The Ramrodders: A Novel

by Holman Day

Gen. Varden Waymouth was elected Governor. In spite of the sullen torpor of his party managers and the snarls of the Reverend Prouty and his radical ilk, he surmounted by mere momentum of his party a certain bland and trustful and destructive indifference of the general public, and won at the polls. The narrow margin by which he won would have scared a really loyal and conscientious State Committee. But the before-and-after gloom of Chairman Presson and his intimates was not caused by any worriment over the size of the plurality. They were languid spectators. They felt like dispossessed tenants. They took little interest in the temple of the party faith.

"When they buried old Zenas Bellew up our way (Zenas weighed three hundred and fifty, and lived in a cottage about the size of a wood-box) the undertaker found he couldn't get the coffin into the house or get Zenas out—not through doors or windows. A half-witted fellow we call 'Simpson's Rooster' spoke up, and said they'd better bury the old man in the house and move the family out into the coffin." That was Thelismer Thornton's comment on the political situation in the Republican party on the morning after the election. The chairman heard it with the gloom of a mourner. He could see nothing bright in the jest or the prospects.

There was a frigid truce during the four months that elapsed between the election and the assembling of the legislature.

General Waymouth retired to the brick house in Burnside, and gave ear to those who promptly made his home the Mecca of the State. There were office-holders who wanted to hold to their jobs, office-seekers who suspected that there would be a break in the plans of party patronage; there were officious gentlemen suggesting new legislation for the next administration to consider; there were crafty gentlemen trying to discover what the administration would recommend. The day was full of cares, duties, annoyances, and the nagging pleadings of persistent petitioners.

Harlan Thornton, now representative-elect from the Fort Canibas district, became still more indispensable in General Waymouth's daily life. Duties at a desk had worn upon him. This everlasting mingling with men was more to his taste. He had natural adaptability. He was a good judge of human nature. He had serene good nature. Physique and manner made him master of many situations at the old brick house that otherwise would have sadly tried the General's strength and temper. Therefore, his chief placed greater dependence upon his lieutenant with every day that passed, solicited his opinions as his knowledge of men increased and his judgment became worth more, relied upon his instinctive estimates of character, and shifted many burdens to the broad shoulders that seemed so well fitted to carry them.

Harlan Thornton was slow to realize what a tremendous power, as chamberlain, he really exercised in the State.

He awoke to that fact more slowly than did the men who came to solicit. He did not try to use his power for his own ends. He promptly noted the deference that men paid him; as promptly he penetrated certain plans men made to corrupt him, if they could. These attempts were made slyly, and did not proceed very far. Something in his demeanor prevented the plotters from openly broaching their desires and their willingness to make their interests worth his while. They knew that one of the Thorntons could not be won by money, but they were rather surprised to find out that he could not be beguiled by other inducements. He was so big and manly, and he had rapidly become so self-poised, that they did not realize that in experience he was only a boy, with the ingenuous faith and simple aims and candor of boyhood. He perceived what he might win. But the pride of serving General Waymouth loyally was worth more to him than anything they could offer.

His duties took him often to the State capital. The chairman of the State Committee was coolly courteous, often gloomily deferential, sometimes frankly cordial—uneasily trying to find the proper level to stand on in his intercourse with one who was the grandson of Thelismer Thornton, and also the chosen confidant of the man who had wrested from him control of State affairs.

In the case of Madeleine Presson, there was none of this embarrassment. He saw her often. She met him half-way with a frank interest in his work and a sympathy which, in those days of truce, did not question his ideals.

He became a welcome intimate of the Presson household. When he was there the master himself put aside all the brusqueness he displayed in their down-town discourse on politics. The girl welcomed him. There were many hours when they were alone together, in the home or on long drives into the country. She did not refer to their talk on that evening when she read to him his lesson on practical politics. He avoided that subject. He did not want to risk any further disagreement between them on the matter of ideals—or, for that matter, on any other subject. Association with her had become too delightful to be put to the test of discussions of political methods. He was still drawing upon her fund of worldly wisdom. There was a little touch of the cynic in her. He became secretly ashamed of some of his ingenuous beliefs, after she had deftly shown him the other side of things. She did show him the other side, quite in a matter-of-fact way. It was not that she was trying to break down his faith. There was nothing sly nor crafty in her methods of improving his views. But by informing him, she made him wiser, and, at the same time, more distrustful of motives, more searching in his investigations of methods. He began to doubt some of his earlier ideas of what a public man should be. He felt that his views were broadening. That was a comfortable way of excusing certain surrenderings to her ideas.