Chapter VI: The Test 258 (3)

Before the first month was over, Hazelrigg had made George Helm the chief spokesman of the party in its campaign against the rapacities of the plutocracy. The old wheel-horse orators, familiar and more or less discredited slobberers of virtuous sentiments from mouths raw and ragged with corruption, were angered and made futile attempts to “haze” the new favorite. Hazelrigg soon quelled that mutiny. Of all the understrappers at the beck and call of a machine boss, the orators--they upon whose lips the people hang spellbound--are the lowest, the most despised by their fellow slaves and the most brutally worked and the most meagerly paid.

As Sayler had taken the muzzle from the press of the State to make his “object lesson” thoroughly effective, in a few weeks George Helm became famous--newspaper famous--the beanstalk variety of fame, showy but perishable. Bill Desbrough came up to see him.

“The lecture scheme’s off--isn’t it?” said he.

“By no means,” replied Helm. “I’ll let you into my secret, Bill. You’re close-mouthed--closer mouthed than I am.”

“I doubt it,” said Desbrough.

“Yes, for _I’m_ telling you my secret--and _you’ll_ not tell anybody. Here’s the secret! By those lecture tours I’m going to build up in every part of this State a machine of my own--groups of people I can trust and who feel they can trust me. There’s some skullduggery back of this spasm of party virtue. It won’t last. We must hurry and make all we can out of it.”

Most men cannot see the obvious, even when it is pointed out to them. The occasional rare man--the man of genius of one kind or another--is he who sees the obvious without assistance. In between these two classes lies a third class, not small like that of genius--yet not huge like the other. To this third class--those able to see the obvious if and when it is pointed out to them--belonged William Desbrough. He reflected on what George Helm had said; and up went his admiration a considerable number of notches. Said he:

“George, what a run you’ll give ’em!”

Helm clapped him on the shoulder with his loud, joyous, boyish laugh. “Put all your money on that, Bill!” cried he.

Helm’s successes wrought in him the usual swift change. The temperament of success, the ability to throw one’s whole concentrated self into an enterprise, involves a highly organized nervous system--hence, extreme sensitiveness, torments from anxiety and from self-doubt. Only an iron constitution could have borne the fatigues of that first campaign of his--the now famous “buggy” campaign--with its nerve strain of the man fighting again desperate odds to save himself from ruin under avalanches of ridicule. And when he finally “made good” in his home district, the question at once arose, “But can I make good at the capital?” This question was in the way to be answered with an emphatic yes.

The respect with which he was treated by other men--men of consequence! The serious attention the papers gave his utterances! The huge piles of letters praising his courage, his logic, his freedom from crude abuse, his clearness of statement--letters from all parts of the State, from all parts of the Union! Those letters made his heart burn with new energy and high hope. He had indeed guessed right. The people--his people--the long-suffering masses were certainly on the alert for a leader. Yes, he was in the way to accomplish something of what he had resolved when he left the farm, because he was intelligent enough to discover that the big monopolies headed by the railway trusts had reduced the nominally independent farmer to the slavery of the poorly paid wage-earner of the cities and towns. He was in the way to be of use in the gigantic task of restoring democracy and opportunity to the republic.

This man, planted upon this rock-founded confidence, could not but show in his exterior the external change. But where the small fellow reveals his fleeting or trivial success in an access of swagger, the large, simple nature reveals it in the deeper absorption in the career, the lessened consciousness of self. And as George Helm’s self-consciousness had been the sole cause of his awkwardness and the chief cause of his extreme plainness, the change was most striking. He was no longer awkward. His long, spare figure revealed--as it always had on the platform after the first embarrassed moment--the innate grace that is in every natural, self-conscious creature. As for the homeliness--how can a strong face be homely when in place of the unattractive expression of shy greenness there come the dignity and beauty of a large intelligence fittingly occupied? “There goes a man who amounts to something,” they now said about Helm. And when you hear that said of a man, you may be sure he will not turn to you a homely face.

Senator Sayler had come on from Washington and had taken a house in the suburbs for the session because of the importance of the curious program he was putting through. He went to hear Helm speak against one of the grab bills his refractory clients were insisting upon. Sayler, as you knew, was a cynic; and when you find cynicism in a man, you may be sure you are at the cover for a lively and annoying secret self-contempt. He listened with his most cynical smile to the simple, sensible eloquence of the young farmer-looking lawyer. But, as he listened, he was saying to himself, “We must attack this fellow, but it will not be easy.” Afterward he had Hazelrigg bring Helm to the Lieutenant Governor’s private room and talked with him for an hour. He would have talked much longer, had there not been a gentle knock at the door.

He disregarded it. The door opened and in came his wife--and Eleanor Clearwater. Mrs. Sayler--the trained wife of the public man--smiled engagingly at Helm and said to her husband:

“We simply can’t wait any longer, Harvey. We were wondering how you dared keep us waiting. But if we had known whom you had with you----” She put out her hand to Helm. “That was a splendid speech, Mr. Helm. I don’t know you, but it made me feel as if I did. I detest politics but not the kind _you_ talk.”

Helm lapsed toward, but not into, his former awkwardness. He might have done better had not Eleanor been standing there, not all dignity and ice, but all merry smiles and impatience to speak.

“How do you do, Mr. Helm?” said she, as soon as Mrs. Sayler finished. “Father and I came to stop with Mrs. Sayler only this morning--and here you are. Really, it’s--it’s--what shall I call it--our always running across each other?”

