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.
V
“What’s the matter, dear?”
Douglas Briggs looked up quickly. “Oh, is that you, Helen?” He smiled into his wife’s face and took her hand. In spite of her matronly figure Helen Briggs did not look her thirty-five years. She had the bright eyes and the fresh coloring of a girl.