Asking for More
20 The Breath of Fame
The convention had reached an impassable barrier. There was no doubt of it, and the fact was apparent even to the youngest of the audience. It needed no words to tell it; the “feel” of it was in the air. The hall was closer and hotter than ever, and the electric lights glared with a searching cruel, white light. Down in the body of the hall the delegates showed all the marks of a long, fierce, and bitter battle. Their eyes were red and so were their eyelids. Their faces were drawn, and disclosed new wrinkles, their hair was dishevelled, and every collar was limp. The angry, downward turn of the lips showed, too, that they would not stand much more. The cry for Guthrie was, therefore, a sort of relief—perhaps the last left to them, and it was taken up and repeated by all, swelling continually.
But Headly and Graves had quite reached the end of their patience. They were in open and unquelled rebellion, and in a side room opposite the one in which Guthrie and Warner and O’Hara were talking they were telling the leaders that the time for them to act had come, and no further excuse for delay would suffice. It was now past one o’clock in the morning, a ballot must be ordered, and after that Warner must be declared out of the race. Nothing that the leaders said could soothe two angry men or extend their patience.
Meanwhile the convention still stamped the floor and roared for Guthrie, without knowing just why it called him.
But Guthrie, engrossed in a hard task behind closed doors, did not hear the cry. Again it was a struggle between him and O’Hara for Warner, with Bluitt and Pursley actively seconding O’Hara, and the blacksmith, Connell, inclining to Guthrie’s side. Even in those moments of excitement and haste this psychological aspect appealed to Guthrie; it was a combat between the good and evil in Warner, and, for the present, the fight seemed to be waged on even terms. Again and again the man wavered; now he was ready to go and announce to the convention that he would withdraw, and then he was equally ready with his old assertion: “I am in the fight to stay.”
The struggle across the hall with Headly and Graves was equal to this in fire and intensity, but it lacked its dramatic phases, and there was less at stake. Warner now and then got upon his feet and walked, or rather staggered, across the room, and then back and forth, until he was tired, after which he would fall upon the sofa again. He wanted, too, at times to declaim upon his wrongs, and the unfairness of the leaders toward him, but he never varied in his esteem and liking for Guthrie, whom he frequently called his “good friend,” before O’Hara and Bluitt themselves.
Pursley presently slipped out and returned in a few moments with a brimming cocktail. “Here, Mr. Warner,” he said, “drink this; it will refresh you and clear you mind.” Warner swallowed it instantly, and then under the influence of the potent fire grew more belligerent.
“Billy,” he exclaimed, waving his hands in an oratorical manner, “I am in the fight to stay. Go back and tell them that I shall never withdraw!”
Then he fell exhausted by his effort, and Guthrie suddenly losing hope, turned away in despair. Was all his work to come to this miserable end? Nor will he ever forget the sneering look of triumph on the faces of Warner and Bluitt. With his hand on the door-knob he could not withhold a farewell shot.
“Mr. Warner,” he said, “I think you will live to be a better man than you are at this moment.”
Then stepping out he closed the door and entered the narrow aisle leading to the stage. He paused there a moment, his face suddenly growing pale and the blood leaping up from his heart. It was the sound of his own name repeated by thousands of voices that startled him and held him to the spot. It is a thing that has a marvellous effect upon a man when he hears it for the first time, touching new pulses and arousing new emotions, and Guthrie for a moment trembled. Nor could he understand this cry, why it had begun, or why it continued.
He stood there, still hesitating, a solitary figure in the dusky little aisle, while the great audience without still roared his name.
As he stood listening two figures hastened to him. They were Jimmy Warfield and Connell, and Guthrie forgot to be surprised at seeing them together.
“Billy,” exclaimed Warfield, “he’ll withdraw! He’ll withdraw! He takes it all back! Ask Connell here if it isn’t so!”
