Sammy smiled wryly. “All right,” said Sammy. “I’m set. Now what are we going to do?”
“We are going to try and get the Republican and the Farmer-Labor people to unite on the nomination of Matthew.”
“Good!” said Sammy. “Here goes.”
“Of course,” added Sara, “we must be careful not to make our new alliance too open and scare off the Liberals. We must drift together apparently as fast and no faster than these two wings come to an understanding. That understanding I’m going to engineer, and I want your help. First you go to Graham and tell him you’ll support Matthew. I’ve told him you’re coming. As soon as I’ve heard from him that you’ve seen him, I’ll get hold of Cadwalader and tell him the news. We’ll work on this toward a final conference just before the primaries.”
XXI
Neither to Sammy nor to Sara did their new alliance make any real difference. It healed the open and public split, but Sammy continued to bore into Matthew’s support, and Sara continued to strengthen his popularity and defenses. Beyond that, Sammy and Sara had always admired each other. Each was a little at a loss without the other. Neither had many intimate associates or confidants whom they wholly trusted. Both had the highest respect for each other’s abilities. They knew that their new alliance was a truce and not a union. Each suspected the other, and each knew the other’s suspicions. At the same time, they needed each other’s skill and they wanted desperately to confide in each other, as far as they dared.
Sara had suggested that just before the primaries, a conference of Republicans and Liberals might be held in order to come to a final understanding and unite on Matthew’s nomination. Sammy had to assent. He had plans of his own for this conference, which he hoped to make a last desperate effort at Matthew’s undoing. He knew just what kind of conference would best serve his ends, but he did not dare let Sara know what he wanted.
On one point Sara had of course made up her mind: no agreement between Matthew, Graham, and Cadwalader was going to depend on the chances of a single conference or even of several conferences. She was going to conduct secret negotiations with all parties, until the final conference should find them in such substantial agreement that definitive action would be easy; that is, all except the left-wing labor unions. The surer she became of the main groups, the less did Sara think of these common laborers and foreigners. They could come in at last, when agreement or protest would make little real difference.
Sara hoped that she might come to this agreement by mere verbal fencing. She hoped so, but she knew better. Sooner or later there must be a definite understanding with Graham. Very well, when the crisis came she would meet it.
With her mind then on this closing conference as merely the ratification of agreements practically made, Sara at first settled on something big and impressive: a church or hall mass meeting of all parties and interests, making an overwhelming demand for the election of Matthew Towns as congressman. Sammy listened, his head on one side, his cigar at an impressive angle, his feet elevated, perhaps a bit higher than usual; his coat laid aside.
“Um-um!” he nodded. “Fine; fine big thing. If it could be put over. Smashing publicity.” Then he took a long pull at his cigar and looked intently at the glowing end.
“Of course,” he said reflectively, “there is one thing: would Matthew make the right kind of speech?” Sammy was really afraid he would; Sara not only did not know whether or not Matthew would make the right kind of speech; she did not even know if he would try. In fact, he might deliberately make the wrong kind of speech, even after agreement had already been reached. Sara’s doubt rested on the fact that she and Matthew had had a tilt this very morning, and she at least had had it out. She put the situation before him, frank and stark, with no bandying of words.
“Now see here. You have got this nomination in your hands and on a silver salver, if you want it. But in order to get it you’ve got to make the kind of statement that will satisfy the Republicans backed by big business, the Democrats backed by big business, and the Farmer-Labor party led by reformers and union labor. You’ve even got to cater to the radical wing of the trade unions. It will mean straddling and twisting and some careful lying. It will mean promises which it is up to you to fulfill after election, if you want to, and to break if you want to—after election. It will mean half promises and double words and silences to make people think what you are going to do, what you are not going to do, or what you do not know whether you are going to do or not. Unless you do something like this you will lose the nomination.
“Or, what’s just as bad, you will lose the Republican nomination. Perhaps you have kidded yourself into thinking that you can make a winning fight with the Farmer-Labor nomination and the independent Negro vote. Well, listen to me. You can’t. There isn’t such a thing as an independent Negro vote. Or at any rate it is so small as to be negligible. The Negroes are going to fight and yell before election. At the election they are going to trot to the polls and vote the Republican ticket like good darkies. If you want to go to Congress, you have got to get the Republican nomination.
“On the other hand, nothing will clinch this nomination, the election, and the wholehearted future support of the
