"You are as bad--and as good--as that," she replied, the hope that stirred in her heart lighting her face.
He shrugged his shoulders and sat down.
"You have the wit to see that the old order of things is pa.s.sing; the old apparatus you have learned to operate with a turn of the hand is out of date. Now is your chance to leave the shadow life and begin again.
It"s not too late to win the confidence--the grat.i.tude even--of the people who now distrust and fear you. The day of reckoning is coming fast for men like you, who have made a mystery of politics, playing it as a game in the dark. I don"t pretend to know much of these things, but I can see that men of your type are pa.s.sing out; there would be no great glory for you in waiting to be the last to go. And there are things enough for you to do. If you ally yourself with the good causes that cry for support and leadership, you can be far more formidable than you have ever been as a skulking trickster; you can lead men up as you have led them down."
"The change is coming; I have seen it coming," he replied, catching at the one thing it seemed safest to approve.
But she was not to be thwarted by his acquiescence in generalities. He saw that she had brought him back to a point whence he must elect his course, but he did not flinch at the flat restatement of her demand.
"You have done nothing to deserve the senatorship; you are not the choice of the people of this state. You must relinquish it; you must give it up!"
The earnestness with which she uttered her last words seemed, to her surprise, to amuse him.
"You think," he said, "that I should go back and make a new start by a different route? But I don"t know the schedule; my transportation is good on only one line." And he grinned at his joke.
"Oh, you will have to pay your fare!" she replied quickly. "You"ve never done that."
His grin became a smile, and he said: "You want me to walk if I can"t pay my way!"
"Yes," she laughed happily, feeling that her victory was half won; "and you would have to be careful to stop, look, and listen at the crossings!"
The allusion further eased the stress of the hour; humor shone in his gray eyes. He consulted his watch, frowned, bent his eyes upon the floor, then turned to her with disconcerting abruptness.
"I haven"t been half the boss you think me. I"ve been hedged in, cramped, and shackled. All these fellows who hop the stick when I say "Jump" have their little axes I must help grind. I"ve fooled away the best years of my life taking care of these little fellows, and I"ve spent a lot of money on them. It"s become a little monotonous, I can tell you. It"s begun to get on my nerves, for I have a few; and all this hammering I"ve taken from the newspapers has begun to make me hot. I know about as much as they do about the right and wrong of things; I suppose I know something about government and the law too!"
"Yes," Sylvia a.s.sented eagerly.
He readjusted himself in his chair, crossing his legs and thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets.
"It _would_ be rather cheerful and comfortable," he continued musingly, as though unburdening himself of old grievances, "to be free to do as you like once in a lifetime! Those fellows in Thatcher"s herd who have practically sold out to me and are ready to deliver the goods to-night are all rascals, swung my way by a few corporations that would like to have me in Washington. It would be a good joke to fool them and elect a man who couldn"t be bought! It"s funny, but I"ve wondered sometimes whether I wasn"t growing tired of the old game."
"But the new game you can play better than any of them. It"s the only way you can find peace."
With a gesture half-bold, half-furtive, he put out his hand and touched lightly the glove she had drawn off and laid on the table.
"You believe in me; you have some faith left in me?"
"Yes."
Her hand touched his; her dark eyes searched the depths of his soul--sought and found the shadows there and put them to flight. When she spoke it was with a tenderness that was new to all his experience of life; he had not known that there could be balm like this for a bruised and broken spirit. This girl, seeking nothing for herself, refusing anything he could offer, had held up a mirror in which he saw himself limned against dancing, mocking shadows. Nothing in her arraignment had given him a sharper pang than her reference to his loneliness, his failure to command sympathy and confidence in his home relationships. No praise had ever been so sweet to him as hers; she not only saw his weaknesses and dealt with them unsparingly, but she recognized also the strength he had wasted and the power he had abused. She saw life in broad vistas as he had believed he saw it; he was not above a stirring of pride that she appreciated him and appraised his gifts rightly. He had long played skillfully upon credulity and ignorance; he had frittered away his life in contentions with groundlings. It would be a relief, if it were possible, to deal with his peers, the enlightened, the far-seeing, and the fearless, who strove for great ends. So he pondered, while outside the sentinel kept watch like a fate.