Helm had no woman-talk. He stood--not too awkwardly--and silently gazed at the lovely and radiant young lady so unaccountably transformed from her former cold reserve. And, as the astute Sayler did not fail to note, he looked at her hungrily. Even Carlotta Sayler, the self-absorbed, saw in Helm’s tell-tale face that there was “something or other between those two--though how could it possibly be!”

“I was about to ask Mr. Helm to dine with us to-morrow night,” said Sayler.

“Yes, do,” cried Carlotta, who never missed a cue. “It’s to be early and most informal--no evening clothes or such nonsense. Won’t it be delightful, Eleanor? Your father will be so pleased to meet one of _our_ coming men.”

Poor Helm was framing a refusal when he caught in Eleanor’s eyes a look of appeal--a pleading request that he accept. Nor had he the excuse that Sayler was of the enemy. Sayler had shown him that he harbored no such petty notions of obligation as possess the average man who fancies that his foe ought to become his friend if he does him the honor of giving him a free cigar, or a free dinner, or a free drink. Also, he wished to talk with Sayler again. Sayler, expert at the political game, had in their hour’s talk taught him more than he had learned of all the other men with whom he had discussed politics. And Sayler was--for some mysterious reason--eager to give him the ammunition of facts about the doings of the plutocracy which he most needed.

“Thank you, ma’am, I’ll be glad to come,” said Helm. He added, “I’ve heard you’re very dressy out at your place. You’re _sure_ you won’t mind my clothes? I haven’t any dress suits.”

“A _man_ can go where he pleases in what he pleases,” said Sayler. “But there’s no truth in that report about us. The women at our place are dressy, of course. They always are everywhere. If they’re not that, they think they’re not anything--and perhaps they’re right. But it’s go-as-you-please with the men.”

Sayler discovered that he wished to look at the west wing of the capitol, walked with his wife, thus forcing Helm to walk with Eleanor--and to walk ahead where he could observe. There was plenty to see.

A serious young woman is never in any circumstances so interesting to a man as a light and gay, pretty woman, whatever men may pretend. It is inborn in the male to regard the female as the representative of the lighter side of life; and _so long as he is not married to her_, light she should be if she would please him--light and full of coquetry of the kind he happens to regard as “womanly.” George Helm had cherished deep in his heart a peculiar feeling for Eleanor Clearwater since that first long talk he had with her, the only woman he had met who possessed worldly knowledge and beauty, refined and glorified by the highest civilized arts of manner and dress. Not love--not possibility of love, though he fancied it was love! Rather, a feeling that here at last was a representative of the best in womankind--and George Helm, like all the ambitious, was born with the passion for the best of everything.

But this Eleanor was no longer the empedestaled goddess, the passive recipient of the homage due her beauty and her taste and her station. She had come to life; she had descended from her pedestal; she had placed herself--no, not within reach of men, but most tantalizingly less out of reach. And she spent that half hour or so in deliberately trying to captivate him, in putting him at ease, in making him feel that she was almost if not quite within reach. She did not herself realize--but Harvey Sayler did--how far she was going. But neither did she realize how much she had been affected by the fact that each time she saw this man he had made a stride forward as with seven league boots away from the crudeness of the bucolic and toward his certain goal of power with vast masses of men. If she had not heard the speech before she saw him, if she had not found her own opinion confirmed by Sayler’s manner toward him, she probably would not have gone so far. Not because she was calculating, you reader ever ready to discover your own deepest failings, however slightly manifested in another; but because she was human--delightfully human, since George Helm had dropped her abruptly down from the perch to which she had been raised by lifelong flatteries and extravagant compliment.

However, it was not until after dinner the following night that she really “laid siege.” She was alone with poor Helm in the library--how cleverly the sly Sayler had maneuvered that!

You have seen a large fish moving in ease and grace through the water? You have seen that same fish flopping and floundering and flapping about on land to which the angler has drawn it? That visualizes George Helm, at home among men, among politicians, or making a speech, and George Helm in a drawing-room among a lot of women in dresses cut as he had seen them cut only in illustrations. And the most ludicrous part of it all was that he fancied himself perfectly at ease. Eleanor Clearwater had hypnotized him into imagining his flounderings were like his motions in his native element.

Said she at length--any woman and almost any man can supply the preliminary or leading-up conversation:

“What a fascinating career you will have! Oh, I know you haven’t told me about it. You simply won’t talk about yourself, and have made me tell you everything about myself from bibs up. But I can guess your career.”

“We had only got you as far as short dresses,” said he. “When you left that boarding school----”

“Nothing since,” interrupted she. “I’ve simply been sitting round waiting for a husband. What else is there for a woman? Still, I never wish I’d been a man.”

“Why not?” asked George. He was twisted into one of his strange poses--legs wound round each other, body bent forward, supported by his elbows. He had never been so blissfully, airily happy as watching this beautiful girl, with the most wonderful light he had ever beheld reflecting from her fair shoulders.

She looked at him with eyes suddenly grave. “Because as a woman I have the chance to be some day loved by a man. As a man”--her eyes danced--“I’d have had nothing to look forward to but just a woman.”

“What kind of a man do you want?” asked he--and his honest, rugged face showed in its frank innocence how impersonal the question was.

“A man like you,” said she audaciously, her face merry.

He laughed loudly--a contagious outburst of joyous good humor that made the luxurious, conventional room seem a poor sort of place. Such a laugh is a very different matter from one that seems a poor, noisy sort of clamor in a room.

