The President. Alfred Henry Lewis
True, Senator Hanway must win his party's nomination; and it was here he took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust to mar their brows or a moment lost in weighing the proposal. The Senate became a Hanway propaganda. Even the opposition, so far as slightly lay with them, were pleasantly willing to help the work along, and Senator Hanway blushed to find himself a Senate idol. By the encouragement which his colleagues gave him, and the generous light of it, Senator Hanway saw the way clear to become the choice of his party's national convention. But he must work.
It was in that prior day when Senator Hanway served his State in the legislature that he wedded Dorothy Harley. It is to be assumed that he loved her dearly; for twelve years later when she died his grief was like a storm, and for the rest of his days he would as soon think of a top hat without a crown as without a mourning band.
When Senator Hanway married Dorothy Harley, her brother, John Harley, married Barbara Hanway. Whether this exchange of sisters by the two was meant for retort or for compliment lived a point of dispute—without being settled—among the friends of the high contracting parties for many, many months.
Not that anyone suffered by these double nuptials; the families owned equal social standing, having none at all, and were evenly balanced in fortune, since neither had a dollar. Both Senator Hanway and John Harley had their fortunes to make when, each with the other's sister on his arm, they called in the preacher that day; and after the wedding they set about the accumulation of those fortunes.
In a half-sense the two became partners; for while a lawmaker can be highly useful to a man of energy outside the halls of legislation, the converse is every inch as true. They must be folk of course who know and trust one another; and, aside from marrying sisters—a fact calculated to quickly teach two gentlemen the worst and the best about each other—John Harley and Senator Hanway had been as Damon and Pythias for a decade. Not that either would have died for the other, but he would have lied and plotted and defrauded and stopped at nothing short of murder for him, which, considering the money appetites of the pair and those schemes they had for feeding them, should be vastly more important.
When Senator Hanway came to Washington, John Harley and his wife, Barbara Hanway-Harley as she preferred to style herself, came with him. Senator Hanway made his home with the Harleys, when now he was a widower; and the trio, with the daughter, Dorothy—named for the Senator's wife—who lost her boot heel when Richard lost his heart, made up a family of four, and took their place in Capital annals.
John Harley had a red and jovial face that promised conviviality. It was the custom with John Harley to slap a new acquaintance on the shoulder and hail him as "Old Man." He was long of body, short of leg, apoplectic as to neck—a girthy, thick, explosive, boisterous gentleman, who could order a good dinner and could eat one. He could find you a fair bottle of wine, and then assist in emptying it. He aimed at the open and frank and generous, and was willing you should think him of high temper, one who would on provocation deal a knock-down blow.
Senator Hanway was his opposite, being of no more color than a monk and of manners as precisely soft as a lady's. He never raised his voice, never lost his temper; he strove for an accurate gentility—to give the lie to noble foes at home—and far from owning any ferocities of fist, retorted to a heated person who charged him with flat falsehood by a mere shrug of the shoulders and a simple:
"I refuse to discuss it, sir!"
And all with a high air that left his opponent gasping and helpless and floundering with the feeling that he had been somehow most severely and completely, not to say most righteously, rebuked.
There you have vague charcoal sketches of Senator Hanway and John Harley; you may note as wide a difference between the two as lies between warclubs and poisons. And yet they fitted with each other like the halves of a shell. Also they were masters of intrigue; only John Harley intrigued like a Wolsey and Senator Hanway like a Richelieu.
John Harley played the business man, and was rough and plain and blunt—a man of no genius and with loads of common sense. He made a specialty of unpalatable truths and discarded sentiment. Indeed, he was so good a business man that he got possession of a rotund interest in a group of coal mines without the outlay of a dollar, and later became the owner of sundry sheaves of railway stocks on the same surprising terms.
Not that the coal and the railway companies lost by John Harley. When it was known that he possessed an interest in the mines, certain armor plate mills and shipbuilding concerns, as well as nineteen steamboat lines, came forward to buy the coal. As for the railway, whereas prior to John Harley's introduction as shareholder and director it could get no consideration in the way of freights from those giant corporations which have to do with beef and sugar and oil—it being both slow and crooked as a railroad—thereafter it was given all it could haul at rates even with the best, and its prosperity became such that fifty-five points were added to the quoted value of its stock.
It is possible that John Harley's nearness to Senator Hanway had something to do with founding for him a railway and a coal-mine popularity. The vote of a Senator may be important to armor plate and shipbuilding concerns; as much might be said of companies that deal in beef and sugar and oil. The action of a Senator may even become of moment to a steamship line. The last was evidenced on a day when those nineteen suddenly refused to purchase further coal from the Harley mines. They were buying five millions of tons a year, those five millions finding their way to the sea over the railway of which John Harley was a director and in which he owned those sheaves of stocks, and a fortune rose or fell by that refusal. The steamboats said they would have no more Harley coal; it was stones and slates, they said.
Senator Hanway at once introduced a bill, with every chance of its passage, which provided for a tariff reduction of ten per cent. ad valorem on goods brought to this country in American ships. Since the recalcitrant nineteen were, to the last rebellionist among them, foreign ships, flying alien flags, this threatened preference of American ships took away their breath. The owners of those lines went black with rage; however, their anger did not so obscure them but what they saw their penitent way to readopt the Harley coal, and with that the mining and carriage and sale of those annual five millions went forward as before. The Hanway bill, which promised such American advantages, perished in the pigeon holes of the committee; but not before the press of the country had time to ring with the patriotism of Senator Hanway, and praise that long-headed statesmanship which was about to build up a Yankee merchant marine without committing the crime of subsidy.
John Harley and Senator Hanway at the time when Dorothy suffered that momentous mishap of the heel, were both enrolled by popular opinion among the country's millionaires. Each had been the frequent subject of articles in the magazines, recounting his achievements and offering him to the youth of America as a "Self-Made Man," whose example it would be wise to steer by. In the Presidential plans of Senator Hanway, John Harley nourished a flaming interest. With his pale brother-in-law in the White House, what should better match the genius of John Harley than the rôle of Warwick. He would pose as a President-maker. When the President was made, and the world was saying "President Hanway," that man should be dull indeed who did not look upon John Harley as the power behind the curtain. He would control the backstairs; he would wear a White House pass-key as a watch-charm! John Harley as well as Senator Hanway had his dreams.
Both Dorothy and her mother were profound partisans of Senator Hanway. Dorothy loved her "Uncle Pat" as much as she loved her father. Dorothy, who could weigh a woman—being of the sex—might have felt occasional misgivings as to her mother. She might now and again observe an insufficiency that was almost the deficient. But of her father and "Uncle Pat" she never possessed a doubt; the one was the best and the other the greatest of men.
Dorothy was so far justified of her affection that to both John Harley and Senator Hanway she stood for the model of all that was good and beautiful in life. Hard and keen and never honest with the world