12 Guthrie and the Senator

Deep in the mountains, the time was passing all too slowly for Guthrie and the Reverend Zedekiah Pike. Guthrie fretted, and looked up at the white peaks around him, but he had little else to do. He was shut out from the world as completely as if he were on an island in the South Seas. Once there were signs of a thaw, and a cold rain fell, but in a few hours it turned colder again than ever, and the rain froze on the surface of the snow, making a glistening sheet of ice. It was now impossible to travel more than a quarter of a mile from the village, and even the wisest of the mountain prophets could not predict a change. The goose-bone had foretold a hard winter, and they had no right to expect anything else.

The talk of lynching was not revived for the present, but Guthrie knew that it would come up again when the snow melted; so he was glad that he had sent his message to the Governor. But the public feeling against Mr. Pike afflicted him. The Senator, by his unaccountable action in sparing Dilger when he was at his mercy, had forfeited the esteem of his own party. People could not understand him; his action violated all tradition and right feeling; he was accused of a want of respect for the memory of his murdered brother; it was popularly said that he was the first Pike who had ever flinched. His own near relatives became rather shy of him, and he was forced to rely more and more upon the companionship of Guthrie, who felt for him the deepest and sincerest sympathy, when he saw all that the Senator had forfeited for the sake of the new and higher feelings learned from the world outside.

But upon Guthrie himself, although he was known to be the intimate friend of Senator Pike, none of this hostility was visited. He was a stranger, a man not meddling in the feud, who had come there to stay a while among them, forced now by stress of circumstances to remain longer than he intended, and the primitive and great virtue of hospitality was exercised to the full in his case. If it had not been for his anxieties about affairs at the capital, he could have thoroughly enjoyed his life in this walled-in dell in the mountains, and, despite these cares, it was not without many attractions. Beauty of the grand and picturesque sort was there in abundance. He saw it all around him in the ridges and the peaks sheathed in their armour of glittering ice that flashed in rays of yellow and silver under the wintry, but none the less brilliant sun. The trees were clad to the last, least twig in the same white coats of mail, and, silhouetted against the sky, they looked like gigantic pieces of carving in ice. Just above the village, where the little river dashed over a fall, the cataract was frozen, and now and then a brilliant rainbow flashed its colours there.

The village itself was snug and warm. Nearly all the houses were built of logs, and the surrounding forest furnished an abundant supply of fuel. In every inhabited building, a great fire blazed and crackled, and there was an abundance of food, too—most of it coarse and rough, but winter work and a winter air made its taste good enough.

It was now that Guthrie began to show his wonderful quality of adaptation, a trait in his nature that made him acceptable everywhere, and liked by people of widely varying types. He had such a keen zest in life, such a readiness to see that people are chiefly the creatures of their circumstances, and such a desire to see the good in them, that he always approached strangers with a friendly prepossession—a feeling that naturally bred reciprocity. He had not been in Briarton a week before he knew every one of its inhabitants, and, without effort on his part to acquire favour, he was the most popular man there. He assumed no airs of superiority, he helped the people to dig their roads through the snow, now and then he cut wood in order to keep his muscles in trim, he said, and, the night when the Widow Connor’s house caught fire, he was first on the roof with a bucket of water to put out the flames. When the fire was out and he slipped on the icy boards, plunging head first into a five-foot snow-drift, he joined with entire heartiness in the laugh against him. And then when the Widow Connor, out of sheer gratitude, kissed him on the cheek, Guthrie returned the salute in such a gallant manner that he won the applause of the entire population gathered there in an admiring circle.

He put the capstone to this edifice of popular esteem when he beat Eli Pike, a second cousin of the Senator, at rifle-shooting. Eli was the champion of the county, and when Guthrie, by a most singular piece of luck, bored a hole right through the centre of the target, a silver coin posted on the trunk of a tree, and then put the rifle aside with an air that seemed to say, “I can do a little thing like that fifty times a day,” there was nothing in the village that he could not have. People said, “Why, he don’t put on no airs at all; he’s jest as easy as an old shoe!”

Guthrie was conscious of his growing power and he used it without cessation for his friend the Senator. He was speaking continually—but only in an indirect manner—of the Senator’s great influence, of the leadership conceded to him by the Republican party—not because he sought it, but because of his high character and abilities; he emphasised the glory that he was shedding upon the mountains in general, upon his county in particular, and upon Briarton most of all. Invariably, in his talk with the mountaineers, he quoted the Senator’s standard of conduct as a rule of life, and he measured all things by it. Such and such a thing at the capital was right, he often said, because Senator Pike approved it; he gave no other reason—that Senator Pike said so was sufficient.