“You have courage--strength. You don’t pose.” All this she said with the lightness that made it in good taste--and none the less sincere. “You are on the side all these other men have deserted as soon as they became prosperous.”

“Perhaps I shall, too,” said he.

“I suppose it must be the wrong side, or surely all of them wouldn’t have left it. But--somehow, I think you won’t.”

“I can’t,” said he. And _he_--his real self--began to look from his eyes--and to look at her.

In spite of herself, she became serious. “No--you can’t,” assented she, absently. “You’ve changed--every time I’ve seen you. But not in that one respect. Whenever I look at you, I still see--as I did that first time--farms and factories--and thousands of men and women at work----”

“And children,” he interrupted, a strange, somehow ferocious note in his quiet voice.

“I don’t forget them,” said she. “I try to, but I don’t.... No, you’ll not change sides. And you’ll marry some woman on that side, and she’ll----”

“I’ll marry the woman I want--when I can afford to marry,” said he. “Women aren’t on one side or the other. This is a man’s fight. A woman--she goes with the man who takes her.”

She smiled with some raillery. “Be careful to select the woman of that sort,” said she, “or you may have to change your mind--suddenly and rather disagreeably--about women.”

He made a large gesture of indifference.

“You don’t care about women?” she asked.

A look of melancholy came into his face. He said with a quaint smile, “They began it. They don’t care about me.”

“Why not?”

“What a foolish question!”

“You’re mistaken,” said she. “Any woman would _like_ you, and if a woman fell in love with you she’d be crazy about you.”

He laughed boyishly as at a huge joke.

“You’re a peculiar sort of man--a sort not many women would appreciate. If you find one who does, you’ll see that I was right. She’ll be a peculiar sort of woman and she’ll belong to you.”

There was pathos in his expression of gratitude. She saw it, understood it--and the tears welled into her eyes. What a lonely, fascinating figure of a man--so different from all other men--so modest about himself--and with such incredibly luminous eyes, tender yet strong. She was looking directly at him. The changing expression of his eyes terrified her--fascinated her. He stood up, and his gesture compelled her to stand also--and to look at him. He stretched out his powerful arm. She tried to draw back; she could not.

“I believe,” said he in an awed, hushed voice, his eyes looking at her wonderingly, “I believe _you_ are the woman.”

He had misunderstood, she said to herself. Then-- “No,” she thought, “I’ve been leading him on. What a foolish, bad thing to do! And he thinks I was in earnest--when nothing could induce me----”

He interrupted her thoughts with, “Yes--you _are_ the woman!”

He had her shoulders in his grasp now and was looking down at her with an expression of sheer amazement, mingled with a tenderness that sent a thrill and a hot wave of--yes, of delight--through her. This man-- She, Eleanor Clearwater, tolerate the touch of this man and--_delight_ in it!

“That is absurd!” she cried hysterically. She looked at him with pleading eyes. “Let me go--please.”

He lifted his hands from her shoulders. Then--how it happened she never could understand--she, trying to draw back, was drawn forward--into his arms--had been kissed by him--was in a whirl of joy, of terror, of wonder, of disbelief in the reality of what was happening. She, who prided herself on never having allowed any man to be in the least familiar with her--she in the arms of this bucolic person whom she hardly knew. It was impossible--it was insane.

“Please let me go,” she said feebly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!”

He was holding her at arm’s length again--this powerful man, with the compelling eyes-- If only he would not look at her so, she might recover herself. He was saying in the sweetest, tenderest voice she had ever heard:

“_You_--for _me_! It simply can’t be, Miss Clearwater.”

“Some woman will care for you--as I told you,” she said in a breathless way. “But not I. You told me once you wouldn’t have me.”

“But I didn’t know you then,” replied he. “Now--I’ve _got_ to have you!”

She gave a cry of dismay. “Oh--don’t say that--please!” she pleaded. “I’m sure you don’t want me.”

“No, I don’t want you,” confessed he, frankly. “I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do with you. How can you break with your father and everybody and go tracking off into poverty with me?”

“As for that,” began she, “I’ve got something of my own, and----”

She stopped short in horror. What was she saying? Who was talking out of her mouth and with her voice? She covered her face with her hands. “I don’t mean it--I’m mad--crazy!” And she was in his arms, with him caressing her hair.

“You don’t want me,” he said gently, “and I don’t want you. But it looks as if we’d got to--doesn’t it, Ellen?”

If there had been any abbreviation of her name that she detested more than any and all others, it had been Ellen. Yet now--in this absurd, lunatic dream she was having, she liked Ellen--in his voice. It seemed to be the name she had been waiting for, the name her man would brand upon her. Ellen. No longer Eleanor Clearwater, but just Ellen--nothing more.

She laughed hysterically. “I’m glad you didn’t select Ella instead,” said she. “No doubt I’d have accepted it, but I’d always have felt low.”

They were looking at each other in a dazed way. At the sound of voices and laughter in the hall, both started and the crimson of shame deepened and deepened on Miss Clearwater’s cheeks and neck and shoulders. They faced the others with every sign of confusion and guilt, neither daring to look at the other. He stammered out phrases of departure and left, still with not a glance at her. Sayler decided that he had made an absurd premature proposal and had been sent about his business--“When he might have had her if he’d kept after her with a firm tread.”

Out in the cold winter night, George strode along until he was half way to his hotel. Then he paused and addressed the stars, reeling with silent laughter!

“What a damn fool I’ve made of myself!”

