Читать книгу The Congressman's Wife - John D. Barry - Страница 7

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Douglas Briggs stood motionless. His face was hot; he could feel his pulse beating in his temples. Sometimes he wondered if he betrayed the fever that the mere mention of that railroad and the scandals connected with it always caused him. The music had begun again, and he could hear the dancers and the loud talk, broken by laughter. Some of the voices he recognized, among them Fanny’s and Guy Fullerton’s. His wife’s voice he could not hear. He started at the sound of a quick footfall. When he looked up Franklin West’s white teeth were gleaming at him from the head of the stairs.

“Oh, here you are!” said West. “I’ve been trying to get a chance to speak to you all evening.” He looked hard at Briggs, and the smile faded. “Anything the matter?”

Briggs drew his arm away and West let his hand drop to his side. “Yes. Farley, of the New York Gazette—you know him, don’t you? I’ve just been having a talk with him—he says the Chronicle is getting ready to jump on me.”

West lifted his brows with a nice imitation of surprise. “About what?”

“About our precious railroad business, of course.”

West looked relieved. “They can’t hurt you,” he said, contemptuously.

“I’m not so sure about that. A paper like the Chronicle carries weight. It’s not like the small fry that have been knifing me lately.”

West turned quickly. This time he betrayed a suggestion of genuine feeling. “But, my dear man, what can they say?”

“They can say what all Washington is saying,” Briggs replied, fiercely. “They can say I’ve taken money to push that bill through the House. They can queer my re-election.”

West drew out a silver-ornamented cigar-case and offered it to Briggs. “You have a very bald way of expressing yourself sometimes. Have one?”

Briggs lifted his hand in refusal, with a suggestion of disgust and impatience. West deliberately lighted his cigar, puffed it, and then looked closely at the burning end. “Taking money,” he repeated, as if addressing the cigar—“that’s a very disagreeable expression! It isn’t,” he added, with a laugh, “it isn’t professional.” He waited as if expecting to receive a reply from Briggs. Then he asked, with a lift of his eyebrows: “Besides, why shouldn’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I what?”

“Why shouldn’t you take money for the work you’ve done? You earned it.”

Briggs rose from his seat. His face clouded. “Then why should I lie about it every time the subject is mentioned? Why should I try to bamboozle that decent young fellow who was in this room a moment ago? He believes in me. He believes that I’m an honest man, a statesman, a patriot. He believes that I think of nothing, care for nothing, work for nothing, but the welfare of the people who elected me.”

West smiled. “He must be an awful ass!” he remarked, quietly.

In spite of his disgust Briggs gave a short laugh. “He—oh, well!” He turned away as if the sight of West had become suddenly obnoxious. “Have you ever believed in anyone in your life, West?” he asked, keeping his face averted.

“Oh, yes,” West replied. “In you, for example. I believed in you the first time I saw you. I knew you were going to get there.”

Briggs looked at him as if examining a curiosity. “That was why you helped me?”

“Certainly,” West acknowledged, with a resumption of his large smile.

“You knew that some time I’d be useful to you?”

“You’re brutal now, Briggs.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“One doesn’t refer in that way to any service, however slight,” West remarked, in the soft voice of conscious politeness.

“True,” Briggs replied, bitterly. “But you must admit the payment has been rather hard.”

“Most people wouldn’t think so. When you came to me, five years ago, you were on the verge of bankruptcy, and you hadn’t even begun to make your reputation.” West looked at Briggs to observe the effect of his words. Then he continued, with a wave of his hand: “And now see what you are! You’ve made a big name. You’re a power. You have all the swells in Washington at your parties. If you had gone under, five years ago, you never could have retrieved yourself. You know that as well as I do.”

“And how much satisfaction do you suppose my success has given me?” Briggs exclaimed. “Since I began to prosper here I’ve not had one really happy moment.”

West laughed.

“You don’t believe that?”

“Of course I don’t. You’re blue, that’s all. That newspaper man has hurt your feelings. That’s your only fault, Briggs—you’re too easily hurt. You want to have everybody’s good opinion.”

“I could get along with my own,” Briggs replied, quietly.

“By helping to put that bill through the House you’re doing the country a thousand times more good than you’ve ever accomplished through those reform schemes of yours. You aren’t practical enough, Briggs. Solid facts are good enough for me.”

“I’ve observed that,” said Briggs, without a change of expression.

“But I’ll tell you what you can do,” West went on, ignoring his host’s manner, “since that conscience of yours is bothering you so much. You can vote against the bill. That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. It would be a very good move just now.”

Briggs looked interested. “How vote against it?” he said, wrinkling his forehead.

“Simply vote,” West replied, with a smile and a wave of the hand.

“After all the work I’ve done for it?” Briggs asked, in astonishment.

“Who’s to know about that? If you like you can get up in the House and explain why you’ve changed your mind.”

“Speak against it, too?” Briggs could not resist the temptation to lure West on. The revelation of the workings of this man’s mind had a fascination for him; they were strangely free from any relation to the principles which he had always believed in, if he had not always practised them.

“Yes. That will turn the tables on the papers that have been attacking you. It will make you seem like a martyr, too. It’s worth thousands of votes to you.”

Briggs walked slowly across the conservatory. His curiosity had suddenly changed to strong temptation. After all, the scheme was practicable. It was merely another expression of the deceit he had been practising for years. In spite of his confidence in his safety, it would be wise for him to take every precaution to protect his reputation. The attacks on his character by the opposition papers would probably grow more violent as the time for his re-election approached. But at the thought of getting up in the House and attacking the bill he had worked for, of making himself an object of contempt to the very men who were his partners in the deal, he turned sick. “No, thank you,” he said, suddenly. “I may have done worse things, but I couldn’t do that!” For a moment, in spite of the sordid quality of his motive, he had the delicious exhilaration of feeling that he had resisted a temptation.