He was soon happy to see that his method was producing good results. The people, without knowing why, began to look upon Senator Pike’s conduct with more leniency. Guthrie’s office, too, added weight to his words. It was soon known that he was the representative of the State’s greatest newspaper, who had come into the mountains to write about them. It was evident that he liked the people, and therefore fell into their ways with the greatest ease. With them, print had a sanctity unshaken by every-day use, and, in their eyes, the man who wrote things appearing in type was great in his day. They weighed in their minds whether he was not as great as a State senator, or at least as great as a member of the House. Certainly, the occupation had about it an air of mystery and romance lacking even in the office-holder.

Guthrie was able to repay the hospitality of his host in yet another way. The Senator, feeling himself an outcast, grew heavy and melancholy, and felt, too, that he was now neglecting his duty in being absent from the capital at so critical a time. He did not excuse himself because it was manifestly the hand of God that kept him away. Guthrie became indispensable to the stricken man. With his own hands, he piled the logs upon the fire, and watched the blaze roar up the chimney. He never abated one whit from his cheerful tone. He talked of the ever-recurring topics of public life, not only of office-holding and law-making, but of the other affairs of the larger world—of science and society, of life and literature. He had noticed that the Senator was often in the fine library in the Capitol building, and now he found that the mountaineer was almost wholly self-taught. His taste was chiefly for history and biography. He had read extensively about ancient kingdoms and republics—nearly always pronouncing the proper names wrong, because no one had ever told him better—and Guthrie was surprised to find that his admiration was for the Greek democracy rather than for the all-conquering Roman State. He had thought that Rome would appeal most to a mountaineer in whose country might counted for so much. But Mr. Pike liked the humanity and mercy of the Greek character, and Guthrie thought he saw in it the key to his rebellion against a prevalent mountain custom.

Guthrie went once to see Dilger in the jail. The feud leader was completely recovered from his wound—he had merely been stunned by the glancing impact of a bullet against his thick skull, followed by a few hours’ paralysis of the muscles—and he found him insolent, defiant, and wholly unrepentant. Yes, he had killed the younger Pike, and he was glad of it; he would serve the older brother the same way if he had the chance, and he expected to have it some day; did they think they would hang him? They would learn better before long. He sneered at the Senator. He did not believe that Mr. Pike had spared him through any moral scruples; such a thought had never entered his head, nor could it have been driven there with a hammer and a chisel; he did not know what moral scruples were, or what the phrase meant. No, the Senator was simply a coward; the blood in his veins was white; when it came to shooting a man, he had lost his nerve, he was a woman in man’s clothes. Dilger laughed in contempt.

On the tenth night after Guthrie’s arrival, Dilger broke jail, and fled along one of the newly opened paths in the snow up the mountain side. It was Senator Pike who responded first to the alarm, and led the pursuit through the snow and the forest. In some way, a revolver had been smuggled to Dilger, and, when the Senator, separated from the rest of his party, overtook him, a duel ensued between this servant of the law and the desperado, fighting for his life. Mr. Pike escaped without a wound, but Dilger fell with a bullet through his shoulder. A second time, the Senator spared the life of his deadliest enemy, and brought him bleeding into Briarton, amid a crowd of spectators, who could not now refuse admiration. Certainly, no one could impugn the courage of the Senator, for single-handed he had fought his enemy as before, wounded him, and brought him in a prisoner. Nor could they deny him consistency, for, in the face of ostracism and all that is precious to a man, he had stood by his principles. Might there not be something in such beliefs if one was willing to pay so great a price to sustain them?

Guthrie was in the crowd that stood by when the Senator brought in Dilger. It was three o’clock of a very cold morning, and the little street was lighted up by torches. Dilger, pale and weak, had been given to the constable, and near him stood the Senator, silent and stern. Back of all were the snow-clad mountains gleaming through the darkness. The scene stirred Guthrie to the depths, and, springing upon a stump, he cried:

“Gentlemen, our Bible says that he who ruleth himself is greater than he who taketh a city; therefore, I call for a cheer for the greatest man in the mountains, the bravest man in the mountains, for a man who has done what few of us would dare to do, a man who single-handed has taken a desperado fighting for his life, a man who stands among us to-night, blood kin to nearly all of you—the Honourable Zedekiah Pike.”

His sonorous periods, his cumulative sentences, pleased the mountaineers, and touched a chord already attuned to a response. They, too, unconsciously had begun to feel the strain of the difference between them and their leader, and at the sudden sight of him, standing there a hero—a hero acknowledged and admired by this representative of an outside world, all their old esteem and liking came back with a rush, and they burst into a spontaneous cheer.