"Yes," Sylvia was saying slowly, "you can make rest.i.tution. But not to the dead--not to my mother asleep over there at Montgomery, oh, not to me! What is done is past, and you can"t go back. There"s no going back in this world. But you can go on--you can go on and up--"
"No! You don"t see that; you don"t believe that?"
"Yes, I believe it. The old life--the life of mystery and duplicity is over; you will never go back to the old way."
"The old way?" he repeated.
"The old unhappy way."
"Up there at the lake you knew I was unhappy; you knew things weren"t right with me?"
"Things weren"t right because you were wrong! Success hadn"t made you happy. The shadows kept dancing round you. Mrs. Ba.s.sett"s troubles came largely from worrying about you. In time Marian and Blackford will begin to see the shadows. I should think--I should think"--and he saw that she was deeply moved--"that a man would want the love of his children; I should think he would want them to be proud of him."
"His children; yes; I haven"t thought enough of that."
She had so far controlled herself, but an old ache throbbed in her heart. "In college, when I heard the girls talking of their homes, it used to hurt me more than you can ever know. There were girls among my friends whose fathers were fine men,--some of them great and famous; and I used to feel sure that my father would have been like them. I felt--that I should have been proud of him." And suddenly she flung her arms upon the table and bowed her face upon them and wept.
He stood beside her, patiently, helplessly. The suggestion of her lonely girlhood with its hovering shadow smote him the more deeply because it emphasized the care she had taken to subordinate herself throughout their talk.
"Do you think you could ever be proud of me?--that you might even care a little, some day?" he asked, bending over her.
"Oh, if it could be so!" she whispered brokenly, so low that he bent closer to hear.
The room was very still. Sylvia rose and began drawing on her glove, not looking at him. She was afraid to risk more; there was, indeed, nothing more to say. It was for him to make his choice. He was silent so long that she despaired. Then he pa.s.sed his hand across his face like one roused from sleep.
"Wait a moment," he said, "and I will walk home with you."
He went to the door and dispatched the guard on an errand; then he seated himself at the table and picked up a pad of paper. He was still writing when Harwood entered. Sylvia and Dan exchanged a nod, but no words pa.s.sed between them. They watched the man at the table, as he wrote with a deliberation that Dan remembered as characteristic of him.
When he had finished, he copied what he had written, put the copy in his breastpocket and b.u.t.toned his coat before glancing at Harwood.
"If I withdraw my name, what will happen?" he asked quietly.
"Ramsay will be nominated, sir," Dan answered.
Ba.s.sett studied a moment, fingering the memorandum he had written; then he looked at Dan quizzically.
"Just between ourselves, Dan, do you really think the Colonel"s straight?"
"If he isn"t, he has fooled a lot of people," Dan replied.
He had no idea of what had happened, but he felt that all was well with Sylvia. It seemed a long time since Ba.s.sett had called him Dan!
"Well, I guess the Colonel"s the best we can do. I"m out of it. This is my formal withdrawal. Hand it to Robbins--you know him, of course. It tells him what I want done. My votes go to Ramsay on the next ballot. I look to you to see that it"s played square. Give the Colonel my compliments. That"s all. Good-night."
Harwood called Robbins from the room where Ba.s.sett"s men lounged, waiting for the convening of the caucus, and delivered the message. As he hurried toward Thatcher"s headquarters he paused suddenly, and bent over the balcony beneath the dome to observe two figures that were slowly descending one of the broad stairways. Morton Ba.s.sett and Sylvia were leaving the building together. A shout rang out, echoing hollowly through the corridors, and was followed by scattering cheers from men who were already hastening toward the senate chamber where the caucus sessions were held.
Somehow Morton Ba.s.sett"s st.u.r.dy shoulders, his step, quickened to adapt it to the pace of his companion, did not suggest defeat. Dan still watched as the two crossed the rotunda on their way to the street.
Ba.s.sett was talking; he paused for an instant and looked up at the dome, as though calling his companion"s attention to its height.
Sylvia glanced up, nodded, and smiled as though affirming something Ba.s.sett had said; and then the two vanished from Dan"s sight.