“Ah, Tate! Come right in; the party hasn’t started yet!”
The newcomer was a short, thickset man, clean shaven, with coarse dark hair streaked with gray. The hand he gave the men in succession as they gathered about him for Burgess’s introduction was broad and heavy. He offered it limply, with an air of embarrassment.
“Governor Eastman, Mr. Tate; that’s your seat by the governor, Tate,” said Burgess. “We were just listening to some old stories from some of these fellows, so you haven’t missed anything. I hope they didn’t need me at that tile meeting; I never attend night meetings: they spoil my sleep, which my doctor says I’ve got to have.”
“Night meetings,” said the governor, “always give me a grouch the next morning. A party like this doesn’t, of course!”
“Up in the country where I live we still stick to lodge meetings as an excuse when we want a night off,” Tate remarked.
They laughed more loudly than was necessary to put him at ease. He refused Burgess’s offer of food and drink and when some one started a political discussion they conspired to draw him into it. He was County Chairman of the party not then in power and complained good-naturedly to the governor of the big plurality Eastman had rolled up in the last election. He talked slowly, with a kind of dogged emphasis, and it was evident that politics was a subject to his taste. His brown eyes, they were noting, were curiously large and full, with a bilious tinge in the white. He met a glance steadily, with, indeed, an almost disconcerting directness.
Where the governor sat became, by imperceptible degrees, the head of the table as he began seriously and frankly discussing the points of difference between the existing parties, accompanied by clean-cut characterizations of the great leaders.
There was nothing to indicate that anything lay behind his talk; to all appearances his auditors were absorbed in what he was saying. Tate had accepted a cigar, which he did not light but kept twisting slowly in his thick fingers.
“We Democrats have had to change our minds about a good many things,” the governor was saying. “Of course we’re not going back to Jefferson” (he smiled broadly and waited for them to praise his magnanimity in approaching so near to an impious admission), “but the world has spun around a good many times since Jefferson’s day. What I think we Democrats do and do splendidly is to keep close to the changing current of public opinion; sometimes it seems likely to wash us down, as in the free-silver days; but we give, probably without always realizing it, a chance for the people to express themselves on new questions, and if we’ve stood for some foolish policies at times the country’s the better for having passed on them. These great contests clear the air like a storm, and we all go peacefully about our business afterward.”
As he continued they were all covertly watching Tate, who dropped his cigar and began playing with the pencil before him, absently winding and unwinding it upon the string that held it to the tablet. They were feigning an absorption in the governor’s recital which their quick, nervous glances at Tate’s hand belied. Burgess had pushed back his chair to face the governor more comfortably and was tying knots in his napkin.