“But tell me,” said the Senator, with animation, “why this unheralded visit? Why did you not let me know? You, of course, are staying for a few days? Here, with me?”
“No, sir, I am not staying. I am taking the midnight train back to Windsor. I suppose I should have let you know, but everything has been so disturbed—”
The geniality went out of the Senator’s face, and it became vague and smooth. “Ah, yes,” he murmured. “I believe I recall something—” He put down his glass and stared at it. Martin, faintly frightened, leaned toward him eagerly. “Mr. Nicholas! I can see you have heard about it—all. And I knew—I know—that you would realize why I did it, and sympathize. And approve. What else could I do under the circumstances? You, of all people, who have been so much interested in slavery, have crusaded so strongly against it, even declared that the North would not hesitate to go to war to free the slaves, you understand! I thought to myself: Of all men in the world Mr. Nicholas would understand and approve.”
Nicholas cleared his throat. He knew what he should say, but he could not bring it out yet. He was so good at this sort of thing; he knew so many sonorous phrases, so many lofty sentiments to express. He knew the exact gesture to use in this case, the exact opening of an eye, the exact expression and posture. But he could not forget that this young man was married to his niece, to whom Gregory had persuaded him to give a reluctant dowry, and that the dividends which were being “thrown away” counted up to a devilish large sum of money. If he had not been a member of the family, the sonorous phrases would have come easily enough, garnished with pious and appropriate sentiments; but it was a devilish large sum of money! He was not incredulous, as were the majority of people, about Martin’s sincerity or sanity; he had met many such zealots, though none whose zeal was so damned expensive. Nicholas fleetingly reflected that few zealots had much cash, and he wondered if it were not a case of cause and effect. He liked zealots: where would a politician be without them? But his normal affection for this particular one was tempered by the thought that he was a member of the family, and that it was a devilish large sum of money to be going out of that family. Then he recalled abruptly that Martin’s renunciation of the money had been given lavish space in many influential newspapers, and that he had not done Nicholas any harm whatsoever! He remembered with considerable pleasure that one newspaper, a radical but powerful one, had emotionally called to its many readers’ attention the fact that Martin Barbour was the nephew of that dauntless defender of liberty and the rights of man, Senator Nicholas Sessions.
Still it was hard to strike the proper note when he replied to Martin: “Er—I believe I understand, Martin. I understand, of course, why you did it. Hum. I suppose I must say I approve.” He made a vague gesture, smiled, ran his tongue along his inner cheeks. But in spite of himself, his tone was lifeless, his smile disagreeable, for all his efforts.
Martin sat back heavily. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. He was silent.
Nicholas was annoyed. This would not do at all. He could be ready enough to sound lofty sentiments when it came to anything else but money—his and his family’s money. He saw that Martin had been repulsed, and he wanted to hold him. A zealot, even a family zealot who threw away good cash, was very valuable to a politician. He saw himself introducing Martin tomorrow to his colleagues, the more radical and wild-eyed ones whom he had not yet convinced of his sincerity. With these, his influence in the Senate was unpredictable in its possibilities. He could hamstring Lincoln if he were elected; he could ruin him. He could be the power behind the throne! Remembering this, he infused his manner, with no effort now, with cordiality and affection and warmth. He patted Martin on the knee.
“Martin, I have seen many men. But only two have been sincere. You are one of them. When I read what you had done, I could hardly credit it. Even tonight, I could not credit that any man had such faith in his own ideals as to pay cash for them. It—it was—Christ-like! Impossible! Sublime! Glorious beyond understanding or belief! I assure you, Martin,” and his voice became solemn, eloquently shaken, “that you have done something that will awaken the nation to a new consciousness of its duty to its fellow men. You have given us all a new and heroic concept of the just life. You have given us an ideal. An ideal! Something that is bound to awaken the universal conscience, make the world a greater and a sweeter place in which to live!” His voice dropped, trembled as if with suppressed tears and humility, and he stood up, apparently overcome. He stood with his back to Martin, a strong man moved to emotion, trying to compose himself.
