Mr. Hand was very wroth.
Mr. Sluss, immaculate in black broadcloth and white linen10, was very sure that he would fulfil to the letter all of Mr. Hand’s suggestions. The proposed ordinance should be denounced by him; its legislative11 progress heartily12 opposed in council.
“They shall get no quarter from me!” he declared, emphatically. “I know what the scheme is. They know that I know it.”
He looked at Mr. Hand quite as one advocate of righteousness should look at another, and the rich promoter went away satisfied that the reins13 of government were in safe hands. Immediately afterward14 Mr. Sluss gave out an interview in which he served warning on all aldermen and councilmen that no such ordinance as the one in question would ever be signed by him as mayor.
At half past ten on the same morning on which the interview appeared—the hour at which Mr. Sluss usually reached his office—his private telephone bell rang, and an assistant inquired if he would be willing to speak with Mr. Frank A. Cowperwood. Mr. Sluss, somehow anticipating fresh laurels15 of victory, gratified by the front-page display given his announcement in the morning papers, and swelling16 internally with civic17 pride, announced, solemnly: “Yes; connect me.”
“Mr. Sluss,” began Cowperwood, at the other end, “this is Frank A. Cowperwood.”
“Yes. What can I do for you, Mr. Cowperwood?”
“I see by the morning papers that you state that you will have nothing to do with any proposed ordinance which looks to giving me a franchise2 for any elevated road on the North or West Side?”
“That is quite true,” replied Mr. Sluss, loftily. “I will not.”
“Don’t you think it is rather premature18, Mr. Sluss, to denounce something which has only a rumored19 existence?” (Cowperwood, smiling sweetly to himself, was quite like a cat playing with an unsuspicious mouse.) “I should like very much to talk this whole matter over with you personally before you take an irrevocable attitude. It is just possible that after you have heard my side you may not be so completely opposed to me. From time to time I have sent to you several of my personal friends, but apparently20 you do not care to receive them.”
“Quite true,” replied Mr. Sluss, loftily; “but you must remember that I am a very busy man, Mr. Cowperwood, and, besides, I do not see how I can serve any of your purposes. You are working for a set of conditions to which I am morally and temperamentally opposed. I am working for another. I do not see that we have any common ground on which to meet. In fact, I do not see how I can be of any service to you whatsoever21.”
“Just a moment, please, Mr. Mayor,” replied Cowperwood, still very sweetly, and fearing that Sluss might choose to hang up the receiver, so superior was his tone. “There may be some common ground of which you do not know. Wouldn’t you like to come to lunch at my residence or receive me at yours? Or let me come to your office and talk this matter over. I believe you will find it the part of wisdom as well as of courtesy to do this.”
“I cannot possibly lunch with you to-day,” replied Sluss, “and I cannot see you, either. There are a number of things pressing for my attention. I must say also that I cannot hold any back-room conferences with you or your emissaries. If you come you must submit to the presence of others.”
“Very well, Mr. Sluss,” replied Cowperwood, cheerfully. “I will not come to your office. But unless you come to mine before five o’clock this afternoon you will face by noon to-morrow a suit for breach22 of promise, and your letters to Mrs. Brandon will be given to the public. I wish to remind you that an election is coming on, and that Chicago favors a mayor who is privately23 moral as well as publicly so. Good morning.”
Mr. Cowperwood hung up his telephone receiver with a click, and Mr. Sluss sensibly and visibly stiffened24 and paled. Mrs. Brandon! The charming, lovable, discreet25 Mrs. Brandon who had so ungenerously left him! Why should she be thinking of suing him for breach of promise, and how did his letter to her come to be in Cowperwood’s hands? Good heavens—those mushy letters! His wife! His children! His church and the owlish pastor26 thereof! Chicago! And its conventional, moral, religious atmosphere! Come to think of it, Mrs. Brandon had scarcely if ever written him a note of any kind. He did not even know her history.