Another man might have said, “What a fool she made of me!” But George Helm was no self-excuser, no shifter of responsibilities.

“But I’ve got to put it through,” he went on, still speaking aloud but addressing the dim landscape in the horizon of which towered the Capitol. “And since I’ve got to do it, I’ll do it!”

A damn fool!--to take upon his already too heavily burdened shoulders this extra weight of a woman--and just the kind of woman who could be heaviest, most useless.

However, instead of walking with bent shoulders, he strode along, shoulders erect. And presently he was whistling like a boy in a pasture.

IV

THE MATCH-MAKER

Men--and women--who restrain sentiment to an obscure, uneffectual part in their own lives take enormous interest in it everywhere else. They have melting eyes and troublesome noses and throats at sentimental plays. They give to street beggars and patronize the literature of slop. They are assiduous matchmakers and want every one--except their own sons and daughters--to marry for love alone.

There was not a little of this in the composition of Harvey Sayler, the interesting boss of the Middle West--more interesting than the ordinary purely commercial boss because he was at heart a bold and reckless gambler, one who had less interest in the stakes than in the game. He was in a sentimental mood about George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater. George Helm, the lean and lank, countrified new orator whom Sayler’s secret lieutenant, the Democratic state boss Hazelrigg, had discovered in the State Senate; Eleanor Clearwater, heiress to the notorious--that is, famous--lumber king and Senator, a lady to her finger tips, fond of playing with “fine ideas” of all kinds, but helplessly dependent upon the culture and the luxury that can be got only by acts which proceed from anything but “fine ideas.” A love affair, an engagement, a marriage between these two appealed to Sayler’s love of the sentimentally romantic.

Also, Sayler had a streak of sardonic humor in him. He liked the mischievous pranks of fate--with the persons and property and destiny of others. And it seemed to him that the coming together of these two would be one of fate’s masterpieces at the practical joke. And how old Clearwater, the risen from farm hand, the intoxicated aristocrat, the unending snob, would rage and rave!

_Also_--and this was the most important of all, for Sayler never did anything that wasn’t a move in his game-- Also--he wanted George Helm.

For purposes that need not here be gone into, Sayler had ordered the Democrats to make a furious assault upon his protégé and ally and master, the plutocracy. Hazelrigg, obeying orders, had selected Helm to lead the attack, because Helm was about the only available man not publicly suspected of crookedness and hypocrisy, was an earnest, sincere and effective speaker, shrewd and sane. After Sayler heard Helm speak, Hazelrigg hunted him up at the University Club. Those clubs to which men of all political faiths can and do belong are most useful for meetings of this sort. Said Hazelrigg:

“What do you think of him, Senator?”

“Of Helm?” said Sayler. A non-committal smile--and that was all.

“A dangerous man, I’d say,” proceeded Hazelrigg. “He looks like a farmer and he’s homely as a horse. But there’s nothing of the jay about that brain of his. And how he does wake up, and wake things up, when he gets that lanky form of his straight on his big feet.”

Sayler smiled again. He was a loquacious man, like all men of abounding mentality All lakes that are copiously fed must copiously overflow. But he had the big man’s usual false reputation for taciturnity. He was never anything but silent, or at most terse, with understrappers. That sort of cattle had to be dealt with carefully.

“He’s doing what I asked him to do, too damn well,” said Hazelrigg. “I’ll have to choke him off.”

Sayler, however, was resolved to give his clients of the plutocracy a thoroughgoing scare. Said he:

“Oh, why not let him alone for the present, Hazelrigg?” Sayler was one of those who give orders in the form of interrogative suggestions.

“But he makes me nervous,” objected the Democratic boss. “He’s spreading like wildfire. I may have to nominate him for governor.”

“Why not?” said Sayler. A sentimental smile; he was thinking of the “match.”

“But--damn it, he’d likely be elected.”

“Well--a good beating might do my party a world of good. We’ve been in too long.”

“But--I’m afraid I can’t get any _hold_ on him.”

Sayler deigned no answer but a satirical smile.

“He’d probably make four years of merry hell. A governor can do a lot in this state. He can _do_; so he doesn’t dare talk without doing, like most governors.”

“He’d make a good governor,” said Sayler.

“Yes--if I could get some _hold_ on him.”

Sayler’s eyes were amused. Said he--and he had the habit of being intensely relevant while seeming to be most irrelevant:

“Curious jaw, that young fellow’s got. Did you notice how long it is from ear to chin? There’s a foolish notion about that--a long chin is a sign of strength. It means nothing--nor does a short chin. It’s the length of the jaw that makes persistence--endurance--and the unafraidness that advances without a tremor where even courage hesitates. An interesting young man.”

Hazelrigg had never heard so long--or so puzzling--a speech from his secret chieftain. He said desperately:

“I give you fair warning, Senator, he may make it damned interesting for _us_ if we aren’t careful.”

Sayler laughed pleasantly. “I wish he would. I’m tired of fighting mere cranks--or knaves attacking us simply to shake us down. Why is it, Hazelrigg, that the best can be changed into the worst? To find an absolutely abandoned woman, don’t look among the girls from the lower classes. Find one born a lady, bred a lady. To get a chap who’ll swallow any insult with gusto, who’ll do any kind of dirty work with pleasure--go among the fallen gentlemen. Several in this club.”

Sayler strolled away. Hazelrigg was laughing--uncomfortably. He said to himself, “Well, if the Senator was rapping me, he was banging his own conk, too.”

