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Title: The Gold Brick

Author: Brand Whitlock

Release Date: March 9, 2022 [eBook #67596]

Language: English

Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD BRICK ***





THE GOLD BRICK




  THE GOLD BRICK

  _By_

  BRAND WHITLOCK

  _Author of_

  THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT
  HER INFINITE VARIETY     THE HAPPY AVERAGE
  THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

  INDIANAPOLIS
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS




  COPYRIGHT 1910

  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
  BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
  BROOKLYN, N. Y.




CONTENTS


                                                 PAGE

     I THE GOLD BRICK                               1

    II THE HAS-BEEN                                35

   III WHAT WILL BECOME OF ANNIE?                  65

    IV THE VINDICATION OF HENDERSON OF GREENE      89

     V SENATE BILL 578                            119

    VI MACOCHEE’S FIRST CAMPAIGN FUND             139

   VII A SECRET OF STATE                          165

  VIII THE COLONEL’S LAST CAMPAIGN                201

    IX REFORM IN THE FIRST                        232

     X MALACHI NOLAN                              262

    XI THE PARDON OF THOMAS WHALEN                302

   XII THAT BOY                                   333




The stories in this book were originally published in _The Saturday
Evening Post_, _The American Magazine_ and _Ainslee’s Magazine_, and to
these publications acknowledgments are due for their courtesy in giving
permission for republication.




THE GOLD BRICK




THE GOLD BRICK


Ten thousand dollars a year! Neil Kittrell left the office of the
_Morning Telegraph_ in a daze. He was insensible of the raw February
air, heedless of sloppy pavements; the gray day had suddenly turned
gold. He could not realize it all at once; ten thousand a year--for him
and Edith! His heart swelled with love of Edith; she had sacrificed so
much to become the wife of a man who had tried to make an artist of
himself, and of whom fate, or economic determinism, or something, had
made a cartoonist. What a surprise for her! He must hurry home.

In this swelling of his heart he felt a love not only of Edith but of
the whole world. The people he met seemed dear to him; he felt friendly
with every one, and beamed on perfect strangers with broad, cheerful
smiles. He stopped to buy some flowers for Edith--daffodils, or
tulips, which promised spring, and he took the daffodils, because the
girl said:

“I think yellow is such a spirituelle color, don’t you?” and inclined
her head in a most artistic manner.

But daffodils, after all, which would have been much the day before,
seemed insufficient in the light of new prosperity, and Kittrell bought
a large azalea, beautiful in its graceful spread of pink blooms.

“Where shall I send it?” asked the girl, whose cheeks were as pink as
azaleas themselves.

“I think I’ll call a cab and take it to her myself,” said Kittrell.

And she sighed over the romance of this rich young gentleman and the
girl of the azalea, who, no doubt, was as beautiful as the young woman
who was playing _Lottie, the Poor Saleslady_ at the Lyceum that very
week.

Kittrell and the azalea bowled along Claybourne Avenue; he leaned back
on the cushions, and adopted the expression of ennui appropriate to
that thoroughfare. Would Edith now prefer Claybourne Avenue? With ten
thousand a year they could, perhaps--and yet, at first it would be best
not to put on airs, but to go right on as they were, in the flat. Then
the thought came to him that now, as the cartoonist on the _Telegraph_,
his name would become as well known in Claybourne Avenue as it had been
in the homes of the poor and humble during his years on the _Post_. And
his thoughts flew to those homes where tired men at evening looked for
his cartoons and children laughed at his funny pictures. It gave him a
pang; he had felt a subtle bond between himself and all those thousands
who read the _Post_. It was hard to leave them. The _Post_ might be
yellow, but, as the girl had said, yellow was a spiritual color, and
the _Post_ brought something into their lives--lives that were scorned
by the _Telegraph_ and by these people on the avenue. Could he make new
friends here, where the cartoons he drew and the _Post_ that printed
them had been contemned, if not despised? His mind flew back to the
dingy office of the _Post_; to the boys there, the whole good-natured,
happy-go-lucky gang; and to Hardy--ah, Hardy!--who had been so good to
him, and given him his big chance, had taken such pains and interest,
helping him with ideas and suggestions, criticism and sympathy. To
tell Hardy that he was going to leave him, here on the eve of the
campaign--and Clayton, the mayor, he would have to tell him, too--oh,
the devil! Why must he think of these things now?

After all, when he had reached home, and had run up-stairs with the
news and the azalea, Edith did not seem delighted.

“But, dearie, business is business,” he argued, “and we need the money!”

“Yes, I know; doubtless you’re right. Only please don’t say ‘business
is business;’ it isn’t like you, and--”

“But think what it will mean--ten thousand a year!”

“Oh, Neil, I’ve lived on ten thousand a year before, and I never had
half the fun that I had when we were getting along on twelve hundred.”

“Yes, but then we were always dreaming of the day when I’d make a lot;
we lived on that hope, didn’t we?”

Edith laughed. “You used to say we lived on love.”

“You’re not serious.” He turned to gaze moodily out of the window. And
then she left the azalea, and perched on the flat arm of his chair.

“Dearest,” she said, “I am serious. I know all this means to you. We’re
human, and we don’t like to ‘chip at crusts like Hindus,’ even for the
sake of youth and art. I never had illusions about love in a cottage
and all that. Only, dear, I have been happy, so very happy, with you,
because--well, because I was living in an atmosphere of honest purpose,
honest ambition, and honest desire to do some good thing in the world.
I had never known such an atmosphere before. At home, you know, father
and Uncle James and the boys--well, it was all money, money, money with
them, and they couldn’t understand why I--”

“Could marry a poor newspaper artist! That’s just the point.”

She put her hand to his lips.

“Now, dear! If they couldn’t understand, so much the worse for them. If
they thought it meant sacrifice to me, they were mistaken. I have been
happy in this little flat; only--” she leaned back and inclined her
head with her eyes asquint--“only the paper in this room is atrocious;
it’s a typical landlord’s selection--McGaw picked it out. You see what
it means to be merely rich.”

She was so pretty thus that he kissed her, and then she went on:

“And so, dear, if I didn’t seem to be as impressed and delighted as you
hoped to find me, it is because I was thinking of Mr. Hardy and the
poor, dear, common little _Post_, and then--of Mr. Clayton. Did you
think of him?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to--to cartoon him?”

“I suppose so.”

The fact he had not allowed himself to face was close to both of them,
and the subject was dropped until, just as he was going down-town--this
time to break the news to Hardy--he went into the room he sarcastically
said he might begin to call his studio, now that he was getting ten
thousand a year, to look for a sketch he had promised Nolan for the
sporting page. And there on his drawing-board was an unfinished
cartoon, a drawing of the strong face of John Clayton. He had begun it
a few days before to use on the occasion of Clayton’s renomination.
It had been a labor of love, and Kittrell suddenly realized how good
it was. He had put into it all of his belief in Clayton, all of his
devotion to the cause for which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and
in the simple lines he experienced the artist’s ineffable felicity;
he had shown how good, how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at
once he realized the sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would
delight and hearten Clayton’s followers, how it would please Hardy,
and how it would touch Clayton. It would be a tribute to the man and
the friendship, but now a tribute broken, unfinished. Kittrell gazed a
moment longer, and in that moment Edith came.

“The dear, beautiful soul!” she exclaimed softly. “Neil, it is
wonderful. It is not a cartoon; it is a portrait. It shows what you
might do with a brush.”

Kittrell could not speak, and he turned the drawing-board to the wall.

When he had gone, Edith sat and thought--of Neil, of the new position,
of Clayton. He had loved Neil, and been so proud of his work; he had
shown a frank, naïve pleasure in the cartoons Neil had made of him.
That last time he was there, thought Edith, he had said that without
Neil the “good old cause,” as he called it, using Whitman’s phrase,
could never have triumphed in that town. And now, would he come again?
Would he ever stand in that room and, with his big, hearty laugh,
clasp an arm around Neil’s shoulder, or speak of her in his good,
friendly way as “the little woman?” Would he come now, in the terrible
days of the approaching campaign, for rest and sympathy--come as he
used to come in other campaigns, worn and weary from all the brutal
opposition, the vilification and abuse and mud-slinging? She closed her
eyes. She could not think that far.

Kittrell found the task of telling Hardy just as difficult as he
expected it to be, but by some mercy it did not last long. Explanation
had not been necessary; he had only to make the first hesitating
approaches, and Hardy understood. Hardy was, in a way, hurt; Kittrell
saw that, and rushed to his own defense:

“I hate to go, old man. I don’t like it a little bit--but, you know,
business is business, and we need the money.”

He even tried to laugh as he advanced this last conclusive reason, and
Hardy, for all he showed in voice or phrase, may have agreed with him.

“It’s all right, Kit,” he said. “I’m sorry; I wish we could pay you
more, but--well, good luck.”

That was all. Kittrell gathered up the few articles he had at the
office, gave Nolan his sketch, bade the boys good-by--bade them good-by
as if he were going on a long journey, never to see them more--and then
he went.

After he had made the break it did not seem so bad as he had
anticipated. At first things went on smoothly enough. The campaign
had not opened, and he was free to exercise his talents outside the
political field. He drew cartoons dealing with banal subjects, touching
with the gentle satire of his humorous pencil foibles which all the
world agreed about, and let vital questions alone. And he and Edith
enjoyed themselves: indulged oftener in things they loved; went more
frequently to the theater; appeared at recitals; dined now and then
down-town. They began to realize certain luxuries they had not known
for a long time--some he himself had never known, some that Edith had
not known since she left her father’s home to become his bride. In
more subtle ways, too, Kittrell felt the change: there was a sense
of larger leisure; the future beamed with a broader and brighter
light; he formed plans, among which the old dream of going ere long
to Paris for serious study took its dignified place. And then there
was the sensation his change had created in the newspaper world; that
the cartoons signed “Kit,” which formerly appeared in the _Post_,
should now adorn the broad page of the _Telegraph_ was a thing to talk
about at the press club; the fact of his large salary got abroad in
that little world as well, and, after the way of that world, managed
to exaggerate itself, as most facts did. He began to be sensible of
attentions from men of prominence--small things, mere nods in the
street, perhaps, or smiles in the theater foyer, but enough to show
that they recognized him. What those children of the people, those
working-men and women who used to be his unknown and admiring friends
in the old days on the _Post_, thought of him--whether they missed him,
whether they deplored his change as an apostasy or applauded it as a
promotion--he did not know. He did not like to think about it.

But March came, and the politicians began to bluster like the season.
Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the
first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing
editor of the _Telegraph_, had conceived it, and Kittrell had worked
on it that day in sickness of heart. Every lying line of this new
presentation of Clayton had cut him like some biting acid; but he had
worked on, trying to reassure himself with the argument that he was a
mere agent, devoid of personal responsibility. But it had been hard,
and when Edith, after her custom, had asked to see it, he had said:

“Oh, you don’t want to see it; it’s no good.”

“Is it of--him?” she had asked.

And when he nodded she had gone away without another word. Now, as he
hurried through the crowded streets, he was conscious that it was no
good, indeed; and he was divided between the artist’s regret and the
friend’s joy in the fact. But it made him tremble. Was his hand to
forget its cunning? And then, suddenly, he heard a familiar voice, and
there beside him, with his hand on his shoulder, stood the mayor.

“Why, Neil, my boy, how are you?” he said, and he took Kittrell’s
hand as warmly as ever. For a moment Kittrell was relieved, and then
his heart sank; for he had a quick realization that it was the coward
within him that felt the relief, and the man the sickness. If Clayton
had reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but
Clayton did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn
to the subject himself.

“You heard of my--new job?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Clayton, “I heard.”

“Well--” Kittrell began.

“I’m sorry,” Clayton said.

“So was I,” Kittrell hastened to say. “But I felt it--well, a duty,
some way--to Edith. You know--we--need the money.” And he gave the
cynical laugh that went with the argument.

“What does _she_ think? Does she feel that way about it?”

Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with
embarrassment, for Clayton’s blue eyes were on him, those eyes that
could look into men and understand them so.

“Of course you know,” Kittrell went on nervously, “there is nothing
personal in this. We newspaper fellows simply do what we are told;
we obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the
paper we have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a
red-hot free-trader and used to write free-trade editorials for the
_Times_--he went over to the _Telegraph_, you remember, and writes all
those protection arguments.”

The mayor did not seem to be interested in Dick Jennings, or in the
ethics of his profession.

“Of course, you know I’m for you, Mr. Clayton, just exactly as I’ve
always been. I’m going to vote for you.”

This did not seem to interest the mayor, either.

“And, maybe, you know--I thought, perhaps,” he snatched at this bright
new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time, “that I might
help you by my cartoons in the _Telegraph_; that is, I might keep them
from being as bad as they might--”

“But that wouldn’t be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil,”
the mayor said.

Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable
business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner.

“Well, good-by, my boy,” said the mayor, as they parted. “Remember me
to the little woman.”

Kittrell watched him as he went on down the avenue, swinging along in
his free way, the broad felt hat he wore riding above all the other
hats in the throng that filled the sidewalk; and Kittrell sighed in
deep depression.

When he turned in his cartoon, Benson scanned it a moment, cocked his
head this side and that, puffed his brier pipe, and finally said:

“I’m afraid this is hardly up to you. This figure of Clayton, here--it
hasn’t got the stuff in it. You want to show him as he _is_. We want
the people to know what a four-flushing, hypocritical, demagogical
blatherskite he is--with all his rot about the people and their damned
rights!”

Benson was all unconscious of the inconsistency of having concern for
a people he so despised, and Kittrell did not observe it, either. He
was on the point of defending Clayton, but he restrained himself and
listened to Benson’s suggestions. He remained at the office for two
hours, trying to change the cartoon to Benson’s satisfaction, with a
growing hatred of the work and a disgust with himself that now and
then almost drove him to mad destruction. He felt like splashing the
piece with India ink, or ripping it with his knife. But he worked on,
and submitted it again. He had failed, of course; failed to express in
it that hatred of a class which Benson unconsciously disguised as a
hatred of Clayton, a hatred which Kittrell could not express because he
did not feel it; and he failed because art deserts her devotees when
they are false to truth.

“Well, it’ll have to do,” said Benson, as he looked it over; “but let’s
have a little more to the next one. Damn it! I wish I could draw. I’d
cartoon the crook!”

In default of which ability, Benson set himself to write one of those
savage editorials in which he poured out on Clayton that venom of which
he seemed to have such an inexhaustible supply.

But on one point Benson was right: Kittrell was not up to himself. As
the campaign opened, as the city was swept with the excitement of it,
with meetings at noon-day and at night, office-seekers flying about
in automobiles, walls covered with pictures of candidates, hand-bills
scattered in the streets to swirl in the wild March winds, and men
quarreling over whether Clayton or Ellsworth should be mayor, Kittrell
had to draw a political cartoon each day; and as he struggled with his
work, less and less the old joy came to cheer and spur him on. To read
the ridicule, the abuse, which the _Telegraph_ heaped on Clayton, the
distortion of facts concerning his candidature, the unfair reports
of his meetings, sickened him, and more than all, he was filled with
disgust as he tried to match in caricature these libels of the man he
so loved and honored. It was bad enough to have to flatter Clayton’s
opponent, to picture him as a noble, disinterested character, ready to
sacrifice himself for the public weal. Into his pictures of this man,
attired in the long black coat of conventional respectability, with the
smug face of pharisaism, he could get nothing but cant and hypocrisy;
but in his caricatures of Clayton there was that which pained him
worse--disloyalty, untruth, and now and then, to the discerning few
who knew the tragedy of Kittrell’s soul, there was pity. And thus his
work declined in value; lacking all sincerity, all faith in itself or
its purpose, it became false, uncertain, full of jarring notes, and,
in short, never once rang true. As for Edith, she never discussed his
work now; she spoke of the campaign little, and yet he knew she was
deeply concerned, and she grew hot with resentment at the methods of
the _Telegraph_. Her only consolation was derived from the Post, which,
of course, supported Clayton; and the final drop of bitterness in
Kittrell’s cup came one evening when he realized that she was following
with sympathetic interest the cartoons in that paper.

For the _Post_ had a new cartoonist, Banks, a boy whom Hardy had
picked up somewhere and was training to the work Kittrell had laid
down. To Kittrell there was a cruel fascination in the progress Banks
was making; he watched it with a critical, professional eye, at first
with amusement, then with surprise, and now at last, in the discovery
of Edith’s interest, with a keen jealousy of which he was ashamed.
The boy was crude and untrained; his work was not to be compared with
Kittrell’s, master of line that he was, but Kittrell saw that it had
the thing his work now lacked, the vital, primal thing--sincerity,
belief, love. The spark was there, and Kittrell knew how Hardy would
nurse that spark and fan it, and keep it alive and burning until
it should eventually blaze up in a fine white flame. And Kittrell
realized, as the days went by, that Banks’ work was telling, and that
his own was failing. He had, from the first, missed the atmosphere of
the _Post_, missed the _camaraderie_ of the congenial spirits there,
animated by a common purpose, inspired and led by Hardy, whom they
all loved--loved as he himself once loved him, loved as he loved him
still--and dare not look him in the face when they met!

He found the atmosphere of the _Telegraph_ alien and distasteful.
There all was different; the men had little joy in their work, little
interest in it, save perhaps the newspaper man’s inborn love of a good
story or a beat. They were all cynical, without loyalty or faith; they
secretly made fun of the _Telegraph_, of its editors and owners; they
had no belief in its cause; and its pretensions to respectability,
its parade of virtue, excited only their derision. And slowly it
began to dawn on Kittrell that the great moral law worked always and
everywhere, even on newspapers, and that there was reflected inevitably
and logically in the work of the men on that staff the hatred, the lack
of principle, the bigotry and intolerance of its proprietors; and this
same lack of principle tainted and made meretricious his own work,
and enervated the editorials so that the _Telegraph_, no matter how
carefully edited or how dignified in typographical appearance, was,
nevertheless, without real influence in the community.

Meanwhile Clayton was gaining ground. It was less than two weeks
before election. The campaign waxed more and more bitter, and as the
forces opposed to him foresaw defeat, they became ugly in spirit, and
desperate. The _Telegraph_ took on a tone more menacing and brutal,
and Kittrell knew that the crisis had come. The might of the powers
massed against Clayton appalled Kittrell; they thundered at him through
many brazen mouths, but Clayton held on his high way unperturbed. He
was speaking by day and night to thousands. Such meetings he had never
had before. Kittrell had visions of him before those immense audiences
in halls, in tents, in the raw open air of that rude March weather,
making his appeals to the heart of the great mass. A fine, splendid,
romantic figure he was, striking to the imagination, this champion of
the people’s cause, and Kittrell longed for the lost chance. Oh, for
one day on the _Post_ now!

One morning at breakfast, as Edith read the _Telegraph_, Kittrell saw
the tears well slowly in her brown eyes.

“Oh,” she said, “it is shameful!” She clenched her little fists. “Oh,
if I were only a man I’d--” She could not in her impotent feminine rage
say what she would do; she could only grind her teeth. Kittrell bent
his head over his plate; his coffee choked him.

“Dearest,” she said presently, in another tone, “tell me, how is he? Do
you--ever see him? Will he win?”

“No, I never see him. But he’ll win; I wouldn’t worry.”

“He used to come here,” she went on, “to rest a moment, to escape from
all this hateful confusion and strife. He is killing himself! And
they aren’t worth it--those ignorant people--they aren’t worth such
sacrifices.”

He got up from the table and turned away, and then, realizing quickly,
she flew to his side and put her arms about his neck and said:

“Forgive me, dearest, I didn’t mean--only--”

“Oh, Edith,” he said, “this is killing me. I feel like a dog.”

“Don’t dear; he is big enough, and good enough; he will understand.”

“Yes; that only makes it harder, only makes it hurt the more.”

That afternoon, in the car, he heard no talk but of the election; and
down-town, in a cigar store where he stopped for cigarettes, he heard
some men talking mysteriously, in the hollow voice of rumor, of some
sensation, some scandal. It alarmed him, and as he went into the office
he met Manning, the _Telegraph’s_ political man.

“Tell me, Manning,” Kittrell said, “how does it look?”

“Damn bad for us.”

“For us?”

“Well, for our mob of burglars and second story workers here--the gang
we represent.” He took a cigarette from the box Kittrell was opening.

“And will he win?”

“Will he win?” said Manning, exhaling the words on the thin level
stream of smoke that came from his lungs. “Will he win? In a walk, I
tell you. He’s got ’em beat to a standstill right now. That’s the dope.”

“But what about this story of--”

“Aw, that’s all a pipe-dream of Burns’. I’m running it in the morning,
but it’s nothing; it’s a shine. They’re big fools to print it at all.
But it’s their last card; they’re desperate. They won’t stop at
anything, or at any crime, except those requiring courage. Burns is in
there with Benson now; so is Salton, and old man Glenn, and the rest of
the bunco family. They’re framing it up. When I saw old Glenn go in,
with his white side whiskers, I knew the widow and the orphan were in
danger again, and that he was going bravely to the front for ’em. Say,
that young Banks is comin’, isn’t he? That’s a peach, that cartoon of
his to-night.”

Kittrell went on down the hall to the art-room to wait until Benson
should be free. But it was not long until he was sent for, and as
he entered the managing editor’s room he was instantly sensible of
the somber atmosphere of a grave and solemn council of war. Benson
introduced him to Glenn, the banker, to Salton, the party boss, and to
Burns, the president of the street-car company; and as Kittrell sat
down he looked about him, and could scarcely repress a smile as he
recalled Manning’s estimate of Glenn. The old man sat there, as solemn
and unctuous as ever he had in his pew at church. Benson, red of face,
was more plainly perturbed, but Salton was as reserved, as immobile,
as inscrutable as ever, his narrow, pointed face, with its vulpine
expression, being perhaps paler than usual. Benson had on his desk
before him the cartoon Kittrell had finished that day.

“Mr. Kittrell,” Benson began, “we’ve been talking over the political
situation, and I was showing these gentlemen this cartoon. It isn’t, I
fear, in your best style; it lacks the force, the argument, we’d like
just at this time. That isn’t the _Telegraph_ Clayton, Mr. Kittrell.”
He pointed with the amber stem of his pipe. “Not at all. Clayton is
a strong, smart, unscrupulous, dangerous man! We’ve reached a crisis
in this campaign; if we can’t turn things in the next three days,
we’re lost, that’s all; we might as well face it. To-morrow we make an
important revelation concerning the character of Clayton, and we want
to follow it up the morning after by a cartoon that will be a stunner,
a clencher. We have discussed it here among ourselves, and this is our
idea.”

Benson drew a crude, bald outline, indicating the cartoon they wished
Kittrell to draw. The idea was so coarse, so brutal, so revolting,
that Kittrell stood aghast, and, as he stood, he was aware of Salton’s
little eyes fixed on him. Benson waited; they all waited.

“Well,” said Benson, “what do you think of it?”

Kittrell paused an instant, and then said:

“I won’t draw it; that’s what I think of it.”

Benson flushed angrily and looked up at him.

“We are paying you a very large salary, Mr. Kittrell, and your work, if
you will pardon me, has not been up to what we were led to expect.”

“You are quite right, Mr. Benson, but I can’t draw that cartoon.”

“Well, great God!” yelled Burns, “what have we got here--a gold brick?”
He rose with a vivid sneer on his red face, plunged his hands in
his pockets, and took two or three nervous strides across the room.
Kittrell looked at him, and slowly his eyes blazed out of a face that
had gone white on the instant.

“What did you say, sir?” he demanded.

Burns thrust his red face, with its prognathic jaw, menacingly toward
Kittrell.

“I said that in you we’d got a gold brick.”

“You?” said Kittrell. “What have you to do with it? I don’t work for
you.”

“You don’t? Well, I guess it’s us that puts up--”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” said Glenn, waving a white, pacificatory hand.

“Yes, let me deal with this, if you please,” said Benson, looking hard
at Burns. The street-car man sneered again, then, in ostentatious
contempt, looked out the window. And in the stillness Benson continued:

“Mr. Kittrell, think a minute. Is your decision final?”

“It is final, Mr. Benson,” said Kittrell. “And as for you, Burns,” he
glared angrily at the man, “I wouldn’t draw that cartoon for all the
dirty money that all the bribing street-car companies in the world
could put into Mr. Glenn’s bank here. Good evening, gentlemen.”

It was not until he stood again in his own home that Kittrell felt
the physical effects which the spiritual squalor of such a scene was
certain to produce in a nature like his.

“Neil! What is the matter?” Edith fluttered toward him in alarm.

He sank into a chair, and for a moment he looked as if he would faint,
but he looked wanly up at her and said:

“Nothing; I’m all right; just a little weak. I’ve gone through a
sickening, horrible scene--”

“Dearest!”

“And I’m off the _Telegraph_--and a man once more!”

He bent over, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and
when Edith put her calm, caressing hand on his brow, she found that it
was moist from nervousness. Presently he was able to tell her the whole
story.

“It was, after all, Edith, a fitting conclusion to my experience on
the _Telegraph_. I suppose, though, that to people who are used to ten
thousand a year such scenes are nothing at all.” She saw in this trace
of his old humor that he was himself again, and she hugged his head to
her bosom.

“Oh, dearest,” she said, “I’m proud of you--and happy again.”

They were, indeed, both happy, happier than they had been in weeks.

The next morning after breakfast, she saw by his manner, by the
humorous, almost comical expression about his eyes, that he had an
idea. In this mood of satisfaction--this mood that comes too seldom
in the artist’s life--she knew it was wise to let him alone. And he
lighted his pipe and went to work. She heard him now and then, singing
or whistling or humming; she scented his pipe, then cigarettes; then,
at last, after two hours, he called in a loud, triumphant tone:

“Oh, Edith!”

She was at the door in an instant, and, waving his hand grandly at his
drawing-board, he turned to her with that expression which connotes
the greatest joy gods or mortals can know--the joy of beholding one’s
own work and finding it good. He had, as she saw, returned to the
cartoon of Clayton he had laid aside when the tempter came; and now it
was finished. Its simple lines revealed Clayton’s character, as the
sufficient answer to all the charges the _Telegraph_ might make against
him. Edith leaned against the door and looked long and critically.

“It was fine before,” she said presently; “it’s better now. Before it
was a portrait of the man; this shows his soul.”

“Well, it’s how he looks to me,” said Neil, “after a month in which to
appreciate him.”

“But what,” she said, stooping and peering at the edge of the drawing,
where, despite much knife-scraping, vague figures appeared, “what’s
that?”

“Oh, I’m ashamed to tell you,” he said. “I’ll have to paste over that
before it’s electrotyped. You see, I had a notion of putting in the
gang, and I drew four little figures--Benson, Burns, Salton and Glenn;
they were plotting--oh, it was foolish and unworthy. I decided I didn’t
want anything of hatred in it--just as he wouldn’t want anything of
hatred in it; so I rubbed them out.”

“Well, I’m glad. It is beautiful; it makes up for everything; it’s an
appreciation--worthy of the man.”

When Kittrell entered the office of the _Post_, the boys greeted
him with delight, and his presence made a sensation, for there had
been rumors of the break which the absence of a “Kit” cartoon in the
_Telegraph_ that morning had confirmed. But, if Hardy was surprised,
his surprise was swallowed up in his joy, and Kittrell was grateful to
him for the delicacy with which he touched the subject that consumed
the newspaper and political world with curiosity.

“I’m glad, Kit,” was all that he said. “You know that.”

Then he forgot everything in the cartoon, and he showed his instant
recognition of its significance by snatching out his watch, pushing
a button, and saying to Garland, who came to the door in his
shirt-sleeves:

“Tell Nic to hold the first edition for a five-column first-page
cartoon. And send this up right away.”

They had a last look at it before it went, and after gazing a moment in
silence Hardy said:

“It’s the greatest thing you ever did, Kit, and it comes at the
psychological moment. It’ll elect him.”

“Oh, he was elected anyhow.”

Hardy shook his head, and in the movement Kittrell saw how the strain
of the campaign had told on him. “No, he wasn’t; the way they’ve been
hammering him is something fierce; and the _Telegraph_--well, your
cartoons and all, you know.”

“But my cartoons in the _Telegraph_ were rotten. Any work that is not
sincere, not intellectually honest--”

Hardy interrupted him:

“Yes; but, Kit, you’re so good that your rotten is better than ’most
anybody’s best.” He smiled, and Kittrell blushed and looked away.

Hardy was right. The “Kit” cartoon, back in the _Post_, created its
sensation, and after it appeared the political reporters said it had
started a landslide to Clayton; that the betting was 4 to 1 and no
takers, and that it was all over but the shouting.

That night, as they were at dinner, the telephone rang, and in a minute
Neil knew by Edith’s excited and delighted reiteration of “yes,” “yes,”
who had called up. And then he heard her say:

“Indeed I will; I’ll come every night and sit in the front seat.”

When Kittrell displaced Edith at the telephone, he heard the voice of
John Clayton, lower in register and somewhat husky after four weeks’
speaking, but more musical than ever in Kittrell’s ears when it said:

“I just told the little woman, Neil, that I didn’t know how to say it,
so I wanted her to thank you for me. It was beautiful in you, and I
wish I were worthy of it; it was simply your own good soul expressing
itself.”

And it was the last delight to Kittrell to hear that voice and to know
that all was well.

But one question remained unsettled. Kittrell had been on the
_Telegraph_ a month, and his contract differed from that ordinarily
made by the members of a newspaper staff in that he was paid by the
year, though in monthly instalments. Kittrell knew that he had broken
his contract on grounds which the sordid law would not see or recognize
and the average court think absurd, and that the _Telegraph_ might
legally refuse to pay him at all. He hoped the _Telegraph_ would do
this! But it did not; on the contrary, he received the next day a check
for his month’s work. He held it up for Edith’s inspection.

“Of course, I’ll have to send it back,” he said.

“Certainly.”

“Do you think me quixotic?”

“Well, we’re poor enough as it is--let’s have some luxuries; let’s be
quixotic until after election, at least.”

“Sure,” said Neil; “just what I was thinking. I’m going to do a cartoon
every day for the _Post_ until election day, and I’m not going to take
a cent. I don’t want to crowd Banks out, you know, and I want to do my
part for Clayton and the cause, and do it, just once, for the pure love
of the thing.”

Those last days of the campaign were, indeed, luxuries to Kittrell and
to Edith, days of work and fun and excitement. All day Kittrell worked
on his cartoons, and in the evening they went to Clayton’s meetings.
The experience was a revelation to them both--the crowds, the waiting
for the singing of the automobile’s siren, the wild cheers that greeted
Clayton, and then his speech, his appeals to the best there was in
men. He had never made such speeches, and long afterward Edith could
hear those cheers and see the faces of those working-men aglow with
the hope, the passion, the fervent religion of democracy. And those
days came to their glad climax that night when they met at the office
of the _Post_ to receive the returns, in an atmosphere quivering with
excitement, with messenger boys and reporters coming and going, and
in the street outside an immense crowd, swaying and rocking between
the walls on either side, with screams and shouts and mad huzzas, and
the wild blowing of horns--all the hideous, happy noise an American
election-night crowd can make.

Late in the evening Clayton had made his way, somehow unnoticed,
through the crowd, and entered the office. He was happy in the great
triumph he would not accept as personal, claiming it always for the
cause; but as he dropped into the chair Hardy pushed toward him, they
all saw how weary he was.

Just at that moment the roar in the street below swelled to a mighty
crescendo, and Hardy cried:

“Look!”

They ran to the window. The boys up-stairs who were manipulating the
stereopticon, had thrown on the screen an enormous picture of Clayton,
the portrait Kittrell had drawn for his cartoon.

“Will you say now there isn’t the personal note in it?” Edith asked.

Clayton glanced out the window, across the dark, surging street, at the
picture.

“Oh, it’s not me they’re cheering for,” he said; “it’s for Kit, here.”

“Well, perhaps some of it’s for him,” Edith admitted loyally.

They were silent, seized irresistibly by the emotion that mastered the
mighty crowd in the dark streets below. Edith was strangely moved.
Presently she could speak:

“Is there anything sweeter in life than to know that you have done a
good thing--and done it well?”

“Yes,” said Clayton, “just one: to have a few friends who understand.”

“You are right,” said Edith. “It is so with art, and it must be so with
life; it makes an art of life.”

It was dark enough there by the window for her to slip her hand into
that of Neil, who had been musing silently on the crowd.

“I can never say again,” she said softly, “that those people are not
worth sacrifice. They are worth all; they are everything; they are
the hope of the world; and their longings and their needs, and the
possibility of bringing them to pass, are all that give significance to
life.”

“That’s what America is for,” said Clayton, “and it’s worth while to
be allowed to help even in a little way to make, as old Walt says, ‘a
nation of friends, of equals.’”




THE HAS-BEEN


As Holman loitered along the pavement that June morning, glad once
more to be back in Springfield after so many years, he recalled with
a sigh another morning, far gone, when first he had come up to the
capital of his state. “A morning just like this,” he was thinking,
“all green and sunny and hopeful and--pure. My God!” But he put aside
regret; it was enough just then to be back after so many years of
absence--years of dingy poverty which had kept him down in stupid
Jasper, never once able to get back during the session, if only for a
day to see the boys!--even as a man of fifty, with gray hair straggling
beneath his broad, slouch hat, with his long, dusty coat, and worn,
old shoes, that fell softly on the hot sidewalk, far other than the
young representative who had come up to the capital so long before. In
Capitol Avenue he had the state house in full view, the gray, swelling
dome still patiently brooding over the stupidities and trivialities
which the bickering human beings, running about like insects below,
were proudly and solemnly achieving. The little flags were at their
staffs on either wing. Once, at the sight he might have hurried,
knowing his presence to be required beneath that flag on the house
wing. No need now to hasten any more; he was not needed there, nor
anywhere in the world.

The sidewalk was filled with men striding like the statesmen they felt
themselves to be, and none among them now to remember him; but he
walked with them under the railroad’s ugly trestle, past the old white
house on the little hill, still with its lightning-rod to keep alive
one of the best of Lincoln stories, and up the broad walk to the state
house. Inside, the cool shades of the big pile were grateful as they
used to be. Through the open doors of offices he could see clerks at
work, or at least at desks, somehow coming off victorious, it seemed,
in their desperate business of holding on to their slippery, eel-like,
political jobs; then the crowded elevator--and the inevitable old
soldier to operate it. All as it used to be; and he, like some risen
ghost long since laid in its political grave, stalking among earthly
presences that had forgotten him.

The doorkeepers at the house regarded him with the official misanthropy
and distrust, but Holman quelled their glance, pronounced the word
“Ex-member,” and so passed in to the one barren prerogative left him
out of the years of former power and prestige.

The house, on the order of senate bills on first reading, was
inattentive; members lolled in their seats, read newspapers, talked,
gossiped, wrote letters, now and then threw paper wads at one
another--incipiencies of that horseplay which would mark the session’s
close. The clerk mumbled the said senate bills on first reading, the
speaker turned in his chair to talk with some one on the divan behind
him, swinging about now and then to say, “First reading of the bill!”
and to tap the sounding-board with his gavel. And, of them all, not one
he knew, not one to recognize him! But, yes, there was one, after all;
just one. Down the center aisle, reclining in his chair nonchalantly,
was a young fellow, almost a boy to Holman’s disadvantage point of
years, whose head, turned at that instant, showed a profile which,
when age and authority should visit it, would cause one to remark it;
a fair brow, strong nose and good-humored lips parting now in a smile
at some remark a member across the aisle had made. As Holman looked at
young McCray his mind went back to another morning in another June,
when the air came in through the tall, open windows with the breath
of young summer in Illinois, the very odor of the prairie flowers
themselves, the morning that Baldwin had come to him. And now McCray
sat there, representing his old district, with all the opportunities,
dreams, ambitions, illusions he himself had had--and lost.

But Holman was not much given to introspection--his eye was not long
turned inward; and now, turned outward, it lighted on a white head far
down toward the front of the house.

“Why, if there isn’t, after all, one o’ the old-timers! Say, young
fellow,” he said, speaking to an assistant sergeant-at-arms who had
been standing near and, unable to identify Holman as a representative
of any railroad or other interest entitled to respect on that floor,
had been eying him with some suspicion. “Say,” said Holman, pointing
with a long forefinger, “ain’t that old Ike Bemis down there--Bemis, of
Tazewell? Yes? Well, now, just call a page boy, won’t you? And have him
tell Bemis an old friend wants to see him.”

Bemis was, in his way, a phenomenon unparalleled in politics; he had
been in the house before Holman and had held on, minority member
from his district, the Republican and Democratic machines working
harmoniously together, for a quarter of a century. And as he came up
the aisle in response to Holman’s message he seemed to Holman to have
changed little; only his hair from iron gray had grown white, and his
face was not so clear or ruddy or healthy as he had known it. He was
dressed as he used to be in the gray clothes that made him look so like
a prosperous farmer, and the hand he held out to Holman was, by some
mystery, rough and horny, as if it had worked indeed.

“Why, bless the Lord!” he cried, “if it ain’t Jim Holman!”

