Kitabı oku: «A Spoil of Office: A Story of the Modern West», sayfa 16
"That will be while you live," said the colonel gallantly.
"I hope not," she replied quickly. "I hope to see our reforms established before the gray comes into my hair. If we are true to ourselves; if our leaders are true to themselves; if they do not become spoils of office" – she looked at Bradley, and the others followed her glance; she saw her mistake, and colored a little as she went on – "if they are true to their best convictions, and speak the new thoughts that come to them, poverty will not increase her dominion."
She closed by saying: "We have with us tonight a very distinguished young Congressman from Iowa, – the Honorable Mr. Talcott. I hope he will feel like saying something to you."
While the people stamped and clapped hands, Ida went over to Bradley and said: "You must talk to them. Tell them just what you think."
Bradley rose. He would have done more had she asked it. He began by speaking of the Grange and its decline, and of the apparent hopelessness of expecting the farmers to remain united.
"I am not quite convinced the time has come for a political movement. If I were, I'd join it, even though some of the planks in your platform were objectionable, for I am a farmer. My people for generations have been tillers of the soil. They have always been poor. All the blood in my heart goes out, therefore, towards the farmer and the farmers' movement. It seems a hopeless thing to fight the privileged classes, with all their power and money. It can be done, but it can be done only by union among all the poor of every class. Since coming to your State, since day before yesterday, my mind has been changed. If I thought – if I could believe – " As he paused he caught Ida's eyes shining into his, and at the moment the one thing in all the world worth doing was to follow her wish. "I do believe, and I'm with you from this time forward." He ended there, but he stood for a moment numb, and tingling with emotion. He had uttered a resolution which changed the course of his life.
The people seemed to realize the importance of this confession on the part of the speaker. There was a vibrant intensity in the tone of his voice, which every listener felt, and they broke out in wild applause as he abruptly ended and sat down.
Ida, with her eyes shining and wet, reached forward over the seat, and clasped his hand and held it. "Glorious! Now you're with us, heart and soul!" In their exaltation it did not occur to either of them what a strange place this little schoolhouse was for such a far-reaching compact.
Out under the coruscating skies again, into the crisp air! Bradley turned and looked back upon the little schoolhouse, packed to suffocation; it would always remain a memorable place in this wide land.
"Oh, you've done them good – more than you can tell!" Ida said.
"I begin to believe it is the beginning of the greatest reform movement in history," he said at last. "They are searching for the truth; and whenever any great body of men search for the truth, they find it, and the finding of it is tremendous. Its effect reaches every quarter of the earth."
They mounted to their perilous seat once more, and moved out into the night. The wind seemed to have gone down. There was a deep hush in the air, as if the high stars listened in their illimitable spaces. The plain seemed as lonely and as unlighted as the Arctic Ocean. Even the barking of a farm-yard dog had a wolfish and savage suggestiveness.
They rode in silence. Ida sighed deeply. At last she said: "It's only an incident with us. We go back to our pleasant and varied lives; they go back to their lonely homes, and to their bleak corn-fields."
"But you have given them something to hope for, something to think of," Bradley said, seeking to comfort her.
"Yes, that is the only consolation I can get out of it. This movement has come into their lives like a new religion. It is a new religion – the religion of humanity. It does help them to forget mud and rain and cold and monotony."
Again Bradley's arm seemed necessary to her safety, but this time it closed around her, strong and resolute, yet he dared not say a word. He was not sure of her. It seemed impossible that this wonderful, beautiful, and intellectual woman should care for him; and yet, when he was speaking, her eyes had pleaded for him.
The driver talked on about the meeting, but his passengers were silent. Under cover of listening they were both dreaming. Bradley was forecasting his life, and wondering how much she would make up of it; wondering if she would make more of it than she had of his past life. How far off she had always seemed to him, and yet she had always been a part of his inner life. Now she sat beside him, in the circle of his arm, and yet she seemed hopelessly out of his reach. She liked him as a friend and brother reformer – that was all. Besides, he had no right to hope now, when his fortunes had become failures.
She was thinking of him. She was deeply gratified to think he had entered the great movement, and that she had been instrumental in converting him. Her heart warmed to him strangely for his honesty and his sincerity; and then he was so fine and earnest and strong-limbed! The pressure of his arm at her side moved her, and she smiled at herself. Unlike Bradley, she was self-analytical; she knew what all these things meant.
"There's the station," the driver broke out, indicating some colored lights in the valley below them. "We're 'most home."
At his word a vision of the plain, and the significance of its life, rushed over Ida – the serene majesty of the stars, the splendor and unused wealth of the prairies, the barriers to their use, the limitless robbery of the poor, in both city and country, the pathetic homes of the renter.