At the thought of Mrs. Sluss—her hard, cold, blue eyes—Mr. Sluss arose, tall and distrait27, and ran his hand through his hair. He walked to the window, snapping his thumb and middle finger and looking eagerly at the floor. He thought of the telephone switchboard just outside his private office, and wondered whether his secretary, a handsome young Presbyterian girl, had been listening, as usual. Oh, this sad, sad world! If the North Side ever learned of this—Hand, the newspapers, young MacDonald—would they protect him? They would not. Would they run him for mayor again? Never! Could the public be induced to vote for him with all the churches fulminating against private immorality29, hypocrites, and whited sepulchers30? Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! And he was so very, very much respected and looked up to—that was the worst of it all. This terrible demon31 Cowperwood had descended32 on him, and he had thought himself so secure. He had not even been civil to Cowperwood. What if the latter chose to avenge33 the discourtesy?
Mr. Sluss went back to his chair, but he could not sit in it. He went for his coat, took it down, hung it up again, took it down, announced over the ’phone that he could not see any one for several hours, and went out by a private door. Wearily he walked along North Clark Street, looking at the hurly-burly of traffic, looking at the dirty, crowded river, looking at the sky and smoke and gray buildings, and wondering what he should do. The world was so hard at times; it was so cruel. His wife, his family, his political career. He could not conscientiously34 sign any ordinances35 for Mr. Cowperwood—that would be immoral28, dishonest, a scandal to the city. Mr. Cowperwood was a notorious traitor36 to the public welfare. At the same time he could not very well refuse, for here was Mrs. Brandon, the charming and unscrupulous creature, playing into the hands of Cowperwood. If he could only meet her, beg of her, plead; but where was she? He had not seen her for months and months. Could he go to Hand and confess all? But Hand was a hard, cold, moral man also. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! He wondered and thought, and sighed and pondered—all without avail.
Pity the poor earthling caught in the toils37 of the moral law. In another country, perhaps, in another day, another age, such a situation would have been capable of a solution, one not utterly38 destructive to Mr. Sluss, and not entirely39 favorable to a man like Cowperwood. But here in the United States, here in Chicago, the ethical40 verities41 would all, as he knew, be lined up against him. What Lake View would think, what his pastor would think, what Hand and all his moral associates would think—ah, these were the terrible, the incontrovertible consequences of his lapse42 from virtue43.
At four o’clock, after Mr. Sluss had wandered for hours in the snow and cold, belaboring44 himself for a fool and a knave45, and while Cowperwood was sitting at his desk signing papers, contemplating46 a glowing fire, and wondering whether the mayor would deem it advisable to put in an appearance, his office door opened and one of his trim stenographers entered announcing Mr. Chaffee Thayer Sluss. Enter Mayor Sluss, sad, heavy, subdued47, shrunken, a very different gentleman from the one who had talked so cavalierly over the wires some five and a half hours before. Gray weather, severe cold, and much contemplation of seemingly irreconcilable48 facts had reduced his spirits greatly. He was a little pale and a little restless. Mental distress49 has a reducing, congealing50 effect, and Mayor Sluss seemed somewhat less than his usual self in height, weight, and thickness. Cowperwood had seen him more than once on various political platforms, but he had never met him. When the troubled mayor entered he arose courteously and waved him to a chair.
“Sit down, Mr. Sluss,” he said, genially51. “It’s a disagreeable day out, isn’t it? I suppose you have come in regard to the matter we were discussing this morning?”
Nor was this cordiality wholly assumed. One of the primal52 instincts of Cowperwood’s nature—for all his chicane and subtlety—was to take no rough advantage of a beaten enemy. In the hour of victory he was always courteous6, bland53, gentle, and even sympathetic; he was so to-day, and quite honestly, too.
Mayor Sluss put down the high sugar-loaf hat he wore and said, grandiosely54, as was his manner even in the direst extremity55: “Well, you see, I am here, Mr. Cowperwood. What is it you wish me to do, exactly?”
“Nothing unreasonable56, I assure you, Mr. Sluss,” replied Cowperwood. “Your manner to me this morning was a little brusque, and, as I have always wanted to have a sensible private talk with you, I took this way of getting it. I should like you to dismiss from your mind at once the thought that I am going to take an unfair advantage of you in any way. I have no present intention of publishing your correspondence with Mrs. Brandon.” (As he said this he took from his drawer a bundle of letters which Mayor Sluss recognized at once as the enthusiastic missives which he had sometime before penned to the fair Claudia. Mr. Sluss groaned57 as he beheld58 this incriminating evidence.) “I am not trying,” continued Cowperwood, “to wreck59 your career, nor to make you do anything which you do not feel that you can conscientiously undertake. The letters that I have here, let me say, have come to me quite by accident. I did not seek them. But, since I do have them, I thought I might as well mention them as a basis for a possible talk and compromise between us.”
