2 On Common Ground

It was near the end of the twilight hour, and over the river and the hills hung a hazy dusk, through which the walls of the Capitol, yellow with age, showed but dimly. No lights shone at any of its windows, and the ancient trees in the grounds waved solemn branches. It was a small and primitive Capitol, built by the State in its earliest youth when there was little money to spare, but it had both beauty and nobility, and it yet resisted all efforts to replace it. An old State senator had wisely said, “You may erect a Capitol very much costlier, very much larger, and very much uglier, and then make in it very much worse laws than we do here,” and his words carried conviction.

Guthrie looked up at the building with a certain reverence and pride. Like all citizens of the State, he was intensely proud of his birth in it, and the antiquated structure, where so many young men, afterward famous in the larger arena of the nation, had made their maiden speeches, was to him full of associations and the charm of history and poetry.

It was with such thoughts as these that he sought to detach himself from the severe test through which he had gone. It cut him to the heart to disappoint the Bishop, one of the best of men and his friend; but he felt that he had done his duty though he would find only a minority taking the same view. For Templeton, he yet had little pity; his disgrace was sure to come soon or late—it had merely fallen to Guthrie’s lot to record it, as it might have fallen to the lot of somebody else. But thoughts of the mother and sister would come, nevertheless, and, turning away from the Capitol, he went to his hotel. “I need lights and the sound of human voices,” he thought, “and I shall go where they are.”

Mrs. Senator Dennison was to give one of her semi-monthly receptions that evening, and it was sure to be attended largely, because Mrs. Dennison was not only a power socially and politically, but the house over which this handsome and tactful woman presided was the pleasantest in the little city. John Dennison was not a State senator, which is important in itself, but a United States Senator—a far grander thing. An old man yet fresh and robust, with a long and distinguished public career in the State, he had been elected at the preceding session of the Legislature to the United States Senate; but his young wife still maintained a home in the little capital in which she had been born and where she was, with the new prestige of her husband, a social queen. Here wisdom went hand in hand with inclination, because, as her husband was the creation of the Legislature, and both he and she would certainly wish him to be recreated at the end of his six years, it was well to turn constantly a smiling face upon the creating power. The old senator, with all his rugged ability and practical judgment, did not know how much his young wife helped him in the building of his political fortune.

Guthrie was sure of a welcome at the Dennison home. The press in his State was not sensational, and its relations with public men were friendly and pleasant; moreover, the Times was a power, and its correspondent at the capital was not a man to be neglected. It was his second “term” there. At his first, he had been but a boy, and many of the members wondered that the Times should send one so young to represent it in a position of such importance; but Guthrie’s dignity, judgment, and absolute honesty soon convinced them that the editor of the Times knew what he was about when he despatched him to the capital.

Guthrie put on his evening clothes and a light overcoat, and walked out in the frosty air toward the Dennison home, which was on the other side of the river, though but a short distance away. He stopped a few moments at the middle of the long bridge, and looked far up the broad, deep river—a sheet of molten silver in the dusk. On the left, in the cemetery at the top of the high cliff, the marble monuments erected to the State’s illustrious dead gleamed snow-white; often Guthrie had walked there, and oftenest he paused before the shaft to those fallen in the Mexican War, where the poet had first read the solemn and famous line: “The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat.”

Guthrie’s State pride swelled afresh; it always seemed to him that his State was full of poetry and romance, and most of all now, in the night, with the deep river flowing under him, the white monuments covering the hills, and the lumberman on his raft in the middle of the stream singing softly some melancholy ballad of the distant mountains from which he and the river came. He forgot, for the moment, all about Templeton and Mrs. Dennison, too. There was a strain of sentiment in his nature which perhaps kept him from being the lawyer that he had wanted to be, and turned him into the newspaper man that he was.

But the present soon came back, and turning away from the hills and the river, he was in five minutes at Mrs. Dennison’s door, where lights and voices alike were plentiful.

“We are glad to see you Mr. Guthrie,” said Mrs. Dennison. “Of course we all bow to the press.”

“And not to me in my humble personal capacity.”

“We value you, too, for your own sake,” she said.

