Stephen smiled mournfully. “Yes, there are always exigencies, Senator.”
“However, Stephen, I don’t think the people of Pennsylvania will refuse to reelect me again to the Senate because of these two actions of mine, which were done with the utmost sincerity and in my firm belief they were best for America.” He looked regretfully at the other man. “I hope this doesn’t spoil our friendship, my boy.”
Stephen pointed to the sheaf of papers in the senator’s hands. “I brought those copies for you to read, sir.”
The senator pulled his hypnotized eyes away from Stephen and began to read. The lamps in the room brightened as the day darkened outside; the fire was sinking into red embers; the rain hammered at the windows. Stephen lay back in his chair, utterly exhausted and dejected. Now his compassion returned to him, tearing at his unprotected heart. He could not look at the senator as he read. He might betray all his work if he did. He stared at the ceiling blindly, and his mouth was dry and there was a nauseous taste in it.
The senator, well accustomed to read rapidly, to skim, to gather all the information on a sheet of paper in one tight nut of facts almost at a glance, made no exclamation as he read the papers Stephen had given him. Stephen could hear the papers turning with monotonous swiftness. Ten, eleven, twelve. The senator had finished. Stephen turned his stare down from the ceiling. The senator was sitting in silence, his head bent, his eyes fixed on the floor between his knees. The papers were gripped in his hands. His face was gray and had fallen into folds which made him appear much older than he was.
Feeling that Stephen was looking at him, he raised his own eyes. There was a sick expression in them. “You did this—to me—Steve, to hurt me. …”
Stephen clenched his hands to hold back that hateful compassion. “No, not to hurt you, Senator. Believe me. Just to keep you from going to Washington again.”
The senator spoke with difficulty: “You’ve had me spied upon, for years. To destroy me. Steve, you know your father was in this—this—‘blackbirding’ too? You know that it was he who invited me to invest. … My brother Alex always had the money. I didn’t. I wanted it. It’s normal to want it, so I borrowed what I could, and I invested. …”
Stephen spoke gently but inflexibly: “You invested it in ships and in men to kidnap black men and women and children from Africa and to spirit them into the Southern states. You invested it in agony and suffering and slavery. You didn’t think it was wrong; you never thought it was wrong; you don’t, even now, think it was wrong. You were very patriotic during the war to free your victims, Senator, but then, you, like Mr. Lincoln, always said it was really a war to preserve the Union, and so it was.” He stopped for a moment. “I was informed, as you see, that you were one of only three senators whom Mr. Lincoln called to the White House to read the Emancipation Proclamation before it was issued. And I think you were the only one who told him it was ‘ill-advised.’ At least you had the honesty of your opinions, Senator, and I never condemn an honest opinion.”
He pulled himself stiffly upright in his chair. “You made a lot of money, Senator, and according to your lights it was not an evil thing to acquire it as you did. It helped you to get elected the first time. It helped you to invest in a number of things which are paying you handsomely. But, Senator, you have forgotten one thing: there are, in this state, tens of thousands of fathers and brothers and sons and mothers who are grieving for their dead killed in the war. There is a battleground, Gettysburg, which the people will not forget just as they will not forget their dead. They remember that those soldiers died because of men like you. They won’t reelect you, Senator, when they know.” Pain was in his face. “They will hate you until you die, yourself, Senator.”
Senator Peale rubbed his damp forehead with the back of his hand. He spoke dully: “So, you gathered all this blackmail so I wouldn’t dare run for the Senate again. You are threatening to expose me because I believe in a strong, centralized government, and I approved of bringing Europeans to this country as fast as possible.”
“Yes,” said Stephen, and he could not help the note of pleading in his voice. “I believe you are dangerous in the Senate, sir. In a way, you could call it blackmail. Perhaps others would think it patriotism.”
The senator lifted his head and smiled drearily at Stephen. “I mentioned before that your father invited me to go into that—that thing. Steve, if you ‘expose’ me, I’ll bring your father into it also. He won’t like that, ill as he is, and he won’t like the son who did it.”