He shook Holman’s hand with genuine pleasure and, putting his arm
across Holman’s shoulders, led him away to a divan under the gallery.

They sat down there and for half an hour chatted and gossiped, recalled
old friends and associates of legislatures that were gone, discussed
them, accounted for them, pursued their subsequent histories in
politics or out of politics, their triumphs, their failures and their
fates--in short, they reconstructed their own little world and caught
up with the times.

“’Tain’t what it used to be, Jim,” said Bemis with an old man’s
deploration of change. “You did right to get out of it. I don’t want
any more of it. When this session closes I’m through; I won’t run
again.”

Holman was not greatly impressed; politicians, he knew, were always
making their last campaign, as sailors were always making their last
voyage.

“_Sine die_ adjournment next week, and then good-by to politics for
me,” Bemis went on. “I’ll be glad to be shut of it all. Nothing in it,
nothing in it.” He wagged his sage head sadly.

“Anything--ah--doing this session?” asked Holman, glancing sidewise at
his old colleague.

“No, nothing except this Chicago street-car bill. We passed it, you
know, and the governor vetoed it. The reformers raised an awful howl.
Comes up--let’s see--to-night, I reckon. Going to try to pass it over
the governor’s veto.”

“Will they make it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Looks dubious. The senate’s all right, of course;
it’s all fixed there, but the house ain’t certain. A two-thirds vote’s
hard to get these days. Baldwin’s been working day and night--but I
don’t know; you can’t tell yet.”

Then the house broke into new confusion. Holman knew the signs well; a
roll-call was on. Bemis pricked his ears and hurried back to his seat.

Holman was glad just then to have him go, for almost at the mention
of the name of Baldwin he had happened to glance toward the speaker’s
chair; the speaker had risen, his gavel poised, and in that instant
Holman saw the man on the speaker’s lounge, lolling back to await the
passing of the interruption, and recognized Baldwin, George R. Baldwin,
carefully dressed as of old, suave, elegant, dignified, all unchanged
save that his hair had grown a bit more gray, though only, it seemed,
to lend to his aspect new dignity, new authority, almost refinement.
Baldwin, the same as ever! It had not changed him, evidently; he was
still correct, irreproachable, respected, received everywhere--while
he, Holman, had come to this. Sarah, back there at home, amid the
dingy poverty and drudgery of her life; and Baldwin’s wife, doubtless,
welcome in all society and reigning there! Holman, sick of the scene,
got up, plunged his hands into his pockets and started out. Near the
door he turned to have another glance. Baldwin had slid to the end of
the lounge and was talking to some young fellow--to McCray.

Holman went to the cigar stand, lighted a cigar, sauntered out into the
rotunda and leaned against the brass rail. He blew out streams of smoke
and through squinting little eyes watched them float away; he smoked
and squinted and thought, and what he saw was Baldwin, the lobbyist,
and young McCray.

Two men passed on their way over to the senate chamber, and he heard
one of them pronounce his name.

“----leaning on the rail there, smoking.

“Oh--I forgot; his face was familiar, too. The old Has-been has come
back for a day!”

It was Baldwin who spoke; his companion was young McCray.

“Ah, yes! An old Has-been,” thought Holman. Baldwin said that, and
McCray! They said that even down in Jasper. But Baldwin, he was no
Has-been; it had not affected him at all.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Holman entered the house that afternoon he was sensible
of a change in the atmosphere. The new element was one he
recognized--skilled as of old in legislative aëroscepsy--one that
strangely excited him, both by what it recalled and by what it
portended; there were tension, alertness, irritability and suspense,
the knowledge of an evil, sinister Presence, known, silent, unrevealed,
but apprehended--a Presence expected, even desired, yet dreaded; in
short, the psychic condition that exists in a legislative chamber when
something is about to come off. Holman, standing well back by the
cloak-room, examining the house with expert eye, knew that the thing
was imminent, though not immediate. There were certain signs wanting.
The speaker sat calm, but he was twirling his gavel nervously; the
leaders were restless and furtive, but they had not as yet got every
man in his seat. McCray, for instance, was absent.

Holman sauntered carelessly around to the side on which Bemis sat,
caught the old man’s eye and beckoned.

“I thought they’d get that bill up,” said Holman, “and I’d see a little
fun; but there seems to be no chance of that. Reckon I’ll go.”

“There’s been a hitch,” said Bemis in a low tone.

“Has, heh?”

“Yes,” said Bemis; “the boys thought they had it fixed, but Wimbleton
switched; told O’Leary so at noon. Either the governor got around him
or he got scared.”

“Need only one vote?” surmised Holman. Then Bemis, as if a thought had
struck him, drew close and put his lips to Holman’s ear:

“You know that young McCray from your district?”

“Sure.”

“Well, now, Jim, if you could fix him--you might get in on this thing.
He won’t do business with any of us. I don’t know exactly, but I should
think there’d be for you and him at least--” He put his lips quite into
Holman’s ear, and Holman bent lower; and Bemis whispered again. Holman
did not move a muscle. Bemis withdrew a little and looked at him.

“I don’t know McCray very well,” said Holman presently. “He’s a
youngster, and I’ve been out of politics a long time. But I might have
a little talk with him. I can’t promise, though--an old Has-been like
me, you know.” He laughed a small bitter laugh.

“Oh, you!” said Bemis striking him softly on the shoulder. “You a
Has-been! Why, Jim, you’re the slickest man in southern Illinois--when
you want to be!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Holman found McCray in the Leland bar-room. The young man was plainly
in some mental stress, his hair matted to his brow, his face moist with
perspiration, and drawn, and in his eyes an utter weariness.

“Just the man I was looking for,” said Holman. “I came to see you about
a little matter down in Jasper; some interests I represent--constits of
yours--and I’ve got to hurry back. So, just give me a minute; I’ll not
keep you long.”

McCray looked at his watch. “I”--he hesitated--“I must get over to the
house; I’m late, anyway. I was detained--”

“Yes, I know,” said Holman, “but I’ve got to see you. It’s something
you’re interested in, anyway. If you’ll just walk along a little way
with me.”

Once outside, Holman kept on out Sixth Street, and McCray, wondering
somewhat, did not demur.

“McCray, you don’t know me well,” Holman began; “I’m an old-timer--a
Has-been, as I overheard a man say this morning. You’re a young man;
you come from my district--or, perhaps, I’d better say I come from
yours. I came here one session, just as you have done, from old Jasper,
and I served, in all, four sessions. During that time I saw a lot of
life and of men; I learned a lot, too, and then I gave it up--and quit.
This morning I came back for a little holiday, and I strolled over to
the house to see how the old place looked once more, just as all the
Has-beens do; they always manage to get back, some way or another,
every session; it’s a habit, a fever, a disease--get it once, a fellow
never gets over it. Well, this morning, as I stood there looking around
I saw you; and that and one thing and another reminded me of something.
I saw you sitting there--young, ambitious, bright, with the world
before you,--and, well, my boy, I took a kind of liking for you all of
a sudden; but that’s neither here nor there. What I was reminded of,
curiously enough, was another young fellow I used to know years ago--a
fellow that didn’t look so much like you, perhaps, and yet who was like
you in many ways.

“It must have been, let’s see, back in the--well, no matter, I don’t
exactly recall just now, and it isn’t material. But this young fellow
came up from down our way to take his seat for the first time in the
legislature. He was a young lawyer, smart, good-looking, a fellow every
one liked. He had the gift of the gab; he could make a rattling speech,
was strong on the stump and good before a jury. Everybody wanted to see
him succeed. He was ambitious--ambitious as Lincoln, ambitious as the
devil. His ambitions were not selfish--that is, not so damned selfish.
He was no reformer, nothing like that; but he really wanted to help his
people, wanted to do something to make life a little easier, a little
better for the average fellow--like those he knew back home. He didn’t
have, perhaps, any very clear idea how he was going to do this, but he
wanted to do it somehow, and, vaguely enough, I reckon, he felt that
the chance would turn up. Back home, too, there was a girl--you got a
girl, McCray?”

The young man, startled by the abrupt question, turned up to Holman,
who shambled along a head taller than he, a face that went red; a smile
came to it, then, suddenly, it went gray and he turned away.

“Beg your pardon,” said Holman, “that’s none of my business, of course.
But this fellow of mine, he had a girl back there. I knew about it; we
were young members, first term, and he used to tell me things. And he
wanted to marry this girl and make her happy. He thought, you see, that
by being something, doing something in the world, he could do _that_.”

They were by this time far out Sixth Street, at the edge of town; a
little farther on lay the open country. They came to a pasture with a
broken fence and a tree.

“Let’s sit down here,” Holman said, “and rest, and I’ll get on with my
story.”

They sat side by side on the bank at the roots of the elm, and Holman,
having finished his cigar and being a man who seemed to require tobacco
in some form every moment of the day, drew out a long plug and a knife
and cut a piece and put it comfortably into his mouth.

“Chew?” he said, proffering tobacco and knife. McCray shook his head,
but lighted a cigarette. And the old and the new generation sat there
side by side on the bank.

“Interested?” asked Holman.

“Yes; go on.”

“Well, this young fellow I’m telling you of--the legislature was just a
stepping-stone to him; that’s what he thought and that’s what everybody
thought; beyond that were congress, governor, senator, everything. He
went right ahead, was popular and influential, got good committees,
and when he got up to speak the house grew quiet--you’ve seen it that
way yourself--and he worked and studied, and back home there was the
girl--and they wanted to get married. But he was poor--mighty poor.”

Holman leaned over, stretched out his long, thin arm--McCray noted
the frayed cuffbands--and plucked a spear of young grass, pulled the
thin, transparent, whitish-green blade out of its delicate sheath
and, squinting his eyes, examined it minutely, as if it were the most
engrossing object of study in the world.

“A legislature, McCray,” he went on, “is the damnedest thing in the
world, the rottenest, most demoralizing, hell-fire sort of institution
there is. All politics is that way, no matter where you find it.
Sometimes I think you can’t get within forty rows o’ apple trees of it
without being polluted. A man, to go to a legislature and stay there
any time and come out whole and safe and sound, has to be made of pure
gold. Now, this young friend of mine, he was, as I’ve said, all right
at heart, and pretty strong, too, most ways; good family, good blood
and all that; and back home there, in safe surroundings, he’d ’ave
got along all right till the end. But in the legislature a fellow’s
away from home, away from all his customary moorings, and most of the
members get it into their heads that at the capital all the rules are
suspended, and I reckon they are--that’s about what government, as we
administer it, amounts to.

“No one from home ever shows up there. The only ones that come around
come to get something for themselves, and it’s always something they
have no right to and oughtn’t to have. They come with all kinds
of plausible reasons and lies and temptations--damned sneaking,
hypocritical, white-washed sepulchers! Eminent and respectable
citizens, best people and all that! And unless a fellow has his eyes
wide open all the time, has his principles clear and fixed and knows
enough to apply ’em every minute, knows what a bunco game it all is,
and is of pure gold besides--as I said--why, he gets all tangled up
and lost--yes, lost. It pretty much all comes from the cities. We poor
jays from the country districts don’t know anything about the cities;
we take what they tell us, or did in my time. We think if we just pass
a few laws to make our fellow-citizens in the cities good, regulate
their beer for ’em and all that, that nothing else is required of us;
so these fellows come down from the city and get us to do their dirty
work for them. In those days there was a fellow here, a lobbyist, a
good-looking man, about the size and favor of--well, Baldwin back
there--saw him talking to you this morning--same kind of a man exactly,
smooth, genial, polished, well-dressed, polite, good fellow, and all
that.

“Now, Baldwin--I mean the fellow--well, damn it!” Holman suddenly
exploded in his exasperation, “it _was_ Baldwin! He had a bill he was
trying to pass, a crooked bill, of course, one of those bills like
this street-car bill I heard of to-day, to take something that by
rights belonged to the people of the city, a street, or the ground
under a street, or the air over a street, or the room in the middle of
a street, and give it to half a dozen eminently respectable and pious
citizens to use for themselves and exploit and get rich on. Baldwin
was trying to pass that bill, and the session was nearly done, and he
needed just one vote. And he looked around and he settled on this young
friend of mine; he knew his hopes, his wants, his necessities--knew all
about him, for that’s Baldwin’s business and his way. I needn’t go into
the details; he worked with him a whole day and nearly a whole night;
explained that it was really a good thing for the city, that this young
fellow’s constits were not interested in the city, anyway, didn’t know
anything about it, nor care anything about it. ‘It can’t hurt you,’
Baldwin would say. ‘Your people won’t know or care; of course, if
it was something they were interested in it might be different’--and
all that. And then, finally, ’way in the night, when the young fellow
was worn down in will, and tired and weak and dazed anyway, Baldwin
began to count the money down on the table, among the stinking whisky
glasses and cigar butts, thousand-dollar bills, green as that grass
there, one--two--three--like that.” McCray, with a kind of fascination,
watched Holman as with slow gesture of his long hands he turned over,
as it were, and laid down one after another those thousand-dollar
bills. “And the young man fell,” said Holman at last. And then he was
silent, his gaze fixed afar on some light across the fields.

“Well,” Holman resumed, “Baldwin was right in one way, at any rate; the
people, the young fellow’s people down home, didn’t care. They never do
care; they don’t take the trouble. They never knew, anyway, and they
elected him again and re-elected him. And he got married and things
seemed to go along all right with him; you would have said he was to
be envied. But, while nothing seemed to change outside, something did
change inside the young man; and the worst of it was, it was a change
that he didn’t know or realize. It was like some disease, working away,
working away there inside of him, without any pain or any symptoms
even; he had no idea of it. But there it was, working away, working
away. He found, at first, that it was easy enough to get money, and
he got it and he spent it and it never did him any good, never a bit,
neither him nor his family. Easy money, they call it; but there’s
no such thing. All money, even easy money, is hard; you got to pay
somehow, you got to pay!

“He changed by slow degrees; first he got careless and slovenly in his
thoughts, and, after a while, didn’t think much anyway, and couldn’t;
he just talked and talked and talked and made loud speeches--became a
windbag, a blatherskite, a bore and a nuisance in the land, to himself
and everybody. There’s a lot of them in this land; all they need to
make a speech is room enough to work their jaws in. His old wishes and
longings to be of some use in the world died out of him; he had no
aims, no mark to head for, no place to go. He became ineffectual; after
while all there was to him was that one vote of his in the house, and
by and by that wasn’t worth much; it kept declining in value, he got
cheaper and cheaper, and finally--just naturally petered out.

“Then, when he was slouchy in morals and mind and character, he got
slouchy in person; his habits weren’t bad, perhaps; he was no drunkard
or anything like that, but just--oh, sloppy, every way. And his wife,
his little wife--she was a fine, pretty girl, McCray, when he married
her--she, of course, had to pay, too, along with him; he dragged her
down. She was patient and kind and always hopeful, but they were poor,
and under the stress of their necessities he would get peevish and
cross, and sometimes when, say, a Saturday night would come and there
wasn’t anything in the house to eat--well, he’d look at the children
and get mad--mad at himself, primarily, though he didn’t say so or
admit it even to himself--and he’d take it out in nasty, mean ways with
her and the children. Finally, she gave up; she didn’t know why, she
never knew what had happened, or, if she did, she never even hinted
it--and the whole family was just going down to hell and the devil.
There wasn’t any outward tragedy to make it striking or dramatic or
even interesting.

“And then, after everybody half knew or half guessed, and had ceased
to respect him, he came back here to Springfield once, as we all do,
and happened to see Baldwin, and found him the same, scarcely a day
older, though he himself was gray and withered. It hadn’t hurt Baldwin;
he was well-dressed, respectable, popular, received everywhere--clubs,
society, church and all, just as the men were whose dirty money Baldwin
handled. And Baldwin’s wife, she wasn’t old and sad and hopeless; she
was going out in society, president of a big woman’s club, talked
about safe little reforms, charities and philanthropies. And Baldwin’s
daughters were over in Europe getting the last finish on their
education.”

Holman had a feeling that McCray was no longer listening and, glancing
aside, saw that McCray’s face was buried in his hands. And with pity in
his long, gray face he looked at him a little while, then laid a hand
on McCray’s shoulder.

“Do you know,” he said, “why I told you this story? You see, I didn’t
want to make you feel bad; I only wanted to show you. Because there’s a
lot in you--a big, beautiful future.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” cried McCray. “All but that last--all but that
last.”

“Why not that?”

“Because it’s too late. Oh, Holman, it’s too late--too late! If it were
only yesterday! But now--it’s too late!”

And McCray bent forward, bowed in pain, and wept.

Holman waited until the boy’s grief subsided, and then, by degrees,
he got the story. To McCray it was an irreclaimable and tragic wreck
of life. But to Holman, in the broader vision his own sins had made
possible, and in some of his judgments of men, perhaps too broad--if,
indeed, that may be--the case was not at all hopeless. He had not, it
is true, been prepared for a revelation so complete and damaging, but
it presented to him no irrevocable aspect. McCray, with the proclivity
of youth to fixed and fated facts, saw the thing consummated and
complete, the contract wholly executed; but Holman did not regard it
as even executory, and he cited for McCray the old adage about the bad
bargain.

“We’ll just give the stuff back to Baldwin.”

“Before?”

“No,” said Holman stoutly, “afterward. After the vote; we’ll have that
satisfaction. Keep him on the hooks.”

“Well,” said McCray. “But here, you take it. It--burns--” He gave to
Holman a roll of bills, and sighed in relief. “You have saved me,” he
said; “you have saved my soul.”

“Oh, to hell with your soul!” Holman said, with more orthodoxy than he
was accustomed to evince. He was not sufficiently accustomed to the
highly moral to relish its too bald expression; perhaps his experience
had been of one other as yet unrecognized benefit--it had made him
wholesomely afraid of cant, and whatever good his spiritual adventure
of that day had done, or was to do him, he was in little danger of
becoming a Pharisee.

       *       *       *       *       *

Greggerson, the clerk of the house, in shirt-sleeves, a handkerchief
stuffed into his collar, had himself taken the reading-desk that night.
Above him the speaker, bent forward, watched the proceedings like some
bird of prey, smiting his desk sharply with his gavel now and then, or
pointing it fiercely at some one. Above the speaker, in placid folds,
was the flag, and from their large canvases on either side of the
house, Lincoln and Douglas surveyed the scene from the calm altitude of
their secure place in American statesmanship.

When the bill had come over from the senate half an hour before, the
crowd had rushed over with it, burst into the house and pushed down the
aisle, choking the passage. Holman saw several senators come over to
see the end; he saw the governor’s private secretary, and old Benson,
the governor’s political manager, and--Baldwin, suave and bland as
usual, yet, as Holman could see on a second closer look, intensely
anxious and concerned. He was paler than Holman had ever seen him.
The air of the chamber was hot and fetid; there was a low, ominous
grumbling. Dalby was on his feet on the Republican side, Quinn on the
Democratic--the program under Baldwin’s eye and the speaker’s would
be hurried through. In the curious way in which secrets cease to be
secrets and permeate the mind of the mass, it was generally known how
every man would vote, and it was understood that the climax, somehow,
would come with the calling of the name of McCray, of Jasper. The
roll-call moved slowly on down the alphabet; Greggerson’s voice
resounded; its boom could have been heard through open windows three
blocks away:

“Lyendorf!”

“Aye.”

“Lynn, of Sangamon!”

“No.”

“Lynn, of Vermilion!”

“No.”

“McBroom!”

“No.”

“McCoy!”

“Aye.”

“McCray!”

Holman strained forward with the crowd. McCray hesitated, looked up,
then shouted:

“No!”

There was a sharp volley of applause, a clapping of hands which had in
it perhaps, a certain too self-righteous quality; and there were human
groans and hoots, and at his elbow Holman heard an oath and turned to
face Baldwin. The face of the lobbyist was white with rage and moist
with fine globules of perspiration, and there were revealed to Holman
in the brilliant, new illuminations of that moment certain lines that
once had not been there, lines not drawn by age, and Holman saw them
with a fierce, vindictive joy.

But McCray was coming, battling his way down the aisle, escaping the
congratulations, curses, praises, objurgations of the men who crowded
about him. He got away from them and came back, and, as he took
Holman’s hand, his tired, drawn face was touched with a smile. Baldwin,
there beside them, saw it, stared at Holman incredulously and said:

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

But Holman had no attention for Baldwin then.

“Let’s get out of this,” he said to McCray.

And when, out of that weltering chaos, they found themselves in the
rotunda, in the mysterious semi-gloom that filled its great, inverted
bowl, the gloom which all the electric lights could not wholly
dissipate, Holman quickly drew his hand from his pocket, pressed it
into McCray’s, and said:

“Here, this belongs to--” Holman hesitated, as at a new point in ethics.

“To Baldwin,” said McCray. “Yes,” he went on wearily, “I’ll give it
back to him.”

“To think of an old Has-been like me,” said Holman, “that hasn’t seen
so much easy money in a coon’s age--and to go toting it around all day
in his pocket! McCray, I’m afraid I’m getting too damned civic! I’ll be
a reformer next, and back in politics!” He laughed again. “We’ll wait
here a little. Baldwin’ll be along, and I’ll stay and see you safely
through it.”

Baldwin was coming even then, and in a moment espied them there by the
rail. He had recovered himself; the mask of years could not be lowered
long; he came on leisurely, even pausing to light a cigarette. Holman
hailed him:

“Lost out, didn’t you, George?”

“So it seems,” Baldwin replied. “When you do business on honor you must
expect to be betrayed once in a while. It’s all in the game. But where
do you come in, Jim--an old back number like you?”

“Does seem funny, doesn’t it? An old Has-been like me! Well, I saw a
good thing coming off and I declared myself in. But McCray has a little
business with you, and when you’re through with him, maybe I can make
it plain to you.”

“Oh, I have no further business with Mr. McCray. I’m quite through
with _him_.” And he turned his back deliberately on the young man.

McCray bit his lip, then remembered and became humble, and, putting
forth his hand, said:

“Here--here’s your--money.”

Baldwin turned, took the money, thrust it carelessly into his pocket,
and said:

“I can’t count it here, of course. I _presume_ it’s all there.”

“Yes,” said Holman, “it’s all there. Such work is done on honor, you
know.”

“Thank you.” Baldwin delicately drew on his cigarette, blew the smoke
upward. “But--that question, Jim, that one unanswered question. Where
do you come in? What is there in this for you?”

Holman looked at him from top to toe with a long, cold, steady gaze.

“Well, George,” he began slowly, “for me there’s nothing in it, in the
way you think--in the only terms you can think in, I mean. There is,
however, in another way, a lot in it; a lot I haven’t dreamed of for
years. All day, while arranging and planning this--the idea came to
me suddenly this morning--I’ve been looking forward to this moment,
thinking of what I’d say and what satisfaction I’d have in saying it.
I thought that that satisfaction would pay me for all you’ve done--for
all you’ve tried to do to this boy here--for all--no, damn it! not for
all!--all hell and eternity couldn’t pay you for _all_ you’ve done--to
other boys like him. But now, as I look at your face and study it, I
see that you just couldn’t understand, that’s all; you have lost the
ability to understand--and--well, George, that mere fact will pay you,
so I won’t try to say it. I’ll say only good-by, and when you get
home to that wife and those daughters of yours--just remember that
Jim Holman asked you how you could look them in the eyes. Do that and
maybe--you’ll understand.”

Baldwin stared at him; the mask shifted an instant, then, instantly
restored, he turned away.

“He looks old, after all,” said Holman. “It has changed him, too....”
He drew out his watch. “I can catch that midnight train on the Alton.
I’m going to get out of here now; I’m going home to old Jasper. There’s
a little woman there I want to see, a little woman and some children,
and I’m going home--now, at last, to look them in the eyes.”




WHAT WILL BECOME OF ANNIE?


Spring had come back to Leadam Street. The moist cobblestones had
steamed in the new sun all the afternoon; sparrows were sweeping up to
the eaves, trailing strings and long straws after them; from the back
porches of the flats were loud, awaking, tinny sounds, breaking the
long silence. The clank of the cable-cars was borne over the roofs,
clearly now in the damp, heavy atmosphere; from somewhere came the
jingle of a street piano. Floating down the mild afternoon, came the
deep, mellow note of some big propeller, loosing her winter moorings
at last and rousing to greet the tug that would tow her out of the
narrow river. Kelley, the policeman, strolled along the sidewalk, with
his hands locked behind him, his nose in the air, sniffing eagerly and
pleasurably. He had left off his skirted overcoat, and changed his
clumsy cap for his helmet.

Annie had sat at her window all the afternoon, but, as the spring day
wore toward its close, she began to realize that only the melancholy,
and none of the promise of this first spring day had touched her. She
had thrown open the window, to test the quality of the air. Now and
then a warm breath came wandering in off the prairies, though when it
met the cold, persistent wind from the lake, it hesitated, and timidly
turned back. But Annie would not let herself doubt that the spring had
come. She knew that in time the prairie wind would woo its way until it
would be playing with the waves of the lake itself, the little waves
that danced all day, blue and white, in the sunshine. And then the
summer would come, and on Sunday afternoons Jimmy would take her out to
Lincoln Park, and they would have their supper at Fisher’s Garden.

Leadam Street was dull enough on week days; on Sundays it was wholly
mournful.

Once Annie saw a woman, with a shawl over her head and a tin bucket
in her hand, go into Englehardt’s place, down the street. The woman
went in furtively, and brushed hastily through the “Family Entrance,”
though why could not be told. She went there nearly every hour of
every day. Then Annie was left alone. She did not turn inward to the
flat; that was too still and lonesome, and it was growing dark now, as
the shadows gathered. She heard the strenuous gongs of the cable-cars
over in State Street, and she could imagine the crowds, gay from their
Sunday holiday, that filled them, clinging even to the running-boards.
She might have gone out and been with them, as every one else in the
street seemed to have done, but she would not for worlds have been away
from home when Jimmy came. She heard the jingle of the street piano,
too; she wished it would come down that way. She would gladly have
emptied her purse for the Dago.

It was not unusual for Annie to be left alone, and she had grown used
to it--almost; as used as a woman can--even the wife of a politician.
Jimmy had told her that she must not worry at any of his absences; an
alderman could never tell what might detain him. She had but a vague
notion of the things that might detain an alderman, though she had no
doubt of their importance. At times she thought she felt an intimate
little charm in the importance that thus reflected itself upon her,
but, nevertheless, her heart was never quite easy until she heard
Jimmy’s step on the stair and his key in the latch, and then--joy came
to the little flat, and stayed there, trembling and fearful, until he
went away again. She had grown to be so dependent on Jimmy. Ever since
she had been graduated from the convent his great, strong personality
had stood between her and the world, so that, as her girlhood had
merged into womanhood, she had hardly recognized the change, and she
remained a girl still, alone but for him; he was her whole life.
She had doubted his entrance into politics at first, just as she
had doubted his going into the saloon business, though she scarcely
understood either in their various significances. Father Daugherty had
told her she was a fortunate girl to have Jimmy for a husband, and that
had been enough. Her only objection was that politics seemed to keep
Jimmy away from home oftener than the old work in the packing-house
used to; she had trembled at it at times, and at times had grown a
little frightened. His success in politics had pleased her, of course,
and made her proud, but it could not have made her prouder of him than
she had been. He was all-sufficient for her; no change could make any
difference.... Without Jimmy, what could she have done? He had never
been gone so long before; here it was Sunday evening; he had left at
eleven o’clock Saturday morning; there was to be an extra session of
the council Saturday night, an unusual thing, and she had not been
surprised when she awoke to find that it was Sunday morning--and that
Jimmy had not come.

The morning wore away, and she had made all the arrangements for
the dinner she would have awaiting him. She had gone about lightly,
happily, all the day, singing to herself, the gladness of the new
spring in her. But, one by one, all the tasks she could think of were
performed, even to drawing the water for his bath and laying out his
clean linen. And then, when there was nothing else to do but wait, and
nothing with which to beguile her waiting, she had taken her post at
the window to watch for his cab.

The day waned, the Sunday drew wearily toward its close, as if it
sighed for Monday, and the resumption of active life. The street
grew stiller and stiller. She heard the voice of a newsboy, far out
of his usual haunts, crying an extra. She could not distinguish the
words in which he bawled his tidings, and she thought nothing of it.
One of Jimmy’s few rules was that she was not to read the papers. But,
when the heavy voice was gone, she found that it had had a strange,
depressing effect upon her; she longed for Jimmy to come; the day had
dragged itself by so slowly, and something of its somberness had stolen
into her soul. She sighed, and leaned her chin on her arm; her back was
growing tired, and beginning to ache. Then suddenly she heard horses’
hoofs, and the roll of a carriage in the street. She rose and leaned
far out of the window to welcome him. The cab drew up; it stopped;
the door opened. But the man who got out was not Jimmy. It was Father
Daugherty. She knew him the instant she saw the fuzzy old high hat
thrust out of the cab, and caught the greenish sheen of the shabby
cassock that stood away from the fringe of white hair on his neck in
such an ill-fitting, ill-becoming fashion. The old man did not look up,
but tottered across the sidewalk.

Annie gasped, and scarce could move. In a moment more she heard the old
steps on the stairs, the steps that for forty years had gone on so many
errands for others, kind and merciful errands all of them, though for
the most part sad. He was soon beside her, and she looked up into the
gentle face that was so full of the woes of humanity. He had driven at
once from the hospital in the cab they had sent to fetch him. Jimmy’s
last words had been:

“What will become of Annie?”

The death of Alderman Jimmy Tiernan at any time would have been a
shock. When death came to him by a pistol-ball it created what the
newspapers, in the columns they were so glad to fill that Monday
morning, defined as a profound sensation. This sensation was most
profound in two circles in the city, outwardly unconnected, though
bound by ties which it was the constant and earnest effort of both to
keep secret and unknown.

The city council had had a special session on Saturday night, and had
passed the new gas franchise. Alderman Tiernan had had charge of the
fight. Malachi Nolan was away, and Baldwin had picked out Tiernan as
the most trustworthy and able of those of the gang who were left
behind. Jimmy had felt the compliment, and gloried in it. It was the
biggest thing that had fallen to him in his political life, and he
was determined that he would make all there was to be made out of the
opportunity. Not in any base or sordid sense--that is, not wholly so;
that would come, of course, but he felt beyond this a joy in his work;
the satisfaction of mere success would be his chief reward, the glory
and the professional pride he would feel. He relished the fight against
the newspapers, against “public opinion,” whatever that was; against
the element that called itself the “better” element.

He was fully determined that no step should be misplaced; he counted
his men over and over again; he checked them off mentally, and it all
turned out as he had said. Every one was present, every one voted, and
voted “right,” when the roll was called; the new gas franchise was
granted; Jimmy had delivered the goods.

It was natural that such a glorious victory should be celebrated,
and the gang, when it assembled in Jimmy’s place, immediately after
the session was over, could not restrain its impatience. The boys
longed to have the fruits of the day’s work; with their wages they
could celebrate with glad, care-free hearts. But Jimmy was of a Gaelic
cunning. He would not jeopardize the victory at that stage by any
indiscretion. He saw at a glance the mood the gang was in. He smiled,
as he always smiled--and any one, to see his smile, must have loved
him--but he shook his head.

“The drink’s in you, boys,” he said, “and you can’t trust your tongues.
You’ll have to wait. Monday night you’ll be over. Then we’ll talk
business.”

Subconsciously, they still were sober; in a strange dual mentality
they saw the safety there was in his decision; and, in the paralysis
of will his magnetism worked in them, they loved him the more for it.
They remembered that it was just what Malachi would have done. And
so, noisy and excited as they were, they applauded his sagacity. Then
they gave themselves over unreservedly to their appetites. It was a
famous night in the annals of the gang. Jimmy himself joined in the
revelry. And in the calm, silent Sunday morning, with the new sunlight
of spring glaring in his swollen, aching eyes, he found himself, with
a companion, in a Clark Street chop house. Just as they were going to
order breakfast, a young man came in, with a black look in his eyes. No
one saw it then, though they all remembered it afterward. Jimmy greeted
him as gaily as he greeted everybody, but the young man did not warm to
Jimmy’s greeting. There were words, the quick rush of anger to Jimmy’s
face, a blow, and the pistol shot. At first the newspapers were glad
to trace some sinister connection between the franchise fight and the
tragedy. Afterward, they said it was only some private grudge. No one
dreamed that Jimmy Tiernan had an enemy on earth.

At the hospital, Jimmy opened his eyes, and on his face, grown very
white, there was a smile again, the last of his winning smiles. His
friends were with him, and they wept, unashamed. Then he rolled his
head on his pillow, and spoke of Annie. The calm Sister of Charity
pressed her rosary into his hand, and stooped to listen. They had just
time to send for Father Daugherty.

Down in the ward, the sadness that had come to Leadam Street spread
blackly. Many a man, and many a woman, and many a child, cried. The
poor had lost a friend, and they would not soon forget him. In the
long days of the distant winter they would think of him over and over.
Every one in that ward was poor, though the reformers, condescending
that way whenever Jimmy was up for reëlection, somehow never grasped
the real significance of the fact. And it was a somber Monday around
the city hall. Jimmy had been a man with a genius for friendship. The
gang mourned him in a sadness that had added to it the remorse of a
recent sobriety, but their grief, genuine as it was, had in it an
evil bitterness their hearts would not have owned. They were restive
and troubled. Whenever they got together in little groups, they read
consternation in one another’s faces, and now and then they cursed
the caution they had extolled on Saturday night. Besides these varied
effects, Jimmy’s death, while it could not create a crisis in the
market, nevertheless gave rise to nervous feelings in certain segments
of financial circles. It was inevitable that financial and political
circles should overlap and intersect each other in this matter, and
there were conferences which seemed to reflect a sense of personal
resentment at Jimmy for having been murdered so inopportunely. In the
end, the financiers were peremptory with Baldwin. He must fix the thing
some way. And he assured them that he would give the appointment of the
administrator his immediate attention. Already, he said, he had a man
in view who would be reasonable and practical. There were suggestions
of strong-handed methods, but that was never George R. Baldwin’s way.
He went out with his air of affability unimpaired. Meanwhile, political
and financial circles could only wait and hope.

       *       *       *       *       *

The excitement of the first few days following the tragedy kept Annie’s
mind occupied; but, when the funeral was over, and she returned to
her little flat, when the neighborly women had at last gone back to
their homes and their interrupted duties, and the world to its work,
Annie was left to face life alone. She could not adjust herself to
the change, and fear and despair added their blackness to her grief.
Father Daugherty knew how great a blow Jimmy’s death would be to her,
and, though he gave what comfort he could, he left her grief to time.
He did not belong to the preaching orders. But, as he pondered in his
wise old head, he shrewdly guessed that the careless Jimmy would hardly
have made provision against anything so far from his thoughts as death,
and he perceived that if Annie were to be protected from a future with
which she, alone and unaided, would hardly have the capacity to deal,
some one must act.

Long ago might Father Daugherty have celebrated his silver jubilee as
pastor of St. Patrick’s, but he was not the man for celebrations. The
parish was one big family to him, and he knew the joys and sorrows, the
little hopes and pathetic ambitions of every one in it. The sorrows of
his children he bore in his own heart; they had wrought their complex
and tragic tale in his face. The joys he left them to taste alone; but
he found too much sorrow to have time for joy. During all those years,
he had given himself unsparingly; if it was all he had to give, it was
the most precious thing he could have given--a daily sacrifice that
exhausted a temperament keenly sensitive and sympathetic. So he had
grown old and white before his time. Many a man had he kept straight
when times were hard and the right to work denied him; many a widow
had he saved from the wiles of the claim-agent. The corporations and
the lawyers hated him.

And so, on Monday morning, the clerks of the probate court had scarcely
had time to yawn reluctantly before beginning a new week’s work, when
Father Daugherty appeared to file Annie’s waiver of her own right to be
appointed administratrix of the estate of James Tiernan, deceased, with
an application for the appointment, instead, of Francis Daugherty as
administrator.

“He must keep a set of blanks,” whispered one clerk to another.

As Father Daugherty went about his inventory, he saw that the result
would be what he had expected. Jimmy had left no estate, no insurance,
nothing but the saloon. And that, with Jimmy dead, was nothing, for its
value lay all in Jimmy’s personality and the importance of his position
in politics. The fixtures would hardly pay for the burying of him. When
the debts the law prefers had been paid, Annie would have scarce a
penny. The world might preserve a respectful and sympathetic attitude
during the few exciting days when it was paying its last conventional
tributes to the dead man, but it kept itemized accounts meanwhile, and
it could not long pretend to have forgotten material things. It would
present its bills, and they must be paid. Annie would have hardly a
cent to meet them with. And Father Daugherty knew, even if Annie did
not know, what the world would do then.