She was tall, blonde, and smiling, a woman of will, capacity, and thirty years. Beside her stood the governor’s wife, Mrs. Hastings, who was yet a girl—Paul Hastings was the youngest governor in the history of the State, and he had married only a little before his election—and beyond her was a vista of other girls, all with the fresh complexions and delicate features which belong to the women of this State.

Lucy Hastings liked Guthrie—he had written many kind things in the Times about Paul, and she greeted him with the warmth and feelings of her youth.

“We have missed you, Mr. Guthrie,” she said, “Haven’t we, Clarice?”

Clarice, otherwise Miss Ransome, was the first girl on her right, and, when the governor’s wife appealed to her for confirmation, Guthrie looked curiously at her to see if it would come. Once before he had met Miss Ransome—the daughter of a rich man in the metropolis of the State, she was now on a visit to her friend, Lucy Hastings, the Governor’s wife. Tall, composed, and with a face full of strength and character, she smiled slightly.

“Why do you appeal to me, Lucy,” she asked, “can’t you speak for yourself?”

Guthrie was disappointed. She seemed to him at their first meeting somewhat cold and reserved, perhaps a little superior; but this bearing attracted his mind unconsciously, telling him that a shell of some kind usually enclosed whatever was of greatest value. It was such a phase of her character that induced him now to stay by her as long as she would let him—Mrs. Hastings had turned away to assist Mrs. Dennison in the reception of her guests and there was opportunity.

“You can see here to-night what a strange medley we are in this State, Miss Ransome,” he said.

She glanced over the crowded drawing-room, and the light of interest appeared in her eyes. Guthrie spoke the truth: many phases of human character were represented there. The State presents sharp contrasts. In the East are the untamed mountains which suddenly drop down in the West into a vast valley, one of the richest and most beautiful in the world; and the people share the qualities of the particular soil on which they dwell. But here, in the little capital, they met on equal terms, politically and socially. Every member of the Legislature was entitled, by unwritten law, to all the hospitality of the little city.

“Who is the singular tall man with the white spots in his hair?” asked Miss Ransome.

He of whom she spoke was leaning against the wall, and Miss Ransome was not the only one who looked at him with curiosity. He was over six feet four inches in height, as straight and slender as a hickory-tree, and his long, coal-black hair had turned white in irregular patches not larger than a silver dollar. His face was straight, long, and smoothly shaven, his cheek-bones high like those of an Indian, and his black eyes wary and restless like those of a hunter who watches for hidden danger. The tails of a long, rusty black frockcoat fell below his knees.

Guthrie followed Miss Ransome’s look, and he smiled slightly, although the smile was sympathetic.

“That,” he replied, “is the Reverend Zedekiah Pike, of Sloane County, a State senator from the mountains, and my very good friend, I am glad to say. At least he preaches sometimes in his native mountains, although he is not ordained—a minister by profession cannot be a member of our Legislature, you know, and he is also, so I am told, the chief champion of the Pikes in their long feud with the Dilgers.”

“A feudist in such a house as this? How strange!” exclaimed Miss Ransome, her eyes shining with interest. “Perhaps he has a pistol with him now!”

“I have no doubt that those long coat-tails hide the butt of a seven-shot self-acting revolver,” replied Guthrie, “—but don’t be afraid, Miss Ransome; Mr. Pike is as gentle as a lamb, he isn’t going to shoot anybody here.”

“Will he talk to women?” asked Miss Ransome.

“Just wait a minute and see,” replied Guthrie, and he crossed the room to Mr. Pike.

The tall mountaineer smiled when the young correspondent spoke to him—Guthrie had printed a picture of Mr. Pike in his newspaper, and under it had appeared the flattering line: “The leader of the mountain delegation in the Senate.”

“A lady from the city wishes to meet you, Mr. Pike,” he said. “Come, I will take you to her.”

The tall mountaineer neither hesitated nor showed embarrassment, but followed Guthrie without a word, and was presented duly to Miss Ransome. Clarice, who knew as little of the portion of her own State from which Mr. Pike came as she did of Afghanistan, was surprised to find him not awkward, but, on the contrary, composed and dignified. He said “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” to her, because he had been taught to say them always to women; but his manner was not one with which anybody could trifle.