“He’ll laugh,” said Stephen contemplatively. “He has a great sense of humor. It’ll amuse him inordinately. He’ll laugh at you, Senator, and enjoy the laughing. He’ll just remember that even if people are disgusted with him, and loathe him, they can’t possibly refuse to ride on our trains. But they won’t forget you, Senator. Senators are expendable.”
The senator stood up, thrust his plump hands in his pockets, and looked at the embers of his fire. There was a slack and weary air about him, and Stephen had to remember so that he would not melt with sympathy.
“What you are trying to tell me, Stephen, is that I must not run for the Senate this year?”
Very gradually, Stephen got to his feet, “unfolding” himself as Rufus often said. He put his elbow on the mantelpiece and covered his face with his long fingers. He spoke from behind them:
“That was my original intention, Senator. It isn’t now.”
The senator continued to look at the fire; then, with infinite slowness, he turned to Stephen, unable to speak.
Stephen’s voice came muffled and mortally tired from its shelter behind his hand: “I’m here to make a bargain with you, Senator. This morning it was still the original bargain: your retirement, and my silence. But things changed in little more than an hour. I’ll be brief: I want you to telegraph your brother Alex, in Philadelphia, not to sell Joseph Baynes’s bonds to my brother Rufus tomorrow. I want you to telegraph him never to sell them without due notice to you, which you will pass on to me, secretly. I want you to get his promise not to sell those bonds under any circumstances to the Capital Railroad Company.”
The senator was amazed, and with his amazement came a deep and confused respect. He tried to smile. “Oh. You want them yourself, is that it, Steve?”
Stephen dropped his hand and showed his haggard face. “No,” he said. “I just want Joe Baynes to have them. You see, I’m going to lend—give—him the money to pay the outstanding interest.”
The senator was amazed. He could not speak. He pulled at his fleshy face; he rubbed his chin. He reached out for a poker and stirred up the dying fire. He sucked in his lips, folded his arms on his knees, and regarded the embers in a long silence.
Then he spoke as if speaking aloud to himself: “I never considered myself a venal man.”
“I know,” said Stephen gently.
The senator put his hands over his face. “I never knew a good man before, Steve.”
“I’m not”—and Stephen smiled involuntarily—“Joe Baynes is just my friend.”
The senator dropped his hands and looked up at Stephen with deep penetration. Twice he started to speak, but stopped himself. Then he laughed without real mirth. “And you would sacrifice even your principles, for a friend—just one man?”
The great pain stood on Stephen’s face, so great a pain that it was really anguish. “I’m afraid I would.” He added, “You see, I’m not a good man at all, Senator.”
Senator Peale took the copies and threw them into the fire. The two men watched the brief blaze. Senator Peale said, when the papers were ashes, “I’m getting much the better bargain. You’re not getting anything, Steve, not anything at all. You confuse me.”
“You find it very strange?”
The senator considered this. It was some time before he spoke again, and it was in a low tone: “Not for you, Steve. No, it’s not strange for you.”
When he looked up again, Stephen was gone.
6
&nb
sp; The wind and the rain blended together in one vast and rumbling maelstrom as Stephen emerged from the senator’s house. The butler looked out and said dubiously, eyeing Stephen the while with surly resentment that he had been so deceived, “Very bad, sir. Your hack has gone.” He implied that a man who had no carriage, or who had not arranged for one of his own, was a man of very low degree. Stephen, vexed with himself for not having made some provision for the hack owner to wait for him, or at least call for him, contemplated the dark gray weather with consternation.
“I’ll call a carriage for you, sir,” said the butler, and by this offer he tendered forgiveness to Stephen and felt uplifted in consequence. “One of the senator’s.”
“Oh, please don’t bother,” Stephen began, with his customary dislike of inconveniencing anyone, but the butler had already disappeared. Within a few minutes a small carriage drew up with smartness before Stephen, who looked at it gratefully. Should he tip the butler? But the man was smiling at him in a very kindly, if superior, fashion, and in some way Stephen caught the diffused idea that the servant had conferred some mysterious favor upon him, Stephen, which would be nullified by a tip. So he merely smiled, crawled into the carriage, and was driven away.