Sayler had brought Helm and Miss Clearwater together at his house the night before--had arranged it as soon as their chance meeting in his presence had revealed to his shrewd eyes that there was something peculiar in their relations, something unwarranted by so casual an acquaintance as theirs apparently had been. And when, after he had seen to it that they were left alone together, he had found them in a state of nervousness that indicated anything but a smooth session, he had decided that Helm had made the mistake of proposing too precipitately--and had been refused. He now went down to the Capitol to hunt Helm up.

An extraordinary amount of trouble for so distinguished a man to take about an almost obscure youth of rugged appearance, one he knew hardly at all. But Sayler was a profound man. It had been said of him that he had ruined more young men than any man of his time. It was his habit to seek out any youth who showed, to his acute insight into human nature, indications of unusual abilities. As there are not many such under our system of crushing in infancy or near it, all but a very few of the very strongest or luckiest, he had plenty of time left over for his other affairs. When he had won the personal liking of such a young man, he proceeded to show him--by ways of most delicate subtlety--how wise and sensible and just it was for a man of ambition to come in with the triumphant classes, and not let any academic sentimentality attach him to the lost and hopeless and morally doubtful cause of the masses.

For a few years Sayler had drawn about himself, had drawn to the support of his policy of the earth for the strong and the sly, scores of the brightest young men of the Middle West. They served him well. They imbibed his genial philosophy of mingled generosity and cynicism. And in exchange for the support and the power they gave him, he gave them office and money and fame. He regarded himself as a benefactor. His young men regarded him as a benefactor. Only cranks denounced him as a procurer and a rake of the vilest description.

He had seen great possibilities in this big, unformed, young state senator, with the gift for eloquent clear statement and with the voice and the eyes that captivated. He purposed to be his benefactor.

Helm was alone in one of the committee rooms, absorbed in the agitated composition of a letter. There were all the obvious signs that much time and paper were being consumed in vain. Sayler paused a moment to look well at his proposed next “victim,” as the cranks would have put it. That long, lean, powerful form, uncouth yet curiously graceful--and somehow so intensely magnetic! That huge, rough-looking head, the strong features, the out-door skin. But Sayler saw only the superb line of the head, the long reach of the jaw. Said he to himself: “This fellow _looks_ more worth getting than any I’ve ever tried for.”

He advanced and laid his hand on Helm’s shoulder. Said he, as Helm looked up, startled:

“I’m going to take a great liberty with you, Helm. I’m somewhat older--but not old enough to be out of your class. And I’m a friend of--of _hers_--and I want to be a friend of yours.”

The color flooded poor George’s face. He did not know what to do. The man-and-woman game was as strange to him as sailor life to the plainsman. And Sayler had adroitly leaped over the barrier of sensitiveness which Helm had begun to build about his inmost self as soon as he had begun to talk.

“I know you’re writing to her,” proceeded the frank and simple Sayler, “and I’m sure it’s something foolish. The thing to do is to go and face her. She’s leaving this afternoon.”

“To-day!” exclaimed Helm, puzzled. “She said last night she was staying a week.”

“She’s leaving--because of you. When a woman thinks highly enough of a man to fly from him, all he needs do to get her is run her down.”

“She’s leaving?” said Helm. He began to tear up the paper. “Leaving on my account.” He gave a laugh of relief. “Then it’s all settled, and I don’t need to write.” He tore the paper into little bits and sent them to join the mass of similar little bits in the basket. “Evidently she got her head back this morning--just as I did. I wonder what there is about night time that makes people so excited and----”

“And courageous,” said Sayler. “I wish I’d had the daring to do the things the night has urged me to do.”

Helm shook his head laughingly. “The night’s insane, the day’s sane,” retorted he. “I went crazy last night, Mr. Sayler. I’ve got so little that I have to skimp to get along at all--and my prospects of any more money are mighty poor, I can tell you.” With a humorous twinkle, “You see, I’m not on your side--the buttered side. I’m on the other side where there isn’t any butter. Anyhow, I’ve no use for a wife--especially such a wife as that sort of a woman would be. And she-- Why, she wouldn’t want me as a husband if I was the last man on earth.”

“Nonsense!” said Sayler. “Under all that trumpery flummery she’s just a woman, and wants what any other woman wants--a _man_. And I think, my friend, that you come pretty near to sizing up to that description.”

“She don’t want me, nor I her,” insisted Helm. “It was nothing but plain lunacy, my asking her to marry me and her accepting.”

Sayler was so astounded that he almost betrayed himself. His eyes sparkled sentimentally, and he gave the younger man a resounding clap on the shoulder. Why, the conquest was as good as made! “She accepted you, Helm, because she wants you. Last night she knew her real mind. By daylight, she’s full of--of all sorts of pitiful fears. Go save her, Helm. Go to her. As soon as she’s told her father, and he begins to fight you, everything’s safe. I know her. She isn’t a quitter, and her father will say things that will make her wild with rage--and with love for you.”

By this time neither of these men, drawn together by their many traits of mind and character in common, had the slightest sense of strangeness. They felt like old friends. Helm said:

“But _I_ don’t want _her_, Sayler. I’ve got no money for her--no time for her--no place for her.”

“You love her--don’t you?” said Sayler audaciously.

Helm slowly collapsed into one of his uncouth poses.

“You see--you do. That means--what? Why, that you’ve got to have her. A man of your sort is no good with a thing like that unsettled.”