Clarice felt a pleasant excitement—educated abroad and knowing nothing of Mr. Pike’s mountains, she imagined much. She was talking here in this brilliant drawing-room to a man who not only carried a revolver in his hip pocket, but could shoot and had shot bullets from it at human beings who were also firing bullets at him. But his face was singularly calm and lamb-like as he talked to her with his drawl and clipped accent.

“I hear you are the leader of the mountain delegation, Mr. Pike,” she said.

“That’s just one of Billy Guthrie’s yarns, ma’am,” he drawled. “These newspaper fellers have got to fill their columns, and I ’low they find it pow’ful hard sleddin’ sometimes, ma’am.”

He put his hand familiarly and affectionately on Guthrie’s shoulder as he spoke.

“But we don’t quarrel with ’em when they stretch the blanket to say nice things about us, ma’am,” he continued, “it’s when they whack our speeches that we say the freedom of the press is turnin’ into license.”

“You don’t differ from other people,” said Miss Ransome.

“No, ma’am,” replied the mountaineer. “You find human natur’ the same on all kinds of soil.”

Miss Ransome tried to draw him out, to make him talk of his own people and himself, but here she struck the obstacle that all must meet who seek to explore as she did. The mountaineer immediately became reserved and cold. He resented any suspicion of a patronising kindness or curiosity, however well-meant, and Guthrie, who heard and observed all, smiled a little. He had seen much of the mountaineers, and he had penetrated their shell; he knew their bitter anger at the assumed and real superiority of the lowlands, and he knew how deeply their members in the Legislature felt it when they were taunted with representing the “pauper” counties—that is, counties that paid into the State treasury very much less revenue than they drew out of it, which was true of every mountain county in the State.

Miss Ransome could not account for the change in the mountaineer’s manner, but Guthrie knowing the trouble quietly led the talk to other subjects, and Mr. Pike became once more his genial but dignified self. When Mrs. Hastings took him away presently, Clarice said to Guthrie:

“What a singular man!”

“Yes,” replied Guthrie, “and as proud as Lucifer! You will hear of him before this session is over. I am glad that you are beginning to find your own State interesting.”

“I never said that it wasn’t.”

“No, but you looked it. Now here is another man, as marked a character as Mr. Pike; he comes neither from the mountains nor from our famous lowland valley, but from the hill country that slopes off into the southwest. I am speaking of Senator Cobb, the big man over there.”

Mr. Cobb, a member of the State Senate, was not quite so tall as Mr. Pike, but he was much broader and heavier, and he, too, was smoothly shaven, and a pair of mild and child-like blue eyes looked forth from his ruddy and massive features. Thick snow-white hair brushed straight back was the crown of a striking face.

“Another friend of mine, Miss Ransome,” said Guthrie. “Senator Cobb is the connecting link between the rich lowlands and the poor highlands, and he is the enemy of all trusts and monopolies. He is the most absolutely honest man in both public and private life that I have ever known.”

“You are always speaking of the honesty of these men, Mr. Guthrie,” said Miss Ransome. “I had the impression that our public life was very corrupt; I know that it is thought so in society and in Europe.”

Guthrie laughed.

“Europe and society in this country,” he replied, “know very little about our public men, and they are misled by sensational newspapers and that absolute freedom of speech among us which tends to exaggeration. I think that we have more honesty and patriotism than you can find in parliamentry bodies anywhere else in the world.”

Miss Ransome was silent, but she was not convinced. It was almost her first contact with the public life of her native State, and she had been taught to believe that it was corrupt, largely because public office was not the perquisite of wealth and birth, and, naturally, bad manners were associated in her mind with bad morals.

But, when she talked with Senator Cobb, who, she knew, had been abused much by the opposition, she began to allow for the exaggeration and the vague charges so common in American life. This man’s gaze was straight and open. She had never looked into eyes more honest. His dignity and the courtesy that he showed to women were equal to those of Mr. Pike, but, obviously, he was of a higher type than the mountaineer. He showed more culture, more acquaintance with the larger world, and a greater grasp of its problems.

“Do you know what feature of this gathering impresses me most?” she said somewhat later to Guthrie. “No, and I cannot guess.”

