound, met the advance guard of the gallery contingent, down-coming. TheHouse had adjourned.
"One minute, Harnwicke!" he gasped, falling upon the first member of thecorporations' lobby he could identify in the throng. "What's been done?"
"They've taken a fall out of us," was the brusk reply. "House BillTwenty-nine was reported by the committee on judiciary and rushed throughafter you left. Somebody engineered it to the paring of a fingernail: barequorum to act; members who might have filibustered weeded out, on onepretext or another, to a man; pages all excused, and nobody here with theprivilege of the floor. It was as neat a piece of gag-work as I ever hopeto see if I live to be a hundred."
Kent faced about and joined the townward dispersal with his informant.
"Well, I suppose that settles it definitely; at least, until we can testits constitutionality in the courts," he said.
Harnwicke thought not, being of the opinion that the vested interestswould never say die until they were quite dead. As assistant counsel forthe Overland Short Line, he was in some sense the dean of the corps ofobservation, and could speak with authority.
"There is one chance left for us this side of the courts," he went on;"and now I think of it, you are the man to say how much of a chance it is.The bill still lacks the governor's signature."
Kent shook his head.
"It is his own measure. I have proof positive that he and Meigs andHendricks drafted it. And all this fine-haired engineering to-night washis, or Meigs'."
"Of course; we all know that. But we don't know the particular object yet.Do they need the new law in their business as a source of revenue? Or dothey want to be hired to kill it? In other words, does Bucks want a lumpsum for a veto? You know the man better than any of us."
"By Jove!" said Kent. "Do you mean to say you would buy the governor of astate?"
Harnwicke turned a cold eye on his companion as they strode along. He wasof the square-set, plain-spoken, aggressive type--a finished product ofthe modern school of business lawyers.
"I don't understand that you are raising the question of ethics at thisstage of the game, do I?" he remarked.
Kent fired up a little.
"And if I am?" he retorted.
"I should say you had missed your calling. It is baldly a question ofbusiness--or rather of self-preservation. We needn't mince matters amongourselves. If Bucks is for sale, we buy him."
Kent shrugged.
"There isn't any doubt about his purchasability. But I confess I don'tquite see how you will go about it."
"Never mind that part of it; just leave the ways and means with those ofus who have riper experience--and fewer hamperings, perhaps--than youhave. Your share in it is to tell us how big a bid we must make. As I say,you know the man."
David Kent was silent for the striding of half a square. The New Englandconscience dies hard, and while it lives it is given to drawing sharplines on all the boundaries of culpability. Kent ended by taking thematter in debate violently out of the domain of ethics and standing itupon the ground of expediency.
"It will cost too much. You would have to bid high--not to overcome hisscruples, for he has none; but to satisfy his greed--which is abnormal.And, besides, he has his pose to defend. If he can see his way clear to aharvest of extortions under the law, he will probably turn you down--andwill make it hot for you later on in the name of outraged virtue."
Harnwicke's laugh was cynical.
"He and his little clique don't own the earth in fee simple. Perhaps weshall be able to make them grasp that idea before we are through withthem. We have had this fight on in other states. Would ten thousand belikely to satisfy him?"
"No," said Kent. "If you add another cipher, it might."
"A hundred thousand is a pot of money. I take it for granted the WesternPacific will stand its pro-rate?"
The New England conscience bucked again, and Kent made his first openprotest against the methods of the demoralizers.
"I am not in a position to say: I should advise against it. Unofficially,I think I can speak for Loring and the Boston people. We are not moresaintly than other folk, perhaps; and we are not in the railroad businessfor health or pleasure. But I fancy the Advisory Board would draw the lineat bribing a governor--at any rate, I hope it would."
"Rot!" said Harnwicke. And then: "You'll reap the benefits with otherinterstate interests; you'll have to come in."
Kent hesitated, but not now on the ground of the principle to be defended.
"That brings in a question which I am not competent to decide. Loring isyour man. You will call a conference of the 'powers,' I take it?"
"It is already called. I sent Atherton out to notify everybody as soon asthe trap was sprung in the House. We meet in the ordinary at the Camelot.You'll be there?"
"A little later--if Loring wants me. I have some telephoning to do beforethis thing gets on the wires."
They parted at the entrance to the Camelot Club, and Kent went two squaresfarther on to the Wellington. Ormsby had not yet returned, and Kent wentto the telephone and called up the Brentwood apartments. It was Penelopethat answered.
"Well, I think you owe it," she began, as soon as he had given his name."What did I do at Miss Van Brock's to make you cut me dead?"
"Why, nothing at all, I'm sure. I--I was looking for Mr. Ormsby, and----"
"Not when I saw you," she broke in flippantly. "You were handing MissPortia an ice. Are you still looking for Mr. Ormsby?"