Helm reflected. “No,” he finally said. “I’ve put her out of my mind before, and I can do it again. Whenever I don’t want to think of anything, I get together so many other things to worry about that there isn’t room or time to worry about it. She’s flying. Let her fly. That settles it.”

“Didn’t you tell me you proposed to her?”

Helm nodded.

“And that she accepted you?”

“But it’s all over,” said Helm.

“By no means,” declared the adroiter man. “She has given you her promise. She will say nothing because she will not wish to hurt you. But she’ll keep to her promise until you release her.”

Helm looked dismal. “Is that the way those things are managed?”

“You’ll ruin her life, Helm. You’ve got to go to her--like a man. Don’t do a cowardly thing--such as silence, or writing a foolish note. Face her. It’s the only square thing.”

And to Helm it seemed so. He groaned.

“Come along. I’ll go with you, and see that you and she have a chance for an undisturbed talk.”

“Wait a minute. I want to think.” Helm went to the window and stared out into the capitol grounds. Sayler seated himself, lit a cigar and read a newspaper. Never had cake of his been spoiled by messing at the baking but unbaked dough. Helm took much more than the one minute he had asked for. When he turned, it was to say with the composure of a man under control:

“Thank you, Sayler--you’ve done me a good turn. I am nothing of a lady’s man. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have done something that as you say would have been contemptible. I’m ready when you are.”

Rarely is there a successful man--even the crude seeker of petty power rising to foreman of the gang of laborers--who has not, however tough his skin or hide may seem to be, a supersensitive nervous system, more acute than that of ordinary men and women, though they may pretend to the most delicate sensitiveness. Sayler was as sensitive as he seemed phlegmatic. He never failed to sense the mood of the person he was with. Therefore, he dropped the subject of Eleanor and talked speeches.

Helm, another man of that same acute sensibility, responded as if he had no concern in the world beyond discussion of how speeches should be worked up and delivered. Sayler, deeply interested in the subject and in the man, led him on to describe his own method, this so sympathetically--rather than adroitly--that Helm took from his pocket an old letter on the blank side of whose single sheet he had outlined the “backbone” of a speech he was to make against a perpetual grant of a big trolley franchise. The franchise meant, of course, the creation of a huge mass of stocks and bonds which would enable many generations of a certain group of the upper class to live luxuriously by taking impudent toll from the masses in exchange for no service rendered.

“I shall take up the franchise in a series of speeches,” explained Helm. “In each speech I’ll make one point and only one. That’s always my method. If you want to dazzle a crowd, you make a speech full of good points. But if you want to convince them, you take one point and drive it home with a succession of blows, all on the head of that same nail.”

Sayler nodded. “Won’t you let me see that ‘backbone’ as you call it?” he asked.

“Nail is a better name,” said Helm.

“Nail for the lid of the coffin of the trolley franchise grab,” said Sayler.

“I hope so,” said Helm.

“So do I,” rejoined Sayler.

Helm gave him the sheet of paper and Sayler read in Helm’s minute hand this series of notes:

Luxurious idlers.

Ladies and gentlemen. The more of them we have the poorer we become.

Proof:

_Comfort_ means wealth and leisure to enjoy--that is, comfort in the
lady and gentleman’s sense of the word.

Leisure to enjoy means little or no labor.

But wealth can be created only by laboring; wealth is nothing but the
proceeds of labor.

Therefore,

To have _comfort_, in the lady and gentleman sense, in the sense in
which our new luxury-mad upper class is determined to have it, means
that one must “appropriate”--that is, steal--the proceeds of the
labor of others.

First corollary: That the more “comfortable” the upper class becomes,
the more of the proceeds of the labor of others it must be stealing.

Second corollary: Since the amount of labor a man can do is
necessarily limited by his strength, then the more of the proceeds
of his labor is stolen from him, the less there is left for him and
the worse off he becomes.

General conclusion: The more ladies and gentlemen we have, the harder
we must work and the poorer we must become.

Sayler read this document through twice. Then he handed it back to Helm. He was smiling cynically to himself. Said he:

“Q. E. D. But--why did you show it to _me_?”

Helm’s gaze rested gravely upon that of the plutocratic chieftain for the Middle West. He replied:

“I see that you want to be friends with me. Why, I don’t know. I am willing--more than willing to be friends with you. But I want you to have no delusions. I want you to know just where I stand--where I shall _always_ stand.”

“I hope so,” lied Sayler, with a generous manliness that half fooled himself. “I’m not a zealot like you. I don’t believe in men, in human nature. I think progress comes through the fierce struggle of brutality and cunning against the stupid shiftlessness and indolence of mankind. I admit there are arguments for another view. They happen not to convince me. But, believing as I do, I am more interested in the game than in principles. To me it is simply a game. And so, I like to see good players on both sides. I’d hate to have you come over to our side. God knows, your side is badly enough off for good players.”

Helm’s smile put into his rugged face a touch of fanaticism--as tremendous earnestness is called in these days when to be interested in anything but accumulation and appetite is regarded as eccentric. Said he:

“My side, as you call it, doesn’t need any players at all. It is simply--to change the figure--the irresistibly sweeping current. I am swimming with it, you against it.”

Sayler surprised him by saying reflectively:

“I’ve thought of that. Sometimes I believe it.”

“The right thing--the thing that’s in accord with progress,” said Helm, “doesn’t need champions. The rainstorm doesn’t need umbrellas. But the men who’ve got to go out in it--they do.”