Some of them crowded forward to shake the hand of Mr. Pike and to tell how much they admired him. Again the shifting picture etched itself deeply on Guthrie’s mind: the tall, black-haired Senator, his features still stern and unrelaxed; the crowd about him; the fallen captive in the background; the smoking torches, and the great rim of snowy mountains.

Gradually the heart of the Senator melted before the surrender of his people, and Guthrie saw a mist appear in his eyes. There was a little tightness at his own heart, and he felt the glow of a good deed well done.

Dilger was again confined in the jail, and his guard was increased until the law should take its course; and then Guthrie and the Senator walked slowly home, neither speaking. Guthrie saw that his companion was deeply moved, and he knew that a great burden had been lifted from his back. As for himself, he was thinking of Clarice Ransome. What would she, with her foreign education, say of such a scene as this? Would it not appear to her wild and singular—a piece out of another world than hers?

The good relations established in a burst of emotion under the torchlight between Senator Pike and Briarton retained their warmth in the cold light of the days that followed. The people flowed through the Senator’s house again, paying friendly calls, asking his advice about public and private matters, and putting him back in his old place—the place in which he belonged—as leading man of the village, made such by sheer merit.

The Senator never spoke of the matter to Guthrie, whom he now treated almost as a son—the companion and loyal friend of his adversity; but he talked freely of affairs at the capital, and Guthrie, taking his cue, uttered many a good word for Carton, never abruptly, nor badly, but always indirectly and in its proper connection.

Mr. Pike was much troubled, and at last told his views upon this important question.

“Personally, I like Mr. Carton,” but he has serious faults, he said. “He seems to me to be somewhat arrogant, to consult too little the feelings of the other members of the House—in short, to lack tact (and that is a serious fault in the leader of any legislative body), but it had not occurred to me that he could be guilty of corruption.”

“Then you would vote for him in his trial before the Senate?” asked Guthrie, scarcely able to conceal his eagerness.

“Unless more evidence is produced than has been made known to me, I should do so,” replied the Senator. Guthrie was wise enough not to push the question further, and now he was more eager than ever to escape from the mountains. He knew that the trial of Carton must be approaching its climax, and he knew, too, that the balance of forces present at the capital was against him. He looked up at the overhanging mountains of white. There was no sign of a thaw. A road had been broken a distance of three or four miles, but it was folly to attempt the entire journey to Sayville; one must turn back or perish in the mountains. Although Guthrie did not know it, the Waterford militia company was still at Sayville, waiting like himself for the first sign of a thaw, and eager to get through to Briarton.

One afternoon, a wind blowing out of the north arose, but in an hour it veered around to the southwest, and its breath was warm. If it lasted, the snow would begin to melt soon, and the weather prophet of the village said that it would last. Evidently he understood his business, because, when the twilight came, the southwest wind was still blowing, and the frozen surface of the snow was softening. After dark, the water began to drip from the roofs.

Guthrie sat that evening with Mr. Pike, and they still talked of the capital and the affairs of the State, both increasingly eager for the journey, now that the snow was melting and the mountains were about to be unlocked. The Senator showed a quiet but serene satisfaction; he seemed to Guthrie to have grown in mental breadth and stature in the last few days; his successful issue from his great trial had solidified and strengthened him, and Guthrie foresaw in him a Republican leader of weight and character. A partisan Democrat himself by birth, training, association, and conviction, he knew that the State needed a stronger and healthier opposition than the Republicans had ever been able to furnish, and he expected Mr. Pike to gather together the scattered forces and to make them cohesive and energetic.

The Senator spoke by and by of Templeton and his defalcation, of which he had known. He held that Templeton should not have been excused because his friends paid back the money; he should have been exposed, nor was that enough: he should have been sent to prison—it was the plain law.

“I heard that you had written an account of it for the Times, Mr. Guthrie,” he said, “and that you were induced by the Bishop to withdraw it.”

Guthrie said nothing; he was willing to let the affair stand at that, and Mr. Pike spoke on, not noticing Guthrie’s failure to answer.

“It did no good to save Templeton,” he said, “because he was saved only for the moment. He will commit another and greater offence, and he is sure to come to a bad end in time. Even now he is pretending to be a lobbyist, and he has all sorts of wild and grandiloquent schemes. I heard him boasting once, when he had drunk too much, that he had only to say the word, and he could go to New York any day he chose, and work for a firm of brokers at ten thousand dollars a year. Ten thousand dollars is a great deal of money. Nobody in the mountains ever made that much, year after year.”

Guthrie had been listening with interest, but now he became suddenly eager and intent. He had the gift of intuition, or rather, a logical way of connecting seemingly irrelevant facts.

“Did Templeton mention the name of the brokerage firm that was willing to pay him so good a salary?” he asked.