West shrugged his shoulders. “It’s what Aspinwall has done over and over again in the Senate. It doesn’t seem to hurt him. He’s one of the most popular men in the country—and the biggest fraud,” he added, with a laugh.

Briggs had begun to pace the narrow walk of the conservatory. He stopped as if on impulse. “West!” he said.

West looked up in surprise. “Well?”

“I have something to say to you. I’ll stand by you in this railroad business till it goes through. I’ll vote for the bill, because I’ve pledged myself to it. You can get along without my vote, I know. The bill is sure to pass. But if there’s any odium to be attached to me for supporting it, I’ll take the consequences.”

“Oh! I thought you were a little nervous about your election, that’s all,” West remarked, carelessly.

The lines running from the corners of Briggs’s mouth deepened. “I’ve lied pretty constantly so far, and I suppose I’ll go on lying till the deal goes through.”

“That won’t be till the next session. We never can bring it up before adjournment.”

Briggs apparently did not hear this speech. “But remember one thing,” he went on, as if continuing his previous remark, “it’s the last official work you need expect me to do for you. Any personal service I shall be only too glad to do. Whatever your motives may have been, you stood by me when I needed a friend. You made my career possible. I should be an ingrate to forget that. But we’re quits. In future, I propose to keep my hands free.”

West rose from his seat and walked toward Briggs. His face betrayed that he was trying to hide a feeling of amusement. These spasms of virtue on the part of Briggs always gave him a pleasant feeling of superiority. “My dear fellow,” he said, laying his hand on Briggs’s shoulder, “you’ve been a brick through the whole business. Stand by me till the bill goes through. That’s all we expect. Only don’t try to be too ideal, you know,” he urged, gently. “Ideals are very pretty things, but they won’t work in practical politics. If the Government were run by ideals it wouldn’t last six months. Legislation’s a business, like everything else that brings in money, and the shrewdest men are going to get the biggest returns. Think of all the men we’ve known who’ve been sent home from Washington simply because they’ve been over-zealous! But I must hurry back to the drawing-room. I’m in the clutches of two newspaper women. I only broke away for a moment on a pretext. I’ll see you later in the evening.”

Briggs watched West disappear. Then he sank on the wicker seat again. This interview was only one of many similar talks he had had with the lobbyist; but each new encounter had the result of heaping fresh humiliation on him. He had always disliked West. The first time that he met the fellow he had felt an instinctive mistrust of him. Now the dislike had become so bitter that he could hardly keep from showing it. Sometimes, indeed, he did not try to hide it, and it seemed as if West only pretended that he did not observe it; or as if, indeed, it only amused him. Briggs recalled, with helpless misery, the steps by which he had bound himself to one of those men who used their knowledge of the law to spread corruption in politics. He had come to Washington full of ambition and eager for reform, with an inspiring sense that he had been chosen to be a leader in a great work. Soon he discovered how small an influence he was able to exert. After a few months, however, his personal qualities, his faculty of putting himself on confidential terms with people, made friends for him even in the opposition party. The first time he spoke in the House, his remarks, faltering and vague, had made a poor impression. At that trying moment his ease and eloquence had left him. For several months he was too discouraged to try again. He found it easy, as many another man had done, to drift with the political tide. One day, however, he suddenly lost his self-consciousness in a debate on a pension bill in which he had been taking a deep interest. He threw himself into it with vehemence, making two speeches that were reproduced in part by nearly all the big papers in the country. Those speeches gave him a national reputation. The leaders in Congress took an interest in him; their wives discovered that Mrs. Briggs was worth knowing. He felt more pride in his wife’s success than in his own. He became dissatisfied with his hotel rooms and took a house that proved to be nearly twice as expensive as he thought it could possibly be. In return for hospitalities he had to give elaborate entertainments. His wife remonstrated; he reassured her, and she trusted him. At the end of the year he owed fifteen thousand dollars.

It was then that he had first met Franklin West. He recalled now with shame his own ingenuous dealings with the lobbyist. In spite of his misgivings, he had accepted the fellow’s offer of help; he had placed himself under such obligations that only two courses were open to him, both, as it seemed, dishonorable—to go into bankruptcy and to ruin his future career, or to become West’s agent, his tool. At the time, he thought he was making a choice between two evils, and he tried to justify himself by the exigencies of the situation and by the plea that his public services more than justified his course. After all, if the Government did not pay its legislators enough to enable them to live as they must live in Washington, it was only fair that the matter should be squared. But it was only in his worst moments that he resorted to this argument.

Like most buoyant natures, Douglas Briggs often had sudden attacks of depression. His talk with Farley, followed by the interview with Franklin West, had taken away all his enthusiasm. Farley, he thought bitterly, had just said that this was a great night for him. Yes, it was a great night. It advertised him before the country as one of the most successful men in Washington and one of the richest men in Congress. What if the papers did ask where he got his money? They were always asking such questions about public men. He need have no fear of them. It was from himself that his punishment must come.

The opening of the new house, this magnificent ball—what real satisfaction could it give him? He could not feel even the elation of victory. He had won no victory. This ball, this house, stood for his defeat, his failure, for the failure that meant a life of deceit, of concealment, of covert hypocrisy. Even from the woman he loved beyond the hope of salvation he must hide his real self. He must let her think he was someone else, the man she wished him to be, the man she had tried to make him. Their children, too, would be taught by her, he would teach them himself, to honor him. They would learn the principles by which he must be judged.