Billy looked at Connell and the big blacksmith nodded his head. There was started afterward, no one knows how, a rumour that Warner later on asked Connell just when he gave him that message, but it has never been verified. Guthrie, however, was not thinking then of such questions as the manner and origin of the message, but of its import. He felt as if a mighty and crushing weight had been lifted, and for a moment he felt himself on the verge of collapse. The triumph had come so unexpectedly that he could hardly believe it, and he remained speechless a few seconds, while the sound of his own name still thundered in his ears.
“Does he mean it? Does he really mean it?” he asked at last.
“Yes,” replied Warfield, and the blacksmith nodded.
“Then, for God’s sake bring him on at once and let him make his speech of withdrawal. The convention can’t hold together much longer!”
He was looking down the narrow aisle toward the stage. He saw that Mr. Stetson had temporarily abdicated the chair in favour of another man, and was coming toward him, while over and beyond the head of the editor he saw a cross-section of the great audience—hot, impatient, angry, and making much noise.
“We must get Warner on at once,” he repeated half mechanically.
“He can’t come,” replied Warfield significantly. “He’s sick, don’t you know? He can’t stand up and he says he won’t face an audience now!”
The big blacksmith nodded again.
“Then what’s to be done?” cried Guthrie.
“Why, you must speak for him,” replied Warfield. “He says you are to do it, that you have a speech for him and somebody has told the audience, too. Don’t you hear ’em shouting your name!”
The chairman reached Guthrie at that moment, and at once grasped the full import of the talk.
“Come Billy! Come!” he cried, “you must go on instantly.”
“But I can’t make a speech!” exclaimed Guthrie.
“You can!”
“But I haven’t any to make!”
“That speech you wrote for Warner! The one you recited for me in my office! Hurry! The people will tear the house down, if you don’t come!”
Guthrie still hesitated, overcome by a sudden and great terror.
“The fate of the Old Fourth now depends on you alone,” shouted the Chairman in his ear.
It was a cry for help, that touched the inmost fibres of Guthrie’s being, one to which he never failed to respond, and he took a step forward. Others came crowding behind him, Mr. Stetson, Warfield, Grayson, Hays, and so many more that in a moment he found himself on the stage, face to the audience.
Then that great cry of “Guthrie!” “Guthrie!” rolling, insistent, ever-growing ceased so suddenly that the silence following it, was deathly and painful. Guthrie was white to the lips, and he felt every nerve in him trembling, but he walked to the centre of the stage, swaying slightly.
Not a thought would come, his tongue lay dry in his mouth, and before his eyes there was a blur and a haze, in which thousands of upturned, expectant faces melted into a great, threatening human cloud. Then his gaze wandered to one side and there he saw her in the box, not in a cloud nor in a haze, a flushed and beautiful face, and two luminous eyes that met his and said: “I know you cannot fail!”
Then he turned again to that mighty curve of human faces, rising before him, row on row, every pair of eyes bent upon him. The silence in the hall was yet deathly and painful. A sheet of paper was heard fluttering to the floor.
Then a spark leaped up suddenly in Guthrie’s breast and burst into a flame. The blood came flushing to his face, and with it a giant courage that held him in its grasp. The mist and the haze floated away, and the faces still rose before him, row on row, but beckoning and friendly now. All the thoughts, all the ideas that had been growing in his brain all these years crowded for utterance, and the words rushed to the tip of his tongue.
He began to speak, at first in a voice nervous and trembling a little, but soon gaining volume and decision, until its rich tones filled every corner of the great hall. He began with the speech that he had written for Warner, the renunciation, the sacrifice of self for party, and the general good, changing from the first to the third person, but somehow Warner soon glided from his scheme of things. He forgot all about the red-faced man on the sofa in the little room, and his veering to and fro as the wind blew—all about the squalid struggle with Headly and Graves on the other side of the hall, and remembered only his conception of public life and public duty. He was still within the lines of the speech that he had written, but it no longer had a personal and particular application. He was speaking from the heart, and the words came fast but in orderly sequence.