Yet he smiled, though he shook his head, as he thought of the
free-handed, indiscriminating generosity that had been akin to the
improvidence of Jimmy’s nature. And now he had but one more duty to
perform; the safe in Jimmy’s saloon had not been opened. No one, not
even the bartender, knew the combination, and Father Daugherty had a
locksmith to drill the lock. The gang had attended Jimmy’s funeral
in black neckties, and had mourned him sincerely, but, now that he
was buried, their attitude became the common worldly attitude, with
perhaps a little more than the usual aggressiveness in it. They were
in a quandary as to the bundle in the new gas franchise, and many
conferences with Baldwin had nerved them to desperate expedients. So
it was on Baldwin’s advice that they determined to be represented at
the opening of the safe. Two of the number were detailed to this duty,
McQuirk of the Ninth, and Bretzenger of the Twenty-fourth. When they
made their demand on Father Daugherty, explaining that they came in
their capacity as Jimmy’s nearest friends, he assented with a readiness
that relieved them both, and delighted Bretzenger, though McQuirk,
who knew Father Daugherty better than his colleague did, was fearful
and suspicious. Father Daugherty said that he had thought of having
witnesses, and they would serve as well as any. It was very kind of
them.

The priest and the two aldermen waited in the saloon for two hours
while the locksmith drilled away silently. The street door was closed;
the crape still hung from the handle that had never gone unlatched so
long at a time before, the curtains were drawn, and outside the crowds
for ever shuffled by on the sidewalk, all oblivious to the little drama
of hopes and fears that was unfolding its cross-purposes within. The
saloon was dark, and an electric bulb glowed to shed light for the
locksmith. The two aldermen puffed their cigars in silence, save for
an occasional whisper, one with another. Father Daugherty’s gaunt
form leaned against the dusty bar, strangely out of keeping with such
a scene, though the saloons in his parish knew him, especially on
Saturday nights, when he conducted little raids of his own, and turned
his prisoners over to their wives. Now his weary visage was relaxed in
patient waiting. At last the locksmith dropped his tools, and said:

“There!”

The thick steel doors swung out on their noiseless hinges. The two
aldermen sprang to the side of the safe. The priest drew near slowly,
but his little eyes were turned on the aldermen, and they fell back a
pace. Then the priest’s long figure sank to a kneeling posture, and
he peered into the safe. There was nothing in view. It was strangely
empty, for a safe of its monstrous size and mystery, and the tenacity
of its combination. He thrust in his hand and fumbled through all its
hollow interior, and then he drew forth--a soiled linen collar! It was
ludicrous, and for once he laughed, a little laugh. There was not a
ledger, not a book.

“He kept no accounts, your riverence,” said McQuirk.

“It was just like him,” said Father Daugherty. But he kept on with his
search. And, when he opened the little drawer of maplewood, he found
a parcel, done snugly up in thick brown paper. He tore it open, and
there swelled into his sight packages of bank-notes almost bursting in
their yellow paper straps. The bills were new, and as freshly green
as the spring itself; more tempting thus, some way, to the reluctant
conscience. The two aldermen bent over the black, stooping figure of
the priest, their eyes fixed on the money. There it was at last, the
bundle itself, the price of, or a part of the price of the new gas
franchise. The priest straightened painfully, and got to his feet. He
held the bundle in his thin fingers, and glanced at his witnesses, with
a keen and curious eye. They met his gaze, expectant, eager, drawing
dry, hot breaths. Involuntarily, they extended their hands. Father
Daugherty looked at them, and a little twinkle of amusement showed in
the eyes that were wontedly so mild and sad.

“Would you?” he said.

The two aldermen hastily raised their hands, and together, in strange
unison, wiped their brows. The room had suddenly grown hot for them,
and their brows were wet, though Father Daugherty was cool and
composed, as he ever was. Yet they remembered; they could not so easily
give up; it was theirs by every right. They could have cursed Jimmy
just then for his excessive caution. It was McQuirk’s quick mind that
thought first.

“Maybe there’s writing,” he said.

Father Daugherty looked long and thoroughly, running his thin hand deep
into pigeon-holes and back into the partitions, until the sleeves of
his shabby coat were pushed far up his lean wrist.

“Not a scrap,” he said.

“Then, maybe--” But McQuirk drew Bretzenger away, and they went into
the darkness that lay thick as dust in the back of the long room.
Meanwhile, Father Daugherty searched the safe through and through. He
found nothing more. The strong-box had had but one purpose, and it had
served it well. Then slowly, painfully, with the clumsy, unaccustomed
fingers that had had small chance to count money, he turned the
packages over, counting them carefully, wetting his trembling fingers
now and then. The man who had drilled the safe stood looking on, with
eyes that widened more and more.

“How much is there, Father?” he said, at length. He extended a grimy
forefinger hesitatingly, as if to touch the package the priest balanced
on his palm. But he did not touch it, any more than if it had been
something sacred in that clean, sacerdotal hand.

“Fifty thousand,” the priest answered. His voice was a trifle husky.

“Fifty thousand!” the man exclaimed. And then he added, in awe:
“Dollars! Doesn’t look like that much, does it?”

“No,” Father Daugherty answered. He had been a little surprised
himself. There was something disappointing in the size of the package.
He had never seen so much money before, and its tremendous power, its
tremendous power for evil, as he suddenly thought, was concentrated in
a compass so small that the mind could but slowly wheel about to the
new conception. The locksmith spoke.

“Might I--might I--hold it a second--in my own hand?” he said.

The priest gave the bundle into the hand hardened by so much honest
toil. The man held it, heaving it up and down incredulously, testing
its weight. Then he gave it back.

“Thanks,” he said, and sighed.

The two aldermen had returned from their little conference.

“Your riverence,” began McQuirk hesitatingly, “might we have a word
with you--in private?” He looked suspiciously at the workman. The
priest went with them a little way apart.

“We know about that,” McQuirk pointed to the bundle.

“You do, do you?” said the priest sharply.

“Yes, Father,” Bretzenger said. “It’s--it’s--well, it belongs to the
company, sir.”

“What company?”

“Well, you know, the new ga--ah, that is, Mr. Baldwin, the lawyer. You
know him?”

“George R.?” asked Father Daugherty.

“Yes, your riverence,” said both men hopefully. “It should go back to
him.”

The priest looked at them, and they caught again that amused expression
in his face. It put them ill at ease, and it roused resentment in
Bretzenger, who felt that this calm priest could read him too well.

“None of it belongs to you, then, I suppose?” observed Father
Daugherty.

“Ah, well--of course,” McQuirk urged, and his tone showed that he
was trying, in his crude way, to impress the priest with an honest
disinterestedness. “Of course, Jimmy was entitled to his piece.”

“Sure!” Bretzenger said, swelling with the little virtue he had found
to help him.

“But you say it ought to go back to Baldwin, eh?”

“That’s what we think, sir,” they chimed.

“Well, he can come and identify it,” said Father Daugherty. He slowly
wrapped the package up, and, unbuttoning his long, rusty coat a little
way down from the throat, stuffed the money into an inner pocket. The
deed seemed to madden Bretzenger, and he moved a step forward. The two
others saw his motion. The priest did not move, but he turned a look on
them, and raised his hand, and McQuirk quailed, a superstitious fear
in his eyes. He stiffened his arm before Bretzenger, and stayed him.
And then the priest stepped quietly to the safe, and pushed its door to
with an arm that seemed too weak and frail to stir the heavy steel.

“It looks to me, Michael,” he was saying gently, as if addressing
McQuirk alone, “like personal property, and, as I’m the administrator,
I suppose I’ll have to take charge of it. If any beside our dead
friend own it, let them come forward and prove their claim, and
identify their property in open court.”

Father Daugherty reported the whole affair to the probate court, and
the judge when the time for filing claims had elapsed, and he had
waited for the particular claim he knew would not be presented, ordered
a distribution of the property. Then Father Daugherty went to the flat
to see Annie, bearing the bundle, the original bundle, the bundle that
had bought the new gas franchise. Something of the dramatic quality in
the situation had got into the old priest’s heart. He knew that Annie
would appreciate it all so much better if she could see the fortune,
and feel it, and he would let her do so for an instant before he put
it away in the safety deposit vaults to await opportunity for its
investment.

She looked at it long and long, lying there in the lap of her black
gown. She could not grasp the amount, though the old priest, leaning
forward, with the enthusiasm of a boy shining once more, after so many
years, in his hollow eyes, said over and over:

“Look at it, my child! Feel it! It’s fifty thousand dollars! And it’s
all yours!”

She patted it, tenderly and affectionately, with a soft and reminiscent
caress, so that the priest knew that it was not for anything that
package of money might hold for her in a material way, then or
afterward, but rather for what it gave back for a moment to her
desolated heart. And the priest was glad of that, and thereafter
silent. He had had doubts. He would feel better when the money had
passed out of his hands, and he sometimes questioned whether it would
ever do good in any one’s hands. But he had a sense of humor, too, a
grim sense in this instance, when he thought of certain political and
financial circles, even if he did dust his thin hands carefully with
his spotless handkerchief when he laid the money down.

Annie’s eyes had filled with the ready tears that welled to their
sweeping, black lashes, and trembled there as she raised her eyes to
him.

“Ah, Father,” she said, “he was so, _so_ good to me, always--and so
kind! And see how thoughtful he was--to leave me all this! Oh, Jimmy,
my poor Jimmy!”

And she rocked forward, like an old woman, and wept.




THE VINDICATION OF HENDERSON OF GREENE


Baldwin, the lobbyist, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees,
and swaying with the train as it swung out on to the rocky ledge that
paves the Valley of the Desplaines, contemplatively cut the end from a
fresh cigar and said:

“But I’m not so sure, after all. My experience with the Bailey bill
shook my faith in that proposition.”

The two other men in the salon looked up with startled eyes.

Baldwin had been driven over from his Michigan Avenue home and caught
the Alton Limited when it made the station stop at Twenty-third Street,
where he boarded the last of its curtained Pullmans. This coach was
the political institution known to Illinois statesmanship as the
Springfield sleeper, and Baldwin and his two companions, Jennings,
the secretary of state, and Denny Healy, a canal commissioner, had
the capsulated coziness of its smoking compartment all to themselves.
Down by Dwight they had fallen into a desultory discussion of the
old question as to whether or not every man has his price. The
question could hardly interest these men long, for, after many years’
constant contemplation, under the gray dome of the state house, of the
weaknesses of men, they had come to an acceptance of the doctrine now
grown frank enough to have no lingering taint of cynicism. Jennings,
indeed, had just dismissed the subject by declaring:

“All men aire fer sale, an’ most of ’em damn cheap.”

And so the subject might have lapsed had it not been for Baldwin’s
heterodoxy. That George R. Baldwin of all men should doubt the first
maxim of their profession was beyond comprehension. Though he played
his part in life with a suite of law offices in a skyscraper as a
background, his serious business was lobbying bills through the
legislature. His friends, who were many, boasted that he always stood
by them, right or wrong. Which he did, indeed, and as they were
generally wrong, the value of such friendship, or his opinions on
practical politics, could hardly be overestimated. The day had been a
hot one in Chicago, but now a cold draft of smoky air was sucking in
through the narrow window-screen, on which the cinders hailed as the
Limited plunged southward.

Smoke and dirt had long since begrimed the dark and sweaty face of
Jennings, who, with waistcoat opened in the comfort dear to the
Egyptian, was sprawling his shanks on the cushion opposite him, while
Healy, doomed by corpulence to an attitude more erect, sitting with
his chubby knees far apart, as the fat will, his paunch resting on the
edge of the seat he filled, now and then brushed a fat palm over his
red scalp and sighed, as he puffed his domestic cigar. But Baldwin
sat and smiled, showing his excellent teeth beneath his reddish
mustache, and visibly expanded. They could hear, as an undertone to
their talking, the dull roll of the Pullman’s paper wheels, and now
and then they were interrupted by the whistle’s long and lonesome note
at a country road-crossing. Out through the double windows, against
which Healy sometimes pressed his forehead because the glass cooled
it, the dark fields wheeled past in an endless belt of blackness, save
where an occasional bunch of sparks from the engine burrowed under the
right-of-way fence, and then, in the momentary glow of light, they
could catch sight of a tossing plume of corn, which told them they were
out on the prairies of central Illinois.

When the train paused for the Big Four crossing at Gardner, they heard
in the sudden flood of silence the snoring of a sensible fare-paying
passenger who had gone to bed. The strident noise of the crickets and
the frogs outside was noted only as an effect of the silence. The
three men had no thought of retiring until they reached Pontiac at two
o’clock, for the lives they led were such that they could not sleep
until that hour, and then not very well.

Baldwin had lighted his imported cigar, the superior aroma of which,
perceptible even in an atmosphere choked with coal gases and the fumes
of the domestic cigars Jennings and Healy were smoking, indicated
faintly the height of cultivation to which he had brought his
appetites, when Jennings, flecking his ashes on the floor of the salon
just as he would have done on his own parlor carpet, said:

“Well, go on with the story.”

Baldwin settled his chin over the blue cravat with the white polka dots
that was knotted over the immaculate collar--a collar, incredulous men
from southern Illinois were sometimes told, that was actually made on
the shirt--drew his creased trousers a little farther above the tops of
his patent leather boots, and began:

“One session there was an old man named Henderson in the house, who
had come up from Greene County; Henderson of Greene, everybody called
him, to distinguish him from Tom Henderson, of Effingham. He was a
queer figure, was Henderson of Greene, tall and gaunt, with a stoop
in his shoulders. He always wore a hickory shirt, opened at a red and
wrinkled throat, and his hair was just a stubble bleached by harvest
suns. The old man was a riddle to everybody in Springfield that winter.
He was always in his seat, even on Monday evenings, when no one else
was there. He voted always with his party, and he voted consistently as
well, like a good country member, against all the Chicago legislation.
But he was a silent man, who stood apart from his fellows, looking
with eyes that peered from under his shaggy, sunburned brows with
an expression no one could fathom. He never made a speech, he
never introduced a bill, he never offered a resolution, he never
even presented a petition, and when the speaker made his committee
assignments, he placed the old man on the committees on History,
Geology and Science, and on Civil Service Reform, and he did not even
look disappointed.”

The two politicians chuckled.

“As for me,” continued Baldwin, “I never spoke to him, and never knew
any one who did. The speaker himself only addressed him--and then as
the gentleman from Greene--when they were verifying roll-calls. No one
ever knew where he boarded. The herd book gave him a paragraph, saying
that he had been born in Indiana along in ’37, and moved to this state
sometime in the fifties. Left an orphan early, with no education, he
had been a day laborer all his life, working at anything he could get,
mostly on farms. He never had held office before, and none knew how he
broke into the legislature--the tidal wave, I suppose. Every one knew
he never would come back again.

“Well, we got down to the last night of the session. The hands of
the clock had been turned back in that vain old attempt to stay the
remorseless hours, but its pale and impassive face was impotent as a
gravestone to stay dissolution and oblivion. I know men who would have
spent a fortune to give that legislature one day more of life, but it
was sweeping on to its midnight death. Somehow, whenever I think of
the legislature, I think of _that_ legislature, and whenever my mind
conceives the state house it isn’t pictured to me as standing there on
the hill, stately in the sunshine, but as it appeared that night as I
walked over from the Leland, with the clouds flying low over its dome.
The lower floors were dark and still as sepulchres, and the messenger
boys who came over from the Western Union, now and then, reminded me of
ghosts as they went by, their heels dragging on the marble floors of
the corridor. A light was burning in the governor’s office, though the
old man himself, I knew, was over at the mansion, pacing the floor of
the library and cursing with classic curses. We were going to try that
night to pass the Bailey bill over his veto.

“But the third floor blazed with electric lights, and the big dome
was full of noisy echoes. The senate kept its coat on--you know how
they mimic decorum over there--but the house was in its shirt-sleeves,
huddled like a pack of wolves around the speaker’s dais, with faces
ripe with whisky, shaking its fists under the umbrella of cigar smoke.
Every fellow was trying to get his bill passed in the last hour of the
session--you know what it is, Hank?”

“Oah, yes,” replied Jennings, “but ’tain’t nothin’ to what ’t used to
be under the ol’ constitution. We’d stack a pile o’ them ’ere private
acts up on the clerk’s desk, an’ pass ’em all t’ oncet ’ith a whoop.
Them ’as the days--but that ’as ’fore your time.”

“Those must have been good old days,” assented the lobbyist, “for the
gang.”

“I reckon! A feller could ’a’ done business in them days! Ol’ John M.’d
better left the ol’ constitution alone--it ’as good enough. But there
’as a passion fer change right after the war.”

The lobbyist politely nodded concurrence in this view and continued:

“Some of the members clambered on to their desks, filling the air with
oaths, ink bottles, and hurtling books with rattling leaves. Sometimes
an iron weight sheathed in paper whizzed by on a vindictive mission,
and one man made an Egyptian nigger-killer with rubber bands. Some even
hurled their copies of the revised statutes--it was the first use they
had ever found for them. Once in a while some one would toss a batch
of printed bills to the ceiling, where they set the glass prisms of
the chandeliers jingling, and then fell like autumn leaves, a shower
of dead pledges and withered hopes. And out of all the hubbub rose a
steady roar--”

“Like at a lynchin’ bee,” assisted Jennings.

“Exactly,” assented Baldwin, who had never seen a lynching. “There were
drunken howls and vacuous laughs, and yet we could hear through it all
the hoarse voice of the clerk, his throat so heated that you could see
the vapor of his breath, as you can an orator’s, or a wood-chopper’s
in winter, rapidly intoning senate bills on third reading. The pages
were growing heedless and impertinent. The newspaper correspondents,
their despatches on the wires, puffed their cigarettes in professional
unconcern, and awaited happenings worthy of late bulletins. The older
members, who had been through the mill many times before, lounged low
in their seats. One could see, above their desks, only their heads and
heels. The speaker, old ’Zeke himself, was in the chair, suave as ever,
but growing caustic. He had splintered his sounding-board early in the
evening, and had taken to tapping perfunctorily his walnut desk with
his little inadequate gavel. And yet he and the older members and the
newspaper men would cast occasionally an anxious glance at the clock,
and an expectant one at the big doors.

“As I sat there on the old, red lounge under the speaker’s flag-draped
canopy, I noticed Henderson of Greene, standing away back under the
galleries on the Democratic side, eying the proceedings with the same
mysterious stare that had never left him since he had been sworn in.
As I have said, I had never spoken to the fellow, but I had always
felt a pity for him--he impressed me as a man who had been stunned by
repeated raps of bad luck. Along toward the end of the session he had
brought his wife up from Greene County to the capital. She had that
tired look that country women have. Her face was seamed, her cheeks
hollow; her back was bent in a bow, and she walked hurriedly, anxiously
along in her flapping skirts beside her tall and somber husband. She
had never been away from home before, and the boys had many a laugh
over her wonder at the trolley-cars purring along under the maple
trees, and her fear of the elevators in the state house--though, for
my part, I could see nothing ludicrous in it all. She stayed three or
four days and they went everywhere, out to Oak Ridge to see Lincoln’s
tomb, over to Eighth Street to visit his old homestead, up to the
Geological Museum where the moth-eaten stuffed animals are, and out to
Camp Lincoln. They took many trolley rides, and even climbed to the
top of the state house dome, whence, they say, you can see Rochester
and the prairies for thirty miles around. He brought her over to the
house one or two mornings, but not on to the floor as other members did
their over-dressed wives; he sent her up to the gallery, where she sat
peering down over the railing at the gang--and her husband, who took no
part in all that was going on.

“The old woman’s interest in all these new things that had come into
her starved life, her ill-concealed pride in her husband’s membership
in such a distinguished body of law-givers, were touching to me, and as
I looked at him that last night of the session, and thought of her,
the wish to do something to lighten their lives came into my heart,
but just then, suddenly, old ’Zeke started from his chair, grasped his
gavel firmly, and leaned expectantly over his desk. At the same instant
the older members dragged their feet down from their desks and sat bolt
upright. The newspaper men flung away their cigarettes and adjusted
their eye-glasses. The assistant clerk, who had been reading, looked
up from the bill then under what I suppose they would have called
consideration, and hurriedly gave his place at the reading-desk to the
clerk of the house. I knew what was coming. I knew that the Bailey bill
was on its way over from the senate. And I heard Bill Hill call:

“‘Mistah Speakah.’

“At the sound of that voice the uproar in the chamber ceased. It became
so still that the silence tingled like a numbness through the body;
stiller than it had been any time since nine o’clock that morning, when
they had paused for the chaplain to say his prayer. The gang turned
around and stood motionless, panting, in its shirt-sleeves, as though a
flashlight photograph were to be taken. Half-way down the aisle stood
Hill. You know how he would look at such a time, in his long black
coat, his wide white shirt bosom with the big diamond, his rolling
collar and black string tie, and his long black hair falling to his
shoulders. You know how he would love such a moment--and it was his
last chance that session. He stood there quietly a whole minute, and
then putting a foot forward, said in his great bass voice:

“‘Mistah Speakah.’

“Old ’Zeke rose and said:

“‘Mister Doorkeeper.’

“‘A message from the senate, by its secretary.’

“‘A message from the senate by its secretary,’ repeated ’Zeke, and then
Bill had to give way to Sam Pollard, who stepped forth and said:

“‘Mr. Speaker, I am directed to inform the house that the senate
has passed senate bill No. 106’--I never shall forget the number
of that bill, after all the sleepless nights it caused me, and the
anxious mornings scanning the calendar to see if its black figures
were there--‘Senate bill No. 106. A bill for an act to amend an act
entitled: An Act concerning the exercise of the right of eminent
domain, notwithstanding the objections of the governor’--you know the
lingo.

“Then, as the speaker said, ‘The clerk will read the message,’ Hen
Harvey, who was clerk of the house, stretched his arm over the narrow
desk and took the file from the page. The old man was mad when he wrote
that veto message, and he gave both houses the devil. I never knew
the legislature to get such an unmerciful lamming in my life; it was
outrageous, for it was a good bill, and--”

“Ought ter pass,” interjected Jennings, repeating the trite phrase
sententiously.

“But nobody heard it, for when Hen began to read, the gang took a deep
breath and began to howl. From both sides of the chamber broke forth
a clamor of ‘Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker,’ until in the din even these
words were lost, and there was just that long, heavy roar. The boys
came over from the senate, for they had done their duty and had done
it nobly, in the face of a great storm of criticism, combined with
the abuse of the Chicago papers, and they wanted to help lift in the
house. And with them came the crowd of reformers from the Municipal
League, and stood about with George Herrick, the old man’s private
secretary. The reformers, as George pointed out members here and there,
and whispered in their ears, supposed that they were doing great things
in the fight against the bill, but that was only another time when they
deluded their precious selves. They did their reforming chiefly at
banquets, but George and the old man knew a thing or two about politics
themselves, and George, standing back by the Democratic cloak-room,
smoking his little cigarettes, was directing that fight with the party
lash in his hand, and some of the best men on the floor of the house to
do his bidding. He was the only private secretary I ever knew who could
set an army in the field.

“But through it all old ’Zeke stood there, game as ever, with a hard,
cold smile on his face, and you could hear the sharp, monotonous rap
of his gavel, rap, rap, rap, neither fast nor slow. The tumult did not
die during the reading of that scathing message, and when Hen’s ruined
voice ceased, and he rolled the message up again and thrust it in his
desk, ’Zeke smashed his gavel down and I heard him say:

“‘Will the house be in order?’

“And it was in order, for ’Zeke knew how to compel order in that
bear-pit when he wanted to, and he never raised his voice to do it
either, only his eye, and the gavel. And so, when they were quiet, he
said: ‘The question is: Shall the house concur with the senate in the
passage of senate bill No. 106, notwithstanding the objections of the
governor?’

“The house tried to break away from him again, but he held it in his
gavel fist, drawing the curb tight, and turned to recognize old Long
John Riley, who was standing like a tall tree beside his desk, with his
hand upraised.

“‘The gentleman from Cook!’

“‘Mr. Speaker,’ said Riley, ‘I move the previous question.’

“There was another roar, but ’Zeke’s gavel fell, and his eyes blazed
black again, and he said:

“‘The gentleman from Cook moves the previous question, and the question
is: Shall the main question be now put? Those in favor of this question
will say aye’--there was a roar of ayes--‘and those opposed will say
no.’ There was a heavier roar of noes, and then came the old cry: ‘Ayes
and noes, ayes and noes, Mr. Speaker, ayes and noes, damn you, don’t
you dare to shut off debate!’ But ’Zeke only smiled and his gavel
cracked--and they were still. Then in the stillness he said:

“‘Gentlemen are as familiar with the rules as is the chair. They are
well aware that the chair is powerless to order a roll-call after a
_viva voce_ vote, unless he is in doubt as to the result, the demand
for the yeas and nays not having been preferred before the question
had been put to the house. In this instance’--and the splendid old
fellow swung his gavel to his ear, and the smile flickered out of
his face--‘in this instance the chair is not in doubt. The ayes seem
to have it, the ayes have it, and the main question is ordered.’
The hammer fell like a bolt, and then calmly leaning on it, his eye
traveled around over the turbulent mob, until it lit on George Herrick
and his little band of dazed reformers--and I knew he was thinking
of the old man over in the mansion whom he hated with an Indian’s
hate--and as he looked George in the eye, the cold smile came back, and
he said:

“‘The question is: Shall the house concur with the senate in the
passage of senate bill No. 106, notwithstanding the objections of the
governor. Upon this question those in favor of the bill will vote aye,
and those opposed will vote no, when their names are called, and the
clerk will call the roll.’ The gavel fell, and the speaker, holding it
where it had fallen, leaned half his length over his desk and motioned
to Hen Harvey. Hen had taken off his coat and vest and collar--he would
call _that_ roll himself--and as he unbuttoned his cuffs, inclining his
head toward the speaker, ’Zeke yelled in his ear:

“‘Now, Hen, damn it, call that roll to beat all hell.’

“Then we knew that the Bailey bill fight was on to a finish. We had
had our first big battle with the reformers, and were down together
in the last ditch. Whenever a bill with something in it is about to
pass the legislature, a strange quality steals into the atmosphere,
just as there does in the council chamber in Chicago when anything
is to be pulled off--don’t you know? There is a forebodement, an
apprehensiveness, that electrifies the nerves and oppresses the lungs.
I felt it there that night. We had had a heavy fight to pass the bill
in the first place, and now we had to override a veto! It’s hard
enough to get the seventy-seven votes that constitute a majority, with
the people against you--men are such cowards--but when it comes to
rounding up two-thirds--a hundred and two--it’s an entirely different
problem. We had been working quietly at the thing for days, for we knew
the veto was coming, and that the old man would wait until the last
night to send it in. We had a hundred and one tried and true men who
would stick to the end. The hundred and second was Jim Berry. We had
his promise, and believed he would stay in line--though he was afraid
of his constits--for he was poor and in debt.

“Judge Hardin came and sat beside me that we might check them off for
ourselves, and Hen began calling the roll:

“‘Allen!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Ambaugh!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Anderson!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Bartly!’

“‘Aye!’

“The leaders, Jamison over on the Republican side, and Riley on
the Democratic, sat at their desks, with roll-calls, at which
they thoughtfully blew the smoke of their cigars as they checked
off the progress of the vote. They appeared as unconcerned as the
correspondents. I never can forget the drollery of the wink Jamison
gave me as he voted no--it was necessary to have some one who had
voted with the majority to move a reconsideration of the vote in case
anything happened. ’Zeke did not resume his seat during the roll-call,
as the rules permitted him to do, but stood bending over his desk with
an alert eye on the cadets. The vote up to this point was propitious,
but ’Zeke knew, and Jamison and Riley knew, and Judge Hardin and I
knew, and we were not so sanguine as the correspondents, who had
already begun to toss sheets of copy to the frowsy telegraph boys,
running to and fro between the press gallery and the Western Union.
We were chiefly interested just then whether Berry would vote right
or not. I was keeping an eye on him and noticed that he was beginning
to fidget in his seat, and chew his cigar, and tear paper into little
pieces. And the roll-call went on:

“‘Beel!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Bell!’

“‘No!’

“Bell, of course, was on the other side, and was standing back with
George Herrick, keeping their fellows in line and cheering up the
reformers from the Municipal League, but we knew his vote would have
its effect on Berry, so I pulled the speaker’s coat-tail, and ’Zeke
leaned over and whispered hoarsely to the clerk. Hen observed a
lengthened pause and then began to call more slowly. Berry was the next
name.

“‘Berry!’ Hen drawled.

“There was no reply.

“‘Berry!’

“There was no reply.

“Hen looked long at Berry, and the poltroon sat there with his eyes
cast down, rolling his cigar around and around in his mouth, tearing
up his little flakes of paper, and swinging from side to side in his
chair. Then Hen called the next name:

“‘Briggs!’

“‘No!’ he voted, and Berry looked up for the first time since the bill
had come over from the senate. ’Zeke rapped fiercely with his gavel,
and Hen paused. Then ’Zeke said sharply:

“‘The chair is compelled again to call the attention of gentlemen to
rule three, which prohibits smoking in the hall of the house. The chair
dislikes to be compelled to repeat this admonition so frequently, and
trusts that gentlemen will observe the injunction without additional
suggestion. The clerk will proceed with the calling of the roll.’ And
he smashed the broken sounding-board again with his gavel. We needed
time. Some of the members laughed, but that only gave ’Zeke a chance
to gain more time by rapping for order. We feared the effect, however,
on discipline. Then he called Brisbane, one of our fellows, and he
didn’t vote. I grew uneasy, and Judge Hardin was squirming there beside
me on the lounge. When I thought of Berry I grew mad, and wondered if
we could save the bill without him. At that instant my eye happened
to light upon Henderson of Greene. He was standing under the gallery
just as he had been standing all evening. He seemed not to have moved.
He had his hands clasped awkwardly behind him, and was chewing his
tobacco contemplatively. And here was my chance! I thought of the
pathetic biography in the house directory. I thought of his wife as
I had seen the poor old thing going around town with him the week
before. I thought of the way he had worked and toiled for her and all
those children, and how little life held for him. If I could get him
for the bill in Berry’s place, the Chicago people, I knew, would be
liberal with him, and he could go back home better off in a financial
way than when he came. And so I motioned to Burke, and when he came up
I told him to ask the gentleman from Greene to meet me at once in the
speaker’s room, and I retired to await him. Presently, in his clumsy
way, he shuffled in. He came close up to me, and when I had given the
poor devil a cigar he bent over to hear what I might have to say. I
asked him how he was going to vote on the bill, and he said he thought
he would vote against it, inasmuch as the governor had said it was a
bad piece of legislation. Well, there was no time to discuss that phase
of the question.

“‘Look here, comrade,’ I said, ‘this is a bill that concerns Chicago
alone--it does not affect and can not affect you or your constituents
one way or the other, can it?’

“‘No,’ he said; ‘reckon not.’

“‘They don’t even know down in Greene County that there is such a bill,
do they?’

“‘Reckon not,’ he said, ‘leastways I hain’t heerd ary one say nothin’
’bout it.’

“‘Of course you haven’t,’ I said, ‘and what’s more, you never will.
Now, see here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be quite frank with you, for I like
you’--he cast a strange, sidling glance at me, distrustful, like all
farmers--‘for I like you,’ I said, ‘and I want to do something for you.
The men who are promoting this legislation have exactly enough votes
to pass it over the governor’s veto, and it’s going to pass. On this
ballot they will have just ninety-one votes--one of their men will
vote against it to move a reconsideration if necessary, and about ten
will not vote. When the absentees are called, these ten will vote for
the bill, and on the verification, you’ll see others tumbling into the
band-wagon. Now, your vote is not needed, as you see, and, cast for the
bill or against it, can have no appreciable effect upon the result. The
bill will pass without your vote, and you can not defeat it, for the
hundred and two will stand firm in the end. One of them, however--it
is Berry, I don’t mind telling you--is trying, at the last minute, to
force us into raising his price. You can take his place, you can have
his price of the easy money with his raise added, if you will go out
there and vote for the bill.’

“He stood looking at the floor, ruminating.

“‘I know, Henderson,’ I continued, ‘that you are a poor man, that you
have a large family, that you have to work hard for a living. You are
going home to-morrow, maybe not to come back here any more, and you can
go if you wish, with three thousand dollars clean, cold cash in your
pocket. What do you say?’

“The old man turned his face away and began to fumble with his horny
fingers at his chin. His hand trembled as with a palsy. We could hear
the roll-call going on outside:

“‘Donavin!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Donnelly!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Evans!’

“‘No!’

“‘Finerty!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Fitzmeyer!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Flanigan!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Hear them?’ I said. ‘It’s nearly up to you--what do you say?’

“The old man’s lips quivered, and his calloused fingers grated in his
beard. He opened his lips to speak, but his jaw moved helplessly. And
we heard Hen’s voice back there in the house calling--calling so that
you could have heard him over in the Leland bar-room:

“‘Geisbach!’

“‘No!’

“‘He is one of those who will change,’ I said.

“‘Giger!’

“There was no response. ‘He’ll be all right when they call the
absentees,’ I said.

“‘Gordon!’

“‘No!’

“‘Griesheimer!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Hear them?’ I asked. The H’s came next, and the old man, still
fumbling with his chin, and without turning his head began to talk:

“‘Baldwin,’ he said, ‘you’re right. I am a poor man. I have a wife an’
eight children. To-morrow I’m goin’ back home, an’ o’ Monday I’m goin’
to hunt a job--hunt a job in the harves’ field. I’ve worked hard all my
life. I ’spect to work hard all my life. I’ll keep on huntin’ jobs in
the harves’ fields. I’ll probably die in the poor-house. I’ll be buried
in the potter’s field. God knows what’ll become of that woman and them
children.’

“He nodded his head as in assent to an indisputable proposition, and
his eyes widened as if in fright. They were looking down the barren
years before him, and I felt in that moment glad of my power to
brighten them.

“‘Hallen!’ we heard Hen call.

“‘No!’

“‘Henderson of Effingham.’

“‘Aye!’

“The old man straightened out his long, lank figure, and then suddenly
he turned and looked me in the eyes.

“‘But, Baldwin,’ he said, ‘I come here last January an honest man,
and to-morrow I’m goin’ back, back to ol’ Greene, back to my people,
back to that woman an’ them children, an’ Baldwin’--he gulped the
word--‘Baldwin, I’m goin’ back an honest man.’

“‘Henderson of Greene!’ Hen’s voice called, and the old man stalked
into the corridor and thundered ‘No!’ in a trumpet note.”

The lobbyist ceased. The train had stopped at Chenoa, and they could
hear the breathing of the engine, breathing as a living thing when it
rests. The noise ceased presently, and the silence of the wide country
night ensued. They heard only the notes that came from the throats of
frogs, and the stridulent drumming of the cicadæ. Baldwin looked at
the two politicians, expecting some comment. The oscitant Healy looked
out of the window, into the vast darkness brooding over the prairie
town. Jennings sat meditatively pulling at his moist mustache, an
expression of perplexity in his countenance, the wrinkles of increasing
concentration of mind gathering in his brow. Presently, without a word,
he rose and left the compartment. When he returned he was treading in
his stockings, his coat and waistcoat and collar had been removed, his
suspenders were hanging at his hips. He was evidently preparing for his
berth. Baldwin meanwhile had pressed a button, and sent Gentry, the
aged porter, now in white jacket, for his bag, and laid out on the seat
beside him his pajamas, and a traveler’s case filled with silver toilet
articles. Jennings lifted his own big valise to his knees, and from
its depths drew a bottle, wrapped heavily in a newspaper. He held one
of the heavy little glasses under the faucet of the water-cooler, and
allowed the water to trickle into it. Then, peeling back the paper from
his bottle, he took a long pull from its naked neck, and passed it to
Baldwin. As he did so, his brows still knotted in perplexity, he asked:

“What’d you say that feller’s name was?”

“Henderson.”

“Henderson of Greene, eh?”

“Yes.”

Jennings threw back his head and tilted the water, deadly cold from the
ice and tasting of smoke, into his throat, and when he had rinsed his
mouth, he said, with the happy expression of a man who has resolved a
doubt:

“Oah, yes, John Henderson, of Greene. He lived out at Rabb’s Corners.
Yes, that’s him; the governor ’p’inted him public administrator of
Greene County right after that session.”

The train lurched, and Jennings, bracing himself, wrapped up his bottle
and stowed it carefully away in his valise. And swinging the valise in
one hand and with the other hitching up his trousers, now beginning to
drag at his heels, he stepped away in his stockinged feet to his berth.

Baldwin began to wind his watch, and the Limited, with its three
hundred tons, and its tossing heads full of the schemes of politics,
went careering away on its paper wheels toward the capital of Illinois.




SENATE BILL 578


He was a page in the Illinois legislature--“House Page No. 7,” the
bright metal badge on the lapel of his little coat said--and all day
long he heard nothing but “Here, boy!” from city members, or “Hey,
bub!” from country members, or “Hi, there, kid!” from the other pages,
or “Get a move on you, Seven!” as the chief page snapped his fingers
at him in his lordly way. His real name was James, but he never heard
that, now that his father was dead. His mother called him Jamie.

Jamie was kept very busy and yet he enjoyed his legislative duties. He
felt that it was a big thing to help, even in his humble little way,
to make laws for all the people in the state. It was pretty important,
for instance, to carry a paper from some member up to the clerk’s desk,
for after the clerk had read it, on three different days, and the house
had voted on it and passed it, and after it had been read on three
different days and passed by the senate, and after the governor had
read it and thought over it as he walked back and forth between the
executive mansion and the state house, and had written his name on it,
it became a law, and everybody in the state had to obey it or go to
jail.

