“First of all, I ought to tell you how proud I have been of your fine progress on the Chronicle. I doubt if there is another young man of your age in the State who has done so much climbing in so short a time. I take a real satisfaction in thinking that you are my brother. I can’t tell you how often I say to myself: ‘Albert Fairchild, the best thing you ever did in your life, or ever will do, was to give that boy a chance.’”
This was gall and wormwood to the young man. He had almost succeeded in regaining the composure so abruptly scattered by Albert’s unexpected arrival. The fluttering agitation came back now, and brought with it a painful sense of shame and self-reproach as Albert’s words recalled the scene which his entrance had interrupted. Seth did not look his brother in the face, but murmured some commonplace of gratitude. He was glad that there was a red shade on the lamp; it might conceal his flush of humiliation.
Albert went on: “But you were not invited here so peremptorily just to hear this. Brotherly pride and affection are things that don’t need words—that can be taken for granted—are they not?”
Seth tried to smile, and said, “Yes, of course they are.”
“Well, youngster, I am taking them for granted in your case. Mind, as I said in my letter, I am not saying a word about gratitude. I don’t want the thing to be put on that footing at all. Brothers ought to be able to help each other, and all that, without lugging in the question of gratitude. I am talking to you as one man should to another who bears the same name, and was of the same mother. By George! poetry, isn’t it? Well, the point is this. The time has come when you can help me, help me immensely. I am not in this fight for myself alone. Personally I care very little about going to Congress. But I have got the family to consider, and I am in a position now where I can make a ten-strike for it. A good deal of it I have created myself. These countrymen up here in Dearborn County fancy they are shrewd politicians, but it has taken me, almost a novice in politics, less than two years to get the whole machinery right under my thumb. It’s in the blood, I tell you! There wasn’t another manager in this whole section that could hold a candle to the old Senator, in his day,—and if he could keep track of things now I imagine he’d admit that his grandson was no slouch.”
Albert chuckled quietly at the slang word, the expressiveness of which pleased him, and at the vision of the satisfaction of the departed ancestor which it suggested. He proceeded:
“I can’t tell you all my plans, but I am in a big combination. I have made use of my large connections as a lawyer in New York to arrange some things which would open your eyes if you knew them. It is all settled that I am going on to a Committee which will be worth while, I can tell you. And then, once started in the thing, with my grandfather’s name back of me, there is no telling where I may not climb. A name that has figured in the blue book as ours has is a tremendous power. The Republic derides heredity, but the public believes in it. It is human nature, my boy. And in this rehabilitation of the family name you have as much concern as I have—in fact more than I have—for you will enjoy even more than I shall the fame and wealth I am going to get out of this thing, for the family.”
“Where does the wealth come in, Albert? There is no money honestly to be made in politics.” Seth had forgotten his earlier embarrassment now, and the spirit of dispute was rising within him.
“My dear fellow,” said the elder brother, comfortably contemplating the rings of cigar smoke he was making, “to the wise there is money everywhere. The word ‘honesty’ in politics is a purely relative term, just as it is in your line, or in law, or in medicine. If we lawyers strictly graded our charges by the net value of our services to our clients, if doctors refused to make all calls upon patients that were not altogether necessary, and based their bills rigidly upon the actual good they had done—by George! the poor-houses would have to be enlarged. Take your own business, for instance, or I ought to call it a profession, too, I suppose. Are editors invariably candid with their readers, do you think? Do they always tell the disagreeable truth about people they make their money from? And don’t they have an open hand behind the back about the same as other folks do? Occasionally, I admit, an ass like our brother John does drift into the profession, and retains his childhood belief that the moon is made of green cheese. But I have noticed that such fellows as he, who run their papers on an exalted moral plane, generally come around to borrow money from the ungodly, toward the close of the year, to make their accounts balance. I am sorry to see that John and Ansdell have filled your head with all this nonsense. A newspaper man tearing his shirt in defense of financial fastidiousness in politics presents rather a comical spectacle, if you only knew it.”
“You have no right at all to say that!” Seth answered hotly. “I believe firmly that the newspaper men of this country, considering their influence and the great temptation to make money out of it, are as honest a body of men as you can find in America. This conventional talk about their venality is the cruellest kind of libel, and if you knew them as I do you wouldn’t lend yourself to circulating it.”