He looked down once at the Chairman, who had resumed his seat, and whose eyes met his in a fixed, admiring gaze, then his look passed on and met another pair of eyes in a box, softer, more luminous, and shining now with absolute faith and joy.
Guthrie felt a curious exaltation. Timid at first he has now absolute ease and confidence. He was a musician who knew his instrument, and there before him was that instrument, the audience. He noted then how the look upon that mighty curve of faces changed, as he willed that it should change, how it expressed joy, or sadness, or anger, as he touched the keys.
And as he spoke the deep, intense, rapt silence of the audience continued. Something wonderful was happening. And everbody in that great crowd knew it. They knew that an orator of the first rank, a statesman and a man of genius had been disclosed suddenly to them. The form of the man on the stage seemed to them to grow, his eyes were alight, his face inspired, the deep rich tones of his voice filled their ears, and his words appealed alike to head and heart. Many of them began to think of an earlier day, when a man of their State was the first in the Union, one upon whose words the nation hung, and now they foresaw that the day had come back again and the great man’s successor stood before them.
Guthrie spoke on, gathering power as he went. The thoughts and the aspirations of his boyhood, his youth, and his young manhood were finding vent, and he rejoiced like a strong man in his strength and skill.
New thoughts came crowding upon each other, and all were fresh, original, phrased in striking language, and delivered in a compelling voice. It was a speech, too, on a new plane, something higher and loftier than the ordinary, something that took the listeners out of themselves, something that made them think now of better things.
Guthrie looked once down toward the eleventh and twelfth wards, and he saw the dense cohorts of the rebels, their faces eager and bent forward like the rest. And he saw, too, in the very centre of the group, the red and startled face of Warner, and beside him the broad features of the blacksmith, Connell. He did not know how they had come there, and it was not for him to wonder then. But he knew that he held all under his spell, the eleventh and twelfth wards with the others.
He painted for them new ideals, he inspired them with a sense of new duties, he showed a contempt of sordid party squabbles, he made them look beyond the narrow confines of the Old Fourth District, however glorious it might be, toward the affairs of the Union and the world. His were the views of a true statesman—one who did not build merely for to-day, but for time, one who was not seeking personal advantage, but the good of all.
And they listened and believed. The hour and the man, so often quoted, and so often quoted falsely, had come together—this time in truth and reality, and every one knew it. In the moment of doubt, anger, and despair, he had appeared and involuntarily all turned to him, as the compass turns to the pole.
Clarice in her box listened with wet eyes and overflowing heart. She had long believed in him, and now all that she had believed, and more, was coming true. She looked up at her uncle, who kept his eyes fixed on Guthrie, and then at her father, who was leaning forward now, his hands on the edge of the box, and listening with the air of a man who did not care what came afterward. The feeling of triumph deepened, and when she looked out again at the great audience, held by the magician’s spell, her heart was filled with pride and exultation.
The clock in the church steeple boomed two o’clock, but no one noticed. It was hotter than ever in the hall, long crowded by the multitude, and the thrice-breathed air grew thicker and thicker, but no one noticed it. Behind Guthrie at the press tables, one of which he had so lately left, the reporters were writing for dear life, and noiseless messenger boys were slipping away to the telegraph offices with page after page of the most sensational speech of the decade, Again the wires were clicking industriously with the news from the fight in the Old Fourth, but it was news of another kind. Despatch after despatch was sent to the great newspaper offices in New York and Boston, and Chicago, and elsewhere, all foreshadowing the end, all foreshadowing it in the same way. “What a pity we haven’t his picture now!” more than one shirt-sleeved night editor said.
But Guthrie unconscious of all the wires that he had set to talking, spoke on, eye and mind fixed on that political ideal which he had so often imagined for himself, and down there among the rebel delegates, Warner, still red-faced and startled, never moved nor said a word.