He had succeeded. He had known that he would not fail. But such a depression fell on him now that his body collapsed against the smooth leather cushions of the carriage. For one man, one friend, he had betrayed his country. It was useless to tell himself that Senator Peale was no worse than any other politician and perhaps even better than any man who might replace him. The fact remained that he, Stephen, had lost a measure of his own integrity, had failed to do what he had set out to do originally. He remembered what the senator had said: “I’m not really a venal man.” No, he was not. Unscrupulous slave dealers had demanded slaves, in spite of all the rigorous laws passed by the Southern states to prohibit the importation of the wretched black man.
“Blackbirding” was a crime in which Northerners had engaged to their own vast profit, and among the most vociferous of the Northerners demanding that the South be crushed had been men like Senator Peale. It was they, now, who were sending their hordes of hired “carpetbaggers” into the ruined South, and Senator Peale had his own agents among them. The weight on Stephen’s concave chest became like iron.
Stephen had given the coachman his directions, and in an effort to forget his depression he looked through the polished glass windows. The carriage was moving steadily through the streets of East Town, after having crossed the bridge, and now it was approaching the railroad tracks. Stephen heard a dolorous howling in the distance. Old Sixty-three, he thought, glancing at his silver watch. Right on time, too. The carriage crossed the tracks hastily, and the howling filled the watery air, and a single glaring eye pierced through the ghostly gloom of wind and rain. You could always depend on old Sixty-three, for the engineer, Bill Laufer, was proud of his record, and was the State Railroad Company’s oldest employee. He had lost three fingers of his right hand when he had been a “coupler,” some fifteen years ago, and to him the loss was his prideful badge of service. Stephen understood the love of railroad men for the railroads, for he shared it himself.
The carriage was now rolling along a rather bleak street of warehouses and shabby offices. Stephen tapped on the glass and called out, “At the corner. Let me out, please.” He fastened his coat, gripped his brief case again, settled his hat firmly, and untangled his legs. He emerged into the rain and ran into a doorway. No one moved along the street, except for a lumbering wagon or two, and the narrow brick walks glimmered wetly in the gray half-light. The windows of all these offices ran with grimy water; the doors were old and splintered. Stephen entered a small and gritty hallway and approached a door on which was printed in faded letters, “Baynes Locals.” He tapped, then entered.
The door opened on a small office furnished simply with a table, a roll-top desk, a black leather chair which was peeling, a bookkeeper’s desk with a stool, and a small and frugal fire. The windows looked out on the dreary street, and had not been washed for a long time. The bare floor gritted under Stephen’s boots, and he put on his usual gentle and diffident smile.
The man sitting at the desk was very small, even smaller than Aaron deWitt, and he turned eagerly at Stephen’s entrance; his tired, thin face lit up. He was a man in his early fifties, but he was so drawn and worn, so weighted with chronic worry and anxiety, that he appeared much older. In spite of his carefully pressed old clothing, his patched boots, and neatly mended cravat, it was evident that he was a gentleman, for his blue eyes were quick and intelligent, his features finely etched and clear. His thin hair had turned white during the past year, and was fastidiously combed and arranged to the best advantage.
“Steve!” he exclaimed, rising and holding out his hands, and looking up at Stephen with genuine pleasure and affection.
“You seem surprised to see me. Had you forgotten that I was coming?”
“No! Of course not. But Steve, it’s always so good to see you. It’s like a new gratification whenever you appear. How are you? Sit down in that damned chair. It’s the best I have, as you know. Wait a minute; I’ll stir up the fire and toss in some coals.”
Stephen watched him. “I bought some more land near Scranton. Everybody laughs at me, but I think it’ll be the best coal field we’ve ever discovered.”
“It was you who told them all that the iron was about played out and they’d better concentrate on coal,” said Mr. Baynes, looking over his shoulder at his friend as he stirred up the fire. “Are you going to start digging soon?”
