Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics

Life is a battle and a march—especially public life. Thorndyke waked the next morning prepared for both a battle and a march. A glance at the morning newspapers showed that the country was entirely with the Congress, and the people, having given their orders, would see to it that these orders were promptly obeyed. The Continental press of Europe with few exceptions barked furiously. The French newspapers alone retained dignity and good sense, pointing out the inevitable trend of events, and advised that, instead of abusing the United States, they should be copied in that system which had made them great, not by war, but by peace. The English newspapers were fair, but in some of them bitterness was expressed at England being shouldered out of her place as the greatest of the world-powers by the young giant of the West. There was in all of them, however, a note of triumph, that this first place had been lost only to an offshoot of the sturdy parent stock. This sentiment is often ridiculed as a peculiarly absurd form of national self-love, but there is, in reality, nothing ridiculous about it. As long as self-love is a part of nations and individuals, so long will each nation and each individual strive to share in the general stock of glory, achievement, and success.

In the American newspapers the man most prominent was Crane. He was compared to Henry Clay, to Stephen A. Douglas, to any and every American public man who had early in life made a meteoric rise in Congress. He was represented as the embodiment of youth with the wisdom of age. One newspaper reckoned him to be a political Chatterton, and called him “the Wondrous Boy.” His beauty was lauded, his voice, his delivery, the fit of his trousers; and one enthusiastic journal in Indianapolis promptly nominated him for the Presidency. Thorndyke searched the newspapers carefully, and did not find his own name once mentioned. He reflected upon Horace Greely’s remark that fame is a vapour.

Disappointing as it was to him to feel that another had reaped his harvest, it did not give him acute pain; for he had waked that morning with the agreeable consciousness which comes occasionally to every human being, that the world is more interesting to-day than it was yesterday; that consciousness which illuminates the cold, gray stage of life, and indicates that the lights are about to be turned up and the play to begin. The kind tones of Constance Maitland’s voice were still in Thorndyke’s ears, and the unmistakable look of interest in her soft eyes had visited him in dreams. He was no nearer marrying her than he had been at any time during the past eighteen years; the same obstacle was there—a very large, real, terrifying, and obvious obstacle—but there was also a sweet and comforting suspicion in his mind that Constance, as well as himself, had cherished the idyl of their youth. And then, by daylight, she did not look so preposterously girlish as she had looked by moonlight and in ball-dress. This gave Thorndyke considerable pleasure as he brushed the remnants of his hair into positions where they would do the most good. Her apparent advantage of him in the matter of youth and good looks had been disturbing to him at first. She still had much of youth and great good looks, but yet, a man with scanty hair and a grayish moustache would not look like an old fool beside her, as he had feared.

Thorndyke, according to his custom, walked to the Capitol. The morning, like most spring mornings in Washington, was as beautiful as the first morning in the garden of Eden. He chose unfrequented streets, and, passing under the long green arcades, had only the trees for his companionship on his walk.

Instead of reaching the building by way of the plaza, Thorndyke chose rather to ascend the long flights of steps leading upward from terrace to terrace on the west front. It is a way little used, but singularly beautiful, with its marble balustrades, its lush greenness of shrubbery, and the noble view both of the building and the fair white city embosomed in trees, spread out like a dream-city before the eye. Half-way up Thorndyke saw Senator Standiford sitting on one of the iron benches placed on the falls of the terrace. Thorndyke was surprised to see him there, and it occurred to him at once that it was a premeditated meeting on the Senator’s part.

He was a tall, ugly old man with chin-whiskers, but his appearance was redeemed by the power which spoke from his strongly marked face, and by his punctilious, old-fashioned dress and extreme neatness. He wore a silk hat made from a block he had used for thirty years. His coat, gray and wide-skirted, seemed of the same vintage, and his spotless collar of antique pattern, and his large black silk necktie might have been worn by Daniel Webster himself. A big pair of gold spectacles and a gold-headed cane completed a costume which was admirably harmonious, and produced the effect of an old lady in 1903 with the side curls and cap of 1853.