The people were called constituents, they seemed to be divided up among
all the members of the legislature; everybody in the state house had
his constituents. Jamie felt that, as a legislator, he should have some
constituents, but he couldn’t decide who his constituents were, and he
didn’t like to ask anybody. But finally he thought of his mother, and
when he told her that she was his constituent she took his little face
between her two hands and kissed him and pressed her cheek to his. Her
cheek was moist with tears.

If everybody in the state house had been as good to his constituents as
Jamie, Illinois would have been a very happy place in which to live.
When his father died, Jamie’s mother had to take in sewing and to work
hard to keep things going. She was sad much of the time, and always
looked tired, and this made Jamie sad. He longed to help her, but he
did not know what to do. Then a friend of theirs, Mr. Woodbridge, said
he could get Jamie a place in the house as a page boy--they always say
“page boy” in the legislature--and one morning Jamie’s mother dressed
him in his Sunday suit and sent him up to the state house with Mr.
Woodbridge.

And so he became a page. He was paid a dollar and a half a day. Every
twenty days the payrolls were made out, and Jamie would go down to the
treasury, sign his name in a big, round hand, “James Horn,” and then
proudly take home to his mother thirty dollars in fresh, crisp, green
bills! His mother had wished him to stay in school, but, of course,
being a page was better than going to school. There were no books to
study, and then you got out so much earlier every day! And more than
all, you couldn’t take home money from school!

The house met every morning at ten o’clock, and after the speaker had
taken his place under the canopy where the beautiful flag was draped,
and had rapped for order, and the chaplain had prayed, the clerk would
call the roll for the introduction of bills. This was Jamie’s busiest
time. Everybody would have bills to introduce or petitions from his
constituents to present, and for an hour Jamie would be scampering up
and down the aisles between the members’ desks and the clerk’s desk.
But after that he had a breathing spell, and could sit on the speaker’s
steps and whisper to the speaker’s page, or look about over the house
and watch the members. There were grave members from the country
districts with long whiskers and steel-bowed spectacles, there were
city members with fancy vests and diamonds, there were Irish members
and German members, there was a Polish member named Kumaszynski, and
there was a negro member, who sat away back on the Republican side
almost under the galleries, and was very quiet, and wore black clothes
and gold eye-glasses.

But there was one whom Jamie liked above all the others. He was tall,
with smiling blue eyes that saw everything, and though his black hair
was patched with gray at the temples, his face was that of a young
man, clean-shaven and ruddy. He was a Chicago member and the most
fashionably dressed man in the house--he wore a different suit of
clothes every day. He was a lawyer and his name was Bronson Meredith.
Jamie loved him the first time he ever saw him, and whenever Mr.
Meredith clapped his hands Jamie would spring to his side before any
other page had started, and if by chance Mr. Meredith ever gave a
resolution or a bill to any of the other boys Jamie felt a twinge of
jealousy at his heart.

Sometimes he would loiter an instant beside Mr. Meredith’s desk, and
a smile from him made Jamie happy all that day. Jamie longed to touch
him with his hand, but dared not. The only thing he could do was to
pat Mr. Meredith’s overcoat, with its soft, silken lining, as it hung
on its hook in the cloak-room. At night, lying in his bed, Jamie would
close his eyes and see Mr. Meredith standing beside his desk, his lips
slightly parted in a smile, showing his white teeth and replying so
sharply to members who interrupted him that they would shoot down into
their seats with red faces and all the other members would laugh, while
Mr. Meredith, raising his hand, would go on with his speech, saying:

“Now, Mr. Speaker, as I was about to remark when I yielded to the
perplexing question of the distinguished gentleman from Pike--”

Mr. Meredith was not often on his feet, as they say in legislative
bodies, but when he took part in a debate all the other members kept
still and listened with their hands behind their ears, which they
didn’t do when any one else spoke. Mr. Meredith was a leader--many
called him a reformer. Jamie decided that when he grew up he would be a
lawyer, a leader and a reformer.

Now, when the session was about over there was a bill in the house
which almost all the Chicago members hoped to see made into a law; but
Mr. Meredith was against it. The country members, too, for the most
part, were against the bill, and Jamie noticed that when it first came
over from the senate there was a stir in the house, and that every
time it came up, after that, all the members would rush in from the
cloak-rooms, or the lobbies, or the supreme court library, or the
rotunda of the state house, to speak about it and to vote on it.

Jamie did not understand the bill, or know what it was for; he only
knew that it was something about a franchise in Chicago, and that every
week a party of rich-looking gentlemen would come down to Springfield
and stand about in the house, or sit on the big red lounge behind the
speaker’s chair, and whisper and try to get men to vote for it.

And Jamie knew, too, that it was called senate bill No. 578; he
impressed that number firmly on his mind and could never forget
it. He soon observed that on any day when he saw S. B. 578 on the
calendar--which is a kind of program printed every morning to tell what
bills are coming up--Mr. Meredith would be on his feet and make motions
and speeches, and that the gentlemen on the speaker’s red lounge would
scowl at him and the other city members try to answer him. And Jamie
noticed that Mr. Meredith always succeeded in having the bill referred
back to some committee, or did something to keep it from becoming a law.

Jamie read the newspapers now and then. He always turned first to
the base-ball news--the season was just opening--and then to the
legislative news, although he never read that as carefully as he did
the base-ball news. Often he saw Mr. Meredith’s name in the types--the
papers said he was making a gallant fight against the franchise grab.
Jamie hoped with all his soul that Mr. Meredith would win in that
fight; not, of course, that he cared about the franchise grab--he had,
like many older persons, very hazy ideas about that--but he always
wished to see Mr. Meredith win.

The spring had come, and as the legislature usually ends early in June,
and the work was piling up, the house was meeting at nine o’clock in
the morning. The house adjourned every Friday at noon, in order that
the members might go home over Sunday, and it didn’t meet again until
Monday afternoon at five o’clock, and then only for a few minutes. The
members who had gone home did not get back until Tuesday morning, and
there were never many there Monday afternoon, not even a quorum, and it
was always understood that nothing was to be done at that session. The
chaplain prayed, the journal of Friday’s session was read and approved,
and the house adjourned until Tuesday morning.

But one Monday afternoon when Jamie reached the hall of the house
he was surprised to find a big body of members there--almost all
the Chicago members except Mr. Meredith. Those rich gentlemen were
there, too, sitting on the speaker’s red lounge. Jamie looked for
Mr. Meredith--he was not there. He thought instantly of senate bill
578--something was up! They were going to try to pass senate bill
578--that was why the gentlemen were there on the speaker’s red lounge;
that was why the Chicago members had come down to Springfield on the
Monday afternoon train instead of waiting for the Monday night train.
Jamie was worried.

It was a balmy spring day with a sky blue and tender, and a soft wind
that wafted strange sweet country smells about, smells that filled
Jamie with dreamy longings and a kind of pleasant sadness. The speaker
gently tapped with his gavel; the good old chaplain rose and spread out
his white hands.

“O Lord,” he prayed, “we thank Thee that the winter is past, that the
rain is over and gone, that the flowers appear upon the earth, that the
time of the singing of birds is come.”

The words stole sweetly in upon Jamie’s soul. He sat on the steps,
looking out of the open windows at the tender young leaves of the maple
trees--it was just the way he used to look out of the open windows in
school before vacation came, when he thought of the swimming-hole out
at Sycamore and of going barefooted. It was all so calm and peaceful.
But with the chaplain’s “Amen!” the speaker’s gavel cracked and the
buzzing noise peculiar to the house began again. And Jamie awoke from
his reveries with a start. He had heavier things to think of now; he
was almost a man; he was in the legislature. Senate bill 578 was on its
third reading, the gang was present, and Mr. Meredith had not come.
Jamie was troubled, and sighed. He must attend to his duties--he must
do something.

Jamie looked over all the faces before him; nowhere could he find one
man he could trust as a friend of Mr. Meredith.

He glanced at the door with a lingering hope that Mr. Meredith would
appear, but of course he did not come. Then Jamie slowly hitched down
the speaker’s stairs, a step at a time, and, reaching the floor,
slipped over by the reporters’ boxes--empty that afternoon, for the
correspondents, like the legislators, never returned until Tuesday
morning--and thence into the side aisle, under the gallery, and to the
cloak-room. There he got his cap, looked longingly at Mr. Meredith’s
hook, empty now, with no satin-lined overcoat for him to nestle
lovingly against for a blissful second, and then he went out into the
hall under the huge dome. No one, of course, observed a mere page
boy, but Jamie felt, as he clicked his hurrying little heels across
the marble floors, that something was about to poke him in his cold,
unprotected back--the fear of a rear attack that boyhood inherits from
its far-distant savage ancestry. Jamie didn’t take the elevator, or the
grand staircase, but reached the main floor by leaping two steps at a
time down a narrow side stairway, unused and dark.

Then he flew out of the east entrance, ran down the wide walk and on up
Capitol Avenue for four long blocks--ran as fast as he could pump his
little short legs to the hotel where he knew Mr. Meredith lived when
he was at the capital. But Jamie had no hope of finding him there that
afternoon. He went to the hotel simply because he did not know where
else to go--that was all. Rushing into the hotel and up to the clerk’s
desk, he put his chin over its edge and, as the clerk leaned down with
his face almost in Jamie’s face, the boy panted:

“Is--now--Honorable Bronson Meredith in?”

The clerk smiled and Jamie blushed, fearing the clerk was making fun of
him. And his heart sank--he might have known Mr. Meredith was not in.

“Whom did you say?” asked the clerk.

“Honorable Bronson Meredith--the gentleman from Cook--”

The clerk was knitting his brows, though the wrinkles about his lips
were twitching as if he found it hard to keep them from rippling out
into smiles. Jamie thought the clerk was wonderfully stupid not to know
such a great man as Mr. Meredith, and he added, in order to jog the
man’s memory a little:

“You know--the reformer.”

The clerk straightened up, placed his hands on his hips, threw back his
head and laughed. Jamie stared at him with wide eyes--he saw nothing
to laugh at, especially when senate bill 578 was coming up. Presently
the clerk took one of his hands from his side and dropped it on the big
bell beside the register, and as it clanged out in the empty lobby, he
shouted in his laughing voice:

“Front!”

A bell-boy in buttons slid to the desk just as a page boy does in the
house when a member claps his hands. The bell-boy and Jamie looked each
other all over from head to toe in the instant they stood there facing
each other, and the clerk began:

“Go see if Mr. Meredith--”

And just then a tall form appeared around the corner of a wall, and
Jamie looked up.

It was Mr. Meredith himself, as smiling as the spring, with a bunch of
violets in the lapel of his new light coat. Jamie sprang at him.

“Oh, Mr. Meredith,” he exclaimed, raising his clasped hands almost
appealingly, “come--quick! Come quick!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” said Mr. Meredith, halting in surprise.

“They’ve got senate bill 578 up!”

Mr. Meredith’s eyes opened; his face lost its mild expression.

“What do you know about senate bill 578?”

Jamie took him by the coat--he dared at last to lay hands on his sacred
person--and tugged as he said:

“Oh, honest--Mr. Meredith--honest--cross my heart they have--you’ll be
too late!”

Mr. Meredith looked at the pleading lad closely, and then suddenly
exclaimed:

“Oh, yes! You’re one of the page boys.” And then he ran as fast as he
could through the lobby, down the steps and across the sidewalk, Jamie
after him.

“Come on!” cried Mr. Meredith, as he stooped to plunge into a carriage
at the curb, dragging Jamie in after him, and shouting to the driver:

“The state house--fast as you can drive!”

The driver whirled his carriage about in Sixth Street, and as Mr.
Meredith drew in his head and slammed the heavy door he shouted:

“Faster there--I’ll double your fare!”

The carriage lurched around the corner, the lash of the driver’s whip
writhed in the air, and the horses went galloping with the rattling old
hack down Capitol Avenue. And as the carriage pitched and rocked Jamie
was supremely happy--he had done what he could, and, better than all,
he was sitting beside Mr. Meredith and actually riding in the same hack
with him!

Mr. Meredith was silent until the carriage whirled into the state
house grounds and the horses, breathing heavily, were plunging up the
driveway toward the north portico. Then he turned and said:

“How’d they know I was in town?”

Jamie looked up in surprise.

“Who?” he said.

“Why,” replied Mr. Meredith, “whoever sent you.”

Jamie felt hurt.

“But no one sent me, Mr. Meredith,” he said; “I just came.”

“And how did you know I was here?”

“I guessed.”

Mr. Meredith was thoughtful for an instant and then said:

“But why did you come?”

Jamie blushed.

“I--I--I--now--” he stammered. “I don’t like to tell.” And he hid his
face against Mr. Meredith’s sleeve.

The carriage stopped, the driver leaped from his box and flung open
the door. Mr. Meredith sprang out, leaped up the stone steps, ran down
the corridors, dashed into the elevator and was shot up to the third
floor. Jamie had been compelled to run faster than he ever did in his
life to keep up with him. He was nearly pinched by the iron door of the
elevator as the man slid it shut.

But he was close at Mr. Meredith’s heels when he ran into the house.
The few senators, having just concluded a perfunctory Monday afternoon
session over in their more or less solemn chamber, were bustling into
the hall of the house, evidently expecting something of interest to
occur. They pressed by the doorkeeper, and as they entered Jamie heard
the speaker cry:

“The gentleman from Cook asks unanimous consent to have senate bill 578
taken up out of the regular order, read at large a third time, and put
upon its passage. Are there any objections?”

The speaker raised his gavel, waited an instant, and said:

“The chair hears--”

But suddenly a voice beside Jamie rang out like a bugle:

“Object!”

The speaker looked up in amazement. The members of the gang turned
about in their seats with startled, guilty faces; the rich gentlemen on
the speaker’s red lounge leaned forward with pained expressions. Mr.
Meredith was striding down the center aisle, his hat in his hand, his
face red, his eyes on fire.

Half-way down the aisle he halted, and once more shouted in that
fearless note:

“I object! A million people in Chicago to-night are waiting to hear
from this house on this franchise bill--I dare you to take it up in
this star-chamber session!”

Mr. Meredith’s hand swept a wide arc that included the whole house as
he flung his defiance, and then he stood glaring at them all. The eyes
that met Mr. Meredith’s eyes quailed; the house was still. No one rose,
no one replied to him.

Then after a long minute of this painful silence the speaker, lowering
his head until Jamie could not see his face, said in a low voice:

“Objections are heard.”

And so the franchise grab bill was not taken up that day after all.

The session was very short after that, and when the house adjourned Mr.
Meredith went down to the speaker’s dais. The speaker looked up as if
he thought Mr. Meredith was coming to speak to him, but Mr. Meredith
stopped at the steps, and taking Jamie’s little hand he pressed it in
his own big palm and said:

“Come with me.”

It was the proudest moment of Jamie’s life as he walked out of the
noisy chamber, through the crowd of angry, baffled members, past the
staring pages, by the wondering doorkeepers, and so on out into the
rotunda. They walked down the great white staircase, and as they were
passing around the polished brass railing of the balcony on the second
floor Mr. Meredith said, as if suddenly reminded of something:

“Beg your pardon, but what’s your name?”

“James Horn,” replied Jamie.

They kept on and Jamie wondered where they were going, until they
turned into the governor’s offices. Jamie’s heart leaped suddenly.
Surely this was a day of big surprises, thought he.

“Is the governor in?” Mr. Meredith asked of the governor’s private
secretary.

“Yes--just go right in, Mr. Meredith,” and in another instant Jamie
was standing beside Mr. Meredith in the presence of the governor.

The governor rose as they entered, and looked first at Mr. Meredith,
then lowered his kind blue eyes and fixed them on Jamie.

“Governor,” said Mr. Meredith, “I wish to present my little friend,
Master James Horn.”

The governor bowed, took Jamie’s hand in his own and said in his soft
voice:

“I’m very glad to meet you, Master Horn, I’m sure.”

Jamie felt himself tingle all through at the governor’s words.

“Master Horn, Governor,” continued Mr. Meredith, “is a page boy in
the house, and to-day, when we were all caught napping, he saved the
franchise bill from becoming a law.”

The governor, looking a question at Mr. Meredith, said:

“Ah?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Meredith, and then, when the governor had motioned
them to take seats, and Jamie had worked and wiggled himself away back
into a deep leather chair, with his legs and feet sticking straight out
in front of him, Mr. Meredith told the governor the whole story. When
he had done, the governor rose and went over to where Jamie sat in the
big chair, his arms stretched along the chair’s arms.

Jamie would have wriggled out of the chair, but he had not time to
do so. And then, as he looked up into the grave, kind face, His
Excellency, speaking very seriously, said:

“My boy, you have done the people of Chicago and the people of Illinois
a great service--a service you will understand some day--and now, on
their behalf, I wish to thank you for it.”




MACOCHEE’S FIRST CAMPAIGN FUND


Squire Goddard had been renominated as mayor of Macochee for the fifth
time, and for three weeks had played his customary checker games
with the firemen in the town hall, serene in the conviction that he
could not fail of reëlection. Then suddenly he awakened to the fact
that he had been the victim of a gum-shoe campaign. Election was but
a week off, and something had to be done. So they raised a campaign
fund. Now, Macochee, in that day, had never had a campaign fund. The
state committee never put any money into Gordon County, even in a
presidential year. The Republicans didn’t have to, and the Democrats
knew better. The local candidates, of course, had little expenses
of their own--for cigars, for carriages when there were township
meetings out in the little red school-house, for printing the tickets
(in the days before we had the Australian ballot), and for Ganson’s
hack to use at the polls on election day, but they were stingy in
these things. Macochee and Gordon County always went right, anyhow.
Joe Boyle, Captain Bishop, Major Turner, old Bill Williams and John
Ernest had been parceling the fat offices in the court-house among
themselves ever since the war, and all a county convention ever had to
do was to renominate the old ticket, and it went through in November
without a scratch. Sometimes, because of curious constitutional
prejudices against a county treasurer succeeding himself, they had to
run Captain Bishop for county clerk, and let old Bill Williams have
the treasury, but it only meant, after all, changing the combination
a little, and beyond the trouble of moving some favorite old desk
chairs, which had molded themselves to rheumatic backs, from one side
of the court-house to the other, the ring remained undisturbed in that
ancient, life-giving pile. Of course they had to find a new candidate
for prosecuting attorney every six years, but, fortunately, the crop of
young lawyers is one that never fails, whatever party is in power down
in Washington.

And so, among a virgin electorate, the advent of a campaign fund was
an impressive event. The people felt that they had entered upon a new
era in their political life, just as they did when the council bought
the new fire apparatus and began to agitate the question of bonding
the town for water-works--a proposition, by the way, upon which the
leading citizens sat down quickly enough, because it meant taxes--while
the line of loafers leaning against the court-house fence increased,
waiting for the distribution. They had vague notions about a campaign
fund in Macochee. The amount was reputed to be five hundred dollars,
and, technically, it was in the custody of the court-house ring, but
as they had never had a campaign fund to disburse before, and could
not decide how to proceed, it was temporarily locked in the county
treasurer’s vault, where, not being interest on the public moneys,
it was comparatively safe. Meanwhile they were sticking closer than
brothers. They would not allow one of their number out of their sight.
They went to their meals in relays, and held night sessions in the
treasury, losing sleep and rest, so that all their latent diseases,
rheumatics, phthisis, lumbago, gravel, and so on, were aggravated. They
became cross, jealous and suspicious, full of envy, debate, deceit,
malignity; whisperers, back-biters, despiteful, proud, boasters,
inventors of evil things. They swore as they had not sworn since the
battle of Port Republic. They cursed each other, they cursed Horace
Goddard, and when these subjects failed, they cursed young Halliday.

Young Halliday was at the bottom of all the deviltry in Macochee. He
had not been out of Harvard a month before all the good people in the
town were wagging their heads sadly and saying: “Tsck! Tsck! Tsck!” He
parted his hair in the middle. He brought home a habit of dropping his
r’s, and of pronouncing his a’s with a broad accent, as, for instance,
when he said “rawther;” he smoked cigarettes, puffed a heavy brier
pipe, wore red neckties and knickerbockers, and he drank beer. And he
did something else, something that struck the moral fiber of the town
on the raw. He changed his politics and became a Democrat!

Being a Democrat in Macochee is like being a Republican in Alabama.
There are hardly enough Democrats in Macochee--outside of the fifth
ward, which is Irish--to hold primaries, and they always have mass
conventions to hide their political nakedness. Hank Defrees, the
only Democratic lawyer in Macochee, insisted that conventions were
necessary in order to keep up the party organization. He liked to go
over to Columbus every two years as delegate to the state convention.
It afforded him an outing and a chance at the whisky in the Neil
House. Besides, it is something to go to the state convention with the
solid vote of any county, even Gordon, in your vest pocket. The local
Democrats humored Hank. He had been their only available timber for
Common Pleas judge and prosecuting attorney, and he had been sacrificed
on the altar of his party times enough, surely, to entitle him to
whatever there was in sight.

But George Halliday had been reared a Republican. His father had been
an Abolitionist, the friend of Salmon P. Chase, and his home had been
known in its time as one of the stations of the underground railway. He
had voted for John C. Fremont, and he had voted a straight Republican
ticket ever since. George had responded to these home influences
sympathetically, and had given early promise of that vital interest in
politics for which Ohio mothers ardently look in their sons. His first
experience in politics was in 1876, when he took an active part in the
Hayes-Tilden campaign, crying after the little Catholic boys from the
parochial school, on his homeward way at evening:

  “Fried rats and pickled cats,
  Are good enough for Democrats.”

And once he marched with a party of his playmates in a torchlight
procession, under a transparency which announced exultantly:

  “Hurrah for Hayes! He’s the man!
  If we can’t vote, our daddies can!”

That was a fine campaign, extending far beyond autumn, and during
the long winter evenings he had been allowed to sit up, sometimes
until after nine o’clock, to hear his father read in the Cincinnati
_Gazette_, of the bloody deeds of the Ku-Klux Klan. The strange,
cabalistic words froze the very blood in his veins. At night he would
hear the drumming of horses’ hoofs, and see white-sheeted forms
galloping by in the gloom. Sometimes they halted and looked at him
through big black eyeholes.

These were the Ku-Klux, and he was afraid, until the evening his father
came home radiant, sat down to the supper table with a smile that gave
a fine cheer to the room and said:

“Well, we got Hayes in.”

Later, when he was in the high school, he became a member of the Blaine
and Logan marching club, wore a red oilcloth cape and carried a torch.
As he trudged along Macochee’s streets, strangely unfamiliar in the
darkness, breathing the smoke of the flaring torches, intoxicated by
the tired throbbing of the bass drum, he would shout in unison with the
hoarse voices of excited men:

  “Blaine--Blaine,
  James--G.--Blaine!”

Then the procession, debouching into the Square, was swallowed up by
the crowd; nothing remained of it but extinguished reeking torches
scattered here and there among the thousands of restless heads. George
wriggled his way up to the festooned band stand, he saw the pale
speakers and the countless vice-presidents--his father was one of the
vice-presidents--and he listened to the inspiring song of the Glee Club:

  “Dinna ye hear the slogan,
  Jimmy Blaine and Johnny Logan?
  The plumed knight and warrior bold
    Are bound to gain the day.
  The golden gates are creaking
  While the Yankee boys are speaking,
  And the Johnnies are retreating,
    For we’re bound to gain the day.”

His eyes had been blurred by the tears, his heart had ached with the
secret pain of patriotism. He had registered sweet vows; he never could
forget--and yet, now, just as his education was complete and he was
ready to enter upon his career, just as the new sign of the new firm of
Halliday and Halliday, attorneys-at-law, was swinging at the foot of
the stairs in the People’s National Bank block, he had turned Democrat.
It was a sore subject at home. He and his father no longer discussed
the tariff question. Mrs. Halliday said it made her nervous, as it
might anybody.

That winter Halliday did nothing more serious than to attend a
Catholic fair in Father Hennessey’s church, and make a speech awarding
the prize some one had won in the raffle. But in the spring, Hank
Defrees, loafing around among the boys, told them the thing to do was
to nominate George for mayor on the Democratic ticket, and it was done.
When old Horace Goddard heard of the nomination, he chuckled until
his great belly shook, and actually invited Captain Bishop and the
rest of the boys, who had gathered at the post-office to wait for the
seven o’clock mail, around to Cramer’s drug store to have a drink. The
cronies all laughed as they drank--though they said, with soberness,
that they felt sorry for old Judge Halliday himself.

It was a cruel thing to do, and it was young Halliday’s idea alone. He
was a youth with aspirations, and he saw in the nomination something
more than the mere compliment Hank Defrees had intended. Therefore
Squire Goddard’s checker game was interrupted by a black-coated
delegation of Protestant clergymen. It was a Monday morning, and they
must have come straight from preachers’ meeting with their impudent
questions. They wanted to know whether or not it was true that the
liquor laws had not been enforced, and how he stood on the saloon
question generally. The old squire puffed profusely and made promises.
The next day a committee of saloon-keepers was called. The old man blew
out his varicose cheeks and sputtered:

“I’ve ran for mayor o’ this ’ere town now goin’ on five times, and I’m
dog _damned_ if I ever heerd such a lot o’ fool questions before!”

The next day it was rumored that Father Hennessey had told his
parishioners that Squire Goddard could not be trusted. Then the storm
broke. The W. C. T. U. held a mass meeting and issued an appeal to
save the boys. That night husbands were put on the rack of domestic
inquisition. They had it pointed out to them that there was a drunkard
in every fifth family--statistics proved it--and parents didn’t want
their boys exposed any longer to such temptations. No one knew where
the statistical lightning was going to strike.

“Suppose you want to intrust the regulation of the rum power to the
Democrats, do you?” sneered the husbands, with ironical grunts, thereby
moving the previous question and closing the debate. Nevertheless,
after that the mayor was kept busy explaining, which is the direst
necessity that can befall a candidate. He encountered Halliday in the
Square one day, and blazed forth:

“You’re gittin’ too smart ’round this town all to onct, young feller.
You know more’n your pap a’ready, an’ if he can’t l’arn ye no respec’
fer yer elders, I will.” He shook a palsied fist at the youth, as he
added, in a tone almost pitiable: “An’ I’ll tell him jest what you
done, too.”

Defeat might have killed the old man, and the campaign was beginning
to tell on him. But when they raised the fund, it was as a hot and
sweetened toddy to warm the cockles of his heart. While he had no
adequate concept of it, and while the manner of its working was a
mystery to him, he did not doubt its efficacy. He felt safe. Also, as
the subject of the only campaign fund Gordon County had ever known,
he felt a supreme importance, which swelled out his chest and filled
him with a ripe content. He even found himself taking the opposition
with some zest, now that it was certain to be non-effective. Three
days more, thought the squire, and it would be all over. He imagined
some sort of civic triumph for himself. He dreamed of a serenade
by the Macochee Silver Cornet Band, in the evening, under the shade
of the pine trees about his home. He dramatized himself as bowing
and smiling on the front porch. He would go out just as he was, in
his shirt-sleeves and slippers, his silver-bowed spectacles on his
nose, and the Cincinnati paper in his hand. It would be thus more
spontaneous, more democratic. Mandy would stand behind him, holding
the lamp high. The front picket fence would be black with people. He
wondered if there would be enough of the campaign fund left to provide
the cake she must offer the band boys, and whether a part of its office
was to meet such contingencies. So the old squire sat in his old chair,
the split bottom of which had been worn shiny years ago, and smoked his
old pipe, with sharp, dry puffs of contentment.

The squire looked forward to disbursing the fund himself, but the
court-house ring still clung to it in indecision. Friday morning,
when they met, election was but three days off, and the ring agreed
that they must get down to business. Major Turner said, with profound
wisdom, that money could be used to best advantage in the saloons.
Charley Bassett--he was prosecuting attorney then--asked, with a
lawyer’s passion for fine distinctions, in what sense the major
employed the word “used.” Before the major could reply--he had knit his
brows and was whittling a fresh chew from his plug, to irrigate his
thought--old Bill Williams said:

“No, that won’t do; we must use it to get out the vote.”

“Well,” said Bassett, who always annoyed the old fellows with his young
haggling, “how’ll you get out the vote?”

The auditor, with an effort at something definite, said:

“Why, we must have organization--that’s what wins in elections
these days.” He shook his head, in a keen triumph, for the phrase
pleased him, as phrases do please politicians. He began to conceive
himself--gladly, as a great political leader, as an organizer of
victory. “Organization, that’s the word,” he persisted, and then,
growing bolder, he brought his fist down on his fat knee, and plunged
on heedlessly into detail.

“You just give me that fund,” he said, “and I’ll--I’ll show you,” he
brought up lamely.

“Well, tell us how you’d spend it,” insisted Bassett. “What’d you buy
first? Remember, election’s only next Tuesday.”

“Why, why,” hesitated Williams, “I’d spend it gittin’ out the vote.
I’d git kerriages, and have signs painted to hang on the horses,
readin’,” and he lined the imaginary letters on the rough palm of his
left hand with the gnarled forefinger of his right, “‘Republican City
Committee--Vote for Goddard.’”

The old squire, tickled with the sound of the last legend, broke in
with:

“You’ve got the idee, Billy.”

“Course,” said Williams, expanding more and more, “I seen ’em that
way when I was in Columbus onct, on ’lection day. Get about five good
two-horse kerriages--”

But the captious Bassett, remembering that old Bill’s son-in-law, Hi
Wellman, kept the livery stable, interrupted him by saying:

“Oh, that wouldn’t cost more’n twenty dollars, and, anyway, we can use
our own buggies, same as we’ve always done.”

Captain Bishop, who had been carefully combing his whiskers with his
fingers, then advanced his scheme.

“Seems to me,” he said, “that we’d ought to have a campaign committee,
with a treasur’ and a finance committee, and let the treasur’ pay out
only on warrants drawed by the finance committee--then there’d be no
question.”

“No, there’d be no question,” said Bassett cynically, “there’d be no
question. And the finance committee could draw warrants for their own
arrest, while they’re about it.”

The ring gasped, and though the captain tried to say something about
business methods, they were all silent for a long time, chewing their
tobacco gravely and thoughtfully, until the squire nervously ventured
to ask:

“But what do you think we’d best spend it fer?”

“Votes,” said Bassett laconically.

“That’s surely what we want,” said Judge Ernest, speaking for the first
time. The old men in the circle wheeled toward the probate judge. They
had not been surprised at what Bassett said, for he never attended
service, and was reputed to be a free-thinker, but Judge Ernest was a
pillar in the church.

“Why, John,” said Major Turner, “you don’t mean to say you’d buy votes?”

“Didn’t say I would, did I?” snapped the old man, wriggling uneasily in
his Delaware chair. “I meant that the money ought to be used so as to
produce votes.”

“Exactly,” assented Bassett.

“And if it don’t do that,” the judge went on, “why we’d ought to give
it back to them as contributed.” The judge offered this solution with a
new hope dawning in his heart, for he had mourned over the ten dollars
he had invested in the fund. A murmur of approval ran around the ring,
and the old squire, fearing the dissolution of the fund, was the only
one in the room whose face did not glow.

“I’ll tell you, boys,” said Joe Bogle, “we might whack her up among the
crowd and everybody do the best they can with their share.”

“That’s what I call a grand su’gestion,” said Judge Ernest, shaking his
head approvingly.

But Bassett shook his head the other way. “No,” he said, “that won’t
do, we want some system in this thing. It ought to be changed into
dollar bills and then given to the central committeemen to use in
their wards election day. Of course we won’t need so much in the strong
Republican wards--we’ll put it out in Lighttown and down in Gooseville
among the niggers, and some of it across the tracks among the boys in
the shops--that’s where it’ll tell.”

But the ring stubbornly opposed the idea of letting that pile of money
go out of its hands. They put only young men on the city committee, and
the honor and importance were enough for them. They would be wanting
office next.

The old squire voiced the protest.

“’Pears to me,” he whined, “that as I’m runnin’, I’d ought to have a
leetle of it fer my own expenses on ’lection day. I’ve been givin’ of
my services to the party now fer nigh on to twenty year, not countin’
my term in the army, and it’s expensive, ’specially with that young
Halliday carryin’ on the way he is--”

“No one never made up a fund for none of us, Hod Goddard,” chorused the
old fellows.

“Yes, and there’s others on the ticket besides you,” interrupted
Bassett. “Let each candidate spend his own money if he wants to. You
hain’t paid your assessment yet, anyhow.”

“But I’m the head o’ the ticket,” stammered the squire, his red face
deepening to purple.

The booming of the town clock in the court-house tower startled the
ring, and the county officials glanced at their big silver watches.
They were already half an hour late for their dinners.

“And my wife told me to fetch home some meat,” said Bassett, forgetting
all else as he seized his hat.

And so the conference broke up. Saturday night came, they had no
solution, and, like those that do business in great waters, were at
their wits’ end.

Sunday morning a report spread through the town that caused the ring
to take heart of grace. It was a report of serious defections in
Halliday’s ranks. Jerry Sullivan, Scotty Gordon, old man Garwood, Rice
Murrell and even Hank Defrees had been going about town all Saturday
afternoon and evening, and everywhere they went they told people it
was no use--Halliday couldn’t be elected. He might have been two
weeks ago, if he had acted differently, but now--they shook their
heads. They couldn’t stand for him any more--he needn’t look to them
for support--he hadn’t treated them right--they had been fools to
expect anything from such a dude. Five hundred dollars, they said,
judiciously used, would settle his hash. They wished they had the
management of it, they would revenge themselves for his slights and
insults. And these were representative men, even if their portraits had
not been made in half-tone for the _History of Gordon County_.

Jerry Sullivan lived on the hill behind the priest’s house, and was
the “darlint” of all the old women in Lighttown. He was a lad of power
in the Fifth Ward. Scotty Gordon lived across the tracks in the Second
Ward and worked in the shops. Old man Garwood lived just at the edge of
town, on the Blue Jacket road, in the Fourth Ward, and Rice Murrell,
the Reverend Rice Murrell, the pastor of the A. M. E. church--who had
turned Democrat when they took the janitorship of the court-house away
from him--could do more with the colored voters down in Gooseville than
any man, save Judge Halliday, and he was out of politics. Hank Defrees,
of course, who still shivered under the fringe of a ragged garment
of respectability by clinging to a heavily mortgaged home far out on
Scioto Street, where the better element of the town began to thin out
into social mediocrity, stood for the aristocratic Third Ward, with its
normal Republican majority of two hundred and eleven. The Democrats had
never been able to make up a ward delegation in the Third, and Defrees
for years and years had sat in all city and county conventions very
much at large.

Such a defection, on the eve of election, was serious, as every one
recognized. Just after dinner, on Sunday, Judge Halliday, who had
disclaimed all interest in the campaign, beckoned his son into the
parlor, darkened for secrets, and said to him in a whisper that Mrs.
Halliday plainly heard over the banister of the staircase in the hall:

“Did you know that Hank Defrees and that Sullivan boy and Gordon and
old man Garwood, and even Rice Murrell, are around working against you?”

George gasped with surprise.

“And did you know,” the father whispered on, “that the Republicans have
raised a corruption fund--five hundred dollars, I understand?”

“Yes, I heard that,” said George, “must be getting desperate, you
fellows, eh?”

“Now, my son,” said the judge, with brows lowered, “you know I would
have absolutely nothing to do with such a business as that. You know my
opinions on such things too well.”

“Oh, of course, father,” said the boy, “that’s all right. I know you
wouldn’t countenance it--”

“And I was just going to say,” the elder man continued, “that while I
do not agree with you, and while I would not vote for you--at least,
I do not think I would--I was just going to say that if you need any
money yourself, to meet any of the--ah--legitimate expenses of your
campaign, why, just call on me.”

The boy grasped his father’s hand, and when he could speak, he said:

“Thank you, father, thank you, but not now--it isn’t worth it--but I’ll
see what’s the matter with these Indians, anyway.”

George went to his offices, over the People’s National Bank and
waited an hour in the rear room, a dark and dingy room, with the dust
of a country law office deep on everything, and one ray of sunlight
scrambling in through the heavy shutters from the alley. Then one after
another, up the worn and splintered stairs with tin signs of insurance
agents and notaries public on every step, five men clambered. They
were grinning when they entered the room, grinning and standing about
awkwardly, all save Hank Defrees, who was solemn and imponderable,
chewing his tobacco as gravely as if he were making an appearance in
court.

“Well,” said George, standing in the middle of the floor, “anything
happened?”

The men all looked at one another, hesitating to speak, but finally
Scotty Gordon said:

“Happened! Well, I guess yes.”

“What?” queried George.

“Well,” he began, “now I done it, and last night old Bill Williams
hunted me up in Jake Fogarty’s saloon, and, well, he offered me fifty
dollars to use if I wanted it.”

“Say,” Jerry Sullivan broke in--“Captain Bishop offered me
seventy-five.”