Guthrie was still playing on the great instrument, his audience, and his hand was the hand of a master. He tore the secrets out of their hearts, there was no emotion they could feel that he did not arouse; they saw white or they saw black, as he pleased, but always he led them on to higher thoughts and higher ideals than those of every day. They, too, forgot the hot and crowded hall, the stifling air, the glaring electric lights, and followed him into loftier and purer regions. Clarice alone in all that multitude was able to take her eyes from the orator, and it was because she loved him best. Great as was his speech, the man was more to her, and in that hour of her supreme joy and triumph she looked to see its effect upon others. The Chairman, an uncommon man himself, still had his eyes fixed on the speaker’s face, her uncle and her father, Mr. Carton, and Mr. Pike did not move, nor did Warner, the rebel, the irreconcilable, and O’Hara himself was crushed down in his seat, anger, fear, and admiration struggling on his face which was always turned toward Guthrie.
Guthrie spoke on and on. The fountain of speech had been unloosed suddenly in him, and it came sparkling in all its vigour and freshness. The crowd hung on every word. There was the faint rustle of a skirt now and then, the soft, sighing sound of the painted fans as they moved slowly, and the deep drawn ah! of some one stirred to new emotion, but no other sound. Golden speech had indeed come back to earth for them, and they were held by its spell. The night grew closer and hotter, and the heavy air hung heavier in the hall, but they noticed it not; they were seeing new scenes, thinking fresh thoughts, as the orator led them into purer regions, free from the mean and sordid aspects of common life.
It was the very boldness and loftiness of Guthrie’s ideal that charmed the people so much. He dared to speak for the right, the best in all things, he appealed to the good instinct in every one, and it came so spontaneously, so flowingly, ringing so clearly with the truth, and clothed in such beautiful words that it carried conviction to the dullest. There was none who could not understand him, there was none to whom he did not make an appeal, and there was none whom he did not carry with him into that higher region where one can think only good thoughts.
He, too, was borne up by a mental exhilaration. The words came of their own accord it seemed to him that he was merely speaking them, an organ upon which some one was playing—he used few gestures, and his face was still pale, but his eyes were alive. Thoughts of long ago, illustrations forgotten until then, came crowding for utterance, and always he had the right words and the right way to say them. The great men of the convention—those who had spoken in its beginning, leaned forward like the others, and let its music and logic pervade them. They knew, like the crowd, that here was one of golden speech, and they knew, too, it was a gift direct from the gods: an orator, like a poet—born, not made.
The reporters wrote on and on, and the telegraph boys still slipped from the hall with sheet after sheet of the speech, but no voice was heard save Guthrie’s as he spoke of his ideal—the ideal public life, and the ideal people—the two were dependent on each other, they went hand in hand, he said. And the crowd hearing, believed. They could not resist the logic of that voice and manner; what he said to them was true, because it was the truth, and because he said it.
The end came now, the last of the golden words was spoken, the orator made a brief bow, and turned from the stage. For a few moments the spell lingered and the silence continued. Then the long-pent emotion and delight of the audience burst forth, and storm of cheers swelled and roared against the roof. Again that powerful and insistent cry, “Guthrie!” was taken up and every one in the convention sprang to his feet.
It was an emotional crowd, keyed to a high pitch by a long strain of doubt and excitement, and now it broke bounds. Handkerchiefs were waved like the fluttering of a snow-storm, and the shifting fans glittered like prisms of many colours. Again and again the applause rose and swelled like waves of the sea, but Guthrie sat at his desk, limp and tired, his face pale again. The Chairman at length took him by the arm and compelled him to go forward and bow. Then the applause broke out afresh, and the great building trembled with the concussion.
The cheering died at last, and then watchful Jimmy Warfield, back again in his seat among the delegates, sprang to his feet on his chair, and instantly caught the Chairman’s eye. A look of complete understanding passed between the two.
“Mr. Chairman,” shouted Warfield, and again the convention became silent.
