"I"m twenty-three."
"You"re young. But that doesn"t mean you"re foolish. Mr.
Dalyrimple, what I"ve got to say won"t take long. I"m going to make you a proposition. To begin at the beginning, I"ve been watching you ever since last Fourth of July when you made that speech in response to the loving-cup."
Dalyrimple murmured disparagingly, but Fraser waved him to silence.
"It was a speech I"ve remembered. It was a brainy speech, straight from the shoulder, and it got to everybody in that crowd. I know. I"ve watched crowds for years." He cleared his throat as if tempted to digress on his knowledge of crowds--then continued. "But, Mr. Dalyrimple, I"ve seen too many young men who promised brilliantly go to pieces, fail through want of steadiness, too many high-power ideas, and not enough willingness to work. So I waited. I wanted to see what you"d do. I wanted to see if you"d go to work, and if you"d stick to what you started."
Dalyrimple felt a glow settle over him.
"So," continued Fraser, "when Theron Macy told me you"d started down at his place, I kept watching you, and I followed your record through him. The first month I was afraid for awhile.
He told me you were getting restless, too good for your job, hinting around for a raise---"
Dalyrimple started.
"---But he said after that you evidently made up your mind to shut up and stick to it. That"s the stuff I like in a young man!
That"s the stuff that wins out. And don"t think I don"t understand. I know how much harder it was for you after all that silly flattery a lot of old women had been giving you. I know what a fight it must have been---"
Dalyrimple"s face was burning brightly. It felt young and strangely ingenuous.
"Dalyrimple, you"ve got brains and you"ve got the stuff in you-- and that"s what I want. I"m going to put you into the State Senate."
"The WHAT?"
"The State Senate. We want a young man who has got brains, but is solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don"t stop there. We"re up against it here, Dalyrimple. We"ve got to get some young men into politics--you know the old blood that"s been running on the party ticket year in and year out."
Dalyrimple licked his lips.
"You"ll run me for the State Senate?"
"I"ll PUT you in the State Senate."
Mr. Fraser"s expression had now reached the point nearest a smile and Dalyrimple in a happy frivolity felt himself urging it mentally on--but it stopped, locked, and slid from him. The barn-door and the jaw were separated by a line strait as a nail. Dalyrimple remembered with an effort that it was a mouth, and talked to it.
"But I"m through," he said. "My notoriety"s dead. People are fed up with me."
"Those things," answered Mr. Fraser, "are mechanical. Linotype is a resuscitator of reputations. Wait till you see the HERALD, beginning next week--that is if you"re with us--that is," and his voice hardened slightly, "if you haven"t got too many ideas yourself about how things ought to be run."
"No," said Dalyrimple, looking him frankly in the eye. "You"ll have to give me a lot of advice at first."
"Very well. I"ll take care of your reputation then. Just keep yourself on the right side of the fence."
Dalyrimple started at this repet.i.tion of a phrase he had thought of so much lately. There was a sudden ring at the door-bell.
"That"s Macy now," observed Fraser, rising. "I"ll go let him in.
The servants have gone to bed."
He left Dalyrimple there in a dream. The world was opening up suddenly-- The State Senate, the United States Senate--so life was this after all--cutting corners--common sense, that was the rule. No more foolish risks now unless necessity called--but it was being hard that counted-- Never to let remorse or self-reproach lose him a night"s sleep--let his life be a sword of courage--there was no payment--all that was drivel--drivel.
He sprang to his feet with clinched hands in a sort of triumph.
"Well, Bryan," said Mr. Macy stepping through the portieres.
The two older men smiled their half-smiles at him.
"Well Bryan," said Mr. Macy again.
Dalyrimple smiled also.
"How do, Mr. Macy?"
He wondered if some telepathy between them had made this new appreciation possible--some invisible realization... .
Mr. Macy held out his hand.
"I"m glad we"re to be a.s.sociated in this scheme--I"ve been for you all along--especially lately. I"m glad we"re to be on the same side of the fence."
"I want to thank you, sir," said Dalyrimple simply. He felt a whimsical moisture gathering back of his eyes.
The Four Fists
At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all his. .h.i.table qualities have quite vanished. But it is certain that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a girl"s lips.
I"m sure every one has met a man like that, been casually introduced, even made a friend of him, yet felt he was the sort who aroused pa.s.sionate dislike--expressed by some in the involuntary clinching of fists, and in others by mutterings about "takin" a poke" and "landin" a swift smash in ee eye." In the juxtaposition of Samuel Meredith"s features this quality was so strong that it influenced his entire life.
What was it? Not the shape, certainly, for he was a pleasant-looking man from earliest youth: broad-bowed with gray eyes that were frank and friendly. Yet I"ve heard him tell a room full of reporters angling for a "success" story that he"d be ashamed to tell them the truth that they wouldn"t believe it, that it wasn"t one story but four, that the public would not want to read about a man who had been walloped into prominence.
It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen.
He had been brought up on a diet of caviar and bell-boys" legs in half the capitals of Europe, and it was pure luck that his mother had nervous prostration and had to delegate his education to less tender, less bia.s.sed hands.
At Andover he was given a roommate named Gilly Hood. Gilly was thirteen, undersized, and rather the school pet. From the September day when Mr. Meredith"s valet stowed Samuel"s clothing in the best bureau and asked, on departing, "hif there was hanything helse, Master Samuel?" Gilly cried out that the faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in whose bowl has been put goldfish.
"Good gosh!" he complained to his sympathetic contemporaries, "he"s a d.a.m.n stuck-up Willie. He said, "Are the crowd here gentlemen?" and I said, "No, they"re boys," and he said age didn"t matter, and I said, "Who said it did?" Let him get fresh with me, the ole pieface!"
For three weeks Gilly endured in silence young Samuel"s comments on the clothes and habits of Gilly"s personal friends, endured French phrases in conversation, endured a hundred half-feminine meannesses that show what a nervous mother can do to a boy, if she keeps close enough to him--then a storm broke in the aquarium.
Samuel was out. A crowd had gathered to hear Gilly be wrathful about his roommate"s latest sins.
"He said, "Oh, I don"t like the windows open at night," he said, "except only a little bit,"" complained Gilly.
"Don"t let him boss you."