usually discussed, who merely reminded each other of moments here
and there in the action. But they saw the play over again as they
talked of it, and perhaps whatever is seen by the narrator as he
speaks is sensed by the listener, quite irrespective of words.
This transference of experience went further: in some way the lives
of those two men came across to me as they talked, the strong,
bracing reality of successful, large-minded men who had made their
way in the world when business was still a personal adventure.
II
Mr. Dillon went to Chicago once a year to buy goods for his store.
Trueman would usually accompany him as far as St. Joe, but no
farther. He dismissed Chicago as "too big." He didn't like to be
one of the crowd, didn't feel at home in a city where he wasn't
recognized as J. H. Trueman.
It was one of these trips to Chicago that brought about the end--
for me and for them; a stupid, senseless, commonplace end.
Being a Democrat, already somewhat "tainted" by the free-silver
agitation, one spring Dillon delayed his visit to Chicago in order
to be there for the Democratic Convention--it was the Convention
that first nominated Bryan.
On the night after his return from Chicago, Mr. Dillon was seated
in his chair on the sidewalk, surrounded by a group of men who
wanted to hear all about the nomination of a man from a neighbour
State. Mr. Trueman came across the street in his leisurely way,
greeted Dillon, and asked him how he had found Chicago,--whether he
had had a good trip.
Mr. Dillon must have been annoyed because Trueman didn't mention
the Convention. He threw back his head rather haughtily. "Well,
J. H., since I saw you last, we've found a great leader in this
country, and a great orator." There was a frosty sparkle in his
voice that presupposed opposition,--like the feint of a boxer
getting ready.
"Great windbag!" muttered Trueman. He sat down in his chair, but I
noticed that he did not settle himself and cross his legs as usual.
Mr. Dillon gave an artificial laugh. "It's nothing against a man
to be a fine orator. All the great leaders have been eloquent.
This Convention was a memorable occasion; it gave the Democratic
party a rebirth."
"Gave it a black eye, and a blind spot, I'd say!" commented
Trueman. He didn't raise his voice, but he spoke with more heat
than I had ever heard from him. After a moment he added: "I guess
Grover Cleveland must be a sick man; must feel like he'd taken a
lot of trouble for nothing."
Mr. Dillon ignored these thrusts and went on telling the group
around him about the Convention, but there was a special nimbleness
and exactness in his tongue, a chill politeness in his voice that
meant anger. Presently he turned again to Mr. Trueman, as if he
could now trust himself:
"It was one of the great speeches of history, J. H.; our
grandchildren will have to study it in school, as we did Patrick
Henry's."
"Glad I haven't got any grandchildren, if they'd be brought up on
that sort of tall talk," said Mr. Trueman. "Sounds like a
schoolboy had written it. Absolutely nothing back of it but an
unsound theory."
Mr. Dillon's laugh made me shiver; it was like a thin glitter of
danger. He arched his curly eyebrows provokingly.
"We'll have four years of currency reform, anyhow. By the end of
that time, you old dyed-in-the-wool Republicans will be thinking
differently. The under dog is going to have a chance."
Mr. Trueman shifted in his chair. "That's no way for a banker to
talk." He spoke very low. "The Democrats will have a long time to
be sorry they ever turned Pops. No use talking to you while your
Irish is up. I'll wait till you cool off." He rose and walked
away, less deliberately than usual, and Mr. Dillon, watching his
retreating figure, laughed haughtily and disagreeably. He asked
the grain-elevator man to take the vacated chair. The group about
him grew, and he sat expounding the reforms proposed by the
Democratic candidate until a late hour.
For the first time in my life I listened with breathless interest
to a political discussion. Whoever Mr. Dillon failed to convince,
he convinced me. I grasped it at once: that gold had been
responsible for most of the miseries and inequalities of the world;
that it had always been the club the rich and cunning held over the
poor; and that "the free and unlimited coinage of silver" would
remedy all this. Dillon declared that young Mr. Bryan had looked
like the patriots of old when he faced and challenged high finance
with: "You shall not press this crown of thorns upon the brow of
labour; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." I
thought that magnificent; I thought the cornfields would show them
a thing or two, back there!
R. E. Dillon had never taken an aggressive part in politics. But
from that night on, the Democratic candidate and the free-silver
plank were the subject of his talks with his customers and
depositors. He drove about the country convincing the farmers,
went to the neighbouring towns to use his influence with the
merchants, organized the Bryan Club and the Bryan Ladies' Quartette
in our county, contributed largely to the campaign fund. This was
all a new line of conduct for Mr. Dillon, and it sat unsteadily on
him. Even his voice became unnatural; there was a sting of
comeback in it. His new character made him more like other people
and took away from his special personal quality. I wonder whether
it was not Trueman, more than Bryan, who put such an edge on him.
While all these things were going on, Trueman kept to his own
office. He came to Dillon's bank on business, but he did not "come
back to the sidewalk," as I put it to myself. He waited and said
nothing, but he looked grim. After a month or so, when he saw that
this thing was not going to blow over, when he heard how Dillon had
been talking to representative men all over the county, and saw the
figure he had put down for the campaign fund, then Trueman remarked
to some of his friends that a banker had no business to commit
himself to a scatter-brained financial policy which would destroy
credit.