“And didn’t you take it?”

“Why, no,” said Jerry.

“What did you tell him?”

The lad’s eyes twinkled.

“I told him,” he answered slowly, “that it wouldn’t be a drop in the
bucket.”

“Good for you,” said George. “And now, Mr. Garwood?”

“Well,” said the old man, “don’t know as I got much to say. Major
Turner, though, ’as ’round to my house this morning, an’--Well, he
offered me fifty dollars if I felt the way I had been reported, and
thought I could use it.”

“Judge,” said George, turning to Defrees, “it’s up to you.”

The old lawyer took his tobacco in his fist and chucked it away. “Joe
Bogle,” he said, “told me he knew where there’s a hundred for me if I
could do any good with it.”

“And, doctor,” said Halliday, facing around to the Reverend Mr.
Murrell, who stood solemn in his black garments and white tie, “what
happened to you?”

The old negro glanced all around him cautiously and even craned his
neck to peer into the room beyond.

“Well, suh,” he began, “Judge Ernest ’as out this mornin’ to hyah me
preach, an’ aftah service was ovah, he drawed me to one side, and
’gin to talk politics. He ast me how I felt towa’ds you all, Mistuh
Halliday, an’--Ah didn’ like to say it--but you done tol’ me, ’membah.”

“That’s right,” said George, urging the parson out of his hesitation,
“you made it strong, I hope.”

“Wellum, Ah tol’ the judge that Ah wasn’ pow’ful strong on you any
moah, sense, Ah said, you all hadn’t felt ’sposed to help us ’ith the
subscription fo’ the new roof on ouah chu’ch.”

“That was clever,” said George, “damned clever--I beg your pardon.”
The old negro’s eyes had widened till their whites showed, and he had
raised his hands, holding up his yellow palms before George. “But go
on.”

“Well, suh, the jedge ’as al’ays had an interest in ouah spiritual
welfare, an’ so he ’lowed we’d ought to be holpen out some.” The old
man paused and swallowed ceremoniously. “An’ so, gen’lemen, he offered
me a hundred an’ fifty dollahs.”

The dark eyes of the old man shone with a strange new luster.

“What did you say?”

“Well, suh,” the preacher hesitated, “Ah took it.”

George brought his hand down on the parson’s shoulder with a heavy
slap and he laughed. “Good, Bishop, good.”

They counted the money out on the table--exactly four hundred and
ninety dollars, the first campaign fund Macochee had ever known. Then
they laughed and laughed and laughed.

When Halliday had laid his plans for the morrow’s battle before his
companions, he leaned back in his chair and said, turning to the
Reverend Rice Murrell:

“I don’t suppose, Bishop, that you approve of the use of money in
politics, do you?”

“No, _suh_,” the old preacher replied, with a smart gravity, “an’
somepin’ done tol’ me, yist’day, when the jedge come to see me, that it
’as jus’ providential that this much o’ that filthy lucah ’as removed
from corruptin’ ouah ’lections by bein’ placed in mah han’s.” His
rolling eyes bulged and he dribbled at the mouth as he fingered the
pile of bills.

“Well,” said George, “don’t put too big a roof on the church, and
remember--Gooseville’s going to vote to-morrow.”

“Oh, nevah you feah ’bout Gooseville, mah brothah--she’ll be votin’
early an’ of’en to-morrah, an’ she’ll vote right.”

George Halliday was mayor of Macochee but one term. That is a trick
that has been played once in every town in this free republic--but it
can never be played twice.




A SECRET OF STATE


Over at the executive mansion, Governor Chatham and his private
secretary were at dinner when the telegram came. The governor took
the yellow envelope from the butler’s tray and tore it open. When he
had read the message he passed it over without a word to Gilman. The
private secretary’s eyes widened as he read it, and he exclaimed:

“Jim Lockhart dead!”

William, the black butler, stirred uneasily. The governor bent forward,
and lifted his coffee to his lips. Gilman laid the despatch beside
his plate, and, still looking at it, began to pinch the golden tip of
a cigarette. William slid noiselessly to his side with a match. When
Gilman had lighted his cigarette he said:

“Poor Jim!”

The governor responded:

“Yes, poor Jim.”

A strange quality in the governor’s tone gave expression to something
more than sadness. His face was somber, immobile, inscrutable. He
dropped his napkin, and, without lighting his cigar, though William
stood by, shading the little flame of the ready match with his pale
palm, he rose and went slowly into the library. About the walls were
his beloved books. On the broad, heavy table of Flemish oak a shaded
lamp rose over the magazines, the pamphlets, the scattered books and
the Chicago newspapers, which reach Springfield at noon. In the wide
chimney--over which is carved those words from the _Benedicte_, “Oh, ye
Fire and Heat, Bless ye the Lord”--a brazier of Sangamon County coal
was blazing. Outside a cold November rain was driving against the tall
windows of the mansion. The governor sank into a deep leather chair. He
supported his head in his hand and gazed into the fire.

Gilman followed, and seating himself, likewise fell into a melancholy
reverie. The silence within, and the wind sweeping the rain back and
forth like a broom without, oppressed him. He was a young man. Once or
twice he looked at the governor, and then the silence, the wind and the
rain forced him to speak.

“He seemed to be in perfect health when he went away Wednesday,” he
said.

The silence deepened. The wind threshed the trees and the rain drenched
the windows anew. Gilman spoke again. He said:

“The party’s lost a good man.”

“And I have lost another friend,” said the governor. He was growing old.

Without moving, still gazing deeply into the coals, after a little
minute, he added:

“He was the most generous man I ever knew.”

“Yes; and I believe, after all, when the time came, he would have been
with you for the renomination.” The governor stretched out his hand to
stay Gilman’s speech.

“I was not thinking of that, Leonard.”

The governor did this gently, as he did all things. Gilman’s face
reddened--for the fire was growing hot--and silence fell again between
them. Gilman felt the silence. He flung his cigarette into the fire.
Then he rose.

“Guess I’ll go over to the Leland,” he said. “Some of the boys may have
particulars.”

The governor nodded acquiescence, but as Gilman reached the door that
leads into the northwest drawing-room, he spoke:

“Before you go hand me the statutes, if you please. I suppose I have
some duty to perform in an event like this.”

Gilman who longed only for action, bore with alacrity the three big
calf-skin volumes to the library table, and turned to the index.

“I’ll find the section for you.” Gilman examined the second volume for
an instant, and then said: “Here it is.”

“Read it, please,” said the governor.

And Gilman read: “‘Section sixteen. In case of the death of the
treasurer, it shall be the duty of the governor to take possession of
the office of such treasurer, and cause the vaults thereof to be closed
and securely locked, and so remain until a successor is appointed and
qualified; and at the time such successor takes possession of the
office, he, together with the auditor of public accounts and any of
the bondmen of the deceased treasurer who shall be present, shall
proceed to take an account of all moneys, papers, books, records and
other property coming into his possession; and the auditor shall take
of such succeeding treasurer his receipt therefor and keep the same on
file in his office.’ There,” concluded Gilman, closing the book, and
then immediately reopening it, “that’s it--it’s chapter one hundred
and thirty, section sixteen of the act of eighteen seventy-three, page
twenty-three twenty-seven.”

“Now turn,” said the governor, “to the chapter on elections, chapter
forty-six, I think it is, and see what it says about the appointment of
a successor.”

Gilman tilted up the first volume, and inspected the red and black
labels on its back; then he turned to chapter forty-six, and, running
his finger down the pages until he found the section, read hurriedly,
mumbling his words until he came to the vital sentence:

“‘When a vacancy shall occur in the office of secretary of state,
auditor of public accounts,’ yes, here it is” (he accentuated the word)
“‘_treasurer_, attorney-general, superintendent of public instruction’”
(he was reading rapidly now and running words together) “‘or member
of the state board of equalization, the governor’” (and now he raised
his voice and read more slowly and distinctly) “‘the governor shall
fill the same by appointment, and the appointee shall hold his office
during the remainder of the term, and until his successor is elected
and qualified.’ That’s section hundred and twenty-eight.”

“Well,” said the governor, “I’ll name Hillman to fill the vacancy.”
Hillman was the treasurer-elect, chosen by the people in November
to succeed Lockhart. He was not of the party, however, to which the
governor belonged. In Illinois, it will be remembered, treasurers
are elected not quadrennially, as are the other state officials,
but biennially, and a treasurer can not succeed himself. So that in
the middle of an administration there is always an off year, and a
reaction, and as the papers say, a stinging rebuke at the polls.

“M-m-yes,” said Gilman, “the boys won’t like it--but it’s only for a
couple of months.”

“And as to sealing the treasury,” continued the governor, “I presume
that the morning will be time enough for that.”

“Yes, it’s a bad night outside, anyway,” responded Gilman. The
governor was lost again in thought. Gilman went on and out.

The governor, alone in the library, continued to gaze into the fire.
Once he took from the table at his elbow a worn book, which he handled
tenderly. He read in it for a while. It was _The Thoughts of Marcus
Aurelius_. But he did not read long. Presently he was sitting with the
forefinger of one hand between the leaves of the book, which lay in
his lap, musing on the fire again. Outside the rain drenched the tall
windows of the mansion.

The clock in the hall tolled eleven. The governor rose, and went slowly
up the staircase that winds gracefully from the great hall to the floor
above, and thence to his chamber and his bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a room on the parlor floor of the Leland, the windows of which
looked down on Sixth street, a short, fat man was pacing the floor.
His unbuttoned waistcoat showed a white shirt stretched over a large
paunch. His hair was greased with perspiration, big drops of which
stood out on his forehead, and slid down his pendulous, dewlapt cheeks.
He had a bristling mustache, at which he gnawed when he removed his
cigar from his lips, and a short goatee at which he plucked incessantly
with his fingers. When his cigar was in his mouth, he rolled it about
and ground it between his teeth. At times he spat pieces of the tobacco
leaves fiercely into the grate. The cigar was burning unevenly, and
fuming so that the little man winked his little eyes. On a table in
the room, littered with the inevitable Chicago papers, and strewn with
poker chips, stood an empty whisky glass. The rumpled counterpane of
the bed showed that the little man had been tossing upon it. As he
paced up and down he talked to himself, and at times swore.

“Hell,” he would say, “why the devil doesn’t he come!”

Occasionally he would draw out his watch, and scowl at its face. Then
he would look at the old-fashioned brass crank on the wall, beside
the door, which sometimes pulled a call-bell in the office below, and
sometimes did not, but he did not ring it. He ran his fingers through
his tumbled hair, and paced up and down.

The little man was William Grigsby, and he was the attorney-general
of the state of Illinois. He had come down from the Jo Daviess
hills, to serve a term in the house, and been nominated for the
office he now held by the governor, John Chatham. John Chatham was
his political creator, and the two men had once been friends. The
administration had begun harmoniously enough, but before two of the
four years of its political life had expired there was a split, and
factions had formed. There had been a fierce fight for the control
of the state central committee that year, and the struggle had been
carried into the state convention, which nominated a state treasurer,
a superintendent of public instruction, and trustees of the university
of Illinois. In one faction were the governor, the auditor of public
accounts, and, of course, his appointees, the adjutant-general, the
railroad and warehouse commissioners and the trustees of the state
institutions. In the other were the attorney-general and the secretary
of state, Jennings. Lockhart, the state treasurer, had been neutral.
He was everybody’s friend. The lieutenant-governor did not count. The
superintendent of public instruction was not a politician, save in
teachers’ institutes, where he was cheered and indorsed in classic
resolutions.

And now Grigsby was an avowed candidate for governor, in opposition
to his old friend, John Chatham, the man who had made him. Two years
bring about great changes in politics. Grigsby, in that time, had grown
corpulent, had hardened his liver and his heart, and was threatened
with Bright’s disease.

The attorney-general continued to smoke and pace the floor, and
swear. After a while he consulted his watch again, and then gave the
old-fashioned brass bell-pull a vigorous jerk. Presently a negro boy
came bearing a presumptive pitcher of water, the tinkling of the ice
heralding his approach. The attorney-general would have welcomed iced
water in the morning, but now he seized it from the black boy’s hand,
set it down with a splash on his wash-stand, and shouted:

“Go and tell Jim to mix me a commodore.”

Just as the boy reached the door, it opened, and a tall man entered.
The tall man seeing the boy, looked at Grigsby.

“What’ll you have, Hank?” said the attorney-general.

“A little whisky.”

“Bring Mr. Jennings some whisky,” ordered the attorney-general.

“Bourbon, boy,” added Mr. Jennings.

The boy withdrew.

The attorney-general paused before the fire, and looked up into the
face of the secretary of state.

“Well, Hank,” he said, “I began to fear you hadn’t got my message.
Heard the news?”

The secretary of state lazily pulled off his wet overcoat and flung
it across the bed, and then, shaking the water from his broad-brimmed
black slouch hat in the careless way they have down in southern
Illinois, he tossed it after the coat, on which it fell with a damp
slap. He stood six feet in height, and would have been taller had he
not stooped. His face was long, his skin dingy and sallow, and his
thin nose, beginning between deep-set eyes of steely blue, stretched
down the middle of his visage, and precipitated itself over the black
mustache that drooped thin and moist about his mouth. His hair, glossy
black, though he was fifty, was flung straight across his brow and
over his left ear, giving the effect of a mane. Behind, it greased the
collar of a long black frock coat that wrapped him lankly. A narrow
black tie hung unknotted at his throat. When he moved it was in that
loose and lazy way that told, as his hat and his habit did, that he
came from the country south of the old O. and M., which divides Egypt
from the corn lands of central Illinois. He drew a rocking-chair to the
grate, and stretching himself comfortably in it, with his feet upon
the ash-strewn fender, drew from his hip pocket a plug of tobacco and
gnawed on it. Then he drawled, in a voice haunted by musical echoes of
southern ancestry:

“What news?”

“Why,” replied the attorney-general, “haven’t you heard? Jim Lockhart’s
dead.”

“The hell he is!” responded Jennings. “I hadn’t heerd ary word. When’d
he die?”

“This afternoon.”

“Sudden?”

“Rather.”

“What was ailin’ of him?”

The attorney-general smiled, a peculiar, mirthless smile.

The secretary of state ceased to rock.

“You don’t reckon now--”

“That’s it exactly.”

“I didn’t know it’d got that bad. What’d they give out fer the cause?”

“Oh, heart failure, I suppose.”

“Beats hell, don’t it?”

The secretary of state was silent. Presently he spoke again in an
abstracted way:

“Well, Jim ’as a devil of a good feller, as good as you’d meet up ’ith
in a coon’s age. An’ I reckon when it come to a show-down, he ’as our
friend. If the boys ’p’ints an investigatin’ committee--Jim ’as al’ays
a leetle too free ’ith the stuff.”

Grigsby said “Yes,” in a detached tone. Then there was silence for a
space. The bell-boy knocked, bore in his tray and departed. The men
nodded over the edges of their little glasses each to the other, and
drank. Then Grigsby, wiping his lips, said:

“Hank, I didn’t send for you to-night to hold memorial services over
Jim Lockhart. There’s something more important than that--there’s
something damned important, and it concerns me.”

“You?”

“Yes, me. I’m in this thing just twenty thousand dollars.”

“The hell you are!”

“Just--twenty--thousand--dollars.”

Grigsby sank into a chair.

“Borrowed?” asked Jennings.

“Yes.”

“Public funds?”

“Well--I don’t know. Course--”

“Jim Lockhart didn’t have no private fortune--’ithout it ’as the
int’rust.”

“Well, suppose it was.”

“An’thin’ to show fer it?”

“I gave him three notes--one for ten, two for five thousand each.”

“Well, you’re a bigger damn fool than I gave you credit fer bein’.”

The attorney-general, clutching his fingers into his hair, rested
his elbows on his short knees, and bowed his head. “And with the
governorship just in plain sight, too,” he groaned.

“Well, it wasn’t so damn plain,” said Jennings.

Then as his eye rested on the man bowed beside him, the sweat trickling
down his tallow face, something in the droop of the figure touched
a chord of pity in his heart, and the tall Egyptian laid a hand on
Grigsby’s shoulder, saying in another tone:

“Don’t take on that way. Let’s see what can be done.”

“Yes, let’s,” assented Grigsby.

The Egyptian knitted the brows over his long, narrow nose.

“Hev you got any money?” he asked.

“I!” exclaimed Grigsby, with a sardonic grunt.

“Any property?”

“Only my house up home.”

“Hain’t you any friends up there, any bankers that’ll take care o’ this
thing fer you?”

Grigsby laughed ironically.

“Cain’t you lay down on somebody fer it?”

Grigsby shook his head.

“How’s your quo ’arranto proceedin’s ’gainst the Chicago Consolidated?”

“It isn’t ripe yet,” said Grigsby, “and, anyhow, there isn’t time.
Damn it, man,” he said, raising his voice, and striking his knee
with his fist, “it’s got to be done now, to-night, or I’m lost. The
governor, under the law, must seal the treasury at once, and you know
just how long John Chatham’ll wait. We’ve got to take care of this
thing to-night, to-night, I tell you. That’s why I sent for you.” The
attorney-general spoke angrily, and with a puffed face that flushed an
unhealthy red, and then added, stretching forth his hand and laying it
on Jennings’ knee, “You’re my friend, ain’t you?”

“Sure,” said the secretary of state carelessly, and then knitted his
brows again. After a few minutes he said:

“Say, Bill, you and the governor used to be friends, and he hain’t a
bad feller, no-way. He got you your nomination, you know--why don’t you
go to him--”

“Go to the governor?” cried Grigsby; “and tell him--tell _him_!”

“Bill,” said the secretary of state, “you don’t know the governor. He
hain’t my kind, ner I his’n, but I’ll tell you one thing--he hain’t the
man to take advantage of a feller. You’d be as safe in his hands as you
would in mine--safer, maybe,” Jennings concluded, with a good-humored
chuckle.

Grigsby emphatically, doggedly, shook his head.

“It never would do in this world,” he said, “never.”

“Why, you could get him to hold off till you could take care of it. You
and him used to be such friends--tell him you’ll lay down fer the sake
of old times--that’s the thing--tell him an’thin’ to get him to hold
off fer a few days. Then you’ll have time to turn ’round.”

“Look here, Jennings,” said Grigsby, straightening up and glaring at
the secretary of state, “Chatham’s got all you fellows hypnotized. You
think he’s a little tin god, that he’s incapable of doing a mean act,
of throwing a friend down, or anything of that sort. I tell you I know
him better than all of you do. He and I used to be close, thicker’n--”

“You wasn’t borrowin’ money out o’ the state treasury them days,
though, was you, Bill?” interrupted Jennings.

Grigsby colored.

“No, you was somethin’ of a reformer yourself.”

Grigsby colored more deeply.

“An’ as fer the throwin’ down--we know who done the heft o’ that.
Course I don’t care--it suits me--but give a houn’ his dues.”

Grigsby’s color had changed by swift gradations of tone to splenetic
blackness. He broke in upon Jennings’ indictment of him, and his
defense of the governor:

“Oh, drop that--let’s talk business. I tell you I know Chatham, and I
ain’t goin’ to put myself in his hands.”

He drew out his watch and opened it.

“It’s half-past eight now, and he doubtless knows Lockhart’s
dead--probably he’s got the treasury sealed.”

Jennings’ brow was gathered once more in wrinkles that indicated
thought. His face rapidly assumed an expression of determination.
Presently he rose.

“Bill,” he said, “I’m goin’ to do somethin’ fer you I wouldn’t do fer
any other livin’ man.”

Grigsby raised an appealing, yearning face.

“Yest’day I deposited in Gregory’s bank over at Decatur twenty-four
thousand dollars. It’s the fees received in my office durin’ the last
quarter. It’s lucky fer you they was unusually large--”

“Yes,” said Grigsby, and his expression, expectant and hopeful a moment
before, clouded, “but it’s in Decatur, and we’re in Springfield and
we’ve got to have it now, to-night, if it’s goin’ to do us any good.
What the devil did you want to deposit it in Gregory’s bank for?”

“Because,” replied Jennings, “Gregory’s rich, and a contributor, an’ he
can deliver Macon County, and we’ll want Macon County’s ten votes, if I
hain’t mistaken, one of these days. But never mind that now--it’s the
on’y thing we can do.”

Jennings looked at his watch. “It’s now twenty-five till nine. A train
goes out on the Wabash at nine-five. I’ll send Hennessey over on that
train with a note to Gregory, an’ a check. He can get twenty thousand,
an’ ketch a train back ’bout eleven-twenty, I think, anyway--that train
that gets here at twelve-forty. You can take the money, put it back in
the treasury, ’fore the governor seals ’er up, an’--”

Grigsby sprang toward Jennings and seized his hand.

“Hank, you’re the best friend I ever had,” he cried, and his eyes
glistened.

“Aw, don’t talk like that,” said Jennings awkwardly.

“But can we trust Hennessey?” said Grigsby, the next instant, his eyes
dilating, his hand suddenly dropping by his side.

“Hell, we’ve got to,” said Jennings. Then he strode across the room
and turned the old-fashioned brass bell-pull.

When a black boy grinned in the doorway, Jennings sent for Hennessey,
and soon, the old elevator having clambered to the parlor floor, there
was a knock. Jennings yelled “Come!” and in the doorway stood a young
Irishman, red-cheeked and with closely-cropped, silver-sprinkled black
hair. In the cities, the hair of the Irish-American--especially in
politics, and they are all in--turns gray early. Hennessey was strong
in the Thirteenth Ward of Chicago, hence his job in the office of
the secretary of state. Jennings had been writing while awaiting the
Irishman’s coming. Turning to him the secretary of state gave his
instructions, and he departed. As he closed the door Grigsby called:

“I’ll make it all right with you, Mike.”

Grigsby went to the window and pressed his face to one of the small
panes, placing his hands as blinds beside his eyes as a little child
does. The cold glass soothed his forehead deliciously. He saw Shorty,
who has driven “statesmen” on their mysterious nightly rounds for
generations, mount the box of his old hack and pull his reluctant
horses into the street. Then he turned to confront the three hours’
wait. He poked the smouldering fire of soft prairie coal, gave Jennings
a cigar, and was about to pull the old-fashioned brass bell crank that
more cheer might be added to the factitious comfort he sought to create
in the room, when Jennings, meditatively scratching his head, said:

“Bill, where’s them notes o’ yourn?”

“Why, in the treasury, I suppose.”

“Well, you’ll have to get some one who can open the vaults fer you
to-night.”

Grigsby’s brow darkened, and the small cheerfulness that had begun to
adumbrate itself in his face faded quite away.

“That’s so--I hadn’t thought of that.”

He pondered heavily and then said, the old note of fear in his tone:

“Has that vault a time lock?”

“I reckon.”

They were silent.

“Well,” said Grigsby presently, breaking the silence, “I’ll have to
get Mendenhall.” Mendenhall was the assistant state treasurer, and was
counted among the adherents of Grigsby.

“Better let me go,” said Jennings, taking up his coat and hat.

When he had gone Grigsby again paced the floor. Now he would pause at
the window and look down into Sixth Street, where the rain, falling
hopelessly and helplessly, was making pools in the depressions of the
cedar block pavement that glinted in the white glare of the arc light
spluttering before the hotel. Whenever the hoarse sounds of distant
locomotive whistles came to him out of the wet night, he jerked forth
his watch and sighed as he replaced it. Then he began to worry because
Jennings did not reappear. He wondered if Governor Chatham would
venture out in such a night to seal the treasury. He cursed Chatham,
who had made him, and finally Jennings, who had saved him. Altogether,
he passed a very bad two hours. And then Jennings returned. As the tall
Egyptian entered the room, Grigsby demanded:

“Where you been?”

“Over to the St. Nick--met up ’ith some o’ the boys, an’ set into a
little game fer a while.”

“See Mendenhall?”

“Yep--he’ll be ’long. Gosh! it’s a regular Shawneetown flood outside!”
And the man waved his big hat in a wide arc, the spray from it spitting
angrily as it sprinkled the fire in the grate.

“So it’s all right, is it?”

“Ump huh.”

“How about the time lock?”

“Oh, George says they don’t never use that--haven’t sence the day the
senate ’p’inted that committee to count the money in the treasury.
’Member? By gosh, didn’t pore ol’ Jim hustle to get a special train an’
haul that money down from Chicago, though?”

The secretary of state wagged his long head and chuckled.

“That thing lost him e’enamost fifty thousan’ in int’rust, he tol’ me
onct,” the secretary of state went on, “an’ he hain’t never been able
sinct to make ary long loan.”

Again he laughed, and, the spirit of reminiscence being upon him, he
went on: “One time ’fore the war, the legislature ’p’inted a countin’
committee, an’ ol’--oh, what’s ’is name?--you know--from Gallatin
County--he ’as treasur’ then, an’ the’ wasn’ more’n about fifty
thousan’ in the safe, but he ’as game, an’ when the committee ’peared
next mornin’, he says, ‘Cert’n’y, gentlemen,’ an’ handed ’em out about
ten thousan’ in them old green dollar bills, an’ says: ‘When yo’re done
countin’ o’ _them ’ere_, I’ll give you all some more.’ An’ in ’bout an
hour they reckoned they’d take _his_ figur’s--they’d have to do.”

Grigsby’s heart lightened, and he became almost gay, ordering much
drink. And for an hour the two men sat there, waiting and smoking, and
drinking whisky--Jennings bourbon and Grigsby rye--and were content.
Though every time the yowl of a locomotive was borne to him on the
cold, wet night, Grigsby jerked out his watch. And once he started at a
short knock on the door, but it was only Mendenhall.

After midnight Grigsby’s anxiety deepened, and he ceased to pay
attention to Jennings’ stories of politics down in “southern Eellinoy,”
stories about Don Morrison and John A. Logan. At twelve-forty he rose
and trod the floor, but Jennings’ long form was stretched out before
the fire, his whisky glass was at his elbow, and he said from time to
time:

“Oh, fer God’s sake, Bill, set down--they’ll be ’long all right.”

“Isn’t that the Wabash?” said Grigsby, cocking his head at the night
cry of a locomotive.

“I don’ know,” said Jennings, who was growing mellow, “on’y whistles
I could ever tell was them on the ol’ O. and M., ’ceptin’ o’ course,
the toot of the _Three States_, which is now at Cairo, ef she hain’t
stuck on a mud bank over on the Mizzouri shore some’er’s ’round Bird’s
Landin’.”

Grigsby looked at his watch. It was ten minutes of one, and just as he
dolefully announced the hour the door opened, and Hennessey entered,
carrying a leather traveling-bag. Grigsby leaped toward him, his
itching fingers outstretched to seize the valise.

“Is it all there?” he exclaimed.

“Take me for a thief?” replied Hennessey, swinging the bag behind him.

Hennessey proffered the bag to his master, but Jennings said:

“Wait a minute.” Then he ran his hand wrist-deep into his pocket and
drew out a paper, which he examined critically, squinting his eyes,
partly to protect them from the smoke that curled up from a big
domestic cigar, partly--as it seemed, to assist in the concentration of
his thoughts.

“Gineral,” he said--by some strange confusion of ideas, down in
Springfield they give the attorney-general a military title, which
custom that functionary fosters--“Gineral, will you give me your
signature to that, ’fore you start?”

Grigsby glowered at Jennings, read the paper, said somewhat petulantly,
“Oh, of course,” and hesitatingly signed it.

“Now, Hennessey,” said Jennings, carefully placing the paper in a long
pocket-book he drew from the region of his left hip.

Hennessey held the bag out toward the secretary of state.

“No,” said Jennings, who was pouring himself a drink, “give it to the
gineral.”

The attorney-general took the bag and opened it. Inside were four big
bundles of bank bills. He lifted them out. Each bundle was composed of
ten smaller packages, held by rubber bands, and each package was bound
with a pink paper strap neatly pinned and marked “five hundred.” He
counted and replaced the packages in the bag. Then taking his coat and
hat, he turned to Jennings and said:

“Well, let’s be gone.”

The secretary of state rolled his head toward the attorney-general,
waved his long arm and flapped his hand fin-like at him, and said:

“We’ll wait here, Mike and me. You won’t need us.”

The attorney-general scowled, and then went out, accompanied only by
the assistant state treasurer. Hurrying down Capitol Avenue, Grigsby
shivered, glancing up dark alleys.

       *       *       *       *       *

The clock in the hall of the executive mansion had struck the half-hour
after midnight, and the governor was descending the stairs in a gray
bath-robe and slippers. The old house was dark and still. Even the
room occupied by Gilman, who should, at that hour, have been reading
the magazines in bed, showed no light. The governor, softly treading,
entered the library. The last embers of the fire were smouldering. The
governor lighted the lamp, and in the circle of soft light it spread on
the library table, he bent over a book, his glasses on his nose, their
cord hanging down into his lap. He turned the leaves of the book. It
was not _The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius_. It was the second volume
of _The Revised Statutes of Illinois_, a stupid work which many men
consult, laboriously, far into the night. He softly rustled over the
leaves until he found chapter one hundred and thirty. He ran his finger
down the pages till it stopped at section sixteen. And then he read
very slowly: “In case of the death of the treasurer, it shall be the
duty of the governor to take possession of the office of such treasurer
and cause the vaults thereof to be closed and securely locked, and so
remain until--” He read the words again, and again a third time, and
yet again.

He closed the book, put out the lamp and slowly felt his way back up
the stairs.

Ten minutes later he descended again, and groping in the hall, drew a
greatcoat over his broad shoulders, covered his head with the slouch
hat he wore when he went down into southern Illinois, and let himself
out of the wide front door. The asphalt driveway that flings its long
curve through the grounds of the gubernatorial residence from Fifth
Street to Fourth, gleamed like the surface of a river at night. The
rain no longer fell, but the trees dripped dismally. Across the low
night sky black clouds were flying. The governor walked down the
driveway to the big iron gates at Fourth Street, whose watered surface
as far as he could see, wavered under the electric lights at the
crossings. The governor turned at Jackson Street and walked down the
sleeping little avenue toward Second Street. Before a low brown house
trickling its eaves behind two sentinel cedars, he halted. He went up
the moist brick walk, and pulled the white bell-knob. The bell jangled
harshly upon the sleeping stillness. The jangling trembled away. He
rang again. There was a reluctant stir within and a voice, a scared
woman’s voice, said:

“Who’s there?”

“The governor,” he responded. “Is Mr. Mendenhall at home?”

The woman slid back bolts and opened the door circumspectly. She thrust
out a towsled head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl. The governor heard
a baby’s cry. The woman’s teeth chattered with nervousness and the cold.

“No, sir; he hasn’t got in yet.”

The governor thanked her and turned away. The woman opened the door
wide and watched him as he retreated down the moist brick walk. At the
street he paused. Then he turned on toward Second Street. The woman
closed the door, and her key grated in the lock.

The governor strode on into Second Street, past the residence of the
Bishop of Springfield, standing behind white pillars deep in its
naked grove, past St. Agatha’s Seminary sleeping in its gloom, until
he reached the state house. The brooding building loomed above him,
dark and dour, heaving its great gray dome into the grim night. Huge
granite pillars lifted themselves above him, he was lost in the shades
of the lofty portico. He unlocked and pushed open the heavy door. The
great marble corridors were dark and echoed to the touch of his heel
upon the stones. In the wide rotunda, under the enormous dome, thick
with billowing gloom, a janitor, the people’s solitary night watch,
slept profoundly in his chair, his mouth open, his white beard upon his
breast. His gossips had departed. Their deserted chairs stood aimlessly
about. He had finished the nightly recital of the strenuous part he
had borne in the great rebellion, and he slumbered, his snores echoing
in the monstrous inverted bowl above him. The governor ascended to
the floor above, and turned down the north corridor. A golden bar of
light was thrown across the marble floor. It streamed from the open
door of the state treasury. The governor quickened his steps. He heard
the lunge of huge bolts as they were tumbled home. He heard the dull
spin of a combination lock, and as he reached the treasury two men were
emerging from the dark vaults.

“Thank God, that’s--”

The sentence was lost in the mouth of the attorney-general of the state
of Illinois, who stood with dropping jaw staring at the governor. The
attorney-general stood motionless, and then plunged a hand with three
pieces of paper into an outer pocket of his overcoat. Mendenhall stood
behind him, a flame flashing over his face.

The governor was the first one to speak.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

The two men did not reply, and the governor spoke again.

“Under the law, gentlemen,” he said, “the duty devolves upon me of
closing and locking the treasury and temporarily assuming possession of
it.”

Still the men did not reply. The tissues of Grigsby’s face had become
flaccid, and a greenish shade had overspread them. His eyes had
contracted to sharp points under angry brows. The governor scrutinized
the two men closely, as he advanced, and said, speaking in a calm tone:

“And so, if you gentlemen have concluded your business”--he paused--“I
shall proceed to the execution of that duty.”

“I am,” he added, a moment afterward, “perhaps fortunate in finding you
here, Mr. Mendenhall. You may be able to assist me.”

He drew toward them, and they stood aside. He entered the vaults where
a gas-jet glimmered, its light glinting on the nickel-plated knobs
of the great steel doors. He tried the doors. They were locked. He
remained an instant in thought, and then took from his pocket a stick
of red sealing-wax. He hesitated another instant.

“No,” he said, “the great seal could not be utilized.”

The great seal of state of the state of Illinois, though it has a
political history, is, nevertheless, physically, but a huge overgrown
seal such as notaries public use in their little businesses.
And in Illinois the governor has no privy seal as he has in some
commonwealths. The governor warmed the sealing-wax in the gas-jet that
blazed beside him in the vault. When it began to melt he dribbled and
daubed its softened substance, drop by drop, on the combination of the
huge safe, as a girl would seal a letter. When he had quite covered
the lock with the molten wax, he sealed it with the seal ring he wore
on his left hand, a ring which bore the coat-of-arms of a colonial
governor. The midnight secret of those two men, whatever it might be,
was either safe with them or more safely still, sealed with other
secrets behind those massive doors. And then he turned the gas down
until only a tiny star blinked in the vault, and came out, and swung
together the big steel gates that clanked like prison bars, their locks
snapping automatically.

He returned to the outer door of the department and placed his hand
upon the knob.

“Gentlemen,” he said ceremoniously, “I await your pleasure.”

He bent his gaze full upon William Grigsby, and that little man,
throwing back his head with something like defiance, strode on his
short legs out of the high-ceiled room, and Mendenhall followed him,
but meekly. As they filed past, Grigsby, with face upturned, a face
that now in anger had taken on the blue tinge of butchered beef, drew
his hands from his overcoat pocket and clasped them behind his back.
The governor bowed as the little man and Mendenhall swept out before
him. And then he drew the big walnut door to.

Standing out in the corridor Grigsby waited, and as he stood and
waited, he fumbled in the outer pocket of his overcoat. Suddenly he
drew forth his hand. His face had turned white, the white of a fish’s
belly.

As the governor drew the big walnut door to, and as it swung behind
him, it pushed before it, scraping with the peevish voice of a ratchet
along the matted floor, a piece of crumpled paper. Grigsby, who had
turned toward Mendenhall with a look of death’s despair, saw it, and
started, a faint ray of hope beaming in his eye. But the paper lay
under the governor’s feet.

The governor closed the doors.

“You may lock them, Mr. Mendenhall,” he said.

The assistant state treasurer drew a jingling bunch of keys from
his pocket and locked the door. Grigsby’s eyes were fastened on the
paper at the governor’s feet. His heart was swelling in his throat.
His fingers were twitching, and he was sweating like a stoker. At
Mendenhall’s approach the governor placed his foot upon the paper. When
Mendenhall had done, the governor picked it up. He smoothed it out in
his fingers, and slowly adjusted his glasses. By the dim light that
always burns at night just outside the door of the state treasury he
read it. Then he placed it in the pocket of his overcoat. He kept his
hand upon it. The blue of Grigsby’s face deepened.

The three men went down the stairs, the governor standing aside at
the top to let them precede him. They crossed the rotunda, past the
slumbering janitor whose snores ascended and exploded in the rounded
blackness of the hollow dome, down the east corridor and so out into
the darkness. They walked together down the wide stone walk, the stone
walk as wide as a street, that sweeps, with a strip of sward down its
middle, across the state house lawns to Capitol Avenue. The governor
did not turn up Second Street by the way he had come. He kept on with
his two companions, and all three were silent. Not a word had any one
of them spoken. They were drowned in thought. It matters not of what
the assistant state treasurer was thinking. He held only an appointive
office. He was a political villain, and had a collar on his neck. The
attorney-general was thinking of days that were to come. The governor
was thinking of days that were gone. Silent, thoughtful, thus they kept
on up Capitol Avenue. When they approached the shades that gathered
under the ugly iron bridge which spans the ragged street that leads to
the capitol of Illinois, the Alton’s St. Louis Limited came plunging
through the town, half an hour late. The three men halted. The great
mysterious, vestibuled train, with its darkly curtained Pullmans, slid
across the bridge. As they stood waiting for it to pass that they might
go under, the governor withdrew his hand from his pocket, the paper
still folded in it. He held the paper out toward Grigsby.

“William,” he said, “I think you dropped something.”