The Senator had a newspaper spread out before him, but as Thorndyke approached folded it up, pushed his gold spectacles up on his forehead, and called out:

“Hello! Have you read about the ‘Wondrous Boy’ this morning?”

“I have,” replied Thorndyke, smiling pleasantly as he lifted his hat, and in response to a silent invitation he seated himself on the bench by Standiford’s side.

“Great speech, that,” continued the Senator. “At first I was disposed to give you the credit for all of it—but there’s something in that fellow Crane. You couldn’t have coached him so well if he hadn’t been capable of learning.”

“You do me too much honour,” replied Thorndyke, laughing, but with something like bitterness.

Senator Standiford continued with a dry contortion of the lips which was meant for a smile:

“But you’ll see, my son, that your friend Crane won’t grow quite so fast as he thinks he will. In our times public men require the seasoning of experience before they amount to anything. There’ll be no more Henry Clays elected to the House of Representatives before they are thirty. The world was young, then, but we have matured rapidly. It is true that we have relaxed the rule of the Senate a little, and allow the new senators to speak in the Senate Chamber at a much earlier period in their senatorial service than formerly. But speech-making is a dangerous pastime. Much of the small success I have achieved”—here Senator Standiford’s face assumed a peculiar expression of solemnity which made him look like a deacon handing around the church plate—“I lay to the fact that I never could make a speech in my life, and I found it out at an early stage in my career. I’m a Presbyterian, as you know, but in my town I’m classed as a heretic and an iconoclast, because when they want to call a new preacher and to have him preach a specimen sermon I always tell the elders, ‘Why do you want to judge the fellow by the way he talks? It’s the poorest test in the world to apply to a man. Find out what he can do.’ But they won’t listen to me, of course, and the Fourth Presbyterian Church is perennially filled by a human wind-bag, who snorts and puffs and blows dust about until the congregation get tired of him and try another wind-bag. In Congress wind-bags don’t last.”

“All the same, I wish from the bottom of my heart that I had had Crane’s chance yesterday and had used it as well,” replied Thorndyke.

“If you had you would have given our junior Senator a bad quarter of an hour,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely.

Now, in common with all true Senatorial bosses, Standiford had seen to it that his junior Senator was a man of straw, put in the place in order that the boss might have two votes in the Senate. Never had the junior Senator yet voted or acted in opposition to his master; but had Thorndyke been the junior it would have been another story, and both men knew it. This caused Thorndyke to remark, coolly:

“He would have no reason to disturb himself—the ass! You have been kind enough to give me to understand that I am ineligible for promotion, not being made of putty, as our junior Senator is.”

“Now, now!” remonstrated Senator Standiford, again assuming his air of a seventeenth-century Puritan. “To hear you anybody would think that our State organisation didn’t want every first-class man it can get! We have the highest regard for your services, and we do what we can to keep you in your present place because we see your usefulness there.”

Senator Standiford punctiliously used the euphemism “we” just as he gravely consulted all the pothouse politicians and heelers in “the organisation,” but it did not materially affect the fact that he was the whole proposition in his own State.

Thorndyke looked full into the deep, calm eyes of the rugged old man before him, and could not forbear laughing; but there was not the glimmer of a twinkle in them. Presently the old man said, coolly:

“Suppose I should tell you that I may retire at the end of my term, two years from now?”

“I should wish to believe anything you say, my dear Senator, but I am afraid I couldn’t believe that.”

“What a fellow you are! But let me tell you—mind, this is a confidence between gentlemen—my retirement is not impossible. You know my daughter, my little Letty——”

As Senator Standiford spoke the name his face softened, and a passion of parental love shone in his deep-set eyes.

