In the Arena: Stories of Political Life. Booth Tarkington

      “Come down—come down!” he begged thickly, beckoning me with his arm.

      I got on some clothes, slipped downstairs without wakening my wife, lit the hall light, and took him into the library. He dropped in a chair with a quick breath like a sob, and when I turned from lighting the gas I was shocked by the change in him since afternoon. I never saw such a look before. It was like a rat you've seen running along the gutter side of the curbstone with a terrier after it.

      “What's the matter, Farwell?” I asked.

      “Oh, my God!” he whispered.

      “What's happened?”

      “It's hard to tell you,” said he. “Oh, but it's hard to tell.”

      “Want some whiskey?” I asked, reaching for a decanter that stood handy. He nodded and I gave him good allowance.

      “Now,” said I, when he'd gulped it down, “let's hear what's turned up.”

      He looked at me kind of dimly, and I'll be shot if two tears didn't well up in his eyes and run down his cheeks. “I've come to ask you,” he said slowly and brokenly, “to ask you—if you won't intercede with Gorgett for me; to ask you if you won't beg him to—to grant me—an interview before to-morrow noon.”

      “What!”

      “Will you do it?”

      “Certainly. Have you asked for an interview with him yourself?”

      He struck the back of his hand across his forehead—struck hard, too.

      “Have I tried? I've been following him like a dog since five o'clock this afternoon, beseeching him to give me twenty minutes' talk in private. He laughed at me! He isn't a man; he's an iron-hearted devil! Then I went to his house and waited three hours for him. When he came, all he would say was that you were supposed to be running this campaign for me, and I'd better consult with you. Then he turned me out of his house!”

      “You seem to have altered a little since this afternoon.” I couldn't resist that.

      “This afternoon!” he shuddered. “I think that was a thousand years ago!”

      “What do you want to see him for?”

      “What for? To see if there isn't a little human pity in him for a fellow-being in agony—to end my suspense and know whether or not he means to ruin me and my happiness and my home forever!”

      Farwell didn't seem to be regarding me so much in the light of a character as usual; still, one thing puzzled me, and I asked him how he happened to come to me.

      “Because I thought if anyone in the world could do anything with Gorgett, you'd be the one,” he answered. “Because it seemed to me he'd listen to you, and because I thought—in my wild clutching at the remotest hope—that he meant to make my humiliation more awful by sending me to you to ask you to go back to him for me.”

      “Well, well,” I said, “I guess if you want me to be of any use you'll have to tell me what it's all about.”

      “I suppose so,” he said, and choked, with a kind of despairing sound; “I don't see any way out of it.”

      “Go ahead,” I told him. “I reckon I'm old enough to keep my counsel. Let it go, Farwell.”

      “Do you know,” he began, with a sharp, grinding of his teeth, “that dishonourable scoundrel has had me watched, ever since there was talk of me for the fusion candidate? He's had me followed, shadowed, till he knows more about me than I do myself.”

      I saw right there that I'd never really measured Gorgett for as tall as he really was. “Have a cigar?” I asked Knowles, and lit one myself. But he shook his head and went on:

      “You remember my taking you to call on General Buskirk's daughter?”

      “Quite well,” said I, puffing pretty hard.

      “An angel! A white angel! And this beast, this boodler has the mud in his hands to desecrate her white garments!”

      “Oh,” says I.

      The angel's knight began to pace the room as he talked, clinching and unclinching his hands, while the perspiration got his hair all scraggly on his forehead. You see Farwell was doing some suffering and he wasn't used to it.

      “When she came home from abroad, a year ago,” he said, “it seemed to me that a light came into my life. I've got to tell you the whole thing,” he groaned, “but it's hard! Well, my wife is taken up with our little boy and housekeeping—I don't complain of her, mind that—but she really hasn't entered into my ambitions, my inner life. She doesn't often read my editorials, and when she does, she hasn't been serious in her consideration of them and of my purposes. Sometimes she differed openly from me and sometimes greeted my work for truth and light with indifference! I had learned to bear this, and more; to save myself pain I had come to shrink from exposing my real self to her. Then, when this young girl came, for the first time in my life I found real sympathy and knew what I thought I never should know; a heart attuned to my own, a mind that sought my own ideals, a soul of the same aspirations—and a perfect faith in what I was and in what it was my right to attain. She met me with open hands, and lifted me to my best self. What, unhappily, I did not find at home, I found in her—encouragement. I went to her in every mood, always to be greeted by the most exquisite perception, always the same delicate receptiveness. She gave me a sister's love!”

      I nodded; I knew he thought so.

      “Well, when I went into this campaign, what more natural than that I should seek her ready sympathy at every turn, than that I should consult with her at each crisis, and, when I became the fusion candidate, that I should go to her with the news that I had taken my first great step toward my goal and had achieved thus far in my struggle for the cause of our hearts—reform?”

      “You went up to Buskirk's after the convention?” I asked.

      “No; the night before.” He took his head in his hands and groaned, but without pausing in his march up and down the room. “You remember, it was known by ten o'clock, after the primaries, that I should receive the nomination. As soon as I was sure, I went to her; and I found her in the same state of exaltation and pride that I was experiencing myself. There was always the answer in her, I tell you, always the response that such a nature as mine craves. She took both my hands and looked at me just as a proud sister would. 'I read your news,' she said. 'It is in your face!' Wasn't that touching? Then we sat in silence for a while, each understanding the other's joy and triumph in the great blow I had struck for the right. I left very soon, and she came with me to the door. We stood for a moment on the step—and—for the first time, the only time in my life—I received a—a sister's caress.”

      “Oh,” said I. I understood how Gorgett had managed to be so calm that afternoon.

      “It was the purest kiss ever given!” Farwell groaned again.

      “Who was it saw you?” I asked.

      He dropped into a chair and I saw the tears of rage and humiliation welling up again in his eyes.

      “We might as well have been standing by the footlights in a theatre!” he burst out, brokenly. “Who saw it? Who didn't see it? Gorgett's sleuth-hound, the man he sent to me this afternoon, for one; the policeman on the beat that he'd stopped for a chat in front of the house, for another; a maid in the hall behind us, the policeman's sweetheart she is, for another! Oh!” he cried, “the desecration! That one caress, one that I'd thought a sacred secret between us forever—and in plain sight of those three hideous vulgarians, all belonging to my enemy, Gorgett! Ah, the horror of it—what horror!”

      Farwell wrung his hands and sat, gulping as if he were sick, without speaking for several moments.

      “What terms did the man he sent offer from Gorgett?” I asked.