Stephen hesitated. He glanced at his brief case. “No, not yet. There’s plenty of time.”
The office might be small, dirty, and full of dreariness, the one kerosene lamp flickering on the brown walls, but Stephen felt peace and contentment. He laid his hat on the table, stretched out his legs to the fire, and pulled his pipe from his pocket. He filled it slowly, lit it carefully. Mr. Baynes perched himself on the chair of his desk and regarded Stephen with deep attachment.
“I’ve just remembered,” said Stephen. “I’m hungry, and I’ve had no luncheon. Have you an extra sandwich, Joe?”
“I forgot to eat, and I’m glad, now,” replied the other man. He pulled open a drawer of his battered desk and brought out a small basket. He opened it, folded back the white napkin, and revealed buttered bread, some slices of ham, mustard, and two pieces of cake. He spread the napkin on the table and laid the food upon it. Stephen looked at it with satisfaction. He picked up two pieces of bread, laid a slice of ham upon it, and made a sandwich. “Joe,” he said, “don’t worry any more. I’ve brought some money for you, to pay the interest on your bonds.”
Mr. Baynes turned in his chair and stared wretchedly at the windows. “I made a mistake, Steve, just as I always make mistakes. I thought the interest was due next week. It’s today. I just went through my books. So you see, it’s too late. I wrote Alex Peale today, begging for more time, because you had promised to help me. I sent the letter by special messenger on one of your trains. But tonight my bonds will be sold. There’s somebody after them. Perhaps the Capital. …” His dry eyes did not turn toward Stephen, and he had spoken quietly, though his hands had been twisting together all the time in a gesture of despair.
Stephen bit a large piece from his sandwich and chewed it. He looked at his friend compassionately and swallowed. “You’re wrong, Joe. Alex won’t sell out your bonds, to anybody. I can promise you that on my word of honor.” He laid down the sandwich and pulled his brief case to him. Slowly, unbelievingly, Mr. Baynes swung to face him. Stephen was piling bank notes on the table in precise heaps. “Five thousand dollars, Joe. That’s your interest to date.”
Dazed, Joseph touched one of the heaps with the tip of a finger, but he stared at Stephen. “I don’t understand,” he said, and his voice shook. “What do you mean? How could you, how did you, stop him from selling me out? How do you know?”
“It’s too complicated
to tell you. You’ve just got to trust me, Joe.”
“Trust you,” repeated Joseph. And then he put his hands over his face and his shoulders heaved, and then he laid down his arms on the table and bent his head on them.
The dirty office was very still. Once or twice Stephen reached out to touch his friend, then drew back his hand, embarrassed. But his little eyes were bright with pity and sympathetic understanding. He picked up his sandwich and continued to eat it, and then he talked gently.
“It’s all right, Joe. Did you think I wouldn’t help you to the best of my ability? It wasn’t important about the interest. Even if you didn’t pay it, Alex Peale wouldn’t sell you out. He never will, now. You see, I talked with his brother, the senator, today.”
Joseph lifted his head quickly from his arms. His face was stained with fatigue and emotion. “But I went to see the senator yesterday, Steve! I talked with him, asked him to intervene for me with his brother. And he said, very regretfully, that he could do nothing. And I’ve known George Peale since we were boys together, and we attended the same university and the same church!”
“You didn’t use the right arguments, apparently,” replied Stephen, hesitating over another piece of ham. “I can be very persuasive on occasion.”
Joseph Baynes could not help his involuntary smile. Then he laughed a little, and Stephen joined him dryly. “Of course,” Joseph said, blowing his nose, “he’s always been such a good friend of your family’s, though you haven’t known him as long as I have. We lived next door to each other. Your father? Is it possible your father … ?”
Stephen stopped chewing. “My father? Good God, Joe! And that reminds me. You’re not to tell anyone about all this, not even Elsa.”
“You haven’t even told me,” suggested Joseph hopefully.
Stephen thought about his interview with the senator, and lost his appetite. He leaned back in his chair and regarded the fire somberly. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said. “Nothing at all.”