Warfield, too, was silent a moment, and swept the hall with a comprehensive eye. He saw that another critical moment had come, and he was ready.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “there has been a fight for the nomination in the Fourth District, this glorious Old Fourth that all of us love so much. It has been a long, hard, and bitter fight, and through it all every one has been in the dark. We have not been able to see how it would end, we could not see a light ahead, and many of us have thought it would come to disaster and ruin for the Old Fourth. But at the last moment—the very last moment—there has arisen one who, all unconsciously, has shown us the way.”
He paused for a few moments, but he held the convention with his eye.
“Yes,” he resumed, “there is one who has shown us the way, he has come among us like an apostle, his words are tipped with lightning, and there is none here who has resisted their force—none who has cared to do so. Gentlemen of the convention, we know the opposing elements that are in this hall, we know how bitter the three candidates have become against each other, we know that they can never be reconciled, and we know now that no one of the three can ever be elected. But, gentlemen of the convention, there is another—another man, the very mention of whose name will set you all on fire—one whose supreme fitness for the place has been disclosed in such a manner that the blind may see. Gentlemen of the convention, I wish to place in nomination an orator, a statesman and a genius, William Guthrie.”
Again that mighty volume of cheering went up against the roof. Guthrie tried to spring to his feet, but Grayson and Hays held him down. When the cheering died there was another man on a chair, and it was the member from the Old Fourth. He was pale now, but he stood steadily, and everybody in the convention knew that the grace of God had touched Henry Clay Warner at last.
The Chairman recognised Mr. Warner, and the convention settled into silence.
“Mr. Chairman,” said the member in a full, firm voice, “I have listened to all that the gentleman has said, and I wish to endorse every word of it. I have known William Guthrie a long time—since he was a little boy. No truer or more honest man ever drew the breath of life. He has been a good and loyal friend of mine, and he is yet. I have wanted the nomination from the Old Fourth, but I recognise that a greater than myself has appeared, without any will of his own, in the field. Therefore, while withdrawing in favour of William Guthrie I second his nomination, and move also that it be made unanimous.”
Again the audience cheered and cheered, and now they cheered for Warner, too. Headly and Graves quietly left the hall, as they saw their forces slip from them, swept on by the universal tide. The convention had been stampeded for Guthrie, without any intention on his part, and the eleventh and twelfth wards were not the last in enthusiasm. O’Hara, Bluitt, and Pursley said nothing, but in stoical silence watched the waves roll over them.
Guthrie tried to spring up again, but as before Grayson and Hays held him back.
The Chairman instantly put the vote on the motion.
When the ayes were called they were thundered out, when the noes were called there was silence.
William Guthrie was the nominee of the convention.
His eyes wandered again to the box and met hers shining with pure joy.
“Accept!” “Accept!” cried the crowd.
“Accept!” cried the Chairman. “Headly and Graves have just notified me of their withdrawal. See, here are their notes. It is you or nobody!”
“Accept!” “Accept!” still roared the crowd.
Guthrie saw that the way had opened without any will of his own, and that it was the only way. Many thoughts passed like lightning through his head. He was a true friend of Warner, and he had worked faithfully for Headly and Graves, but this was the call of destiny. He met her eyes again, and she told him to accept. Then he hesitated no longer.
But Guthrie made no more speeches that night. He walked forward and announced simply that he accepted the great honour conferred upon him so unexpectedly by the convention, and, if elected would do his best for the district, his State, and the country. Then he sat down amid more cheers, and the Chairman sprang to his feet.
“Gentlemen,” Mr. Stetson exclaimed, “Mr. Guthrie is now the nominee of the convention, and we promise each and every one of us, to make his majority six thousand.”
The convention roared back approval, but Mr. Stetson underestimated it. When the vote was counted at the close of the polls on election day, Guthrie’s majority proved to be over seven thousand.
Guthrie was still in a sort of dream. Something new and wonderful had happened in his life, a thing perhaps which he had imagined at times in a vague twilight or a misty dawn, but which it had never occurred to him might become real. The hall and the figures in it were hazy, and he did not feel that he had yet come quite back to earth.
