“It’s the strong debater who is likely to become formidable. There’s Thorndyke now—Crane has made the speech—largely Thorndyke’s—but he is totally unequal to the running fire of debate. Thorndyke could do him up inside of ten minutes. Luckily for him, the debate will not be fierce, and Thorndyke will really conduct it.”
“Mr. Thorndyke is a very able man,” said Senator Bicknell, as if thinking aloud.
“Yes, but totally without ambition,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely, and Thorndyke, within the car, laughed silently.
It was, however, no laughing matter, but Thorndyke, having chosen his rôle for better or for worse, could only cleave to it, forsaking all others. However, he would see Constance Maitland the next day at five o’clock. There was balm in Gilead, or hasheesh in the pipe, he knew not exactly which.
Chapter Four
GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED
Life is a battle and a march—especially public life. Thorndyke waked the next morning prepared for both a battle and a march. A glance at the morning newspapers showed that the country was entirely with the Congress, and the people, having given their orders, would see to it that these orders were promptly obeyed. The Continental press of Europe with few exceptions barked furiously. The French newspapers alone retained dignity and good sense, pointing out the inevitable trend of events, and advised that, instead of abusing the United States, they should be copied in that system which had made them great, not by war, but by peace. The English newspapers were fair, but in some of them bitterness was expressed at England being shouldered out of her place as the greatest of the world-powers by the young giant of the West. There was in all of them, however, a note of triumph, that this first place had been lost only to an offshoot of the sturdy parent stock. This sentiment is often ridiculed as a peculiarly absurd form of national self-love, but there is, in reality, nothing ridiculous about it. As long as self-love is a part of nations and individuals, so long will each nation and each individual strive to share in the general stock of glory, achievement, and success.
In the American newspapers the man most prominent was Crane. He was compared to Henry Clay, to Stephen A. Douglas, to any and every American public man who had early in life made a meteoric rise in Congress. He was represented as the embodiment of youth with the wisdom of age. One newspaper reckoned him to be a political Chatterton, and called him “the Wondrous Boy.” His beauty was lauded, his voice, his delivery, the fit of his trousers; and one enthusiastic journal in Indianapolis promptly nominated him for the Presidency. Thorndyke searched the newspapers carefully, and did not find his own name once mentioned. He reflected upon Horace Greely’s remark that fame is a vapour.
Disappointing as it was to him to feel that another had reaped his harvest, it did not give him acute pain; for he had waked that morning with the agreeable consciousness which comes occasionally to every human being, that the world is more interesting to-day than it was yesterday; that consciousness which illuminates the cold, gray stage of life, and indicates that the lights are about to be turned up and the play to begin. The kind tones of Constance Maitland’s voice were still in Thorndyke’s ears, and the unmistakable look of interest in her soft eyes had visited him in dreams. He was no nearer marrying her than he had been at any time during the past eighteen years; the same obstacle was there—a very large, real, terrifying, and obvious obstacle—but there was also a sweet and comforting suspicion in his mind that Constance, as well as himself, had cherished the idyl of their youth. And then, by daylight, she did not look so preposterously girlish as she had looked by moonlight and in ball-dress. This gave Thorndyke considerable pleasure as he brushed the remnants of his hair into positions where they would do the most good. Her apparent advantage of him in the matter of youth and good looks had been disturbing to him at first. She still had much of youth and great good looks, but yet, a man with scanty hair and a grayish moustache would not look like an old fool beside her, as he had feared.
Thorndyke, according to his custom, walked to the Capitol. The morning, like most spring mornings in Washington, was as beautiful as the first morning in the garden of Eden. He chose unfrequented streets, and, passing under the long green arcades, had only the trees for his companionship on his walk.
Instead of reaching the building by way of the plaza, Thorndyke chose rather to ascend the long flights of steps leading upward from terrace to terrace on the west front. It is a way little used, but singularly beautiful, with its marble balustrades, its lush greenness of shrubbery, and the noble view both of the building and the fair white city embosomed in trees, spread out like a dream-city before the eye. Half-way up Thorndyke saw Senator Standiford sitting on one of the iron benches placed on the falls of the terrace. Thorndyke was surprised to see him there, and it occurred to him at once that it was a premeditated meeting on the Senator’s part.