“She is a very remarkable girl, Mr. Thorndyke, very remarkable; and she loves her old father better than he deserves. I have as good sons as any man ever had—but that daughter left me by my dead wife is worth to me everything else on God’s earth. The doctors have been frightening her about me lately. They tell her I work too hard for my time of life—that I ought to take a rest, and if I will do it I can add ten years to my life. Now, you know, the State organisation will never let me take a rest”—Senator Standiford said this quite seriously—“and Letty as good as told me six months ago that if I should be re-elected to the Senate”—the Senator uttered this “if” in a tone of the most modest deprecation—“if I should be re-elected for another term—as she wishes me to be—then she wants me to resign. I don’t mind admitting that if any other human being had said this to me except my daughter Letty, I should have reckoned myself drunk or crazy to have listened to it. But my daughter, as I mentioned to you, is a remarkable girl. Besides, the child is not strong herself, and if she gets to worrying about me—well, you can see, Mr. Thorndyke, how it is with me. The world credits me with loving place and power above everything on earth, but there is something dearer to me than the office of President of the United States: it is my daughter. And the sweetness and the tenderness of that child for her old father——”

Here Senator Standiford took out a large red silk handkerchief and blew a blast like the blast of Roncesvalles.

Being an accomplished judge of men, Senator Standiford, while speaking, had watched Thorndyke closely. Had he shown any undue elation over the political prospects indicated by Senator Standiford’s possible retirement, Thorndyke’s fortunes would have been ruined. But by the lucky accident of having a good heart he said the most judicious thing possible.

“I don’t see any indications of overwork in you, Senator. At the same time I know you do the work of ten men, and I also know the exercise of power is so dear to you that, from the pound-master in your own town up to the candidate for President, you give everything your personal supervision. But as for Miss Standiford’s not being strong—why, I took her in to dinner less than a month ago, and remarked on her freshness and beauty. She looked the picture of health and ate more dinner than I did.”

“Did she?” asked the Senator, anxiously. “What did she eat?”

Thorndyke did not feel in the least like laughing at Senator Standiford’s inquiry, and answered, promptly:

“Oh, everything. I remember chaffing her about her good appetite.”

“Thank God! The doctors say if she can only eat and live out in the fresh air and play golf and ride horseback she will be all right. But, Thorndyke, I swear to you, I am as soft as milk about that girl. If she goes out to golf I am unhappy for fear she will take cold. If she rides I am in terror for fear some accident will happen to her. Ah, Thorndyke, a man is no fit guardian for a girl like that—the sweetest—the most affectionate——”

Here Senator Standiford again blew his nose violently.

“She has always been very sweet to me,” answered Thorndyke, “although I believe she thinks me old enough to be her grandfather.”

“She is a very remarkable girl, sir; that I say without the least partiality,” replied Senator Standiford, earnestly. “She’s a little wild, having no mother, poor child—but her heart, sir, is in the right place. And the way she loves her old father is the most splendid, touching, exquisite thing ever imagined!”

Thorndyke listened attentively, deeply interested in the human side of a man who had seemed to him to have a very small amount of the purely human in him. The little story of Letty Standiford’s health and heart and nature did not strike him as puerile—there was nothing puerile about Silas Standiford, and his love for this child of his old age was, in truth, a Titanic passion, strong enough, as he said, to make him forego the chief object of his existence: power over other men. Thorndyke really liked and pitied Letty Standiford, living her young life without guidance, in a manner possible only in America and not desirable anywhere for a young girl. He had not suspected the delicacy of her constitution, and after Senator Standiford ceased speaking said:

“I wish, Senator, you could persuade Miss Standiford to be a little more prudent about her health. The night I dined out with her, when it came time to go home she was about to pick up her skirts and run two blocks to your hotel, in her satin slippers, with sleet coming down, and the streets like glass—this, for a lark. I took her by the arm and shoved her in a cab, got in myself, and took her home. I thought she would box my ears before I got there, but I carried my point.”

“She told me about it—she tells me everything; and I thank you for taking care of the child. You may imagine what I suffer on her account.”