Cowperwood did not smile. He merely looked thoughtfully at Sluss; then, by way of testifying to the truthfulness60 of what he had been saying, thumped61 the letters up and down, just to show that they were real.
“Yes,” said Mr. Sluss, heavily, “I see.”
He studied the bundle—a small, solid affair—while Cowperwood looked discreetly62 elsewhere. He contemplated63 his own shoes, the floor. He rubbed his hands and then his knees.
“Come, Mr. Sluss,” said Cowperwood, amiably65, “cheer up. Things are not nearly as desperate as you think. I give you my word right now that nothing which you yourself, on mature thought, could say was unfair will be done. You are the mayor of Chicago. I am a citizen. I merely wish fair play from you. I merely ask you to give me your word of honor that from now on you will take no part in this fight which is one of pure spite against me. If you cannot conscientiously aid me in what I consider to be a perfectly66 legitimate67 demand for additional franchises, you will, at least, not go out of your way to publicly attack me. I will put these letters in my safe, and there they will stay until the next campaign is over, when I will take them out and destroy them. I have no personal feeling against you—none in the world. I do not ask you to sign any ordinance which the council may pass giving me elevated-road rights. What I do wish you to do at this time is to refrain from stirring up public sentiment against me, especially if the council should see fit to pass an ordinance over your veto. Is that satisfactory?”
“But my friends? The public? The Republican party? Don’t you see it is expected of me that I should wage some form of campaign against you?” queried68 Sluss, nervously69.
“No, I don’t,” replied Cowperwood, succinctly70, “and, anyhow, there are ways and ways of waging a public campaign. Go through the motions, if you wish, but don’t put too much heart in it. And, anyhow, see some one of my lawyers from time to time when they call on you. Judge Dickensheets is an able and fair man. So is General Van Sickle71. Why not confer with them occasionally?—not publicly, of course, but in some less conspicuous72 way. You will find both of them most helpful.”
Cowperwood smiled encouragingly, quite beneficently, and Chaffee Thayer Sluss, his political hopes gone glimmering73, sat and mused74 for a few moments in a sad and helpless quandary75.
“Very well,” he said, at last, rubbing his hands feverishly76. “It is what I might have expected. I should have known. There is no other way, but—” Hardly able to repress the hot tears now burning beneath his eyelids77, the Hon. Mr. Sluss picked up his hat and left the room. Needless to add that his preachings against Cowperwood were permanently78 silenced.
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1
requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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franchises
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| n.（尤指选举议员的）选举权( franchise的名词复数 )；参政权；获特许权的商业机构（或服务）；（公司授予的）特许经销权v.给…以特许权，出售特许权( franchise的第三人称单数 ) | |
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ordinance
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| n.法令；条令；条例 | |
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courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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rumored
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| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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pastor
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| n.牧师，牧人 | |
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distrait
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| adj.心不在焉的 | |
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immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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sepulchers
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| n.坟墓，墓穴( sepulcher的名词复数 )；圣物置放处v.埋葬( sepulcher的第三人称单数 ) | |
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demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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ordinances
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| n.条例，法令( ordinance的名词复数 ) | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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toils
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| 网 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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verities
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| n.真实( verity的名词复数 )；事实；真理；真实的陈述 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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44
belaboring
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| v.毒打一顿( belabor的现在分词 )；责骂；就…作过度的说明；向…唠叨 | |
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45
knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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46
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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47
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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48
irreconcilable
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| adj.（指人）难和解的，势不两立的 | |
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49
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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50
congealing
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| v.使凝结，冻结( congeal的现在分词 )；（指血）凝结 | |
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51
genially
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| adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地 | |
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52
primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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53
bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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54
grandiosely
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55
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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56
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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57
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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58
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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59
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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truthfulness
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| n. 符合实际 | |
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thumped
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| v.重击， （指心脏）急速跳动( thump的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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63
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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64
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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65
amiably
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| adv.和蔼可亲地，亲切地 | |
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66
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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67
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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68
queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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succinctly
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| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
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71
sickle
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| n.镰刀 | |
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72
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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75
quandary
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| n.困惑，进迟两难之境 | |
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76
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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77
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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