"Oh, the pathos, the tragedy of it all! Nature is so good and generous, and poverty so universal. Can it be remedied? It must be remedied. Every thinking, sympathizing soul must help us."
Bradley's voice touched Ida deeply as he said, slowly: "Henceforward I shall work for these people and all who suffer. My life shall be given to this work."
A great, sudden resolution flashed into Ida's eyes. She lifted her face to his and laid her hand on his and clasped it hard. There was a little pause, in which, as if by some occult sense, their minds read each other.
"We'll work together, Bradley," she said; and the driver did not see the timid caress which Bradley put upon her lips as a sign of his unspeakable great joy.
XXXII.
CONCLUSION
One winter evening Ida and Bradley came out of their apartments on Capitol Hill and struck into one of the winding walks which led downward toward the city. It was the fourth week of the "short session" of Bradley's term of office, and the tenth week since their marriage. He still treated Ida with a certain timidity, and his adoration had been increased rather than diminished by his daily association with her. She seemed not to regret her compact with him, and though hardly more demonstrative than he, she let him know how deeply she trusted and loved him.
He was transformed by her influence. His life had regained direction and certainty. No rebuff of the Speaker, no insult of a member, angered him. He was always in his seat, ready, whenever opportunity offered, to do battle against wrong knowing that Ida was watching him. Between times he went with her about the city, and his quiet and dignified attentions were a source of the keenest pleasure to her, he was so unobtrusively serene and gentle in all things. They went often to the theatre. They walked a great deal, and they were already marked figures about the Hill, they were both so tall and strong and handsome.
They always passed through the Capitol grounds on their way down town, for it gave them a little thrill of delight to pass the clumps of trees. On this evening the grounds were specially beautiful. A heavy fall of damp snow covered every twig and grass-blade. They walked slowly down the winding path till they reached the open lawn just before the western gate.
"Wait a moment, Bradley," said Ida. They turned to look back. The untracked, unstained snow swept in undulating breadth to the deep shadow of the great building, which rose against the sky as cold, as seamless, as if it were cut from solid ice. The yellow flare of lamps about its base only added to its austere majesty. It was at its best, and Ida and Bradley looked up at it in silence, hearing the jingle of bells, the soft voices of the negro drivers, the laughter of children coasting on the mall, and the muffled roll of the "carettes."
"It is beautiful to-night," said Ida softly. "The building is like a cloud."
"Yes, but I can't think of it without its antithesis, the home of the workingman and the hut of the poor negro," Bradley replied.
They moved on again in silence. Darky newsboys, shivering with cold, met them at every corner, holding out to them in their stiffened little claws their "Styah papahs."
The avenue swarmed with sight-seers, mainly of the West and South. Every hotel door was like the vent to a hive – black with comers and goers. The old man with the cough medicine met them again. They could repeat his singsong cry now, and with a little impulse of fun-making Ida joined in with him: "Doc-ter Fergusson's double-ex selly-brated, Philadelphia cough drops, for coughs or colds, sore throat or hoarseness; five cents a package."
They soon struck into the gayer streams of people making their way towards the theatre; and when they took their seats in the crowded balcony, poverty was lost sight of.
"There! who says this is not a bright and gay world?" said Ida. "No poor, no aged, no infirm, no cold or hungry people here."
"This is the bright side of the moon," replied Bradley gravely. They looked around, and studied the people with a mental comparison with other throngs they had seen on the far prairies of Kansas and Iowa. There were girls with eyes full of liquid light, with dainty bonnets nestling on their soft hair; their faces were like petals of flowers; the curves of their chins were more beautiful than chalices of lilies; their dresses, soft, shapely, of exquisite tones and texture, draped their perfect bodies. Their slender fingers held gold-and-pearl opera glasses. The young men who sat beside them wore the latest fashions in clothing cut from the finest fabrics. Heavy men of brutal bulk slouched beside their dainty daughters, the purple blotches on their bloated and lumpy faces showing how politics or business had debauched and undermined them. Everywhere was the rustle of drapery and soft, musical speech. All that was lacking in "the round up" at Chiquita was here – shining, fragrant, and rustling.
The curtain rose upon the fair in Nottinghamshire; and with the sweet imaginative music as solvent and setting, the gay lads and lassies of far romance sang and danced under the trees in garments upon which the rain had never fallen, and unflecked with dust. Knights in splendid dress of silver and green, with jewelled swords and gay sashes, came and went, while the merry peasant youths circled and sang task-free and sin-free.