"I am--just that. Is he with you?"
"No; he left here about twenty minutes ago. Is it anything serious?"
"Serious enough to make me want to find him as soon as I can. Did he sayhe was coming down to the Wellington?"
"Of course, he didn't," laughed Penelope. And then: "Whatever is thematter with you this evening, Mr. Kent?"
"I guess I'm a little excited," said Kent. "Something hashappened--something I can't talk about over the wires. It concerns you andyour mother and sister. You'll know all about it as soon as I can findOrmsby and send him out to you."
Penelope's "Oh!" was long-drawn and gasping.
"Is any one dead?" she faltered.
"No, no; it's nothing of that kind. I'll send Ormsby out, and he will tellyou all about it."
"Can't you come yourself?"
"I may have to if I can't find Ormsby. Please don't let your mother go tobed until you have heard from one or the other of us. Did you get that?"
"Ye-es; but I should like to know more--a great deal more."
"I know; and I'd like to tell you. But I am using the public telephonehere at the Wellington, and--Oh, damn!" Central had cut him out, and itwas some minutes before the connection was switched in again. "Is thatyou, Miss Penelope? All right; I wasn't quite through. When Ormsby comes,you must do as he tells you to, and you and Miss Elinor must help himconvince your mother. Do you understand?"
"No, I don't understand anything. For goodness' sake, find Mr. Ormsby andmake him run! This is perfectly dreadful!"
"Isn't it? And I'm awfully sorry. Good-by."
Kent hung up the receiver, and when he was asking a second time at theclerk's desk for the missing man, Ormsby came in to answer for himself.Whereupon the crisis was outlined to him in brief phrase, and he rose tothe occasion, though not without a grimace.
"I'm not sure just how well you know Mrs. Hepzibah Brentwood," hedemurred; "but it will be quite like her to balk. Don't you think you'dbetter go along? You are the company's attorney, and your opinion ought tocarry some weight."
David Kent thought not; but a cautious diplomatist, having got the ideawell into the back part of his head, was not to be denied.
"Of course, you'll come. You are just the man I'll need to back me up. Ishan't shirk; I
'll take the mother into the library and break the ice,while you are squaring things with the young women. Penelope won't carethe snap of her finger either way; but Elinor has some notion's that youare fitter to cope with than I am. After, if you can give me a lift withMrs. Hepzibah, I'll call you in. Come on; it's getting pretty late to govisiting."
Kent yielded reluctantly, and they took a car for the sake of speed. Itwas Penelope who opened the door for them at 124 Tejon Avenue; and Ormsbymade it easy for his coadjutor, as he had promised.
"I want to see your mother in the library for a few minutes," he began."Will you arrange it, and take care of Mr. Kent until I come for him?"
Penelope "arranged" it, not without another added pang of curiosity,whereupon David Kent found himself the rather embarrassed third of asilent trio gathered about the embers of the sitting-room fire.
"Is it to be a Quaker meeting?" asked Penelope, sweetly, when the silencehad grown awe-inspiring.
Kent laughed for pure joy at the breaking of the spell.
"One would think we had come to drag you all off to jail, Ormsby and I,"he said; and then he went on to explain. "It's about your Western Pacificstock, you know. To-day's quotations put it a point and a half above yourpurchase price, and we've come to persuade you to unload, _pronto_, as themember from the Rio Blanco would say."
"Is that all?" said Penelope, stifling a yawn. "Then I'm not in it: I'm aninfant." And she rose and went to the piano.
"You haven't told us all of it: what has happened?" queried Elinor,speaking for the first time since her greeting of Kent.
He briefed the story of House Bill Twenty-nine for her, pointing out theprobabilities.
"Of course, no one can tell what the precise effect will be," hequalified. "But in my opinion it is very likely to be destructive ofdividends. Skipping the dry details, the new law, which is equitableenough on its face, can be made an engine of extortion in the hands ofthose who administer it. In fact, I happen to know that it was designedand carried through for that very purpose."
She smiled.
"I have understood you were in the opposition. Are you speakingpolitically?"
"I am stating the plain fact," said Kent, nettled a little by hercoolness. "Decadent Rome never lifted a baser set of demagogues intooffice than we have here in this State at the present moment."
He spoke warmly, and she liked him best when he put her on the footing ofan equal antagonist.
"I can't agree with your inference," she objected. "As a people we areneither obsequious nor stupid."
"Perhaps not. But it is one of the failures of a popular government thatan honest majority may be controlled and directed by a small minority ofshrewd rascals. That is exactly what has happened in the passage of thisbill. I venture to say that not one man in ten who voted for it had thefaintest suspicion that it was a 'graft'."
"If that be true, what chances there are for men with the gift of trueleadership and a love of pure justice in their hearts!" she saidhalf-absently; and he started forward and said: "I beg pardon?"