Sayler was admiring Helm’s manner. It was not the manner of the condemned man--at least, if it was, it was that of a condemned man of the type that tranquilly accepts the inevitable. Yet Sayler knew that Helm was moving consciously toward one of those crises that put the souls of men to the cruelest test. Sayler understood him thoroughly now, understood the strong and tenacious emotions that lay hid, or rather lay unexposed to any but expert eyes, beneath the surface look of the homely provincial man--provincial now, rather than bucolic, as he had been when he first burst upon the astonished and amused town of Harrison, with his strange red beard, and his much-tailed cheap broadcloth. “How this man could love a cause or a woman!” thought the sentimental overlord of bosses and machines. “But,” he added, “neither is appreciative--or worth loving.”

Where Sayler fell short of greatness was in that near-sightedness which prevented him from seeing the big truths that dominate the horizon of life--such truths as that the high happiness is not of the give-and-take variety but is the capacity for sheer giving. The deep and serene joy of Helm, secure from all surface storms, was the possession of a nature capable of _giving_.

Helm had not accomplished his only object. He had simply convinced Sayler of his value, not in the least of his inflexibility. Sayler prided himself on thorough knowledge of human nature. Convictions were, in his opinion, merely the creatures of circumstances. Change Helm’s circumstances, change his outlook upon the world from the uncomfortable to the comfortable, and he would become a tower of strength for the existing order, for the guardianship of the masses by the upper class--a service for which the masses ought to be glad to pay with part of their only asset, their labor.

At the suburban house he had taken for that legislature session, Sayler put Helm--not into the library; he was too tactful to make such a blunder as to give him the reminiscent surroundings of the previous evening--but into a home-like little smoking-room, next to the billiard room. Then he went in search of Eleanor.

Not often is a man able to gratify so many widely differing tastes as was Sayler by bringing together Helm and Eleanor. It pleased his natural amiability, his sentimentality, his love of mischief, his passion for political scheming, his impatience with the pompous and wearisome pretensions of her father, and several other minor tastes. Perhaps, as he entered the upstairs sitting-room where Eleanor was giving orders to her maid, amiability was uppermost in his mind. Amiability was one of his strongest traits; it is always a strong trait in the characters of politicians, and expands with use and with pretense. Said he when the maid had gone:

“George Helm is down stairs.”

Before she could control herself, she had betrayed herself by looking wildly round to escape.

Sayler ignored and went tranquilly on:

“I told him I was sure you’d be glad to see him. I know what a good judge of character you are. You must have seen what a remarkable man he is--about the strongest I’ve come across, among the younger men. He’ll be nominated for governor next fall--and elected, I suspect. And he’ll go up--and up. _There’s_ the sort of man you ought to marry, Eleanor.”

“I don’t want to marry _anybody_,” cried she with the pettish anger of a child.

Sayler made mental note of this sign of nervous tension, and proceeded:

“You are always saying that a husband who had already arrived would be uninteresting in comparison with one who had the makings of a career in him, and whom the wife could help--could work with, and go up with. Here’s your chance--and as good a one as ever was offered a woman.”

Eleanor was listening--was looking at the wily schemer with wistful eyes. “You’re not joking?” said she.

“I’m disappointed in you,” said Sayler. “You’re not so big or so clever as I fancied. You’re just ordinary woman, after all.”

Eleanor blushed, and her eyes sank.

“I thought you were big enough to see _him_,” proceeded Sayler. “But you saw only what you shallow women are able to see--the fit of his clothes, the absence of a valet, the lessons in manners he has yet to learn and will learn soon enough. You don’t want the man with the career to make. You want the ready-made man. You want to have nothing to do but shine by his light, be his trivial ornament and plaything. Oh, you women!” He laughed with good-humored mockery. “What frauds you are--and how little you count for.”

“I am engaged to him,” said Eleanor quietly--with a look that ludicrously mingled pride and fear and apology.

Sayler shrugged his shoulders. “An impulse you’ve repented,” said he.

“I think I must have been crazy,” said she.

“I think _he_ must have been crazy,” retorted Sayler. “But he has come to his senses. He’s here to release you.”

Eleanor’s eyes flashed.

“He was caught for the moment by your looks,” Sayler went on, with quick raillery. “But he is too intelligent to be ruled by such an impulse. Shallow men are, but not such men as George Helm. They assign women their proper place in the life of a man with something to do in the world and the ability to do it.” Sayler’s raillery veered to a sarcasm none the less stinging for its cloak of politeness and good humor. “_You_ sized _him_ up--and accepted him. As soon as _he_ sized _you_ up--you under the glamor of that charming exterior of yours and that very deceptive cleverness--as soon as he saw _you_, he wanted to release you.”

The girl’s beautiful face, frankly expressing her emotions, gave Sayler the pleasure of delighting in his skill as a player upon that interesting instrument, human nature. A woman--especially a young woman--brought up in the false education custom imposes upon our comfortable classes, rarely has the intelligence clearly to distinguish a formable man in his early formative period. Or, if her woman’s instinct for the real thing in manhood does by chance lead her aright, the courage to act is lacking. Eleanor had seen the man in George Helm--a degree, a kind even, of manliness which she recognized as unique. But she had acted upon, had yielded to only his peculiar, his irresistible physical charm for her. Who, looking at his rough and rugged exterior and hers so fine and delicate, would have suspected the possibility of the existence of such a charm? She would not have admitted to any one--least of all to herself--that the male exterior that best pleased her was not the “polished gentleman,” the flower of culture, but one exactly its opposite--primitive, rough of skin, direct and crude of manner. If Helm had been brutal she would have loathed him. But he was so gentle and tender--and what wonderful eyes, and what a magic voice!