Martin’s face had become radiant with a white light. “Mr. Nicholas, I knew you would understand! But I am afraid that you overestimate what I have done. It is very little. There is so much more to do, and it seems almost hopeless. I admit that I felt pretty hopeless when I came here tonight, myself. But I came because I thought—I knew—that you would help me. In a way, this situation in the North is as bad as the situation in the South. It has even greater peril for liberty and progress, and a decent regard for the rights of men. Slavery that is openly acknowledged is dangerous, but its very openness restricts it. But slavery that is unacknowledged and furtive, practiced in secret, cannot be controlled. It is like denying a pestilence, and so doing nothing to stop it, until life itself is destroyed. And that is why you, and only you, can help now.”
What the devil! thought Nicholas, still trying to control the emotion of a strong man with his back to Martin. The idea that Martin was plotting fresh and perhaps more dangerous idiocies alarmed him. But he controlled his impulse to swing on the young man too abruptly. He allowed himself to sink, overcome, into his chair, to cover his face with his hand. Behind that refuge he need not be hypocritically harsh with his facial muscles.
“Tell me,” he murmured. With his free hand he pulled out his handkerchief, blew his nose.
“Mr. Nicholas, the whole thing is wrong and unwholesome and menacing. Bringing this ignorant labor here in large lots to be exploited for the sake of larger profits. It is intolerable to American ideals and fairness, not to mention the inhuman side of it. It must be stopped. You have influence in the Senate. I understand there is a lobby against it, also, in Washington, but a very small and almost unknown one. But the whole thing comes down to this: the importation of alien contract labor must be prohibited by law. Appeals to decency can do nothing. Only the law remains. And that is why I have come to you. You can advance this law, introduce it, force it through, if not at once, in the near future. You can sponsor it; you have eloquence and power. With your help, it will pass.”
So astounded was Nicholas that his hand fell from his face. He stared at Martin with the protruding eyes and open, slack mouth of utter stupefaction. His expression was one of complete imbecility, of entire inability to believe what he had heard. His eyes began to blink rapidly over their glaucousness.
Then, as he finally comprehended that Martin was not joking, but was in deadly earnest, dark color rushed into his face and fury into his eyes. His face was like the blank front of a secret house, whose windows and doors have suddenly and violently been thrown open to emit evil countenances and obscene voices, that could not longer be restrained inside. There was an enraged shouting within him, mingled with exclamations of incredulity. Was this man a fool? Was he actually appealing for this preposterous help to a man whose main income was derived from the very thing against which he was asking punitive measures? Was he actually so blind, so stupid, so devoid of common intelligence? It was all very well for him to cast lustre on Nicholas by his own self-denial, but to ask Nicholas to share in his lofty imbecility was insulting as well as incredible. It was like asking a wolf, whose jaws were already running with the blood of sheep, to help in the giving of protection to, and the saving of, the very creatures that sustained him. This innocence unnerved as well as astounded Nicholas. There was something appalling, something almost indecent, in this innocence, something contemptible. For one wild moment he thought that Martin was malicious
ly baiting him, that he was deep and dangerous, perhaps in the pay of enemies.
Then, in spite of all this, in spite of his screaming incredulity, he realized, with shock, that Martin was indeed innocent and simple, sincere and faithful. His reason repudiated this acknowledgment, but the evidence was before him. He gaped at Martin as at the denizen of a strange and out-of-focus world, strayed into a planet where ferocity was respectable and wickedness sanctified. He shook his head repeatedly like a man who has been struck with a heavy instrument. Such innocence, such unworldliness, such lack of ordinary perception, stunned him, tore his mask from him, left him aghast.
Finally, before Martin’s puzzled and questioning expression, he saw his danger in his unmasking, and he violently pulled himself together. His efforts were visible. He was like a Frankenstein monster laboriously co-ordinating its movements. He made himself smile, though the muscles of his face ached. Martin only saw that he had become livid, and that the folds of his face were moist.
“What makes you think, Martin, that I would—that I could—do this?” he asked in a voice that shook without conscious design.