THE COLONEL’S LAST CAMPAIGN


All day long Colonel Talbott sat in his leather chair in the lobby of
the Grand, twiddling his cane, smoking his cigar, and talking politics.
Under the broad brim of his black slouch hat his hair fell in silver
wisps almost to his shoulders, and the long mustache, drooping like a
Georgian’s at the corners of his mouth, was as white as his hair, save
at the spot where his cigar had tinged it yellow.

There was not a politician of either party between Dunleith and Cairo
who was not proud to bend over the old fellow’s chair, take his thin
hand and say: “Hello, Colonel, what’s new in politics?” The colonel had
one invariable reply: “I’m out of politics, and don’t know anything.
What do you hear?” Sometimes, if the passing politician happened to be
of the old day, the colonel would take him by the arm, and they would
saunter away to the bar. If the politician came from northern Illinois,
the colonel would take rye; if from southern Illinois the colonel would
take bourbon; such was his idea of etiquette. Though never would he
take a drink before breakfast, for a drink before breakfast, he told
Carroll, was a back log in the fire that would burn the live-long day.

Carroll was the staff of the colonel’s old age. The two would sit by
the hour, while the old man talked of the Nineteenth Illinois Cavalry,
of Lincoln and Douglas, of David Davis and Elijah Haines, of state
and national conventions, in the days when he had made and unmade
congressmen, governors and senators, ruling his party in the state,
Carroll shrewdly thought, with a discipline as rigid as that with which
he had welded the Nineteenth Illinois into a fighting regiment.

To those who knew the veteran’s history, his love for the boy was
touching. The story is too long to tell now, but its essential motif
must always be the ingratitude of Si Warren. The colonel had picked
Warren up in the old Fifteenth District, sent him to Congress, and
finally made a United States senator of him. Warren, developing
quickly as a politician, had turned around, defeated the colonel for
reëlection as chairman of the state executive committee, a position he
had held for sixteen years, had frozen him out of the Arizona deal, and
somehow caused the colonel’s only son to go wrong out there in Tucson.
The boy’s mother had died; of a broken heart, they said. Since then a
decade had passed, a decade which the colonel had spent in the grim
lonesomeness of a crowded hotel. He never mentioned Warren’s name. If
he heard it, he clenched his bony fists so tightly that the knuckles
showed white. Once a year, perhaps, in the springtime, when the state
central committee met, he got out his white waistcoat and was invited
up to the ordinary to make a speech on the state of the party, and once
a year, in the summertime, he attended a reunion of his regiment, now
decimated to a squadron of tottering old men, whom the colonel called
“boys.”

Spring came, rolling up from the muddy Ohio, showering its apple
blossoms in the orchards of Egypt, sprinkling with purple flowers the
prairies of central Illinois, and finally flooding with tardy sunshine
the cold waters of Lake Michigan. It was the year the legislature
that chose Warren’s successor in the senate was to be elected, and
when the senator came home from Washington he found his fences in sad
repair. The Silas Warren of the parlor suite in a Lake Front hotel
was not the Si Warren whom Colonel Talbott had rescued from the dusty
little law office down in Shelbyville fifteen years before. The clothes
of that time were faded by the sun in which he loafed all day on the
post-office corner, whereas the clothes of this spring morning bespoke
a New York tailor and a valet.

The senator was not in a pleasant mood. There was opposition to
his reëlection, and while his machine ignored it, and while George
R. Baldwin, the lawyer who watched the interests of certain big
corporations during the sessions of the legislature, said it was but
a sporadic demonstration of soreheads, back-numbers and labor skates,
it was spreading, as the picturesque politicians from the corn lands
of central Illinois would say, like a prairie fire. Jacksonville,
where the standard of revolt had first been raised, was in Morgan,
the colonel’s home county, and so it came to pass that the defection
was laid to the machinations of the colonel himself. And yet, as the
politicians who were always dropping into Chicago to correct their
reckonings, paused an instant by the leather chair, the old white head
would slowly wag from side to side, and the old man would say:

“No, I’m out of politics.”

If Carroll had not conceived the idea of running for office, perhaps
the colonel would have remained out of politics, but the boy, after a
week of dreaming, dramatized himself as making a speech in the state
senate chamber at Springfield. The colonel, as a man’s duty is, advised
him to keep out of politics, and yet within an hour after Carroll shyly
confessed his ambition, the fever awoke in the old fellow’s bones, his
eyes flamed with the old fire, and he admitted that the experience
might help a boy who was struggling in a pitiless city for a law
practice.

Within a week the colonel had introduced Carroll to Superintendent of
Street and Alley Cleaning Patrick F. Gibbons, who promised to be with
him, and had taken him to the city hall for an audience with the mayor.
After that the newspapers said that John D. Carroll had been slated for
the senatorial nomination in the First District.

When Warren learned of the colonel’s new interest in the campaign, he
cunningly decided to utilize it by throwing his strength to Carroll
in the First, provided the colonel would withdraw his opposition. He
prided himself on being a man who harbored no resentments. So he sent
Dan Ford, his private secretary, to open negotiations for peace.

The colonel had recognized the coming of the heat by donning his suit
of linen, with a red tie at his throat to give the touch of color
he always loved, and he had got out his broad-leaved Panama hat for
its fifteenth season. Ford found him seated in the leather chair,
swinging one thin leg over the other, his white hose wrinkling over
his low shoes, telling Carroll how Grant came to Springfield from
Galena seeking a commission in the army. Ford diplomatically broached
the subject of a conference between the colonel and the senator.
The colonel heard him to the end, but said nothing. His mustache
simply lifted a little with the curl of his lip. Ford was evidently
disappointed.

“Have you any reply?” he asked, “or any message?”

“Yes,” said the colonel, and his gray eyes flashed under their shaggy
brows. “Present my compliments to Senator Warren, and tell him that if
he ever presumes to speak to me again in all his life, I’ll slap his
face, and if he resents it, I’ll kill him.”

Ford tried to bow, and the colonel, turning to Carroll, said:

“As I was saying, General Palmer happened to go into the
adjutant-general’s office and saw Grant smoking a corn-cob pipe and
working away on muster rolls at a broken table propped up in one corner
of the room. The old forage cap he had worn in the Mexican War was
lying on the table. It was the only hat he had in those days.”

The next morning an interview with Warren appeared in all the papers.

“I would prefer,” the senator was reported as saying, “to retire to
private life and resume my interrupted law practice, if I were not
compelled to seek vindication by the bushwhacking of this doting old
ingrate, who, disappointed in his attempts to monopolize patronage that
belongs to patriotic party workers, now skulks behind the sympathy his
years and infirmities excite, to wage a guerrilla warfare.”

The colonel read the interview at breakfast. He sat at the table with
one paper propped up before him and four others beside his plate, his
eye-glasses on his nose, and ate his oatmeal and his beefsteak and his
boiled eggs just as he did on every morning of the year. Then he drank
the half cup of coffee that he always reserved, with its cream slowly
coagulating at the surface, for the end of his meal, because it was
cooler then, laid his napkin down and shuffled slowly out.

Half an hour later a man stopped by his chair in the lobby and said
something to the colonel that made him drop his paper, and look up over
his eye-glasses with a scowl. The man was known as Birdy Quinn, and he
had lost his job in the water office the week before, because Warren
wished to make room for a fellow who could deliver more votes at the
coming primaries than Birdy could.

“Are you sure?” the colonel asked.

“Sure! Isn’t it all over the ward this morning?”

“You’re sure that Pat Gibbons consented to run as Warren’s candidate
for state senator in the First District against Carroll--after
promising me--_me_?” He bent his brows angrily and pointed with a long
forefinger at his own breast.

“Well, hell’s bells!” said Quinn. “Wasn’t Baldwin working with him half
the night?”

The colonel took his glasses from his nose and swinging them by their
heavy cord, blinked with his old eyes at the square of sunlight blazing
in the Clark Street entrance, across which, as on a vividly illuminated
screen, the crowds on the sidewalk flitted like trembling figures in
a kinetoscope. Presently he lifted himself heavily from his chair and
gathered up his newspapers and his stick.

“Well, Birdy,” he said wearily, “I guess I’ve got one more fight left
in me.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Most men thought it was Warren’s interview that caused the colonel to
consent at last to lead the opposition against him, though some said it
was but the fascination of politics, which is like the fascination of
the sea, so that a man who follows it once must follow it till he dies.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d be glad to find the
old man’s chair empty,” said Eph Harkness, of Macoupin, that afternoon.
He had come up from Carlinville in response to a telegram from the
colonel, and having registered, and given his bag and linen duster to
a bell-boy, was removing his big felt hat to mop his wet brow.

“I’m afraid he won’t be able to stand the strain of a campaign,” said
Carroll.

“Stand the strain! Him?” exclaimed Harkness. “Why, he’ll be alive and
drawing pay when they’re referring to Si Warren as ex-senator!”

“I hate to have them say such mean things about him,” Carroll
persisted, thinking of the interview.

“If they think they kin say any meaner things ’bout him than he kin
’bout them, jes’ let ’em lam in,” chuckled Mosely, of Alexander.

“Yes,” mused Harkness, “it’ll be the greatest fight we’ve had in
Illinois since Logan’s time. We’ve got a leader now.”

There was an echo of the old days in his voice, which, with its gentle
hint of regret, was lost on Carroll, who had not known the colonel in
the old days.

They found the colonel in his room, sitting by an open window, his
Panama hat on his head, his cigar in his teeth, and his walking-stick
twirling in his long fingers. The room did not present that orderly
and cool appearance it had on the few occasions when Carroll had been
in it before. The shades were high at the window, admitting flames of
heat, wads of crumpled paper bestrewed the floor, a huge table had been
brought in and it was already littered with newspapers and telegraph
blanks. The bureau had been moved, the tall white door it had hidden
so long had been unlocked, and Carroll heard the incessant clicking
of a typewriter in the adjoining room. Two or three men sat idly
about, gossiping, as men will, about political battles of the past.
There seemed to be none of the industry of politics apparent, though
political headquarters seldom do display that, perhaps because a good
part of the industry of politics consists in talking and smoking and
drinking, and partly, perhaps, because of the necessity of concealment
that always exists. These men were gathered to organize the defeat of a
crafty and unscrupulous man who had a national, state and city machine
at his command, with money to heart’s desire, and yet they sat and
smoked, stirring only when a telegram came from down the state, or some
long-forgotten politician came in to offer himself as a recruit.

For a month the colonel did not go out of the hotel. He was up early
and at work, his cigar in his mouth, dictating letters, sending
telegrams, receiving callers. When he slept, no one knew. He never had
his hat off. He ate his meals from a tray in his room, after the food
had grown cold. His headquarters recalled pathetically the old days
when his power and supremacy were unquestioned. They were crowded day
and night with the back-numbers and the soreheads Baldwin had talked
about, who came with their grievances, their impossible schemes, their
paltry ambitions. Of such stuff the colonel had to make his machine,
flattering, threatening, wheedling, soothing jealousies, reconciling
discordant factions, healing old animosities, inflaming new hatreds,
keeping up spirit in faint hearts, leaving not a wire unpulled. He
appointed a steering committee, on which were Mosely, of Alexander;
Garwood, of Kankakee; Harkness, of Macoupin, and Malachi Nolan; he
wrote personal letters to old friends in every school district in the
state, and thus, slowly, patiently, laboriously welded his organization
together. What he most needed was funds, and a candidate to provide
funds; lacking them, he insisted that this was not a movement for
the profit of any one man, but for the good of the party alone, and
so invested it with the enthusiasm of what passes for patriotism in a
nation where party is set above country. He told the landlord of the
Grand that he would be responsible for the rent of the two rooms he had
engaged next his own. He already owed the landlord.

The night before the primaries a crowd, foul with the reek of tobacco,
alcohol and perspiration, was shuffling about in the hall and anterooms
of the colonel’s headquarters. The crowd was noisy, profane and
confident. But inside, the steering committee was assembled, and it was
very sober. Garwood, at the littered table, had been scratching his
head over political equations.

Conventions had been held in all the thirty-six outside districts, and
sixty-nine candidates had been nominated, fifty-five representatives
and fourteen senators. Of these they could depend upon twenty-nine.
It requires fifty-two to control a legislative caucus, when the party
has a bare majority on joint ballot, so they would have to nominate at
least twenty-three of their candidates in Cook County to get a caucus
majority, assuming the ultimate election of them all. Fifty-seven
candidates were to be selected in Cook County on the morrow. Of them,
they should name at least thirty-five to be entirely safe. In other
words, they must carry Cook County.

“Is that countin’ hold-over senators?” asked Mosely, when Garwood was
done.

“Yes, counting the hold-overs--Warren claims fourteen out of the
seventeen.”

“Josh Badger never’ll vote for him,” said Mosely.

“He gives us Josh,” Garwood replied. “Bates and Halliday are uncertain.”

“Not so damned uncertain,” said Mosely. “They’re only waitin’ to be
seen.”

“Warren’ll get them easy enough,” said Harkness.

“Yes, they’re cheap,” Mosely assented, spitting across the room at an
iron cuspidor. “’Bout eight dollars apiece, I’d guess ’em off at,” he
added, with a poor man’s contempt for low prices.

“Well, that only makes it worse,” replied Garwood. “But leave them out
entirely. With sixty-two votes Warren can control the caucus--”

“Providin’ al’ays, however,” suggested Mosely, in statutory language.

“Oh, course,” assented Garwood, petulant from the heat and the
situation, “they won’t all be elected. That’s why he’ll work like hell
to carry Cook. He lies when he says he doesn’t give a damn how she goes
to-morrow.”

“He always does that,” said the colonel, from his bed.

Carroll, to whom political calculations savored always of the mystery
of higher mathematics, said:

“Seems to me you could figure it better than that.”

“Well, you try it,” said Garwood, dropping his pencil and tilting back
in his chair.

There was not much hope, and the soberness deepened. After a while
there was a knock on the door, and a shaven head was thrust in.

“Them lit’ry guys is out here,” said the shaven head. “Any figur’s to
give out?”

“Figur’s?” cried Mosely. “We’ve got th’ official vote!”

And Garwood, taking his papers from the table, went out and said to the
reporters:

“Conventions have been held in all the senatorial districts down the
state, and sixty-nine candidates are already nominated. Of these
sixty-nine, we have beyond any question”--he consulted his paper, as
if to make sure of the number--“we have fifty-three, and that doesn’t
include the nine hold-over senators who are with us. We can lose ten of
them at the polls and still have enough to control the caucus. In Cook
County, to-morrow, we’ll carry the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth,
Eleventh, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-third and the
country towns--the Seventh--giving us thirty-five more candidates, or
ninety-seven in all. This is a conservative estimate, and gives the
doubtful districts to Warren. We can lose Cook to-morrow and still have
a fighting chance to win out. I regard the battle as ours. Senator
Warren is defeated.”

“Over at the Richelieu,” said Cowley, of the _News-Despatch_, “Baldwin
claims they have you whipped to a standstill.”

“They’re welcome over there to any comfort they can get out of the
situation,” said Garwood in a superior way.

It rained on the day of the primaries. All morning politicians, big
and little, stamped into Senator Warren’s hotel on Michigan Avenue, or
stamped into the Grand, tracking with greasy mud the muslin that had
been stretched over the carpet in Colonel Talbott’s headquarters. The
polls were to open at one o’clock. The colonel had risen early, after
three hours’ sleep, and snatched his breakfast from a tray, talking
to Carroll between bites. All morning he was buttonholed by men who
scuffled for a word, complaining that Warren’s fellows would have money
to burn, and he fought with them, bill by bill, for the few dollars he
had in his pocket. He was only liberal, to the extent that his slender
campaign funds permitted liberality, with those who were to work in
Carroll’s district. As the day wore on and he received reports and
despatched orders, like a general fighting a battle, the colonel’s
spirits rose, and the politicians, when he ordered them sharply about,
paused at the door to look back at him, pleased by the thought that
this was the Colonel Talbott of the good old days.

It was a wicked battle they fought out at the polls that day. The
Warren men had control of the party organization and named the judges
and clerks. Inmates of lodging houses, and Lake Front hoboes, their
rags steaming in the warm rain, were hauled from poll to poll in
big moving vans, and voted wherever Warren needed votes and as often
as he pleased. The city hall took a hand and furnished policemen
in larger numbers than the primary election law intended, so that
whenever an anti-Warren challenger challenged a vote he was hustled
by officers, and if he resisted, bundled off to the Harrison Street
police station and locked up on a charge of disturbance. Late in the
afternoon reports coming from Halsted Street that the Fifth Ward was
in danger, the colonel escaped from his headquarters and went into the
trenches himself. Carroll never forgot the old man as he splashed from
poll to poll that waning summer day, or stood in the drenching rain
before a voting booth, waving back policemen, ordering men up to vote,
threatening judges and clerks. He had never heard the old man swear
before.

At seven o’clock the polls closed. Warren carried some of the
districts, the opposition others. Both claimed the victory. It was left
for the convention to decide.

       *       *       *       *       *

The colonel, for some reason, preferred not to get up the next
morning, but opened his mail, read his papers, ate his breakfast, and
finally held his morning levee, the last of the campaign, in bed. The
politicians who had been waiting outside for an hour, grumbled at such
indolence, and, when they were finally admitted to their leader’s
presence, suspected him of imitating the undemocratic luxuriousness of
Senator Warren, who received his callers in bed every morning. But by
nine o’clock they had received their final instructions and scattered
to the conventions, and when Mosely and Garwood sauntered in from the
breakfast-room, they found only a few stragglers, who lingered on in
the hope of beer money, at least, for their imaginary services on this
decisive day. Malachi Nolan, in black garments and white cravat, came
presently, his big diamond flashing, his face shining and red from his
dull razor, and then Carroll, at the sound of whose young step and
fresh laugh the colonel succeeded in evoking a wan, tired smile.

“Just lazy, that’s all,” he declared reassuringly, seeing Carroll halt
in surprise. He reared himself on his elbow, and as he raised his head,
its white hair all tangled, Carroll saw how haggard he was. He never
had seen him look so old, so white, so worn, before.

“I was waiting for you,” said the colonel, indicating Nolan with a
finger that was like a claw. “I’ve fixed everything but the First
District.” He paused for breath. “The First Ward’s solid, isn’t it?
Well, all right. But watch Donahue. I’m sorry we ever let him get
on the delegation. And then, let’s see”--he pressed his brow in a
troubled effort to steady his senses--“oh, yes. See McGlynn and have
him lay down on Hardy, and tell Reinhold that if he wants that job from
the South Park board he’d better get in line, and as to Wright--his
brother’s a conductor on the Cottage Grove line, and you can get at him
through Harlow. Tell him I sent you. That’ll give you thirty-five votes
on the first ballot, and--”

Carroll, who had turned to reply to some jest of Mosely’s, heard a
groan. Instantly he looked back at the colonel. The old politician,
his face livid, was struggling as if he wished to get out of bed. He
writhed a moment, then his head nodded, his chin dropped to his breast,
and he collapsed in a heap, among the tumbled bedclothes. Carroll paled
with a sudden sickness.

“He’s fainted,” said Garwood, fumbling at the throat of the colonel’s
shirt. Malachi Nolan brought a cup of water, Mosely hunted impatiently
for a flask of whisky, and when they had straightened him out upon his
pillows, Carroll ran for the hotel physician. The colonel recovered
consciousness before the physician came and glanced around with an
expression of embarrassment.

“Damn such a heart, anyway,” he said. Then young Doctor Lambert
came with his new stethoscope. When the doctor had finished his
auscultation, the colonel said:

“Malachi, vote your delegation solid every time--don’t give
complimentary votes--it’s dangerous. And remember--I don’t care what
happens so long as Carroll’s nominated, trade anything, everything for
that, and send me word--”

But they hushed him.

At noon Doctor Foerder, the specialist, arrived.

“Ah, Lambert,” he said, scowling about him as he put down his
tremendous leather valise, big with the mysterious contrivances of
modern surgery, pulled off his gloves, and with his quick, professional
tread, stepped to the bedside. He exposed the colonel’s big chest,
and began a delicate percussion with his white fingers. When he had
done tapping, he laid his ear over the colonel’s heart, and listened
silently a long time to the cardiac murmurs, he rolled under his
fingers the superficial vessels of the temples, the forearms, the
wrists, the knees, he counted the pulse; and he looked long at the old
man’s finger-nails. When he paused, the colonel said:

“Well?”

Doctor Foerder had retreated from the bedside and was writing his
directions precisely, logically, as an official draws up a report,
beginning each paragraph with a Roman numeral. He did not answer the
colonel.

Foerder briefly consulted with Lambert, that is, repeated the
directions he had already written out, and began to buckle his big
valise.

“And as to a nurse?” asked Doctor Lambert.

“I’ll send one of my own,” said Foerder, hastily lighting a Russian
cigarette. He could not remain long in one place. He had patients to
see and a lecture to deliver over at Rush Medical College and his man
was waiting with his high-hooded phaeton down in Jackson Boulevard.

The nurse, diffusing a faint odor of antiseptics, came from Doctor
Foerder’s private hospital, laid aside her bonnet and veil and pausing
an instant to give a woman’s touch to her hair, quietly and deftly set
the room in order.

All that afternoon the colonel lay in his darkened bedroom, fighting
the battle of his life. He lay so still that the nurse almost fancied
him asleep, so regular was his breathing. Once he broke the silence by
asking the time.

“Twenty minutes after three,” the nurse responded, glancing at her
little watch.

“Some of the conventions, then,” the colonel said, “are over. I wonder
why they don’t send me word.”

The nurse did not notice his speech, and he added:

“Pardon me, you doubtless are not interested in politics.”

The talking brought on a spasm of dyspnœa, and the colonel struggled so
painfully for his breath that the nurse had to prop him up with pillows
in a sitting posture, as those who are afflicted with asthma pass their
nights, finding it easier thus to breathe. The colonel begged the
nurse’s pardon, as if he had committed some indelicacy.

About this time news was brought from the Fifth District convention in
Arlington Hall and from the Sixth in Jung’s Hall, that the Warren men
had carried both districts. The colonel, hearing the hoarse whispering
between the messengers and Mosely in the room outside, demanded
information, and Doctor Lambert had to tell him. The colonel wished
to see Mosely, he had some new plan for the West Side to offset their
loss; and he saw Mosely and the plan was put in execution. Then the
colonel seemed once more to sleep. When he opened his eyes he asked if
he could not have a cigar--“seegar,” he pronounced it--assuring the
nurse that he felt much better, but she said, as one might say to the
whim of a child to whom explanations are not vouchsafed:

“Not just now.”

And there was silence again, and the ticking of the nurse’s little
watch.

By four o’clock the colonel became restless once more, and asked if
there were any news. When the nurse said no, he insisted that there
must be some message, some letter, some telegram. He did not know that
his followers, vindicating all history, were now standing afar off. He
worried and grew incoherent. He seemed to confuse Carroll with the boy
who was sleeping under the stars far away in Arizona.

Doctor Foerder returned at four o’clock. He had not been expected
before evening, but he was interested in the case. He had mentioned it
in his lecture that day. He had commented on the wonderful display of
vitality on the patient’s part, and spoken of the value in such cases
of moral treatment, of encouraging words and a confident manner. He
read the nurse’s chart, counted the colonel’s pulse for fifteen seconds
and calculated the rate by multiplication, drew down the old man’s
eyelids, noting the senile arc that was whitening the periphery of the
cornea, and he examined the finger-nails; then the percussion and the
auscultation. When he raised his black head, the colonel said:

“Any news?”

“You’re doing well.”

“Aw!” said the colonel impatiently, “I don’t mean that--any news from
the conventions?”

Foerder hesitated, as if half reluctant to display interest in anything
so human, but said:

“Yes.”

“What?” said the colonel eagerly, his eyes brightening with a light
that alarmed the doctor.

“They say you’ve carried some districts on the North Side.”

“Which ones?” asked the colonel.

“Don’t remember.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, they say Warner has carried some North Side districts, too--and
some West Side districts.”

“Warner?”

“Well, whatever his name is.”

Then Foerder was silent, and the colonel lay a long time thinking.

“Did you learn how it’s going in the Ninth, or the Second, or the
Seventeenth?”

“They say it’s about an even break everywhere.”

“And how’s the First?” The colonel put this question in a whisper, as
if he feared the answer. The doctor did not know. Then the silence
again, and the colonel’s labored breathing, and the ticking of the
nurse’s little gold watch.

“What district do you live in, Doctor?” the colonel asked later.

“I?” replied the medical man in some surprise.

“Yes.”

“I--why, I don’t know,” he said.

The colonel faintly smiled. “Where do you live, then?”

“In Drexel Boulevard.”

“That’s the Fifth,” the colonel said. “Warren carried that.”

“Did he?” The doctor looked as if he were ashamed. “We mustn’t talk any
more just now.”

Foerder remained until evening, pacing the anteroom, his hands behind
him, his lips twitching in his involuntary smile. Now and then he
took a turn in the long, dark, softly carpeted hall, to smoke a
cigarette. At times some politician would come with a scared face and
inquire about the colonel, and the doctor always demanded news of the
battle, before he answered the questions. The reports brought by the
politicians were not encouraging, and they hurried outside again. Their
visits, as the afternoon waned, became fewer. Even Mosely and Garwood
had been glad of the exciting excuse offered by the First District
convention in Italia Hall down Clark Street to escape from the shadowed
headquarters. At six o’clock no one had been there for an hour, save
some sympathetic bell-boys and porters from down-stairs, and Carroll,
of course--he came every half-hour from the convention, disheveled,
bathed in perspiration, his eyes burning with excitement and suspense.
Foerder would not allow him to see the colonel, who lay behind the
white door, his eyes half closed, too weak any longer to whisper.

At seven o’clock the reporters came, and Doctor Foerder, as they put
it, issued a bulletin.

“He’s alive,” the doctor said, “pulse 120 to 124, respiration 22 to 26,
temperature 98. His remarkable nerve alone sustains him. He’s making
the most magnificent fight I ever saw in all my life--have you heard
anything from the convention?”

“They’re all over but the one in the First District,” one of the
reporters said, while they scribbled down the physician’s figures. “It
all depends now upon what that does. It’s the worst fight ever known in
Chicago. They say Warren has spent twenty-five thousand to-day.”

“Does it look as if he could be elected there--in the First, you know?”

The reporters smiled and winked one at another.

The colonel lay like one asleep, until far along in the evening. Once
or twice he opened his eyes and looked an inquiry into the doctor’s
eyes, but Foerder could only shake his head. And once or twice he
muttered something about Baldwin, and was troubled that they could not
understand. Then he sank into a state of coma, and the news for which
all were waiting would not come.

Doctor Foerder was for ever glancing at his watch and asking Lambert
how he thought the First District convention would turn out. Lambert
had no idea.

“I hope we’ll win,” Foerder would say. Finally he sent Lambert down
for news. Lambert hurried back. They had taken forty-six ballots, he
said, and the vote was tied. At ten o’clock Doctor Foerder examined
the colonel again, examined his eyes, his finger-nails, drummed on his
chest, listened to his heart.

“You’re magnificent!” he could not refrain from whispering, but his
patient did not answer or look, or even smile this time. He was growing
very weak. His breathing was faint, he inhaled the air through livid
lips. He did not arouse from his stupor.

Doctor Foerder got very impatient. “We can’t wait much longer,” he said.

“It’s all we can do, now,” said Lambert.

Foerder went outside. The anteroom was deserted. The politicians came
no more. He would sit down, then instantly get up, walk back and
forth; his eyebrows knitting in his scowl, his lips twitching in that
mirthless smile. And he smoked cigarette after cigarette. He did this
for an hour.

Along toward midnight he heard a step. Flying to the door, he saw
Carroll, dragging down the hall with the step of defeat and exhaustion.
The boy’s hair was matted under his hat, his eyes were dull, sunken,
black as night.

“Licked,” he said, waving his hands with a gesture of despair, as if
the world had come to an end. Foerder went inside, leaving Carroll to
sink into the first chair. But a moment later the physician opened the
white door, and beckoned with his head. The motion was conclusive,
final. He held the door ajar, and Carroll entered. The useless drugs
had been pushed aside. The room was filled with the strange silence,
the odor of death. Lambert stood at the window, looking out into the
darkness. The nurse stood by the bed, waiting to perform her last
office for the dying man.

Carroll timidly approached and looked down at the long form, scarcely
outlined by the sheet, at the rigid head, at the great, waxen brow,
at the little blue spheres formed by the closed eyelids, at the mouth
slightly open beneath the white mustache with its tinge of yellow.
Doctor Foerder was pressing his fingers to the colonel’s wrist. The
breathing had lost all human quality, it was but a series of automatic
gasps, which, it seemed, would never end. Finally they grew shorter, at
last they ceased, there was one faint inspiration, and Doctor Foerder,
laying the thin old hand down upon the colonel’s breast, said:

“It’s all over.”

There was silence for a whole minute. Then Doctor Lambert tossed up the
window, and Carroll heard, in the street below, a crowd shuffling over
the sidewalk, a crowd coming, as he knew, from the convention in Italia
Hall. And suddenly from the crowd arose a raucous, drunken yell:

“Hurrah for Warren!”




REFORM IN THE FIRST


The senatorial convention in the First District was to convene at
ten o’clock, in a dingy little hall in lower Clark Street, lighted
by windows so long unwashed that they looked like ground glass. From
the chandeliers, black and sticky with dead flies, shreds of tissue
paper fluttered, relics of some boisterous fête an Italian society had
given there long ago. The floor was damp in arabesque wrought by a
sprinkling-can, for the janitor had sprayed water there to lay the dust
he was too indifferent to remove. Perhaps a hundred chairs were set in
amphitheatrical order, and before them stood a kitchen table, on which
was a white water pitcher, flanked by a glass, thickened by various
sedimentary deposits within.

In the saloon below, at nine o’clock, scores of delegates were already
shuffling in the sawdust that covered the floor, holding huge schooners
of beer in their hairy fists, gorging grossly at the free lunch table,
with bologna, rank onions and rye bread. The foam of the beer clung to
their mustaches, which, after each sip, they sucked between their lips.
Most of them managed, at the same time they were eating and drinking,
by a dexterous sleight-of-hand, to smoke cheap domestic cigars, and a
cloud of white smoke rolled along the low ceiling. Each new arrival
was greeted with some obscene but endearing epithet, and the room rang
with laughter and profanity. A keg of beer had been provided by one
of Conway’s managers, and the bartender, wiping his hands on a dirty
towel, was rid, so long as the keg lasted, of the responsibility of
keeping account of drinks, and of ringing up the change on the cash
register. At eleven o’clock the keg was empty, the free lunch table
abandoned to the flies, and the delegates scuffled up the dingy stairs
to the hall. Half an hour later the chairman of the senatorial district
committee pounded the kitchen table with a leg of a broken chair, and
shouted:

“The convention will be in order.”

This declaration made no impression upon the babel of voices, the
laughter, the profanity, the noise of shuffling feet and scraping
chairs. The delegates were scrambling to their places, seating
themselves by wards. Reporters flung themselves into seats at a second
table and gazed about the room, noting who were there. The political
men of the morning papers did not trouble themselves to take seats.
They loafed among the politicians in a way superior to the reporters
for the afternoon papers, as if they were politicians themselves,
making history instead of recording it.

Meanwhile the noise did not abate, and the committeeman was growing red
in the face. The morning was warm, and the room, already cloudy with
tobacco smoke, was filling with a noisome human odor. The atmosphere
was feculent. Delegates removed their coats, hanging them over the
backs of their chairs. Finally the chairman of the committee, growing
impatient, split the table with his club and yelled:

“Damn it all, boys, come to order!”

And then, eager to resign such a difficult command, he hastened to
announce:

“The committee has named Honorable John P. Muldoon to act as temp’ry
chairman.”

He handed the chair leg to John P. Muldoon, who, stroking back his
curly hair from his brow, began to beat the table impartially.

All this while Underwood stood against the wall, looking on. The
question that had been agitating him for weeks was about to be decided,
but now that the ordeal was actually upon him, the consciousness beat
numbly against his brain, so that the whole scene lacked reality,
almost interest. He was dazed. He was about to take his baptism of
political fire, and he trembled like a white novitiate.

Underwood belonged to one of the oldest families of Chicago--the name
had been known there before the fire. His father, who had lately
taken him into his law firm, continued to cling in his conservatism
to an old stone house in Michigan Avenue long after his neighbors had
abandoned their mansions to uncertain boarders, and either retreated
farther south or advanced to the North Side. John Underwood had come
out of Harvard with a young lawyer’s ambition in politics, an ambition
that had the United States senate merely as a beginning of its home
stretch, and when the year rolled around in which state senators were
to be elected in the odd numbered districts he decided that it was time
to begin.

The newspapers had scented the sensation that lurked in the candidature
of a young man like Underwood in a district like the First, and because
he was rich, because he wore good clothes, because he went into what
is called society, promptly dubbed him a reformer, and thus weighted
he had set out upon his race for the nomination. He liked to see his
name in the newspapers, liked to think of himself as a reformer, though
he was embarrassed in this attitude by the fascinating figure of the
political boss he had hoped to become--a well-dressed, gentlemanly
boss, of course, who, while at home in those saloons where he permitted
the convivial familiarity of the boys, nevertheless took his luncheons
at his club. He fell into a way of speaking of the First as “my
district,” spoke of it, in fact, as if he, instead of Malachi Nolan
and “Cinch” Conway, owned it, and when certain ward politicians in the
first days of the campaign called upon him, Underwood was pleased to
lend them money, just as he was pleased to comply with the requests of
certain others who organized the John W. Underwood First Ward Campaign
Club, and sent a committee to inform him that they were assembled in
the club rooms ready to transact business, and beer only four dollars a
keg. He winked confidentially at himself in the mirror that night as he
gave a final touch to his white cravat and surveyed his fine young form
arrayed in evening clothes for the reform banquet at the Palmer House.
His speech was _The Tendencies of Modern Politics_. The newspapers said
it was a very brilliant speech, breathing lofty political sentiments
that were bound to make John W. Underwood votes. Also, the Reform Club
indorsed his candidature.

As Underwood leaned against the greasy wall of the little hall on lower
Clark Street this morning, the whole campaign flashed before him, just
as the events of a lifetime are said in books to flash before the mind
of a drowning man. He recalled every vivid detail of the call Baldwin
had made upon him, how he entered his private office without troubling
the pale, pimpled office boy to announce him, how he lifted from his
carefully parted hair his straw hat with its youthful band of blue,
and laughed out, “John, my boy, how are you? Hot, isn’t it?” He could
see Baldwin as he sat in the solid oak chair that stood intimately
beside his roll-top desk, fanning his ruddy face with the hat, which
had impressed a broad red band on his forehead. Underwood had been glad
enough to close _Cooley on Taxation_ and revolve his chair to face
Baldwin, just as if he had been a client, for Baldwin was the most
important politician who had ever called upon him professionally.

Underwood remembered clearly how Baldwin’s excellent teeth glistened
when he smiled, how he lighted a Turkish cigarette and, tilting up his
chin, blew a long, airy stream of blue smoke through the thick hairs of
his mustache. He could even remember how carefully Baldwin sheltered
the flame of the match for Underwood’s cigarette, in that curious
spirit of economy men always practice with regard to matches, much as
if there were only one match left in the whole world. And then he could
recall almost word for word their conversation. Baldwin had frankly
told him that Conway had him handicapped, because he had the city hall
with him and controlled the Fifth Ward. Simmons, Baldwin had said,
didn’t cut much ice; he had some labor leaders with him, and would get
a bunch of delegates from his own ward, but that was about all. In
fact, said Baldwin, concluding his judicial summing up, Conway could
win out, hands down, if it were not for his recent quarrel with Malachi
Nolan. Underwood remembered that during all this frankness he had
reflectively drawn rude little geometrical figures on an envelope and
had been somehow afraid to look up at Baldwin, for the noted lobbyist
had sat there transfixing him with an eye that could read the mind of a
man when it was impinged on politics--that is, practical politics--as
easily as it could a poker hand across a table stacked with blue chips.

He knew Baldwin had come with some practical proposition, and when
the lobbyist suggested that he was too respectable, and would run
better in some residence district, that the boys looked upon him as
a reformer, and that the silk stockings were not practical enough to
help him, Underwood had felt that at last it was coming. It was simple
enough. Baldwin had been talking that very morning about Underwood’s
candidature to Mr. Weed of the Metropolitan Motor System, and to Mr.
Peabody, president of the Gas Company, and they had been very much
interested. They had an anxiety to see good men nominated that year,
for they had large business interests that were more or less affected
by legislation, and had feared they would have to settle on Conway.
Conway had experience in legislative matters, and had been friendly
enough in the city council, yet they felt they could hardly trust
him--he was such a grafter, and in such things, Baldwin blandly assured
Underwood, they had to depend upon a man’s honor alone, and so they had
sent Baldwin to suggest that Underwood meet them at luncheon, and talk
matters over. Baldwin, with his love of ease and luxury, had preferred
a dinner over at the Cardinal’s in the evening, but Mr. Peabody had
something on hand with the trustees of his church and couldn’t meet
them then. Baldwin had taken out his watch at this point, with the air
of a man who suddenly remembers some important engagement--the details
all came back with a fidelity that was painful--and stood awaiting
Underwood’s reply, with the open watch ticking impatiently in his palm.