She let the blue-gray eyes meet his and there was a passing shadow ofdisappointment in them.
"I ought to beg yours. I'm afraid I was thinking aloud. But it is one ofmy dreams. If I were a man I should go into politics."
"To purify them?"
"To do my part in trying. The great heart of the people is honest andwell-meaning: I think we all admit that. And there is intelligence, too.But human nature is the same as it used to be when they set up a man who_could_ and called him a king. Gentle or simple, it must be led."
"There is no lack of leadership, such as it is," he hazarded.
"No; but there seems to be a pitiful lack of the right kind: men who willput self-seeking and unworthy ambition aside and lift the standard ofjustice and right-doing for its own sake. Are there any such mennowadays?"
"I don't know," he rejoined gravely. "Sometimes I'm tempted to doubt it.It is a frantic scramble for place and power for the most part. The kindof man you have in mind isn't in it; shuns it as he would a plague spot."
She contradicted him firmly.
"No, the kind of man I have in mind wouldn't shun it; he would take holdwith his hands and try to make things better; he would put the selfishtemptations under foot and give the people a leader worth following--bethe real mind and hand of the well-meaning majority."
Kent shook his head slowly.
"Not unless we admit a motive stronger than the abstraction which we callpatriotism."
"I don't understand," she said; meaning, rather, that she refused tounderstand.
"I mean that such a man, however exalted his views might be, would have tohave an object more personal to him than the mere dutiful promptings ofpatriotism to make him do his best."
"But that would be self-seeking again."
"Not necessarily in the narrow sense. The old knightly chivalry was abeautiful thing in its way, and it gave an uplift to an age which wouldhave been frankly brutal without it: yet it had its well-spring in whatappeals to us now as being a rather fantastic sentiment."
"And we are not sentimentalists?" she suggested.
"No; and it's the worse for us in some respects. You will not find yourideal politician until you find a man with somewhat of the old knightlyspirit in him. And I'll go further and say that when you do find him hewill be at heart the champion of the woman he loves rather than that of apolitical constituency."
She became silent at that, and for a time the low sweet harmonies of thenocturne Penelope was playing filled the gap.
Kent left his chair and began to wish honestly for Ormsby's return. He wassearing the wound again, and the process was more than commonly painful.They had been speaking in figures, as a man and a woman will; yet he madesure the mask of metaphor was transparent, no less to her than to him. Asmany times before, his heart was crying out to her; but now behind the crythere was an upsurging tidal wave of emotion new and strange; a topplingdown of barriers and a sweeping inrush of passionate rebellion.
Why had she put it out of her power to make him her champion in the Fieldof the Lust of Mastery? Instantly, and like a revealing lightning flash,it dawned upon him that this was his awakening. Something of himself shehad shown him in the former time: how he was rusting inactive in the smallfield when he should be doing a man's work, the work for which histraining had fitted him, in the larger. But the glamour of sentiment hadbeen over it all in those days, and to the passion-warped the high call istransmitted in terms of self-seeking.
He turned upon her suddenly.
"Did you mean to reproach me?" he asked abruptly.
"How absurd!"
"No, it isn't. You are responsible for me, in a certain sense. You sent meout into the world, and somehow I feel as if I had disappointed you."
"'But what went ye out for to see?'" she quoted softly.
"I know," he nodded, sitting down again. "You thought you were arousing aworthy ambition, but it was only avarice that was quickened. I've beentrying to be a money-getter."
"You can be something vastly better."
"No, I am afraid not; it is too late."
Again the piano-mellowed silence supervened, and Kent put his elbows onhis knees and his face in his hands, being very miserable. He believed nowwhat he had been slow to credit before: that he had it in him to hew hisway to the end of the line if only the motive were strong enough to callout all the reserves of battle-might and courage. That motive she alone,of all the women in the world, might have supplied, he told himself inkeen self-pity. With her love to arm him, her clear-eyed faith to inspirehim.... He sat up straight and pushed the cup of bitter herbs aside. Therewould be time enough to drain it farther on.
"Coming back to the stock market and the present crisis," he said,breaking the silence in sheer self-defense; "Ormsby and I----"
She put the resurrected topic back into its grave with a little gesture ofapathetic impatience she used now and then with Ormsby.
"I suppose I ought to be inte
rested, but I am not," she confessed. "Motherwill do as she thinks best, and we shall calmly acquiesce, as we alwaysdo."
David Kent was not sorry to be relieved in so many words of the persuasiveresponsibility, and the talk drifted into reminiscence, with the Croydonsummer for a background.