Martin’s perplexity grew. The answer seemed obvious to him, and he smiled deprecatingly. “Why, sir, it is very plain. You have put yourself on record as against any kind of exploitation, as against slavery. You have defended the Constitution, have led debates in the Senate against injustice and greed. Who else is more capable than you to lead the crusade against alien contract labor?”
Nicholas poured himself another stiff glass of brandy with a shaking hand, and gulped it down. And then another. He began to sweat, his collar became too tight. Then he said, through a pleasant and dulling haze: “You overestimate my—er—my talents and my influence, Martin. I can see your point. It—it is very well taken. Very well, indeed. I—sympathize with you. Believe in you. But you must understand how things are, a little.
“Laws are not rushed through after sudden and unannounced introduction. The way must be prepared for them, the ground made ready. It is true that there is a small and poverty-stricken lobby here agitating against the importation, unrestricted, of foreign contract labor. But the people are as yet unaroused about it. There is a lot of preliminary work—Newspapers. Articles. Speeches. Remember, Martin, that a situation is not coalesced into a proposed law until long after the public at large has agitated for such a law, has perceived the need of it. Legislators cannot themselves introduce a law out of a clear sky. The public is a jackass, suspicious and easily bewildered. The legislator is like a musical instrument on which his constituents must blow a certain air before he can sound it. So far, the public, as I have said, is unaroused, unaware of this need you have proposed.
“Of course, there is another way. And that is by deliberately educating the people into seeing a need they never suspected existed. It can be done, and has been done. It takes a tremendous lot of money, paid committees, the impressing of newspaper editors, public speeches and agitations, fanfare, constant pounding at the public consciousness. This is a prodigious undertaking, vaster than a single man can undertake, too expensive even for a millionaire. And I am afraid that you would not be able to convince millionaires.
“No, there is only the slower, the deeper and the more natural way: the self-awakening of public awareness, the spontaneous demand of the public. On that you must hope and rely. You must have faith.”
He stood up. He no longer wanted Martin to remain for display to his colleagues; he might say something that would be impossible for the Senator to live down. Laughter had killed stronger than he. Moreover, the very sight of Martin infuriated and frightened him. He could not see the last of him soon enough. It was like having a dangerous explosive in the house.
Martin was astonished when he found himself in a cab in the rain bowling back to his dingy hotel. He came awake through a cloud of bemusement. He remembered that the Senator had at the last been hasty though effusive, fluent in protestations against a departure that seemed to occur all by itself, full of messages for Amy and Gregory and May, expressions of affection for the children, lavish and meaningless promises and consolations and sympathies, agreements that perhaps he did have considerable that needed his attention in Windsor. Beaming smiles, handshakes, more promises, laughter booming and loving, exactions that Martin would take care of himself and let his uncle know—And then the rain and the cab and the closed door and silence, except for the sound of the wheels and the clop-clop of the horse through the dark and silent streets. The silence was what awakened Martin, brought him to himself with a start.
“Why,” he exclaimed aloud, “he threw me out!”
Then all at once he burst into loud and dreary laughter. He shouted with it. The cabby heard it, told himself philosophically that his passenger was drunk. He had suspected it, the way the bigger man had led the younger and slighter to the vehicle, talking constantly and consolingly; the younger man had seemed more than a little dazed, had been deposited, like a piece of baggage, on the seat.
“I’ve been thrown out!” shouted Martin inside the cab. And he laughed and laughed until he could laugh no more, and the merriment had gone from his voice and only the dreariness remained, like a desolate whisper.
CHAPTER XLII
When Martin told Amy the result of his interview with her uncle, he was astonished at her passion of anger against Nicholas. She trembled with her private suffering at Martin’s humiliation; her indignation galloped away with her close family feeling, and she surprised herself by her unsuspected command of what Martin, sadly smiling, called her “strong language.”
“But then,” she cried, “Uncle Nicholas was always a rascal!”
“You knew that?” he asked, incredulous.