The next morning Mr. Trueman went to the bank across the street,
the rival of Dillon's, and wrote a cheque on Dillon's bank "for the
amount of my balance." He wasn't the sort of man who would ever
know what his balance was, he merely kept it big enough to cover
emergencies. That afternoon the Merchants' National took the check
over to Dillon on its collecting rounds, and by night the word was
all over town that Trueman had changed his bank. After this there
would be no going back, people said. To change your bank was one
of the most final things you could do. The little, unsuccessful
men were pleased, as they always are at the destruction of anything
strong and fine.
All through the summer and the autumn of that c
ampaign Mr. Dillon
was away a great deal. When he was at home, he took his evening
airing on the sidewalk, and there was always a group of men about
him, talking of the coming election; that was the most exciting
presidential campaign people could remember. I often passed this
group on my way to the post-office, but there was no temptation to
linger now. Mr. Dillon seemed like another man, and my zeal to
free humanity from the cross of gold had cooled. Mr. Trueman I
seldom saw. When he passed me on the street, he nodded kindly.
The election and Bryan's defeat did nothing to soften Dillon. He
had been sure of a Democratic victory. I believe he felt almost as
if Trueman were responsible for the triumph of Hanna and McKinley.
At least he knew that Trueman was exceedingly well satisfied, and
that was bitter to him. He seemed to me sarcastic and sharp all
the time now.
I don't believe self-interest would ever have made a breach between
Dillon and Trueman. Neither would have taken advantage of the
other. If a combination of circumstances had made it necessary
that one or the other should take a loss in money or prestige, I
think Trueman would have pocketed the loss. That was his way. It
was his code, moreover. A gentleman pocketed his gains
mechanically, in the day's routine; but he pocketed losses
punctiliously, with a sharp, if bitter, relish. I believe now, as
I believed then, that this was a quarrel of "principle." Trueman
looked down on anyone who could take the reasoning of the Populist
party seriously. He was a perfectly direct man, and he showed his
contempt. That was enough. It lost me my special pleasure of
summer nights: the old stories of the early West that sometimes
came to the surface; the minute biographies of the farming people;
the clear, detailed, illuminating accounts of all that went on in
the great crop-growing, cattle-feeding world; and the silence,--the
strong, rich, outflowing silence between two friends, that was as
full and satisfying as the moonlight. I was never to know its like
again.
After that rupture nothing went well with either of my two great
men. Things were out of true, the equilibrium was gone. Formerly,
when they used to sit in their old places on the sidewalk, two
black figures with patches of shadow below, they seemed like two
bodies held steady by some law of balance, an unconscious relation
like that between the earth and the moon. It was this mathematical
harmony which gave a third person pleasure.
Before the next presidential campaign came round, Mr. Dillon died
(a young man still) very suddenly, of pneumonia. We didn't know
that he was seriously ill until one of his clerks came running to
our house to tell us he was dead. The same clerk, half out of his
wits--it looked like the end of the world to him--ran on to tell
Mr. Trueman.
Mr. Trueman thanked him. He called his confidential man, and told
him to order flowers from Kansas City. Then he went to his house,
informed his housekeeper that he was going away on business, and
packed his bag. That same night he boarded the Santa F? Limited
and didn't stop until he was in San Francisco. He was gone all
spring. His confidential clerk wrote him letters every week about
the business and the new calves, and got telegrams in reply.
Trueman never wrote letters.
When Mr. Trueman at last came home, he stayed only a few months.
He sold out everything he owned to a stranger from Kansas City; his
feeding ranch, his barns and sheds, his house and town lots. It
was a terrible blow to me; now only the common, everyday people
would be left. I used to walk mournfully up and down before his
office while all these deeds were being signed,--there were usually
lawyers and notaries inside. But once, when he happened to be
alone, he called me in, asked me how old I was now, and how far
along I had got in school. His face and voice were more than kind,
but he seemed absent-minded, as if he were trying to recall
something. Presently he took from his watch-chain a red seal I had
always admired, reached for my hand, and dropped the piece of
carnelian into my palm.
"For a keepsake," he said evasively.
When the transfer of his property was completed, Mr. Trueman left
us for good. He spent the rest of his life among the golden hills
of San Francisco. He moved into the Saint Francis Hotel when it
was first built, and had an office in a high building at the top of
what is now Powell Street. There he read his letters in the
morning and played poker at night. I've heard a man whose offices
were next his tell how Trueman used to sit tilted back in his desk
chair, a half-consumed cigar in his mouth, morning after morning,
apparently doing nothing, watching the Bay and the ferry-boats,
across a line of wind-racked eucalyptus trees. He died at the
Saint Francis about nine years after he left our part of the world.
The breaking-up of that friendship between two men who scarcely
noticed my existence was a real loss to me, and has ever since been
a regret. More than once, in Southern countries where there is a
smell of dust and dryness in the air and the nights are intense, I
have come upon a stretch of dusty white road drinking up the
moonlight beside a blind wall, and have felt a sudden sadness.
Perhaps it was not until the next morning that I knew why,--and
then only because I had dreamed of Mr. Dillon or Mr. Trueman in my
sleep. When that old scar is occasionally touched by chance, it
rouses the old uneasiness; the feeling of something broken that
could so easily have been mended; of something delightful that was
senselessly wasted, of a truth that was accidentally distorted--one
of the truths we want to keep.
Pasadena, 1931
End of this Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
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