Sayler laughed to himself. Here again was an instance of a phenomenon he amused himself by observing as he strolled through life. Time spent by a man in primping to catch a woman, unless she had been thoroughly vulgarized and snobified, was time wasted. He would better have spent it on training his voice.

Said Eleanor: “Of course I’ll release him. I was going to write him from home. Do you think I’d best see him? Won’t I spare him pain--” She flushed, as Sayler began to smile--“I don’t mean that he especially cares about me. Simply that he’ll be terribly embarrassed.”

“Oh, if you’re _afraid_,” said Sayler, “you can send down some excuse.”

“That would be cowardly,” said Eleanor promptly, “and insulting to him.”

“He’s in the little room off the billiard room,” said Sayler, departing.

Curiously enough, it was not Helm but Eleanor who was embarrassed when they were face to face. Her lips were burning--the lips he had kissed so tenderly yet so passionately. What a strong, simple _man_ of a man! If she had given way to her impulse, she would have burst out crying and flung herself into those long arms of his that had seemed to enfold her against all the ills of life. She could not meet the gentle, sad look those magnetic eyes of his bent upon her.

Said he:

“Miss Clearwater, I’ve come to do what I know you want me to do. I’ve come to release you.”

“Thank you,” she said stammeringly, without looking up.

“I don’t know what possessed me. I took advantage of--of your kindness and liking. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“I knew you didn’t mean what you said,” murmured she, meaning nothing but simply trying to prevent a painful silence.

“You’re mistaken there, ma’am,” said he. “I spoke from my heart. I love you very dearly. I don’t see how I’m going to get along without you. There’s only one thing in the world that’d be harder.”

She was looking at him now--was looking at his rugged, kind face--the face of a man born to suffer and born to bear without crying out. Such a lonely man--one of those large, simple, lonely souls. Said she:

“I meant what I said too. Just as much as you did. But--I--I--didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You haven’t hurt me, Miss Clearwater,” protested he earnestly. “You’ve done me only good--given me only happiness. I’ll always remember--last night--and it’ll make me happy. I oughtn’t to have said what I did about your letting me take advantage of your liking. It wasn’t the truth, and I knew it. You are honest and good--and what you did was from the heart.”

“As nothing I ever did before,” said she.

“But you know as well as I do, that the hardest thing of all would be for us to be together. We ain’t in any way suitable to each other. You’re too fine and delicate for me.”

“Please don’t say that sort of thing,” cried she. “It isn’t like you--those snobbish ideas.”

A puzzled expression came into his face. Then he smiled slightly. “You misunderstood,” said he. “I didn’t mean exactly that. I meant that you hadn’t been brought up right--according to my notion. So--you’d be miserable as my wife, and a burden on me. Anyhow, it always seemed to me that I wasn’t made to be a married man. The ladies never seemed to care much about me, and I guess that got me into the way of arranging to get along without them.”

As he stood there, rugged and powerful, his sincere face made tragic by the look of lonely melancholy that was habitual to it in repose, she was so moved that she knew she ought not to trust herself to speak. But she did--and her voice was shaking with sobs as she said:

“I know I’m not worthy of you. I’m so poor that I haven’t anything that you need. I’m only fit for a very inferior sort of man. Oh, how vain and silly I’ve been--to imagine I was worth a man’s while.”

“Now, I didn’t mean _that_--not at all,” cried he. “I don’t know how to talk to women.”

“Indeed you don’t!” retorted she. “You don’t understand them, at all.”

“I see I’ve offended you, Miss Clearwater. I didn’t mean to.”

“_Don’t_ call me Miss Clearwater,” cried she desperately. He had not moved, but she had--unconsciously--drawn much nearer to him--almost within his reach. “And don’t--” with a hysterical little laugh--“_don’t_ call me ma’am.”

He smiled with a kind of grim humor. “I don’t see that it matters what I call you,” said he, “as long as I can’t call you mine.”

She trembled. “Oh, _won’t_ you understand?” cried she. And she looked at him with eyes shining with passion.

He shook his head slowly. “Well--I must be going.” With a sudden change to a look of terrific power. “If I stay here a minute longer, I’ll not be able to keep my hands off you. I love you, Ellen--and it’s stronger than I am.”

“Why should you go?” said she, boldly. Her glowing heart told her it was no time for trifling, for maidenly pretense of coyness. That sort of game was all very well, with men who understood it--and men one didn’t especially care about. But this man didn’t understand it--and he was tremendously worth-while. Plain speaking, or he would be lost forever. She did not see how she was to marry him; but to lose him--that would be frightful. “Why should you go?” she said boldly. “Don’t you want me, George?”

He put his hands behind his back. He grew pale; his eyes seemed deeper set than ever.

“No man ever made me feel, but you,” she went on. “I belong to you. If you cast me off----”

He had her in his arms--not because of what she had said but because he could withstand no longer. “I’ve gone crazy again,” he said, as he kissed her--as she kissed him--“but you know as well as I do that we can’t be anything to each other.”

“Don’t think of that,” pleaded she. “Let’s be happy while we can--and let’s hope.”

“There’s nothing to hope for,” said he, drawing away from her. “I’m ashamed of myself. I love you, but it isn’t the kind of love a man gives a woman that he wants to live his life with.”