Of course, Underwood had understood--and he wished ardently to be
nominated and elected. He could see himself swinging idly in a big
chair behind a walnut desk in the senate chamber, just as an actor sees
himself, with an artist’s ecstatic, half-frightened gasp, in some new
part he is about to study. The position would give him much importance,
he would be riding back and forth between Chicago and Springfield on
a pass, it would be so pleasant to be addressed as senator, to be
consulted, to head delegations in state conventions and cast the solid
vote for any one he pleased; besides, it would be a good training for
Washington, he could practise in oratory and parliamentary law just
as he practised on friendless paupers over in the criminal court when
his father influenced some judge to appoint him to defend an indigent
prisoner. It meant only one little word, he could be wary of promises.
His heart had expanded, he had turned half around in his chair to face
Baldwin, when suddenly the reformer within him rose to object, pointed
to his ideals, rehearsed the speech on _The Tendencies of Modern
Politics_, recalled all the good words the independent papers had
spoken of him, urged the beauty of great sacrifices for principle. At
the idea of self-sacrifice, Underwood had felt a melting self-pity, he
admired himself in this new rôle of a self-sacrificing reformer. And so
he flung the cigarette out of the window, watched it whirl down to the
melting tar of the roofs below and said firmly:

“I have an engagement this morning, Mr. Baldwin. I’m sorry, but I guess
I can’t come.”

Once more Underwood saw the pleasantness leave Baldwin’s face, saw him
fleck a flake of ash from the white waistcoat he wore with his summer
suit of blue, and snapping the lid of his watch shut, he once more
heard him say in a final and reproachful tone:

“Well, all right; sorry, my boy.”

Underwood wondered that morning in the noisy convention hall, whether,
if he had the decision to make over again, he would decline such
influence. It had been the cause of much doubt and some regret at the
time. The boss within him had protested--surely it was a political
mistake--and the boss was louder than the reformer, and more plausible.
He came forward with a brilliant scheme. He recalled Baldwin’s
reference to the rivalry between Nolan and Conway. Underwood remembered
that when he suggested the possibility of Nolan’s running for the
nomination himself, Baldwin had shaken his head--there wasn’t enough in
it, he said. Nolan could do very much better in the council, where he
was. Besides, Mr. Weed and Mr. Peabody disliked him.

Underwood thought out his scheme that afternoon, while hunting in
the digest for cases in point to be cited in a case his father was
preparing for the appellate court. The work of looking up cases in
point, while its results are impressive and seem to smell of the lamp,
had in reality grown quite automatic to Underwood, and as he loafed
over digests and reports and jotted down his notes, he elaborated
the scheme, just what he would say and do, how he would appear, and
so forth. And so, when he entered Malachi Nolan’s place in Dearborn
Street, early that evening, he was fully prepared. The details of this
incident came back just as the details of Baldwin’s visit had done--the
empty saloon, the alderman himself leaning over his bar, his white
apron rolled into a big girth about his middle, the cigar in the round
hole at the corner of his mouth gone out, denoting that it was time for
him to go down the alley to Billy Boyle’s and get his porterhouse and
baked potato.

Underwood watched Malachi Nolan mix his Martini cocktail, splash it
picturesquely into a sparkling glass and bejewel it with a Maraschino
cherry, then gravely take a cigar for himself and stow it away in his
ample waistcoat. Then, as Nolan mopped the bar with professional sweep
of his white-sleeved, muscular arm, Underwood unfolded his brilliant
scheme, skirting carefully the acute suspicions of an old politician.
But Nolan mopped, blinking inscrutably, at last putting the damp cloth
away in some mysterious place under the counter. The fat Maltese cat,
waiting until the moisture on the bar had evaporated, stretched herself
again beside the silver urn that held the crackers and the little cubes
of cheese. Still Nolan blinked in silence, like a hostile jury with its
mind made up, until at last, in desperation, Underwood blurted out his
proposition. Nolan blinked some more, then, half opening his blue Irish
eyes, grunted:

“Well, I like your gall.”

Underwood’s spirits fell, yet he was not disappointed. It was,
after all, just what he had expected. It served him right for his
presumption, if nothing more--though the subdued reformer within had
hinted at other reasons. He hung his head, twirling his empty glass
disconsolately. He did not see the light that twinkled in the blue
eyes, he had not then known how very ready Nolan was to form any
combination that would beat Conway and Baldwin, especially with a
reformer like himself who had money to spend on his ambitions. He had
not discerned how badly the man whom the newspapers always cartooned
with the First Ward sticking out of his vest pocket, needed a reformer
in his business, as the saying is. Hence his glad surprise when Nolan
wiped his big hand on his apron like a washer-woman and held it out,
saying:

“But I’m wit’ ye.”

Then the campaign, under Nolan’s management, in the most wonderful
legislative district--a cosmopolitan district, bristling with
sociological problems, a district that has fewer homes and more
saloons, more commerce and more sloth, more millionaires and more
paupers, and while it confines within its boundaries the skyscrapers,
clubs, theaters and hundred churches of a metropolis, still boasts a
police station with more arrests on its blotter than any other in the
world. Night after night, with Nolan’s two candidates for the house,
he spent in saloons where a candidate must treat and distribute his
cards that the boys may size him up; lodging houses and barrel houses
in lower Clark Street, where sweating negroes and frowsy whites drank
five-cent whisky with him; blazing saloons along the levee, where
even the poor, painted girls at the tables lifted their glasses when
he ordered the drinks for the house; crap games and policy shops in
lower Clark Street, the Syrian, Arabic, Chinese and Italian quarters
down by the squalid Bad Lands, and at last a happier evening along the
Archey Road. Underwood had three weeks of this, and as he stood in the
convention hall that morning, unwashed, unshaven, his linen soiled,
his shoes muddy, his own friends would not have known him, though he
cared little enough for this now--they had all forgotten to go to the
primaries the day before, and those for whom he had sent carriages had
been too busy, or too respectable, to respond. The taste of bad beer
and the scorch of cheap cigars still smacked in his mouth--indeed, he
did not get them entirely out until he came back from Mt. Clemens two
weeks after the nomination.

But they were balloting for permanent chairman now. It would be a test
vote; it would disclose his own strength and the strength of Conway.
He looked over the red faces before him. He saw Conway himself moving
among the delegates, snarling, cursing, quarreling with the friends
of years; he saw Conway’s candidate for the house, McGlone, over in
the Second Ward delegation, his coat off, a handkerchief about his
fat neck, a fuming cigar between his chubby fingers, turning on his
heavy haunches to revile some man who was numbered with Nolan’s crowd;
he saw in the First Ward delegation, Malachi Nolan, clean-shaven, in
black coat and cravat, his iron gray hair cropped short, calm alone
of all the others. He would have looked the priest more than the
saloon-keeper, had he smoked his cigar differently. Now and then he
solemnly raised his hand, with almost the benediction of a father, to
still the clamor of his delegation, which, with its twenty-one votes,
was safe at all events for Underwood.

Muldoon was Conway’s man--they would try to make the temporary
organization permanent. D’Ormand was Underwood’s candidate. And Muldoon
won. Underwood had lost the first round.

The candidates for senator were to be placed in nomination first.
Underwood stood in the crowded doorway and heard Conway’s name
presented. Then, in the cheering, with his heart in his sanded throat,
he heard the chairman say:

“Are there any other nominations?”

There was a momentary stillness, and then he heard a thick, strong
voice:

“Misther Chairman!”

“The gentleman from the First Ward.”

“Misther Chairman,” the thick, strong voice said, “I roise to place in
nomynation the name of wan--”

It was the voice of Malachi Nolan, and Underwood suddenly remembered
that Nolan was to place his name before the convention. He listened
an instant, but could not endure it long. He could not endure that
men should see him in the hour when his name was being thus laid
naked to the world. Reporters were writing it down, perhaps the crowd
would laugh or whistle or hiss. Besides, candidates do not remain in
the convention hall; they await the committee of notification in
some near-by saloon. He squeezed through the mass of men who stood on
tiptoes, stretching their necks to see and hear the old leader of the
First Ward, and fled.

The first ballot was taken--Conway, 31; Underwood, 30; Simmons, the
dark horse, 8; necessary to a choice, 35. The vote was unchanged for
twenty-six ballots, till the afternoon had worn away, and the trucks
had jolted off the cobblestones of Clark Street, till the lights were
flaring and hot tamale men, gamblers, beggars, street walkers, all
the denizens of darkness were shifting along the sidewalks, till the
policemen had been changed on their beats, and Pinkerton night watchmen
were trying the doors of stores, till Chinamen shuffled forth, and
Jewesses and Italian women emerged for their evening breath of air,
bringing swart and grimy children to play upon the heated flags. The
hall was lighted, just as if some Italian festival were to be held
there. The reporters’ places at the table were taken by the men who
did politics for the morning papers, themselves reduced at last to
the necessity of taking notes. They brought reports of the results in
other senatorial conventions held about town that day--it seemed to
be assured that John Skelley had carried the country towns, Lemont,
Riverside, Evanston, and so on. In certain west side districts this
man had won, in certain north side districts that man had been
successful. It looked as if the old gang was going to break back into
the legislature.

And so the interest in this one remaining convention deepened, the
strain tightened, the crowd thickened. The delegates, tired and sullen,
shed their waistcoats, tore off their moist and dirty collars and
settled down to an angry fight. The amphitheatrical arrangement of the
chairs had long been broken. The ward delegations now formed circles
about their leaders. The damp arabesques wrought by the janitor’s
superficial sprinkling-can had long since been superseded by arabesques
of tobacco juice. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, the
spent ballots with which the stubborn contest had been waged. The
First Ward delegation was in a solid ring, and in the center of it sat
Malachi Nolan, his elbows on his knees, tearing old ballots into tiny
specks of paper and strewing them on the floor, but keeping all the
while a surveying eye on the Fifth Ward delegation, now divided into
two groups, one of which surrounded Howe, the other huddling about
Grogan, the lawyer, who, with disheveled hair, a handkerchief about
his neck, stood glaring angrily at Nolan, his eyes shadowed by heavy
circles telling of weariness and the strain.

Now and then the leaders made desperate attempts to trade, harrying
Simmons, offering him everything for his seven votes. Simmons himself,
in his turn, tried to induce each faction to swing its strength to him.

But the situation remained unchanged.

Once Nolan sent for Underwood and whispered to him. He thought he
knew one or two Conway men who could be got very cheaply, but the
boy shook his head--the reformer within him demurred--and yet he
smiled sardonically at the reformer thinking of the primaries and the
convention itself.

Then Malachi Nolan caught the chairman’s shifty eye and moved an
adjournment until morning. But even as he spoke, Grogan scowled at
Muldoon, shook his head at his followers, and the room rang with their
hoarse shouts:

“No! no! no!”

Heartened by this confession of weakness on Nolan’s part, they kept on
yelling lustily:

“No! no! no!”

They even laughed, and Muldoon smote the table, to declare the motion
lost.

On the forty-seventh ballot, one of the Simmons votes went over to
Conway, and there was a faint cheer. On the forty-eighth, one of the
Simmons votes went to Underwood, and parity was restored. On the
forty-ninth, Underwood gained another of Simmons’ votes--Nolan, it
seemed, had promised to get him on the janitor’s pay-roll in the state
house--and the vote was tied. This ballot stood:

                First      Second      Fifth
                Ward        Ward       Ward       Total

  Conway         --         10          22           32
  Underwood      21          4           7           32
  Simmons        --          5          --            5

The Simmons men were holding out, waiting to throw their strength to
the winner. When the sixty-seventh ballot had been taken, Muldoon,
squinting in the miserable light, at the secretary’s figures, hit the
table with the chair leg and said:

“On this ballot Conway receives 32, Underwood 32, Simmons 5. There
being no choice, you will prepare your ballots for another vote.”

Just then one of the Conway men from the Second Ward left his
place, and touched one of Nolan’s fellows in the First Ward
delegation--Donahue--on the shoulder. Donahue started. The man
whispered in his ear, and returned to his delegation, keeping his eye
on Donahue. Underwood looked on breathlessly. Nolan, revolving slowly,
held his hat for every vote--last of all for Donahue’s. The man dropped
his folded ballot into the hat and hung his head. Nolan calmly picked
the ballot out of the hat and gave it back to Donahue, who looked up in
affected surprise.

“What’s the trouble, Malachi?” he said as innocently as he could. He
was not much of an actor.

“This won’t do,” Nolan said, giving the ballot back to the man.

“It’s all right, Malachi, honest to God it is!” protested Donahue.

“Thin I’ll just put this wan in for ye, heh?” said Nolan, drawing
another ballot from the pocket of his huge waistcoat and poising it
above the hat.

The crowd had pressed around the First Ward delegation. The convention
had risen to its feet, craning red necks, and out of the mass, Grogan
cried:

“Aw, here, Malachi Nolan, none o’ that now!”

Nolan turned his rugged face toward him and said simply:

“Who’s runnin’ this dillygation, you or me?”

“Well--none o’ your bulldozing--we won’t stand it!” replied Grogan
angrily, his blue eyes blazing.

“You get to hell out o’ this.” And so saying, Nolan dropped the ballot
into the hat and turned to face the chair.

“Have you all voted?” inquired Muldoon.

“First Ward!” the secretary called.

Nolan squared his shoulders, not having looked in his hat or counted
the ballots there, and said slowly and impressively:

“On behalf av the solid dillygation av the First Ward, I cast
twinty-wan votes for John W. Underwood.”

“Misther Chairman! Misther Chairman!” cried Grogan, waving his hand in
the air, “I challenge that vote! I challenge that vote!”

“The gentleman from the Fifth Ward challenges the vote--”

“Misther Chairman,” said Nolan, standing with one heavy foot on his
chair and leveling a forefinger at Muldoon, “a point of order! The
gintleman from the Fifth Ward has no right to challenge the vote av the
First Ward--he’s not a mimber of the dillygation!”

“Let the First Ward be polled,” calmly ruled Muldoon. Nolan took his
foot from his chair and stepped to Donahue’s side. Every man in the
First Ward delegation, as his name was called from the credentials,
cried “Underwood!” As the secretary neared the name of Donahue, Nolan
laid his hand heavily on the fellow’s shoulder.

“Donahue!” called the secretary.

The fellow squirmed under Nolan’s hand.

“Donahue!”

“Don’t let him bluff you!” cried some one from the Fifth Ward.

“Vote as you damn please, Jimmie!”

“T’row the boots into ’im, Donnie!”

“Soak him one!”

“Take your hands off him, Bull Nolan!”

So they bawled and Donahue wriggled. But the hand of Nolan, like the
hand of Douglas, was his own, and gripped fast. Grogan, his face red,
his eyes on fire, leaped from his place in his delegation, and started
across the chairs for Nolan. The big saloon-keeper gave him a look out
of his little eye. His left shoulder dipped, his left fist tightened.
Grogan halted.

“Vote, Jimmie, me lad,” said Nolan, in a soft voice.

“Underwood!” said Donahue, in a whisper. His weak, pinched, hungry
face turned appealingly toward Grogan. His blear eyes were filmy with
disappointment.

“He votes for John W. Underwood, Misther Chairman,” said Nolan
complacently. The vote was unchanged. The chairman ordered another
ballot.

And then, all at once, as if a breath from a sanded desert had been
blown into the room, Underwood was sensible of a change in the
atmosphere. The air was perhaps no hotter than it had been for hours
at the close of that stifling day, no bluer with tobacco smoke, no
heavier with the smell borne in from Clark Street on hot night winds
that had started cool and fresh from the lake four blocks away, a
smell compounded of many smells, the smell ascending from foul and dark
cellars beneath the sidewalk, the smell of stale beer, the ammoniac
smell of filthy pavements, mingled with the feculence of unclean bodies
that had sweated for hours in the vitiated air of that low-ceilinged,
crowded room. It had a strange moral density that oppressed him, that
oppressed all, even the politicians, for they ceased from cursing and
from speech, and now sat sullen, silent, suspiciously eying their
companions. It was an atmosphere charged with some ominous foreboding,
some awful fear. Underwood had never felt that atmosphere before, yet,
with a gasp that came not as an effect of the heat, he recognized its
meaning.

A hush fell. Muldoon, his black, curly locks shining with perspiration,
was leaning on his improvised gavel, his keen eye, the Irish eye that
so readily seizes such situations, darting into every face before him.

And suddenly came that for which they were waiting. A man entered
the hall and strode straight across the floor into the Fifth Ward
delegation, into the group where the Underwood men were clustered
about their leader. He wore evening clothes, his black dinner-coat
and white shirt bosom striking a vivid note in the scene. He walked
briskly, but his mind was so intent upon his pose that it was not
until he had removed his cigarette from his lips and had observed
Underwood, that his white teeth showed beneath his reddish mustache in
the well-known smile of George R. Baldwin. He elbowed his way into the
very midst of the Underwood men from the Fifth Ward, and leading one of
them aside, talked with him an instant, and then returned him, as it
were, to his place in the delegation. Then he brought forth another,
whispered to him for an earnest moment, and sent him back, with a smile
and a slap on the shoulder. The third delegate detained him longer,
and once, as he argued with him, the slightest shade of displeasure
crossed Baldwin’s face, but in an instant the smile replaced it, and he
talked--convincingly, it seemed. Before Baldwin returned this man to
his delegation, he shook hands with him.

The secretary was calling the wards, and Nolan had announced the result
in his delegation. The Fifth Ward was a long while in preparing its
ballots. There was trouble of some sort there, among the Underwood
men. Nolan was urging, expostulating, cursing, commanding. The air was
tense. It seemed to Underwood that it must inevitably be shattered by
some moral cataclysm in the soul of man. Grogan’s brow was knit, as he
waited, hat in hand. The delegates voted. Feverishly, with trembling
fingers, Grogan opened and counted the bits of paper. Then he sprang to
his feet, with a wild, glad light in his face.

“Misther Chairman!” he cried, “the Fifth Ward casts twenty-five votes
for Conway and four for Underwood!”

The three bolters in the Fifth Ward delegation sat with defiance
in their faces, but they could not sustain the expression, even by
huddling close together. They broke for the door, wriggling their
way through masses of men, who made their passage uncertain, almost
perilous. A billow of applause broke from the Conway men, and submerged
the convention. Delegates all over the hall were on their feet,
clamoring for recognition, but Malachi Nolan’s voice boomed heavily
above all other voices. His fist was in the air above all other fists.

“Misther Chairman!” he yelled, “I challenge that vote!”

“Misther Chairman!” yelled Grogan, “a point of order! The gentleman
isn’t a member of the Fifth Ward delegation and can not challenge its
vote!”

“The point of order is well taken,” promptly ruled the chair. “The
gentleman from the First Ward is out of order--he will take his seat.”

Men were screaming, brandishing fists, waving hats, coats, anything,
scraping chairs, pounding the floor with them. There were heavy, brutal
oaths, and, here and there, the smack of a fist on a face. In the
tumult, the five Simmons votes went to Conway. Muldoon was beating the
table with his club and crying:

“Order! order! order!”

“To hell with order!” bawled some one from the First Ward delegation.

“On this ballot,” Muldoon was calling, “there were sixty-nine votes
cast; necessary to a choice, thirty-five. James P. Conway has received
forty votes; John W. Underwood, twenty-nine, and George W. Simmons”--he
paused, as if to decipher the vote--“none. James P. Conway, having
received the necessary number of votes, is therefore declared the
nominee of this convention.”

Underwood was stunned. He staggered through the horrible uproar toward
the door. He longed for the air outside, even the heavy air of lower
Clark street, where the people surged along under the wild, dazzling
lights, in two opposite, ever-passing processions. His head reeled.
He lost the sense of things, the voices about him seemed far away and
vague, he felt himself detached, as it were, from all that had gone
before. But as he pressed his way through the crowd that blocked the
entrance, and plunged toward the stairs, he saw Baldwin, mopping the
red band on his white brow. Baldwin recognized him, and said, with his
everlasting smile:

“Sorry, my boy--next time!”




MALACHI NOLAN


Malachi Nolan sat by the roll-top desk in the front window of his
saloon. The desk was unopened, for Malachi seldom had occasion to use
it. The only letters he ever wrote were to whisky houses in Peoria or
Louisville, and then the process was a painful one. His mighty haunches
completely filled the chair, which, in turn, completely filled the
space railed off in front of the partition that screened the bar. The
saloon was in a basement in Dearborn Street, and, to get to it, you had
to go down four stone steps, hollowed by countless feet in the long
years he had kept there. Outside, over the door, a long, black sign
bore his simple device--M. Nolan.

Malachi Nolan sat with his back to the window. His cropped gray hair
showed his red scalp, the hard red skin on his face was closely shaven
and shone on the points of his heavy jaw. In the round hole at the
corner of his broad mouth was one of the long succession of cigars that
had worn away the hole, sending up its perpetual incense. He never
removed the cigar and seldom puffed it. It seemed to smoke of its own
volition, and lasted a long time. When it consumed itself, Malachi
replaced it with another. No one had ever seen him without a cigar in
that hole at the side of his mouth. When he moved his thin lips to
speak the cigar would stand out rigidly between his teeth. He spoke
with his teeth clenched. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his shirt
was clean and fresh, for he changed his linen daily, just as he shaved
himself, relentlessly, every morning with a dull razor. On his glossy
shirt front a great diamond, four carats in weight, sparkled leisurely
as his enormous chest slowly rose and fell with his heavy breathing.
This diamond was the central jewel of his alderman’s gold star,
presented by constituents years before. The setting was so contrived
that the stone could be unscrewed and made to serve as a stud. Malachi
seldom wore the star, unless he went to a fire, or to a prize-fight
across the Indiana line, or to the Olympic Theater, or got drunk.

As he sat there in his warm saloon on this raw March morning, Malachi
read his paper, read it carefully and slowly, first the front page,
column after column, then the second page, and so on, methodically,
through all the pages, except the editorials, which he skipped. His
lips moved slightly as he read, for he had to pronounce the words to
himself in order to get their full meaning. He read his paper thus
every morning of his life, and his paper was all he ever did read.

Malachi sat this morning, as on every other morning of the year, heavy,
imponderable and solemn. The hour was ten o’clock. It was too early for
business to begin in that saloon, so that the old bartender, who had
been with Malachi for fifteen years, sat with his apron in his lap,
against the whisky barrels that reached in rows from the slot machine
back to the wooden stalls where many a campaign in the city council had
been planned and its victory celebrated. The bartender was likewise
reading a paper, the sporting news chiefly claiming his attention. By
noon, aldermen and city hall employees would begin to drop in, and the
place would liven up, but now the monotonous ticking of the Western
Union clock on the wall could be heard all over the long room, and the
big Maltese cat snoozed lazily at one end of the bar.

Malachi was not feeling as well as usual this morning, though his
exterior was as clean and calm as ever. A fever burned beneath his
great waistcoat, and on coming down he had drunk a bottle of mineral
water. The truth is, that the night before, Malachi had so far departed
from the habit of his methodical life as to drink much whisky, a
thing he had not done for years, ever since the occasion, in fact,
when celebrating a reëlection to the council, he had drunk so much
that he was constrained to enter a barber shop in State Street, and
terrorize the barbers by sticking all the razors in the floor, like
a juggler he had seen playing with knives in a theater. The gang had
been in the saloon until three o’clock that morning. They had just
passed an ordinance granting a new franchise to the Metropolitan Motor
Company, and in one of the walnut stalls the bundle had been cut, as
the phrase is. The gang had grown so hilarious, as it always did on
such occasions, that it had proposed a song by Malachi. Now, in his
younger days, Malachi had been a great lad for song, and many a shindig
in Bridgeport had he gladdened with his voice, but in the latter years
it was seldom that he could be induced to exercise it. He would always
plead his age and his flesh, and such was the solemnity of manner
that had grown upon him with the years, that men in their sober hours
never had the temerity to suggest anything so unbecoming his dignity.
But on this night, heated by wine, and feeling, though they did not
of course analyze the feeling, that so many improprieties had been
committed that one more could not noticeably swell the score, they had
been emboldened to demand a song. Malachi, standing by his own bar in
his long frock coat and square-crowned stiff hat, twiddling his whisky
glass just as if he were a casual visitor there, had resolutely shaken
his head. But at two o’clock in the morning he had suddenly ordered the
drinks for the house, and then, when the gang had given over all hope
of his singing, save, perhaps, one or two who, deeper in their cups
than the rest, had monotonously persisted in the invitation, he had
spontaneously burst forth:

  “Oh, Paddy, dear, and did you hear the news that’s going round?
  The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground.
  St. Patrick’s day no more we’ll keep, his colors can’t be seen,
  For there’s a bloody law ag’in the wearin’ of the green.
  I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
  And he said, ‘How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?’”

And then the gang, unable to hold its enthusiasm, bellowed in chorus
with the sadly cracked voice, which, nevertheless, retained the true
old Irish lilt:

  “She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
  They are hangin’ men and women for the wearin’ of the green.”

They had sung it over and over, prolonging to a greater extent with
each repetition the high note upon which in the song the word “men”
falls. Once in tune, it was not so difficult to get Malachi to sing
other songs, and he gave them, with the genuine flavor of the old sod,
_Garryowen_. The gang became uproarious when he reached the stanza:

  “Johnny Connell’s tall and straight,
  And in his limbs he is complate,
  He’ll pitch a bar of any weight
  From Garryowen to Thomond gate.”

But the climax was reached when Malachi was at last induced to sing
_The Night Before Larry Was Stretched_. This had taken time and
diplomacy, for the more popular the song, the more difficult it was to
prevail upon him to sing it, though at last he yielded, and the gang
restrained itself as he began:

  “The night before Larry was stretched,
    The boys they all paid him a visit,
  A bit in their sacks too they fetched,
    They sweated their duds till they riz it:
  For Larry was always the lad,
    When a friend was condemned to the squeezer,
  But he’d fence all the togs that he had
    Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer,
    And moisten his gob ’fore he died.”

The lagging last line was too much, and in their mad delight they began
to pound Malachi familiarly on the back. And then he froze stiffly,
drew himself up, ordered his cab and went home, and the song was never
finished.

But now that morning had come and reason had returned with the light,
he felt a chagrin at having suffered such a lapse in his dignity, and
such a break in the resolution of years, and so was more solemn than
ever.

When Malachi had read to the last line of the last column of the last
page of his newspaper, he did not fold it and lay it aside as he did
every other morning of the year. He turned to the first page and
studied the picture there. It was the daily cartoon, and the central
figure was intended for Malachi himself. That there could be no
question of identity, the prudent artist had labeled it “Bull Nolan.”
The figure was one that Malachi had seen in the newspapers in varying
situations for years, and the aldermanic paunch, with massive chain
and charm, the bullet head, with its stubble of hair and bell-crowned
hat, the checked and braided clothes, the broad-soled shoes and
checkered spats, the briskly radiating lines to symbolize his diamond,
were supposed to embody the popular conception of the alderman’s
personality. The inevitable cigar had fallen and lay fuming at his
feet, the eyes and mouth gaped in palpable fear, and with a fat hand
flashing other diamonds, this counterfeit presentment of Malachi Nolan
was trying to protect the First Ward--peeping on a ballot from his
waistcoat pocket--from a gentleman with high hat, side whiskers, gloves
and cane, who, labeled “Citizen,” obviously impersonated the better
element. The point of the cartoon was that the Municipal Reform League
had resolved that Malachi Nolan be retired from public life. The League
had had a banquet, and the speeches had breathed a zeal of reform such
as only champagne and truffles can inspire. The resolutions rang like
a declaration of independence; if the reform candidate, a gentleman
of prominent probity, were beaten in regular convention, they would
nominate him by petition.

Malachi studied the cartoon a long time, never changing expression,
and when he finished, he folded the paper carefully and laid it on
his desk, bestowed his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket, and then,
placing a hand on each knee, sat and stared with widening eyes straight
before him.

It was not a new experience to be thus caricatured. He had long
since acquired a politician’s stoicism and could affect a reassuring
indifference to attacks of the press; indeed, if a newspaper happened
to elude him and slip into Nora’s hands, he could even pretend to like
it. But this cartoon roused the fighting Irish in him.

Malachi had promised himself to retire from politics that spring,
though his wary habit had kept him from taking the public into
his confidence. He was rich, though not rich enough to give up
saloon-keeping and become a contractor or a broker, and he had lately
got the notion that he was growing old. But this successful politician,
who so long before had landed in New York a homesick emigrant, had
one great ambition unfulfilled. It was the common ambition of the
exile--to see his home once more. When first elected to the council,
after toiling years to save enough for his first small saloon, he had
found, in the sentimental manner of his race, his chief joy in the
fact that it was in the character of an ex-alderman he could go home
to Ireland. Fate, of course, with her usual irony, had embittered his
joy; Molly had died that very spring, she had not been spared even
long enough to see him take his seat in the council chamber behind the
one pathetic floral piece his constituents had placed upon his desk,
but had left him to sit beside the candles at her wake, with lonesome
little Nora crying at his knee. He felt that he had earned a rest. He
had worked hard, mastered the intricate details of the water office and
the special assessment bureau; he had done his part in making a town of
wooden sidewalks a city of steel and stone; he had never betrayed his
party or his friend. As for certain of his methods, well--if he thought
of them at all--they were direct, and they won. So now that Nora was
grown and had finished her education at St. Aloysius, he had decided
to retire and take her with him on the long-dreamed-of trip back to
Ireland--Ireland, where it was really spring that very morning.

But he wished to retire gracefully, to name his successor before he
went, and how could he do this with the reformers making the fight
of their lives against him? It would take Malachi Nolan some time to
decide a question like that. He must think. Nora was young; after all,
another term would make little difference; if he concluded to give some
more lessons in practical politics to the reformers, she could take
some more lessons on the piano.

Meanwhile, like a wise statesman, Malachi Nolan set about his day’s
work. He had enough to keep him busy, so, drawing out his gold watch
he carefully compared it with the clock, grasped the hour, rose
deliberately, settled his ponderous body on his thick legs, and
withdrew behind the partition. When he emerged to view again he was
wrapped in his frieze overcoat, with his square-crowned hat pulled down
to his eyebrows, ready for his morning visit to the city hall.

His progress over the great building was constantly impeded by men who
stepped out of the rushing throngs of lawyers and lawyers’ clerks, city
employees, court officials and politicians to shake hands with him, to
whisper to him. He halted each time in a way that did not impair his
Hibernian dignity, heard them with gravity, and walked on. He went to
the water office to see why young Hennessey had been laid off; to the
civil service commission to find out what opportunities the sixty-day
list afforded; to the commissioner of public works to have some
laborers put on the pay-roll; to the board of election commissioners to
give in a list of certain constituents he desired to have appointed as
extra clerks during the spring rush of work. He dropped in on the chief
of police to get Murphy on the force; he saw the city clerk about a
good fellow who had to be taken care of; he even followed the long hall
to the court-house wing, where he whispered an instant to Judge Peters
and had a friend excused from the jury.

And then he called on the mayor. A lieutenant of police, in gold
stripes and stars, the velvet cuffs of his blue coat scrupulously
brushed, was just going in. When the officer came out, the big
policeman standing guard at the door raised his hand in a semi-military
salute, and he kept a finger at his forehead until Malachi entered,
thus declaring his abiding faith in the alderman’s political star, and
his concern for his own official one.

The mayor sat at his great, square desk, with that look of nervous
weariness Chicago gives the faces of its successful men, though the
morning was young and the day’s strain scarce begun.

“Well, Alderman,” he said with a sigh, “what can I do for you?”

“Misther May’r,” said Nolan, “I come fer to ask a favor.”

The shade of weariness under the mayor’s eyes enveloped his brow,
although he tried to wipe it out with his palm. Everybody came every
day to ask favors.

“Now, Alderman,” he said, turning away fretfully, “I know. Please don’t
ask me to interfere in your fight this spring. I’ll promise to keep
hands off and leave you alone. Ain’t that enough?”

“Who said annything about my fight?” said Malachi. “It’s time enough to
saay good marnin’ to th’ divil whin ye meet ’im, Jawn.”

The mayor looked a bit relieved, and turned toward Malachi with half a
smile.

“Excuse me, Alderman, I supposed, of course--But what can I do for
you?” He repeated his formula.

Malachi seated himself, and dangling his hat between his knees, he said:

“They’s a laad from my waard in the Bridewell, Jawn, an’ he’s a mother
who’s wallopin’ a wash-board be th’ daay an’ night fer to make a
livin’. His name’s James McGlone, an’ I’m afther a paardon fer ’im.”

The mayor scowled. “What’s he in for?”

“Damned if I know,” said Malachi; “he’s all the time in wan shcrape or
anither with some o’ thim bla’gyaards down there.”

The mayor was turning a long blue pencil over and over, end for end,
between his white fingers, making a series of monotonous tappings on
his desk.

“Can’t you wait till after election?” he said at last.

“His time’ll be served out befoore that,” said Malachi, “an’ ph’at
good’ll a paardon do ’im thin?”

The mayor continued the thoughtful tapping with his long blue pencil.

“Well, Alderman,” he said after a while, “I’d rather not issue any
pardons before election, if I can help it. These reformers are going to
raise hell this spring, sticking their noses into everybody’s business,
and--”

Malachi’s little eyes contracted until their blue twinkle was almost
hidden.

“But, Jawn,” he said, “so much the more r’ason why ye’ll want the
Firsht in th’ convintion.”

“Oh, well,” said the mayor, “if it’s important--” And he pressed a
button under his desk. Before his secretary appeared he added:

“You say you don’t know what he’s in for?”

“I dinnaw,” Malachi replied, “Mallett sint him up befoore I could git
over.”

“You ought to watch those things more closely, Alderman,” chided the
mayor peevishly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Malachi Nolan sat at twilight with a glass of hot toddy on the leaf
of his desk, and he sipped it with heavy sighs, for he had taken cold
out in the March weather, with pores opened by the relaxations of the
night before. Through his windows he could see the lights glimmering
in the rain that had followed the moist snow of the early morning, and
thousands of feet trudging by under rolled-up trousers or skirts held
ankle high. At intervals the feet would line up along the curb waiting
for North Side cable-cars, and seeing them paddle in the dirty slush,
Malachi in the selfish spirit of contrast, more than ever coddled in
the warmth of the room, of the toddy over which he smacked his lips,
and of the cigar he smoked so slowly and comfortably. As he sat and
smoked and sipped, he thought again of Limerick--the breath of spring
blows the fragrance of the hawthorne, white upon the bough; he hears
the song of the mavis; he is walking homeward along the black path
through the bog, and up the green boreen, and there before him is the
little cottage, its thatch held down by sticks and stones, a long ash
pole propping up its crumbling gable; there is the mud shed with the
thills of the old cart sticking out of it; the donkey is standing by,
sad as ever; and up the muddy lane little Annie in her bare feet is
driving the cows to the byre; and then he sees his mother sitting in
the low doorway, all at once he catches his first whiff of the peat
smoke, and with the strange spell that odors work upon the memory, it
makes him a boy again; again he is sheltered on a rainy day in the mud
shed, playing shoot-marbles with Andy Corrigan and Jerry O’Brien; again
he is in the little chapel with the leaky roof; he sees all the boys
and girls--Mary Cassidy among them--standing on the bare clay floor; he
brings his bit of stone to kneel on during mass, he even runs out for a
piece of slate to give to Mary, who lays it in the puddle at her feet
and spreads her handkerchief over it before she kneels. And when the
mass is over he will take little Nora--little Nora? He placed his hand
to his forehead in confusion, and then in a gasp it all comes over
him--Mary is old, Andy and Jerry are old, little Annie is old and he is
old--they are all gone away. He bowed his head.

And yet Nora yearned to go. Should he turn the ward over to Brennan
and take her this spring? He could run for the legislature when he
came back in the fall; a senator would be elected by the next general
assembly, and the graft would be very good then. The compromise
attracted Malachi, for at once it acquitted him of indecision, a
quality of statesmanship he hated, and kept for him the life of power
that had become as the very breath of his nostrils. He would have been
happy but for this stuffy cold, and even as it was he smacked his lips
and fetched a long sigh, as he put down the glass.

And then the door opened, and a chill, wet wind blew in, causing him
to start up out of his chair. He looked to see who it was that thus
broke upon his reveries--and it was a woman! Now, a woman had never
been in Malachi Nolan’s place before. It was a thing he could never
tolerate, if he could ever imagine it even, and he hastily glanced
around to see how many men were at the bar, and who they were. His face
showed positive alarm. But the woman entered. She was accompanied by
a boy, who slouched in behind her, shutting the door at her solicitous
command, and halted there, hanging his head. His eyes shifted
suspiciously under the hat brim that shadowed his sallow, prematurely
wrinkled face; his lips curled in an evil sneer that seemed habitual.