The scene changed to Sherwood Forest; and there, in the land of Robin Hood, where snow never falls, where rains never slant through the shuddering leaves, the jocund foresters met to sing and drink October ale. There came Little John and Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale in glittering garments, with smooth, fair brows and tuneful voices, to circle and sing. Fadeless and untarnished was each magnificent cloak and doublet, slashed with green or purple; straight and fair and supple was every back and limb. No marks of toil anywhere, no lines of care, no hopeless hunger, no threatening task; nothing to do but to sing and dance and drink after the hunt among the delightfully dry and commodious forest wilds – a glorious, free life! A beautiful, child-like, dream-like, pagan-like life!
As they looked, and while the music, tuneful, soft, and persuasive, called to them, a shadow fell upon Ida. That world of care-free, changeless youth, that world of love and comradeship, threw into painful relief the actual world from which she came. It brought up with terrible force the low cottage in the moaning pine forest of Wisconsin, or the equally lonely cabin on the Kansas plain.
When the curtain fell, they rose and went sombrely out. When they reached the street, Ida pressed Bradley's arm.
"Oh, it was beautiful, painfully beautiful! Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes," replied Bradley simply.
"O Bradley! if we only could discover a land like that, to which all the poor could go at once and be happy – a land of song and plenty, with no greed and no grinding need!"
"Yes," Bradley sighed, "But I am afraid you and I will never again taste anything sweet. There will always be a dash of bitter in it."
"Yes, we were born to feel others' cares. The worst of it is, we could have that land in America if we only would. Our forefathers thought it was coming, but instead of it" – She did not finish, and they walked on in deep thought.
"Yes," said Bradley, "we could have it; but the way is long and weary, and thousands and millions of us must die on the road, I am afraid."
As they walked on, Bradley could hear the occasional deep-sighing breath of the heart-burdened woman beside him. Again they passed by the cold and stately palace of the Government, lifting its dome against the glittering sky. The moon had swung high into the air, giving a whiter tinge to the blue, and dimming the brilliancy of the stars, but the crusted snow sparkled like a cloth of diamonds, and each flake-burdened branch took on unearthly charm. It was very still and peaceful and remote, as if no city were near. They stood in silence until Ida shivered with cold; then without a word Bradley touched her arm, and they walked on.
When they entered their room, Ida sat down in a chair by the fire without removing her things; and when Bradley came in from the hall she still sat there, her eyes shaded by her hat, her chin resting on her palm, her gloves in her lap. He knew her too well to interrupt her, and took a seat near her, waiting for her to speak.
At last she turned abruptly, and said, "Bradley, I'm going home."
It made him catch his breath. "Oh, no, I can't let you do that, Ida."
"Yes, I must go; I can't stay here. That play to-night has wakened my sleeping conscience. I must go back to the West."
"But, Ida, you've only been here four weeks; I don't see why" —
"Because my work calls me. I am cursed. I can't enjoy this life any more, because I can't forget those poor souls on the lonely farms grinding out their lives in gloomy toil; I must go back and help them. I feel like a thief, to be living in this beautiful room and hearing these plays and concerts, when they are shut out from them."
Bradley experienced a sudden impulse of rebellion. "But we have done our best, haven't we?"
"Yes, but we must continue to do our best right along; the battle is only half won yet, and I've enlisted to the end. Besides," she said, looking up at him with a faint smile, "I've got to go right into your district and pave the way for your re-election. If you expect to do your part here, I must do my part in electing you." She looked old and care-worn. "You know how much good it does the poor wives and mothers to meet me and to hear me. Now, we mustn't be selfish, dear. We must not forget that neither of us was born to idleness. I have been very happy here with you, but there is something of John the Baptist in me: I must go forth and utter the word – the word of the Lord."
They fell into silence again, and Bradley, facing the fire, felt a burning pain in his staring eyes. Her presence had been so inexpressibly sweet and helpful he could not bear to let her go. And yet he understood her feeling. Slowly through years of thought he had grown, till now he was level with her altruistic conception of life. When he spoke again it was in his apparently passionless way.
"All right, Ida. We enlisted for the whole war." He was able to smile a little as he looked up at her. "My congressional career will soon end, anyhow."
She rose and came to him and put her arm about his neck. "As a matter of fact, you'll work better without me, Bradley, and your public career must not end for many years. You must keep your place for my sake as well as for the sake of the wronged – and also for the sake of – of our children, Bradley." Her voice grew tremulous toward the end, and a look of singular beauty came into her face.
Bradley looked up at her with a questioning, eager light in his eyes, then his long left arm encircled her like a shield and drew her to his knee.
"All that I am I owe to you. Now, nothing can defeat me!"
