In the Arena: Stories of Political Life. Booth Tarkington

to him; that he meant to print this about me in their damnable party-organ tomorrow, in any event, and only warned me so that I should have time to prepare Miss Buskirk. Of course he don't care! I'll be ruined, that's all. Oh, the hideous injustice of it, the unreason! Don't you see the frightful irony of it? The best thing in my life, the widest and deepest; my friendship with a good woman becomes a joke and a horror! Don't you see that the personal scandal about me absolutely undermines me and nullifies the political scandal of the closet affair? Gorgett will come in again and the Grand Jury would laugh at any attack on him. I'm ruined for good, for good and all, for good and all!”

      “Have you told Miss Buskirk?”

      He uttered a kind of a shriek. “No! I can't! How could I? What do you think I'm made of? And there's her father—and all her relatives, and mine, and my wife—my wife! If she leaves me—”

      A fit of nausea seemed to overcome him and he struggled with it, shivering. “My God! Do you think I can face it? I've come to you for help in the most wretched hour of my life—all darkness, darkness! Just on the eve of triumph to be stricken down—it's so cruel, so devilish! And to think of the horrible comic-weekly misery of it, caught kissing a girl, by a policeman and his sweetheart, the chambermaid! Ugh! The vulgar ridicule—the hideous laughter!” He raised his hands to me, the most grovelling figure of a man I ever saw.

      “Oh, for God's sake, help me, help me. …”

      Well, sir, it was sickening enough, but after he had gone, and I tumbled into bed again, I thought of Gorgett and laughed myself to sleep with admiration.

      When Farwell and I got to Gorgett's office, fairly early the next morning, Lafe was sitting there alone, expecting us, of course, as I knew he would be, but in the same characteristic, lazy attitude I'd found him in, the day before; feet up on the desk, hat-brim tilted 'way forward, cigar in the right-hand corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his double-chin mashing down his limp collar. He didn't even turn to look at us as we came in and closed the door.

      “Come in, gentlemen, come in,” says he, not moving. “I kind of thought you'd be along, about this time.”

      “Looking for us, were you?” I asked.

      “Yes,” said he. “Sit down.”

      We did; Farwell looking pretty pale and red-eyed, and swallowing a good deal.

      There was a long, long silence. We just sat and watched Gorgett. I didn't want to say anything; and I believe Farwell couldn't. It lasted so long that it began to look as if the little blue haze at the end of Lafe's cigar was all that was going to happen. But by and by he turned his head ever so little, and looked at Knowles.

      “Got your story for the Herald set up yet?” he asked.

      Farwell swallowed some more and just shook his head.

      “Haven't begun to work up the case for the Grand Jury yet?”

      “No,” answered Farwell, in almost a whisper, his head hanging.

      “Why,” Lafe said, in a tone of quiet surprise; “you haven't given all that up, have you?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, ain't that strange?” said Lafe. “What's the trouble?”

      Knowles didn't answer. In fact, I felt mighty sorry for him.

      All at once, Gorgett's manner changed; he threw away his cigar, the only time I ever saw him do it without lighting another at the end of it. His feet came down to the floor and he wheeled round on Farwell.

      “I understand your wife's a mighty nice lady, Mr. Knowles.”

      Farwell's head sank lower till we couldn't see his face, only his fingers working kind of pitifully.

      “I guess you've had rather a bad night?” said Gorgett, inquiringly.

      “Oh, my God!” The words came out in a whisper from under Knowles's tilted hat-brim.

      “I believe I'd advise you to stick to your wife,” Gorgett went on, quietly, “and let politics alone. Somehow I don't believe you're the kind of man for it. I've taken considerable interest in you for some time back, Mr. Knowles, though I don't suppose you've noticed it until lately; and I don't believe you understand the game. You've said some pretty hard things in your paper about me; you've been more or less excitable in your statements; but that's all right. What I don't like altogether, though, is that it seems to me you've been really tooting your own horn all the time—calling everybody dishonest and scoundrels, to shove yourself forward. That always ends in sort of a lonely position. I reckon you feel considerably lonely, just now? Well, yesterday, I understand you were talking pretty free about the penitentiary. Now, that ain't just the way to act, according to my notion. It's a bad word. Here we are, he and I”—he pointed to me—“carrying on our little fight according to the rules, enjoying it and blocking each other, gaining a point here and losing one there, everything perfectly good-natured, when you turn up and begin to talk about the penitentiary! That ain't quite the thing. You see words like that are liable to stir up the passions. It's dangerous. You were trusted, when they told you the closet story, to regard it as a confidence—though they didn't go through the form of pledging you—because your people had given their word not to betray Genz. But you couldn't see it and there you went, talking about the Grand Jury and stripes and so on, stirring up passions and ugly feelings. And I want to tell you that the man who can afford to do that has to be mighty immaculate himself. The only way to play politics, whatever you're for, is to learn the game first. Then you'll know how far you can go and what your own record will stand. There ain't a man alive whose record will stand too much, Mr. Knowles—and when you get to thinking about that and what your own is, it makes you feel more like treating your fellow-sinners a good deal gentler than you would otherwise. Now I've got a wife and two little girls, and my old mother's proud of me (though you wouldn't think it) and they'd hate it a good deal to see me sent over the road for playing the game the best I could as I found it.”

      He paused for a moment, looking sad and almost embarrassed. “It ain't any great pleasure to me,” he said, “to think that the people have let it get to be the game that it is. But I reckon it's good for you. I reckon the best thing that ever happened to you is having to come here this morning to ask mercy of a man you looked down on.”

      Farwell shifted a little in his chair, but he didn't speak, and Gorgett went on:

      “I suppose you think it's mighty hard that your private character should be used against you in a political question by a man you call a public corruptionist. But I'm in a position where I can't take any chances against an antagonist that won't play the game my way. I had to find your vulnerable point to defend myself, and, in finding it, I find that there's no need to defend myself any longer, because it makes all your weapons ineffective. I believe the trouble with you, Mr. Knowles, is that you've never realized that politicians are human beings. But we are: we breathe and laugh and like to do right, like other folks. And, like most men, you've thought you were different from other men, and you aren't. So, here you are. I believe you said you'd had a hard night?”

      Knowles looked up at last, his lips working for a while before he could speak. “I'll resign now—if you'll—if you'll let me off,” he said.

      Gorgett shook his head. “I've got the election in my hand,” he answered, “though you fellows don't know it. You've got nothing to offer me, and you couldn't buy me if you had.”

      At that, Knowles just sank into himself with a little, faint cry, in a kind of heap. There wasn't anything but anguish and despair to him. Big tears were sliding down his cheeks.

      I didn't say anything. Gorgett sat looking at him for a good while; and then his fat chin began to tremble a little and I saw his eyes shining in the shadow under his old hat-brim.

      He got up and went over to Farwell with slow steps and put his hand gently on his shoulder.

      “Go on home to