The Senator meditated a moment. “He spoke the name,” he replied, “but I had to think a little before I could recall it. It was Purvis & Eaton. I remember his words—they were: ‘I can get ten thousand dollars a year from a firm of brokers in New York. Purvis & Eaton will be glad to pay me that much any day I say I’m willing to take the job.’ Yes, those were his words. Do you think that he was lying, Mr. Guthrie?”

“I do not know,” replied Guthrie, and in a few moments he spoke of something else. But his thoughts remained on Templeton, and they were tumultuous.

In his heart, Guthrie did not believe that Templeton had been lying—at least not absolutely; he might have exaggerated the sum, but there was a basis. Why should Purvis & Eaton, a brokerage firm of New York, presumably powerful, offer a large salary to an obscure man in a distant little city—a young man without experience in the financial world?

Guthrie rapidly put two and two together, and came swiftly to his conclusion. He listened with pleasure to the increasing drip, drip of the melting snow from the roof, and he heard the steady breath of the warm southwest wind on the window-pane. The great thaw had begun, and, in a few more days, the road through the mountains would be open, but Guthrie no longer turned his face toward the little capital. He resolved that, when he reached Sayville, the train should bear him eastward and not westward.

* * * *

In the little capital, too, the warm wind from the southwest was blowing, and it blew all through that night, the next day, and the next night, too. The sheet of ice on the surface of the snow disappeared, the snow itself melted as if under the rays of a July sun, and the waters poured in torrents from the hills. The river rose many feet, and Clarice, looking through her window at the world rising from its robe of white, felt a thrill that she was afraid to define.

All of Carton’s friends, all of the people in the “Governor’s set,” were saying that the Senator and Guthrie would soon be back. A curious feeling of relief, for which they could not have accounted if asked, pervaded them. No one knew how the Senator would vote, or how he would influence his fellow Republicans, and Guthrie had no vote at all.

Senator Cobb, backed up and aided in every way by Jimmy Warfield, who, though a member of the House, was not without influence in the Senate, had just fought off a vote, despite the pressure of Pursley, and Harlow, and all the others. Templeton, too, was doing a little quiet lobbying, and it was said that he would shortly leave the little city for a larger field. Finally, word came that the road from Briarton was open to the venturesome, and arrivals from there might be expected in the capital on the morrow.

Clarice was sitting with her mother, Mrs. Hastings, and Mary Pelham when this news was told and Mrs. Ransome’s look was ironical.

“I suppose that quite a fuss will be made over this young Guthrie when he returns,” she said. “Everybody talks of him as if he were something quite out of the common!”

“We think that he is above the average,” said Lucy Hastings with quiet dignity, “and all of us like him because he is so unselfish and so devoted to his friends. Paul said last night that no one could be missed from the capital more than he had been, and I think so, too.”

Mrs. Ransome flushed slightly, and made no reply. She had not found it to her advantage to quarrel with the Governor’s wife and her friends, and, as all her efforts at patronising were skilfully turned aside, she was forced for the time to choose some other course. She glanced at Clarice, who had gone to the window, and was looking out at the melting snow and torrents of water that ran down the gutters.

Clarice was unhappy. She resented her mother’s implication that she was neglecting Raoul—or rather the memory of Raoul, as Raoul himself was five thousand miles away—but the insinuation was true, and she knew it. However, it would be only for a little while, she told herself; these were her people, and it was natural that she should be interested in them; this was her country, and Europe was not, although it was to be—she did not thrill at this last thought.

She could not deny to herself that she should be glad to see Guthrie—but it was only her curiosity, she said, that she would gratify. Guthrie’s vigorous, masculine life, his keen interest in the affairs of the world, and his energy and optimism appealed to her. And this journey of his into the mountains on such an errand, and then the coming of the great snow enclosing and shutting out him and Mr. Pike, had the savour of knight-errantry—there would be a fine story to tell, and she relished tales of adventure.

Above all, she keenly resented the presence of her mother in the guise of a mentor. She knew perfectly well why Mrs. Ransome had come to the capital; no quibble or excuse could conceal it from her, and she was angry that she should be treated as a child.

Paul Hastings came in, and after the customary words of greeting, said:

“Wilson”—Wilson was the lieutenant-governor and, therefore, president of the Senate—“tells me that he has just had a telegram from Senator Pike at Sayville, saying that he will arrive here at noon to-morrow, and—”

He paused, and looked rather curiously around the little circle.

“And Mr. Guthrie comes with him?” asked Mrs. Hastings.

“Guthrie,” the Senator added, “was to take the east bound train at midnight for New York.”

Clarice, despite herself, looked up in surprise. Mrs. Ransome breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“Why on earth is he doing that?” asked Mrs. Hastings.

“I do not know,” replied the Governor.

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