But they were calling for him again, calling so powerfully and so insistently that he must respond, and he walked forward still in a mist, and bowed again and again to the applause which leaped up afresh at the sight of his face. When he returned to his seat, Warner himself came upon the stage, and he grasped Guthrie’s hand.
“Billy,” he said—and there was genuine pleasure in his face, and relief, too—relief at escape from the snare of the toiler, “I congratulate you. It was the finest speech I ever heard in my life, and since I couldn’t have the nomination myself—I see now that I couldn’t—I’m glad you got it. And I know, too, that it came to you because it had to; you never worked for it.”
Guthrie returned Warner’s hand-shake with sincere joy. He would not have in Warner’s mind any lurking feeling against him because, if it were there, it would spoil all his pleasure in the nomination, but he knew now that Warner saw and understood.
Then his friends came, the Governor and his wife, Carton and Mary Pelham, Jimmy Warfield, Senator Pike, the Bishop, and others. He saw sincere joy shining in the eyes of every one of them.
“Billy,” said Carton, “we shall go to Washington together, but I shall never be the great man that you are. I can never reach the heart of the people as you do.”
“God bless you, my son!” said the Bishop simply.
Then came a quiet, smoothly shaven man in a gray sack suit.
“Mr. Guthrie,” he said, “I am perhaps less surprised at this revelation than anybody else in the hall. Believe me when I say that I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart.”
It was Caius Marcellus Harlow who spoke.
Next came the gigantic blacksmith, Connell, who imprisoned his hand in a grip like that of his own vise.
“Mr. Guthrie,” he said, “I thought of you for it, when you were in that room talkin’ so well to Mr. Warner, and I’ll be proud to vote for you.”
“Billy,” exclaimed Tommy Newlands with enthusiasm, “I’m going to write another poem about you!”
“And I’ll see that it gets printed this time!” said Warfield.
Guthrie glanced toward the auditorium where the crowd still lingered, and he saw O’Hara and Bluitt sheepishly leaving the hall. Connell’s eyes followed his.
“They’ll vote for you, and they’ll work for you, too,” said the blacksmith. “They have to or they’ll be dead forever politically. The eyes of the eleventh and twelfth wards are on ’em.”
The crowd began to go out at last. The clock in the church steeple was striking three. Guthrie looked at the empty seats, the floor littered with newspapers, and the electric lights that still glared overhead. “What a change has occurred in those last two hours!” he thought.
“Mr. Guthrie,” said Mr. Ransome who stood at his elbow, “it is late, and you are very tired. We have two carriages waiting for our party, and we shall be glad to drop you off at your house. We shall consider it an honour.”
Clarice was behind them and she said nothing, but there was a deep colour in her face; her eyes told him to come.
Mr. Ransome turned away to see about the carriages, and Clarice said to Guthrie:
“All your life you have been helping people to great rewards, and now your own has come to you at last.”
“But I am going to ask for far more than I have now,” he said.
“Why what is it?” she exclaimed, and then her face flooded with sudden and deeper colour.
“I am asking for you, Clarice. Don’t you see that I love you, that I have long loved you! I can ask you now. Won’t you be my wife, Clarice?”
She put her hand in his and replied softly:
“Yes, I am yours.”
“Mr. Guthrie,” said Mr. Ransome, as they drove through the streets, “I should think that you are a very happy man this morning.”
“I am, but there is one thing lacking to complete my happiness,” replied Guthrie.
“And what is that?”
“Your daughter. Give her to me,” said the new statesman boldly.
A twinkle appeared in Mr. Ransome’s eye.
“Perhaps I should,” he replied, “because if I don’t you will take her. I’ll see that Jane approves too. Leave that to me. And Mr. Guthrie, I have just learned to believe in you.”
A soft, warm hand stole into his.
“Billy, I always believed in you,” she said.