“It is the size of the men. It seems to me that all of them are over six feet tall. I have seen the French Chambers, and I have seen the English Parliament, and, after them, I seem to have come here upon a race of giants—physically at least.”

Clarice Ransome was deeply interested—more so than she would have confessed to Guthrie. She had been only a week at the capital, and only three months from Europe, arriving with many prejudices and a view which she had begun to believe was somewhat narrow. It now seemed to her that much of the so-called cultivation and refinement that she had learned abroad had in it the touch of effeminacy, and that was repellent to her.

More than once her glance strayed to Guthrie, who was now on the other side of the room, talking to Senator Cobb, and she did not know whether she liked him; but she could not help noticing his fine, eager face, handsome with the glow of youth, and she felt, too, that he had communicated to her some of his own enthusiasm and interest in everything about him.

But Guthrie was unconscious of her glances. He drifted in a few moments from Senator Cobb to Jimmy Warfield, the youthful representative of one of the metropolitan districts. Warfield put his hand on Guthrie’s shoulder and drew him to one side.

“Billy,” he said. “I’ve heard a tale about you and Templeton. I hope it isn’t true.”

Guthrie’s form stiffened a little. Here was the issue again and he would have to face criticism by one of his best friends. But he did not seek to avoid it.

“I suppose you have heard that I sent the Times an account of Templeton’s defalcation,” he replied. “Well it’s true.”

“I don’t see how you could do it, Billy,” Warfield said. “I am sure I’d have skipped it if I had been in your place.”

“It’s one of the things that I’m in this city for,” replied Guthrie, and he walked away, not willing to discuss it any more.

Warfield, who was a tender-hearted man, ready at any time to sacrifice himself for a friend, gazed after him. “I couldn’t have done it!” he murmured.

Guthrie knew Warfield’s thoughts, and they troubled him. He believed that men of the world in constant touch with public affairs ought to understand his point of view, and he foresaw hostility to himself because they did not. He was not by nature of a belligerent temper; he preferred the friendship of everybody, and he enjoyed life in the little capital. He did not wish to be spoken of as the man who had exposed Templeton’s mother and sister to disgrace, but his mind returned to his original position as the right one. He wondered what Clarice Ransome would think of his activity, and he was angry with himself for trying to guess her opinion. A woman would be sure to take the sentimental view! But when he looked at her face, and studied the firm curve of her jaw and her calm, strong eyes, he was not so sure; neither was it a discovered fact that women were softer-hearted in such matters than men.

Guthrie left early, and as he passed into the vestibule, he found Senator Cobb also with his hat and overcoat, and the sight of the Senator’s broad, bland face gave him an idea. Mr. Cobb’s family were not in the capital and he need not hurry, so Guthrie proposed that they walk together.

“Certainly, my son,” replied the Senator, who called all young men whom he knew well “my son.” “Our ways are the same, anyhow. What a glorious night! I’m past sixty, but this keen frosty air puts the blood of thirty in my veins.”

After that they walked in silence for a while, the old Senator enjoying the cold air and the light but fresh breeze from the hills. He was a man of immense physical vigour, one who had been all his life close to the soil, and Guthrie noticed with a certain pleasure the free, vigorous swing of his body. They were near the bridge before the Senator, taking thought of his young companion’s silence, glanced keenly at his face.

“What’s the trouble, Billy?” he asked, putting his hand kindly upon Guthrie’s shoulder.

“I’ve had to do something to-day that I found unpleasant,” replied Guthrie.

“What is uncommon in that?”

“But this was more so than usual,” replied Guthrie with a slight laugh. Then he told the story of Templeton, his crime, and the telegram about it. Mr. Cobb listened with attention, and they were almost across the bridge before the account was finished. Then Guthrie waited to hear what he would say, but the Senator was silent for a minute or two.

“You were right to do it,” he said at last, “although I should not have done it myself.”

He would say no more, but Guthrie noticed that his manner lost nothing of its warmth and friendliness; instead, it became more fatherly.

“Who is the Miss Ransome, to whom you introduced me?” he asked. “A rich man’s daughter, is she not?”

“Yes,” replied Guthrie, “and she has just returned to this country, after being educated in Europe.”

“I thought so,” was the Senator’s brief comment, and he added, after a moment’s thought:

“We must Americanise her.”

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