“Of course, darling. All of us knew. Uncle Gregory knows; May knows. Why, May has made fun of him a thousand times! She can take off his hypocrisies to perfection, and his bombastic speeches and gestures. He’s too much of a hypocrite, though, to be a really big scoundrel.” She pressed his head fiercely to her soft young bosom with a jealous and maternal passion of protection; she kissed his face and lips over and over, as though she were a mother kissing away tears. She knew, instinctively, that the tears were there, though they were not visible. Oh! she thought passionately, Who could hurt him? Who could have the heart to hurt him so!
“Uncle Nicholas,” she went on after a moment, “never really cared about slavery, Martin. That was just a pose of his. All the poor black people in the South could be lashed or shot to death, and it wouldn’t stir a hair of his head. I wanted to tell you that, but it seemed so necessary, I thought, that you should believe in someone. You see, all Uncle Nicholas cares about is that slavery might some day threaten his own profits, because a Northern industrialist might not be able to compete with Southern industrialists who employed slave labor without wages. Then, too, he has a personal grudge against a Southern Senator who blocked his appointment to the Supreme Court. So, you see, all the pretty roads lead right back to Uncle Nicholas.”
“What a starry-eyed fool you must think me!” said Martin with bitterness.
“Darling, you must not say that! I think you are the best and finest of men, the kindest and truest. It is not your fault that you are Daniel in the lions’ den. It is not your fault that the world is so wicked and stupid that it cannot understand an honest man.”
Then she told him, triumphantly, of Father Dominick’s message. Martin was immediately elated. But he was also puzzled. “I did not know that Ernest knew him,” he said thoughtfully. “But how good he is to do this for me! I remember that he said something about not giving up hope, but I thought it was just his way.”
He temporarily forgot his recent humiliation and disappointment. He was overwhelmingly busy. First of all, he bought a farm within four miles of Windsor, a little farm among softly rolling foothills, not very fertile but with tight buildings upon it. The house, of rough whitestone, was commodious and comfortable, well built and sturdy, large enough for a family of eight or mor
e. There were big gardens behind it, both fruit and vegetable, an apple and cherry orchard, an acre of peach trees and another of pears. The hills in the summer were folded soft green velvet, intersected by quiet narrow streams that bore tiny plumed islets upon them. The farm was well stocked, and there was a flock of guinea-fowl that delighted the children with their anxious “pitty-querks!” Martin looked over the stock with satisfaction: three cows, ten hogs and their litters, six horses, one hundred chickens. Amy expressed herself as delighted, said nothing could be more perfect. If she lifted her skirts very high and tiptoed about fastidiously in order not to soil her boots in the mud, she maintained a bright and shining smile. If she was anxious because her time was close for the birth of another child, and she was wondering about obtaining adequate help and medical attention in this quiet and isolated place, she did not disturb Martin with these worries. She had appointed herself the keeper of his cheer, and for a long time never relaxed in this duty.
Martin was exceedingly hurt because Hilda promptly refused to accompany him and Amy “into the woods.” Since Joseph’s death she had become anxious and querulous, forgetful and irritable, keeping to her rooms in Martin’s house and nursing what she considered some grievance against Amy. Amy never found out what it was, though she felt the antagonism of her mother-in-law. Hilda, too, had developed an extravagant fondness for little Godfrey James, Ernest’s son, and was fond of relating loudly at all times, especially after Amy’s babies had been unusually obstreperous, stories of his tractability, sweetness and good breeding. She knew, of course, of Martin’s quarrel with his brother, and of his withdrawal from the Company, and was brutally tactless and outspoken about the matter. It was then that Amy created the grievance, for one day she said clearly and quietly to Hilda, in Martin’s absence: “Mother, this is my house and Martin’s. You are our guest here, and we love you. But it is not the part of a guest to speak so to her host, and wound her hostess like this.” Hilda never forgave her for the twinge of conscience she inflicted upon her. Hilda considered herself of an age when she should be spared a conscience, and her many disabilities and sorrows remembered. So she took out her restlessness and sense of guilt and annoyance in more subtle but more galling ways. She complained that the children disturbed her, treated them indifferently before their parents, scolded them whenever she thought Martin or Amy might hear her. It was unfortunate that neither Martin nor Amy saw her devotion to the babies when she was really alone with them, and how she kissed them and wept over them.
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