Senator Standiford rose then, and, resting both hands on his old-fashioned gold-headed stick, he looked full into Thorndyke’s face, and said, slowly:

“I hope we understand each other, Mr. Thorndyke. We think you a very strong man, and strong men are liable to become dangerous. The State organisation wishes you to remain where you are. But in the event that I should be re-elected and should be forced to resign, I have no hesitation in saying that unless something unforeseen happens you would certainly have my personal good wishes toward getting you the party nomination for Senator.”

“I understand you perfectly, Senator,” replied Thorndyke, with equal coolness, “and though I admit I think it a shameful state of affairs that any organisation or any man should have the power to dispose of any man’s political future, yet it is a fixed fact in our State and can’t be helped for the present. So far as your personal kindness to me goes I have the deepest sense of it, and the chances are, on the strength of what you have just said, that I may one day be senator.”

“And when you are you won’t be as much down on the State organisation as you are now,” remarked Senator Standiford, beginning to climb the marble steps. “You will probably be called a boss yourself.”

“No, I shall not,” answered Thorndyke. “I shouldn’t have the heart to put men through the mill as I have seen you and Senator Bicknell and a few others do.”

Senator Standiford professed to regard this as a pleasantry, and so they entered the Capitol together.

The day was the regular one for the meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and there was a full attendance, every member being prompt except the chairman. Ten minutes after the hour struck, Crane entered. It was almost impossible for a man to have had the personal triumph he had enjoyed the day before, without showing some consciousness of it. Thorndyke had expected to see Crane crowing like chanticleer. Instead, he was remarkably quiet and subdued. He was greeted with the chaff which senators and representatives indulge in after the manner of collegians. Several members addressed him as the “Wondrous Boy,” and others, displaying copies of the Indianapolis editorial, presented their claims to him for cabinet places and embassies. One member—the Honourable Mark Antony Hudgins, a colleague of Crane’s, who posed as a greenhorn and was really a wit—solemnly engaged Thorndyke to write him a speech to deliver at the first seasonable opportunity, but warned him not to make it too much like the speech of the “Wondrous Boy.” Thorndyke laughed. He had taken no part in the joking and chaffing. Crane’s face flushed. He did not like to be reminded of Thorndyke’s share in his success, but he was too considerable a man to deny it.

The meeting was brief and devoted to routine matters. The debate would begin directly after the morning hour, and it was supposed it would go along smoothly. There was, it is true, an able and malevolent person from Massachusetts who would be likely to stick a knife between the joints of Crane’s armour, and two or three Southern members who would be certain to discover an infringement of the Constitution of the United States in something or other—but these were only the expected rough spots in an otherwise smooth road.

At two o’clock the debate began. Again were the galleries packed, though not to the same degree as on the day before. When Crane rose to defend the report he was loudly applauded. He was interrupted once or twice by the able and malevolent representative from Massachusetts, who never disappointed expectations in that particular. And there were some sly allusions to the Indianapolis newspaper and the “Wondrous Boy.” This bothered Crane obviously, who had a reasonable and wholesome fear of ridicule. He had his share of a certain crude humour—God never makes an American without putting humour of some sort into him—but Crane’s was not the rapid-fire, give-and-take humour which counts in debate. He was always afraid of committing some breach of taste and decorum when he wished to raise a laugh. He remembered certain men whose remarks had caused a tempest of mirth in the House, but those same remarks seen in cold type next day had seriously damaged their authors. It was here that Thorndyke came to Crane’s rescue. While he sat glowering and fuming and hesitating, Thorndyke stood in the breach with a good story, full of wit and pith. The House immediately went into convulsions of laughter. The able and malevolent member from Massachusetts in vain tried to bring the gentlemen back to a state of seriousness and disgust with affairs generally. But the turn injected by Thorndyke into the discussion put everybody into a good humour, the debate went swimmingly, as it was foreseen, and when the adjournment came it was plain that the report would be adopted substantially as it came from the committee.

Thorndyke watched the big clock over the main doorway, and precisely at four left the chamber, and likewise left Crane to his fate, which, however, proved to be easy enough. Thorndyke had other business on hand then.