It was a dangerous pastime for Kent; perilous, and subversive of manythings. One of his meliorating comforts had been the thought that howeverbitter his own disappointment was, Elinor at least was happy. But in thisnew-old field of talk a change came over her and he was no longer sure shewas entirely happy. She was saying things with a flavor akin to cynicismin them, as thus:
"Do you remember how we used to go into raptures of pious indignation overthe make-believe sentiment of the summer man and the summer girl? Irecollect your saying once that it was wicked; a desecration of thingswhich ought to be held sacred. It isn't so very long ago, but I think wewere both very young that summer--years younger than we can ever be again.Don't you?"
"Doubtless," said David Kent. He was at a pass in which he would haveagreed with her if she had asserted that black was white. It was notweakness; it was merely that he was absorbed in a groping search for theword which would fit her changed mood.
"We have learned to be more charitable since," she went on; "morecharitable and less sentimental, perhaps. And yet we prided ourselves onour sincerity in that young time, don't you think?"
"I, at least, was sincere," he rejoined bluntly. He had found themood-word at last: it was resentment; though, being a man, he could see nogood reason why the memories of the Croydon summer should make herresentful.
She was not looking at him when she said: "No; sincerity is always just.And you were not quite just, I think."
"To you?" he demanded.
"Oh, no; to yourself."
Portia Van Brock's accusation was hammering itself into his brain. _Youhave marred her between you.... For your sake she can never be quite allshe ought to be to him; for his sake she could never be quite the same toyou_. A cold wave of apprehension submerged him. In seeking to do the mostunselfish thing that offered, had he succeeded only in making her despisehim?
The question was still hanging answerless when there came the sound of adoor opening and closing, and Ormsby stood looking in upon them.
"We needn't keep these sleepy young persons out of bed any longer," heannounced briefly; and the coadjutor said good-night and joined him atonce.
"What luck?" was David Kent's anxious query when they were free of thehouse and had turned their faces townward.
"Just as much as we might have expected. Mrs. Hepzibah refuses point-blankto sell her stock--won't talk about it. 'The idea of parting with it now,when it is actually worth more than it was when we bought it!'" he quoted,mimicking the thin-lipped, acidulous protest. "Later, in an evil minute, Itried to drag you in, and she let you have it square on the point of thejaw--intimated that it was a deal in which some of you inside peopleneeded her block of stock to make you whole. She did, by Jove!"
Kent's laugh was mirthless.
"I was never down in her good books," he said, by way of accounting forthe accusation.
If Ormsby thought he knew the reason why, he was magnanimous enough tosteer clear of that shoal.
"It's a mess," he growled. "I don't fancy you had any better luck withElinor."
"She seemed not to care much about it either way. She said her motherwould have the casting vote."
"I know. What I don't know is, what remains to be done."
"More waiting," said Kent, definitively. "The fight is fairly on now--asbetween the Bucks crowd and the corporations, I mean--but there willprobably be ups and downs enough to scare Mrs. Brentwood into letting go.We must be ready to strike when the iron is hot; that's all."
The New Yorker tramped a full square in thoughtful silence before he said:"Candidly, Kent, Mrs. Hepzibah's little stake in Western Pacific isn'taltogether a matter of life and death to me, don't you know? If it comesto the worst, I can have my broker play the part of the god in the car.Happily, or unhappily, whichever way you like to put it, I sha'n't misswhat he may have to put up to make good on her three thousand shares."
David Kent stopped short and wheeled suddenly upon his companion.
"Ormsby, that's a thing I've been afraid of, all along; and it's the onething you must never do."
"Why not?" demanded the straightforward Ormsby.
Kent knew he was skating on the thinnest of ice, but his love for Elinormade him fearless of consequences.
"If you don't know without being told, it proves that your money hasspoiled you to that extent. It is because you have no right to entrap MissBrentwood into an obligation that would make her your debtor for the veryfood she eats and the clothes she wears. You will say she need never know:be very sure she would find out, one way or another; and she would neverforgive you."
"Um," said Ormsby, turning visibly grim. "You are frank enough--to draw itmildly. Another man in my place might suggest that it isn't Mr. DavidKent's affair."
Kent turned about and caught step again.
"I've said my say--all of it," he rejoined stolidly. "We've been decentlymodern up to now, and we won't go back to the elemental things so late inthe day. All the same, you'll not take it amiss if I say that I know MissBrentwood rather better than you do."
Ormsby did not say whether he would or would not, and the talk went asideto less summary ways and means preservative of the Brentwood fortunes. Butat the archway of the Camelot Club, where Kent paused, Ormsby went back tothe debatable ground in an outspoken word.
"I know pretty well now what there is between us, Kent, and we mustn'tquarrel if we can help it," he said. "If you complain that I didn't giveyou a fair show, I'll retort that I didn't dare to. Are you satisfied?"
"No," said David Kent; and with that they separated.
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