The woman fluttered her shawl about her shoulders, clutched it to her
thin breast with one hand, while the other she stretched forth with a
blessing, as it were, for Malachi, and as she spoke, her seamed and
scarred old Irish face, bleached in the steam of many wash-days and
framed in withered black bonnet strings, glowed with the light of
mother-love.

“Praise be, Mal’chi Nol’n,” she began, in a high voice that immediately
stifled the clinking of glasses and the laughter behind the partition.
“May God bless ye--ye’re th’ foinest man in th’ whole town! To think
of yer l’avin’ th’ laad out th’ way ye did--an’ so soon afther me
havin’ th’ impidence to ask ye, too--shure a mither’s blessin’ an’ th’
blessin’ of th’ Vargin’ll be on ye fer gettin’ th’ paardon fer ’im.
Shtep up here, Jamesy, and t’ank Misther Nol’n yersilf--he’s th’ best
man--”

“Aw, tut, tut, tut, now, Misthress McGlone,” said Malachi, his face
flaming with something more than the exertion of craning his neck to
peer behind the partition, “tut, tut, now, don’t be goin’ on like that.”

But the woman, brave in the one subject upon which she could dispute
the alderman, persisted:

“Shure, Mal’chi Nol’n, ye know it yersilf--shtep up here, Jamesy, an’
make yer t’anks to ’im. Th’ laad’s a bit bashful, ye must excuse ’im,
sor, he’s th’ best b’y ever lived, though it’s mesilf says it p’hat
oughtn’t to.”

The boy still hung back, but the old woman hitching up the shawl that
was shamelessly revealing the moth-eaten waist she wore, plucked him
by the sleeve, and dragged him to the rail that separated them from
Malachi. The boy jerked away from his mother’s grasp, yet lifted his
unsteady eyes for an instant to blurt out:

“Well, I’m much obliged, see?”

And then, as if ashamed of so much politeness, he hung his head and
squeezed the toe of his shoe between the spokes of the railing. The old
woman folded her arms in the shawl and gazed on him with a fond smile
that showed the few loose, yellow teeth that always wobbled in their
gums when she spoke. Presently she turned to Malachi again:

“Ye mustn’t think haard o’ him, Misther Nol’n, he’s a bit back’ard
shp’akin’ to th’ loikes o’ ye, ye moind, but he’s a good b’y, an’
he’d never got into throuble if it hadn’t been for this bad comp’ny
he be’s dhragged into. Shure, he niver shtays out later’n tin o’clock
o’ noights widout tellin’ me p’here he’s been. This afthernoon Oi was
shcrubbin’ awaay all alone, an’ who should come in all o’ a suddint but
him, bless th’ b’y, an’ saay, ‘Ma,’ he says, ‘Alderman Nol’n got me a
paardon an’ Oi--’”

“That’s all right, Misthress McGlone--”

“An’ God’ll bless ye, sor,” the old woman broke in, unable to restrain
the flood of tears that filled her filmy eyes and zigzagged down her
cheeks. She cried softly a moment, then suddenly looked up in a crafty,
cunning way.

“They’s wan thing, Misther Nol’n,” she said, “some wan was so good,”
she looked all about to make sure that none was within hearing, and
lowered her voice to a rough whisper, “as to sind me a ton o’ coal in a
pushcaart th’ day. Oi wonder now who could that be?”

The alderman raised his heavy face with fine innocence.

“Where did it come from?” he asked.

“Misther Degnan’s yaards,” the woman answered.

“Thin I suppose’t was Degnan himsilf sint it.”

“Aw, there now!” the old woman cried, with the triumph of a vindicated
prophet. “Oi knowed ye’d saay that, Oi knowed ye’d saay that--but,
shure Oi think’t was yersilf done it.”

“L’ave off, l’ave off, now,” said Malachi almost roughly, “’tis no
place, do ye mind, fer a woman, an’ no place fer th’ laad.” He gave the
boy a penetrating glance that made the shifting eyes fall suddenly.
“An’ ’tis late--did ye come down on th’ caar?”

The old woman’s tears running down her cheeks had left stains in
the wrinkles, and she began plucking at something under her shawl.
Presently she drew forth a handkerchief folded in a soft little white
square, fresh and clean from the iron, and shaking it out she dabbed
at her weak old eyes and wiped away the tear stains. Her voice was a
whisper again.

“Aw, Misther Nol’n,” she began, “it’s been a haard winther on the poor,
an’ Oi’ve had to save th’ pinnies, shure they’re scarce enough, an’
th’ laad with no job an’ me a poor widow woman. God forgive me”--her
voice sank still lower, and into the whisper came a hard, rebellious
note--“but some noights Oi’ve gone without me supper--”

“But why didn’t ye tell?” asked Malachi, looking up in concern.

“Oi’d die first!” she whispered hoarsely, while her wet eyes blazed.
“It’ll niver be said Oi’m a beggar, an’ Oi wouldn’t have tould anny wan
but you, sor”--she gave him a coaxing smile through her tears, and bent
her head to one side in a way that seemed to recall her girlhood--“an’
maybe, sor, ye’d not saay annything ’bout it--there’s a good man, now.
Oi’ve kep’ up th’ insurance an’ there’ll be enough to give me a dacent
bur’al whin Oi die. Ye’ll excuse me fer”--she stretched a hand from
the shawl and touched him on the shoulder--“fer runnin’ on loike this,
but Oi couldn’t shlape th’ noight till Oi’d come down to thank ye--God
bless ye, sor, Oi’ll pray fer ye every noight. We’ll be goin’ now.” She
took a step toward the door, but turned back again, with that pleading
inclination of the head, that smile, showing her long, wabbling teeth.

“Ye must excuse me, sor,” she said, “fer throublin’ ye so, but ye’re a
koind, saft-hearted man--ye couldn’t git th’ laad a job now--shure Oi
know ye couldn’t--he’s an hones’ b’y an’ a willin’ worker, sor, whin he
can git annything to do--ye must excuse me, sor.”

Malachi was deeply chagrined. He actually got up and peeped again
around the corner of the partition, and then said hastily, so as to
close a painful and scandalous incident:

“Let th’ b’y come down an’ see me in th’ marnin’, ma’am, an’ here’s a
bit o’ caar fare fer ye. Do ye go now an’ take th’ caar home. ’Tis a
long waays fer ye to walk, ye niver ought a done it.”

The old woman objected at first, but finally consented to accept the
coin on the basis of a loan, and then, blessing him again and again,
courtesied herself in an old-fashioned, rheumatic way out of the door.
And then Malachi tilted up his glass and drained the last drop. The
toddy had grown quite cold.

The law of moral reaction sent the gang home early that evening, and
by ten o’clock it was plain that the day’s work was done. Malachi had
the bartender help him on with the frieze overcoat, and was adjusting
his hat to a skull that still was sore, when the door opened. Malachi
turned with a scowl, when the draft struck him, and saw Sullivan, the
ward committeeman, and Brennan, Malachi’s political residuary legatee.
Brennan’s eyes were sparkling merrily, his red face was round with
laughter, and he came in with a breeze like the March day.

“Hello, Mal’chi,” he called, smiting the bar with the thick of his
fist, “ain’t goin’ home, are you? It’s just the shank of the evening.
What’ll you have?” Then, as one who likes to think he has special
privileges, he said to the bartender aside: “Give’s a nice little drink
of whisky.”

Malachi neither moved nor spoke. Brennan felt his coldness and flashed
the intelligence to Sullivan.

“Just saw Jim Degnan,” he said, grasping the sweating whisky bottle.

“You did, did you?” said Malachi, in a challenging tone.

“Yes,” said Brennan, determined to be genial. “He tells me you’re
goin’ back to Ireland in the spring.”

“He does, does he?” again challenged Nolan.

“Didn’t you tell ’im?”

“If I did, did I tell ’im phat spring?”

“Well, I s’posed as a matter of course he meant this spring.”

Brennan bent over to measure his drink and to hide some confusion. “And
I thought--you know what you said, Mal’chi--I was goin’ to have Mike
here call the convention and round up the nomination--”

“Th’ hell you was! Th’--hell--you--was!” Malachi’s growing amazement
lengthened the pauses between his words.

“Why, didn’t you say you’d t’row the nomination to me when you quit?”

Brennan’s color deepened to an angry red.

“Did ye iver see such narve!” said Malachi, ignoring the question.
“Mike’ll call th’ convintion fer soon enough, but whin I’m not a
candydate in me own waard, I’ll tell ye mesilf, Willum Brennan.”

“Well, don’t get mad about it, Mal’chi,” said Brennan, who was getting
mad himself. He shoved the bottle on to Sullivan, and blinked his
small eyelids a moment. “Of course, Mal’chi, it’s just as you say.”

“Well, now, ye’re talkin’, Willum.” Malachi never could brook anything
like interference in his ruling of the First Ward. “Whin I’m done,
ye can have th’ nomination, same’s I told ye, but this spring I’m a
candydate mesilf, do ye mind that now?” He drew closer to the bar in
his softened humor, and now that the question at last had been decided,
and in the only way it could have been decided, he suddenly became
himself again.

“When do you want the convention called for, Mr. Nolan?” asked Sullivan.

“Sathurday,” replied Malachi promptly.

“Where?”

“Oh, same as usual--in the back ind of th’ plaace here.” Malachi jerked
his thick thumb toward the rear end of the saloon, where the gloom was
deep. “Prim’ries fer Friday.”

“All right,” said Sullivan.

Then no one spoke for a while. Finally, however, Brennan said, in a
hesitating way:

“If you’re goin’ back to the council, Mal’chi, what’s the matter with
me takin’ the legislative nomination in the district?”

“It’s time enough to saay good marnin’ to th’ divil whin ye meet ’im,
Willum.”

There was silence again, until Brennan said:

“Well, I can’t help thinkin’ it’s a fine trip to Ireland you’re losin’.”

“’Tis so,” assented Malachi.

“Yes,” sighed Brennan. And he saw his ambition pass from him. But
presently he was saying in his old, cheery tone:

“Ain’t you goin’ to take somethin’?”

Malachi leaned his big body against his bar, and over his shoulder, out
of the corner of his mouth, he said:

“Seegaar.”

The bartender slid the box along the counter and rang up another ten
cents on the cash register.

“Well, here’s lookin’ at you,” said Brennan, raising the little tumbler.

“Dhrink heaarty,” said Malachi Nolan.

       *       *       *       *       *

The long day was done, and Malachi, in shirt-sleeves and stockinged
feet, sat in his big plush rocking-chair, his legs stretched out
before him, taking his ease at his own hearth. When he had come home at
midnight, Nora, who always sat up for him, had insisted upon brewing
him a cup of tea, under the impression, common to a certain class
of women, that it has great medicinal qualities. Malachi had sipped
it obediently, though he had not cared for it after all the mineral
waters he had drunk that day, and had enjoyed far more than the tea the
freckled Irish face of his daughter, as he gravely goggled at her over
the rim of the saucer into which he had poured the beverage to cool
it. They were in what Malachi called the parlor of their flat, though
Nora had lately taken to calling it the drawing-room. It was furnished
mostly in pieces upholstered in plush. Over the mantelpiece hung a
large crayon portrait of a woman whose face, despite the insipidity the
canvasing artist had given it, still showed the toil she had endured,
if it told little of her strong character, while that disregard for
expense which was expressed in the gilt frame marked it as a memorial
of the dead. It was, of course, the face of Malachi’s wife, and when
Nora, in her new culture, had hinted at hanging it in his bedroom, she
had, for the first time in her life, quailed before that stubborn
spirit with which her father ruled the First Ward. The few books on
the center-table treated mostly of religious subjects, though there
were queer bound volumes of Irish poetry, and on the wall there were
one or two etchings in oaken frames. In a corner was a crucifix with a
candle before it. But the one object in the room that dominated all the
rest with its aggressive worldliness, was an upright piano, and Nora
now sat swinging on the stool, her back to the instrument, her elbows
behind her on the keys. She had partly prepared for bed, for she wore a
flannel wrapper and her brilliant black hair hung in a braid down her
back. Celtic blue eyes lighted up her face, and now they smiled under
their long, black lashes upon this big saloon-keeper whom half the city
feared, as if the simple sight of him were reward enough for her long
hours of waiting.

Malachi finished his cup of tea and hurriedly inserted a cigar in the
hole at the corner of his mouth, and thus confirmed in comfort, he said:

“Nora, child, do ye sing now--phat was that--it wint hummin’ t’rough me
head th’ daay. Well, well, well, let me see now--hum-m-m-m--it goes
something like--”

And he hummed a quavering old tune:

  “‘I saw the Shannon’s purple flood
    Flow by the Irish town.’”

Then he stopped and shook his grizzled head. “Shure, now, I’m
forgettin’ it intirely; ye know, though, somethin’ about:

  “‘Whin down the glin rode Sarsfield’s min,
    And they wore the jackets green.’

“Sing it onct, fer th’ ould man.”

“But, father,” the girl laughed, though she began screwing up the piano
stool, “it’s too late, the neighbors will object.”

“Niver mind th’ neighbors,” commanded the alderman in the tone he used
at a primary, “sing it.”

“But it’s forbidden in the lease after ten o’clock,” the girl
protested, leafing over her music. “What if the landlord--”

“It’s time to say good marnin’ to th’ divil, Nora, whin ye meet ’im.”

Nora fixed herself on the stool, fingered the keys, finding a soft
minor chord. The old man closed his eyes, slid farther down in his
plush chair, and just as he was prepared to listen, she suddenly
stopped in the provoking way amateur musicians cultivate, to say:

“But, father, that’s such an old song, wouldn’t you rather I’d sing the
Intermezzo from _Cavalerie_?”

Malachi opened his eyes with a start and sat bolt upright.

“Naw,” he said, “none o’ thim fur’n op’res--phat’s the use of yer goin’
to th’ convint all those years?” But his voice quickly softened. “Do ye
go on now, Nora, darlin’, there’s a good gur-rl.”

And so she sang, and the alderman sank in his chair, with his big arms
in their shirt-sleeves thrown over his head, closed his eyes again,
stretched out his stockinged feet. The smoke from his cigar ascended
to the chandelier, and now and then when he remembered the words of a
line, he hummed them behind closed lips, in unison with his daughter.
When the song was done Nora whirled around, clasped her hands in a
school-girl’s ecstasy and said:

“Oh, father, that song makes me homesick--homesick for a place I never
saw. You won’t run again, will you, father, will you? And we’ll go to
Ireland in the spring, won’t we? Tell me, in the spring?”

A pain struck through Malachi Nolan’s heart, a pain that was made only
more poignant when, with her American fear of the sentimental, Nora
joked:

“I must see our ancestral cabin.”

Malachi could not open his eyes. For once he was afraid. He did not
move for a long time. But at last he sighed and set his jaw, and said:

“Well, Nora--if ye saay so--in the spring.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Malachi Nolan sat bolt upright in his seat in the Pullman. He was
clothed in his decent black suit, and he wore his black cravat tucked
stiffly under the collar that so tightly bound his thick, red neck. On
his glossy shirt front the great diamond, four carats in weight, rose
and fell with his heavy breathing. At his feet was a new yellow valise;
beside him, wedging him tightly into his seat, was Nora’s luggage, her
new bag, the roll of steamer rugs, her little umbrella, her plaid cape,
and all the things she had got at the suggestion of friends who were
interested in her journey across the sea to Ireland. Nora, in her new
traveling gown, was prettier than Malachi had ever seen her. She sat in
the front seat of the section, leaning against the double window, her
elbow on its narrow sill, her chin meditatively in her palm. There had
been some talk between them as the heavy train pulled out of the Van
Buren Street station, and in the bustle of getting away, of arranging
her bags and her bundles, and all that, Nora had beamed with pleasure,
and a fine and happy excitement had sparkled through the long, black
lashes of her blue Irish eyes. But as the train plunged recklessly
out through the bewildering yards, she had noticed her father casting
wistful glances at this or that familiar object sweeping so swiftly and
irrevocably away. There was the Harrison Street police station which
he had visited on so many mornings to help some poor devil out of the
toils; the shops shutting down for the night, their workers trooping
homeward, dead tired after the long hours; the Twelfth Street viaduct,
marking the limits of his ward; the slips in the south branch of the
dirty Chicago River, where big schooners still lay torpid at their
winter moorings, the crossings at Sixteenth Street, then the dear old
Archey Road. A silence had fallen upon him that reacted upon her, and
she grew still, and rode on in the swaying train, gazing soberly out
upon the ragged edges of that Chicago she was leaving behind for the
first time in her life.

The black porter, in spotless white jacket, was going through the car
with his stool, pulling down the inverted globes of the lamps with his
ventilating stick and lighting the four little gas-jets; the travelers
in the car were settling themselves accustomedly for the long ride to
New York, there was even a prospect of some cheer in the dinner which
was soon to be served in the dining-car, but the alderman seemed not to
notice any of these things.

Malachi had never traveled much. His only trips had been those biennial
ones to Springfield, when he had headed the First Ward delegation to
the state conventions; sometimes he had gone down there while the
legislature was in session; and once he had journeyed to Washington
with the Marching Club to attend the inauguration ceremonies. But that
was all. On these trips he had gone with his own kind, and doubtless
enjoyed them, but now, this evening, it was plain that he was not
comfortable. He could not smoke, for one thing, and the round hole in
the corner of his mouth looked forlorn in its present lack of a cigar.
He must have thought, once or twice, of escaping to the smoking-room,
but each time he had remembered Nora, and so had sat on, heavy,
imponderable and solemn.

After a while the porter got the little lights to burning, and they
illumed, though inadequately, the long coach, its heavy trappings, its
bell cord, the suspended hats and wraps swaying from side to side, as
it creaked and groaned over so many switches and curves and crossings
to get out of town. They rushed by mills, with furnaces blazing like
infernos in the gathering twilight, and black, stubby chimneys lighting
the dull sky with flames; at last they were in the outskirts where the
city helplessly degenerates into naked flat buildings, finally, into
low cottages scattered here and there in little broken rows, with high
board-walks in front of them.

Then Malachi, stooping painfully, unbuckled his new valise and took
from it a newspaper. Before he unfolded it, he drew out his spectacles
and calmly adjusted them to his nose. Then opening the paper he began
to read. He read carefully and slowly, first the front page, column
after column, then the second page, and so on, methodically, through
all the pages. His lips moved slightly as he read, for he had to
pronounce the words to himself to get their full meaning. When Malachi
had read to the last line of the last column of the last page of his
newspaper, he did not fold and lay it aside. He turned back to the
first page and studied the picture there. It was the daily cartoon, and
the central figure was intended for Malachi himself. That there could
be no question of identity, the prudent artist had labeled it “Bull
Nolan.” The figure was one that Malachi had seen in the papers, in
varying situations, for years, with the aldermanic paunch, the massive
chain and charm, the bullet head, the stubble of hair, the bell-crowned
hat, the braided plaid clothes, broad-soled shoes and checkered spats,
the briskly radiating lines to symbolize the diamond. But at last the
inevitable cigar had gone out, the First Ward no longer peeped on a
ballot, secure and safe, from his waistcoat pocket. The gentleman with
high hat, side whiskers, gloves and cane, who, labeled “Citizen,”
impersonated the better element, had it now, and while he was still
self-contained, there was a look of almost holy triumph in his face.

Malachi studied the cartoon a long time, never changing expression. But
even when he finished he did not fold the paper carefully and put it
back in his valise, nor bestow his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket.
He had suffered many lapses in his methodical habits of late, and they
were growing easy now. He turned to the editorial page, where a line in
big types, heading a leading editorial, had caught his little eye. It
said: “The Passing of Malachi Nolan.” Malachi began to read, slowly and
carefully, pronouncing each word to himself:

  “Citizens not only of the First Ward, but of the entire city, are to
  be congratulated upon the signal victory the Municipal Reform League
  has won in its campaign against Malachi Nolan. This man, who so long
  has misrepresented the ward mentioned in the city council, has at
  last been dislodged, and driven to the obscurity of private life,
  where his pernicious and dangerous tendencies, if not altogether
  abated, will at least be confined to a narrower sphere of activity.
  In announcing his retirement from politics, he gives as a reason
  his desire to pay a visit to his native land, but the public, while
  speeding his departure, will readily penetrate the gauzy excuse
  he advances for it. They know that he has been forced to fly from
  a field rendered utterly untenable by the onslaughts of those
  public-spirited gentlemen who at great personal sacrifice have so
  freely contributed of their means, their energies and their time to
  the work of the Municipal Reform League, and to them and the press
  they will ascribe the credit and the praise. It would seem, however,
  that the Honorable Bull Nolan has lost none of his presumption, for
  he insolently declares that he leaves as his personal representative
  and successor in the aldermanic chair one of his henchmen, William
  Brennan. But the people will take care of Mr. Brennan at the proper
  time. They will see to it that Nolan’s successor shall not be a man
  whose political methods are such as will enable him to take vacation
  trips in Europe, and with the abundant encouragement they have now
  received, will continue to widen this breach already made in the
  walls of corruption and dishonesty and carry on the splendid work for
  good government and honest politics--”

Malachi did not read any further. The lights in the car were poor,
after all, and then, his eyes were not so good as they used to be.
He folded the paper carefully, looked all about, then hid it at last
behind him. Then he bestowed his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket,
and, like Nora, looked out of the window. They had gone through South
Chicago, they had passed One-hundredth Street. They looked out now
upon the dull prairies that sprawled flat all about them, with no sign
of spring as yet, but dead and desolate, broken only by a black and
stunted tree here or there. At wide, wide intervals a lonely gas lamp
twinkled bravely in a legal way as if to preserve the prescription of
what was only technically a street. The prairies stretched away until
they faded into the gray gloom of the March evening, and they had left
Chicago at last behind.




THE PARDON OF THOMAS WHALEN


The private secretary turned reluctantly from his open window beside
which the trees bathed their young leaves in the sparkling sunshine of
the June morning to confront the throng that awaited audience with the
governor. The throng was larger than usual, for the state convention
was to be held on the morrow. Every county in the state was represented
in the crowd that trampled the red carpet, crushed the leather chairs
and blew the smoke of campaign cigars into the solemn faces of former
governors standing in their massive gilt frames with their hands
on ponderous law books. In one corner a woman huddled, pinching a
handkerchief to her eyes. Now and then she sobbed aloud. When Leonard
Gilman, the private secretary, saw her he knew it at once for a pardon
case, and paid no further attention to her. Big countrymen in Sunday
clothes, who wore the red badges of delegates, slapped him on the back,
city ward-heelers of checkered lives and garments called him “Len.”

There was an odor of perspiration in the room, distinguishable even in
the heavy fumes of tobacco. The real leaders, of course, William Handy
and the others, were over at the executive mansion, with the governor,
completing the final arrangements for his renomination. The governor
held the convention in the hollow of his hand.

The woman huddled in her corner until eleven o’clock, and then Gilman,
happening into her quarter of the room, asked her what she wanted,
listening with official respect for her reply. It was an old story to
him. When she told him he smiled a strange smile and turned away. At
noon the governor ran the gauntlet of the waiting crowd and gained
the sanctuary of his private office. Once there, breathing a sigh of
relief, he stood for a moment in one of the tall windows looking out
upon the smooth lawns stretching lazily in the sun, and rolling away
to the elms surrounding the state house. He was a tall man and strong.
If he had a physical fault, it was that he carried his head too low,
denoting him a thinker, but if his gaze was fixed upon the earth,
his thoughts were in the stars. Presently he shook his splendid head
vigorously, wrapped his long coat determinedly about him, and settled
himself at his desk.

Gilman entered, bearing a pile of papers demanding the governor’s
personal attention, but the morning conference was very brief on this
day. As Gilman turned to go, the governor said:

“I desire to be alone to-day. I have that speech of acceptance to
write. If Handy comes, send him in, but no one else.”

Gilman laid his hand upon the door-knob and the governor asked:

“No one of importance out there, is there?”

“No,” said Gilman. “There’s a woman--what do you think she wants?”

“A pardon, of course.”

“Yes, but for whom? You’d never guess in a thousand years.” Gilman was
smiling.

“Then tell me.”

“Tom Whalen!” Gilman laughed at the humor of it.

The governor’s features relaxed with a smile, but quickly his brow
contracted again, and he said:

“Well--poor things--I pity them. I could wash my hands in women’s tears
every week.”

“Well,” said Gilman, opening the door, “I told her she could see you.
I’ll slide her out.”

The governor bent to his desk, but just as the door was closing he
called:

“Oh, Gilman!”

Gilman stopped.

“Don’t do that--tell her I’ll see her after a while.”

Gilman, as he returned to his desk, smiled and shook his head at the
governor’s weakness.

Thomas Whalen was a life convict in the penitentiary. The crime was
committed on the night of the election at which John Chatham had
been chosen chief executive of his state. Whalen was a boss in the
nineteenth ward and a Chatham man. The campaign had developed such
bitterness that Whalen found it necessary to name himself a judge of
election in the fourth precinct of his ward. Many times during the day
blue patrol wagons had rolled into the precinct.

The polling place of the fourth precinct was a small barber shop
in Fifteenth Street. During the evening, as the ballots were being
counted, it had become apparent that an altercation was in progress
behind the yellow blinds. It was abruptly terminated by a shot. The
lights in the shop were extinguished at the same moment. A man burst
from the door and fled. When the police arrived, they found a dead
election judge face downward on the table. His name had been Brokoski.
The bullet had passed entirely through his body, and reddened with
his blood the ballots that gushed from the overturned box. The window
at his back had been completely shattered by the ball as it flew out
into the alley. This was a large bullet, a thirty-eight caliber. The
police found a revolver gleaming in the light of the dark lanterns
they flashed down the alley. It was a thirty-eight caliber with one
empty chamber. It was evident that the murderer had discarded it in
his flight. A lieutenant of police at the Market Place police station
easily identified the gun as one he had given to Whalen several weeks
previously. The judges and clerks had rushed after Whalen. The shock,
the sudden failure of light, the horror of the dead man in the dark had
jangled their nerves. They were too excited to give a clear account
of the affair. They knew that Whalen and Brokoski, sitting on opposite
sides of the table, had been quarreling. They had heard the shot, had
been blinded by the flash, and had seen Whalen bolt. Brokoski had
fallen heavily upon the table, and died with an oath upon his lips.

Gilman never forgot that wild night. He had spent it with the governor
at the headquarters of the state central committee. In the dawn, when
the east was yellowing, and sparrows began to scuffle and splutter on
the eaves of the federal building looming dour just over the way, the
news of the murder and frauds had come to them. The governor’s face,
white with excitement and fatigue, had suddenly darkened. Had it been
the shadow cast by the passing of a great ambition?

       *       *       *       *       *

At the close of the long day the woman, beckoned by Gilman into the
governor’s presence, lingered on the threshold of the chamber. The room
was full of shadows. The figure of the governor, standing in the tall
window, shut out the waning light, and was silhouetted, big and black,
against the twilight sky. He did not hear the woman enter. She coughed
to attract his attention. This did not arouse him from his reverie, and
after a moment’s timid hesitation, she said:

“May I come in?”

The governor turned. “Be seated, madam,” he said. “I shall be quite
frank with you. I am acquainted with this case, and do not believe it
to be one justifying executive clemency.”

When she spoke her voice was tremulous.

“Will you hear my story?”

“You may proceed,” the governor replied. He had pushed the papers aside
and was drumming lightly with his long, white fingers on his desk.

The woman nervously pleated her handkerchief, fearing to begin. “You
must excuse me,” she said presently, “I can not tell my story very
well. I do not come here for mercy or anything like that. It is only a
matter of justice.”

Had it not been for the gloom, she might have seen a smile steal
over the face of the dark figure at the desk. Once plunged into her
narrative, her words flowed rapidly, until--suddenly she ceased to
speak.

“That was five years ago,” she said, her voice dropping to a sadly
reminiscent whisper. “We were to have been married that spring, but--I
would rather not tell the rest.”

The woman probably felt her cheeks flush with warmth.

The governor could hear her quick breathing. In a minute he said kindly:

“Well?”

The woman hesitated an instant, and then fairly blurted out the rest
of her tale. The governor, through the darkness, saw the woman lean,
panting, toward him. Convulsively she pressed her hands to her face.
She collapsed in tears. When her sobs became more regular, though still
labored, the governor said:

“And Whalen--he knew this?”

“He must have known.”

“Then why did he not tell?”

The woman hung her head and said, in a low voice:

“I was mistaken, sir. The other woman lied.”

“Ah, I see.” The governor turned and looked out of the windows. The
old-fashioned iron lamps on the broad steps that led up to the state
house were blinking in the dark trees, and the arc light swinging
in the street swayed the shadows of their foliage back and forth on
the white walks. A flash of heat lightning quivered over the purple
outlines of the elms.

The governor sat for a long time in somber silence. The woman could
hear the ticking of his watch. Presently he drew it from his pocket and
struck a match.

“It is growing late,” he said. “The tale you tell is a very remarkable
tale. My time is so fully occupied that it will be impossible for me to
devote any thought to it just now. If you will leave your address with
my secretary I shall communicate with you. Meanwhile--do not talk.”

When the private secretary had conducted the woman from the room the
governor went to his window. The voices of the June night floated up to
him, but he no longer heard their music. For the second time, at the
name of Whalen, and even in the darkness, there swept over his face the
shadow of the passing of a great ambition.

The convention met. The secretary never got down to _S_ in calling the
roll of counties, and the governor was renominated by acclamation. But
never in all the exciting scenes of those two days, in the black moment
of suspense before the roll-call began, in the white instant of agony
pending the poll of the Richland County delegation, in the golden hour
of triumph, when he stood pale and bending before the mad applause
rolling up to him in mighty billows, did he forget the name of Thomas
Whalen, or did the face of that woman pass from him. They followed him
persistently, they glimmered in his dreams. There was no escape from
their pursuit.

After a week in which he found no ease, with the determination
that characterized him when once aroused, he undertook a judicial
investigation of the case. He obtained a transcript of record, and read
it as carefully as if he had been retained in the case and sought error
upon which to carry it to the supreme court. In the familiar work he
found for a time relief.

Gilman, meanwhile, had forgotten the incident of the woman’s visit.
The idea of pardoning Tom Whalen was too preposterous to merit
serious consideration. But, when the governor told him to go to
the penitentiary and interview Whalen, and then to the city and the
locality of the crime for the purpose of learning all he could about
Brokoski’s death, he damned himself for having mentioned the fact of
the woman’s presence on that crowded, tobacco-clogged, perspiring
morning. And as he left the capitol he resolved that his visit should
be astonishingly barren of results.

Inside the warden’s private office at the penitentiary he saw Whalen.
The man had found the convict’s friend, consumption, and Gilman hardly
knew him. When the private secretary told him of the application for
his pardon, Whalen only smiled. Gilman found him strangely reticent,
and after an effort to induce him to talk, said:

“Whalen, really now, did you kill Brokoski?”

The striped convict picked at the cap he held in his lap. A bitter
smile wrinkled his pale, moist face.

“Suspected again, eh?” he said, without looking up.

Finally Whalen tired of the examination. He breathed with difficulty,
but that may have been due to his disease. At last he raised his shaven
head.

“Mr. Gilman,” he said, “I see what you’re getting at. I have told you
I did not commit the crime for which I am here. For that matter, any
of the three thousand other prisoners within these walls and wearing
these clothes will tell you the same thing. I don’t know whether you
believe me or not. It doesn’t make much difference. It doesn’t matter
what becomes of me any more. I ain’t long for this world. So just let
it drop--what’s the use of opening it up again?”

“But you haven’t answered my question,” said Gilman, interested in
spite of himself, for a great fear was growing up within him; “you have
not told me who did kill Brokoski.”

The convict lifted his eyelids slowly, and fastened his vision upon his
interlocutor. And then he said very deliberately and distinctly:

“No, Mr. Gilman, and I never will!”

Gilman left the penitentiary with more than its gloom upon him. He
declined the warden’s effusive invitation to stay to dinner. He wanted
to get away. He could not forget the shine in Whalen’s eyes. And the
fear within possessed him.

When he reached the city, after dining at the chop house where his old
friends foregathered, he went out to Fifteenth Street. Costello had
sold his barber shop, and the place had become a saloon. The saloon
was quiet that night. Gilman drank with the bartender, and, of course,
talked about the Brokoski killing. The bartender had made a study of
that case, and discussed it with the curled lip of the specialist.

“They didn’t do a t’ing to Tom but t’row the hooks into ’im all right,
all right. It was a case of him in the stripes from the start. Say,
them lawyer guys and fly-cops’d frost you.”

Then carefully locating the actors in the tragedy, he reproduced it
vividly before Gilman’s eyes. Brokoski had faced the wall where the
hole was. Whalen’s back had been to it. Brokoski had sat with his back
to the window. The barkeeper plunged his red hands into a drawer,
rattled a corkscrew, a knife, a revolver and a jigger, and then drew
out a small piece of lead. It was a thirty-eight caliber bullet.

“That’s the boy that done Brokoski,” he said.

“Where did you get it?” asked Gilman, with the mild awe a curio excites
in men.

The bartender pointed to a ragged hole in the wainscoting.

“Dug it out o’ there with the icepick. I’m a Sherlock, see? Sure,” he
sneered, “it might ’a’ bounced off the Polock’s breast.”

The man wiped his towel over the bar in disgust.

Then seriously:

“On the dead, Mr. Gilman, if Tom had his rights, he’d be sent back to
the ward to die.”

Gilman was troubled. He returned in the morning and examined the
premises carefully. At two-twenty that afternoon he was on the Limited,
flying back to the capital.

That evening he was sitting with the governor in the library of the
executive mansion. The windows were open and the odor of lilacs was
borne in from the summer night. A negro who had served half a dozen
governors, shuffled into the room, bearing a tray.

“That’s excellent whisky,” observed the private secretary.

“That was excellent whisky, Gilman,” said the governor, “before you
were born.”

The private secretary was rolling a cigarette. He rolled it with
unusual deliberation, licking the rice paper many times before trusting
himself to paste it down.

The governor bit the end from a black cigar. A blazing match passed
between them.

Then Gilman told of his interview with Whalen. He did not display much
spirit in the telling. When he had done, he flecked the ash from his
cigarette in a thoughtful way. Resting his forearms on his knees, he
regarded the floor between his feet.

“Has it ever struck you as peculiar,” he said, “that the bullet was not
introduced in evidence?”

“No,” said the governor, “not very.”

The private secretary paused. When he had done he laughed. The governor
was seriously silent for many minutes, and then he said:

“Leonard, I want you to tell me your theory of this whole business.”

Gilman sat up. “Well,” he said, “had it never occurred to you that it
would have been significant to determine where that bullet lodged as
showing its direction? It bored a hole clear through Brokoski, but at
which end had it entered?”

“I presume the medical testimony settled that,” replied the governor.
He seemed to find a species of relief in this thought.

“Yes,” Gilman said, “but the medical testimony was bad. It consisted
of the conclusions of a young doctor who examined Brokoski’s body
after it had grown cold. He accepted Whalen’s guilt as an established
fact. He assumed that the bullet entered at the breast. There was then
nothing to do but to trace its course through the tissues of the body.
If his views were correct, the ball would have lodged somewhere behind
Brokoski.”

“But it flew out into the alley,” argued the governor, “and shattered
the window in doing so.”

“True,” assented Gilman, “and yet you assume all the while that Whalen
fired the shot. Of course the circumstances attending the tragedy, the
occasion, the quarrel, Whalen’s flight, and the finding of his gun,
lent strong color to that presumption.”

“But the shattered window,” the governor interpolated.

“Yes, and the shattered window. Now,” he continued, “a surgeon,
experienced in gunshot wounds, might have been able to distinguish
in such a wound as Brokoski’s, the point of the missile’s entrance
from the point of exit. Of course it is not certain. The youth the
police called did not think such an inquiry important, whereas it was
vital. A pistol fired point-blank at a man would blacken his breast
with powder. The velocity of the ball, fired at such range might have
been sufficient to knock the man over backward, instead of allowing
him to fall upon his face as he did. Then, there’s the window. It was
shattered, the police said, by the ball. Even the glass in the upper
sash was broken. The frame on the outside was blackened by powder, the
stains even now being visible. Now, a bullet flying the distance it
must have traversed between Whalen’s hand and the window, would, in all
probability, simply have perforated the glass with a round, clean hole.
But the weapon having been fired in close proximity, the concussion
shattered the whole window.”

After a silence Gilman resumed:

“Now then, assume that the bullet entered Brokoski’s back and emerged
from his breast. The conclusion deduced from the circumstances I have
suggested, is impregnable when that bullet is located in a position in
front of Brokoski.”

During the recital the governor lay in his deep chair, his arms across
his breast, his finger-tips together. He regarded Gilman through
half-closed eyes. A thoughtful observer would have said that he had
heard the essential elements of the tale before. When he spoke, after a
silence which had begun to annoy the private secretary, he said:

“Well, your hypothesis is tenable. In fact, it is one of the prettiest
cases I ever saw put together.”

Gilman stirred uneasily.

“But did you learn anything as to the identity of the person, who, if
your suppositions are correct, killed Brokoski?”

“That’s the weak point,” Gilman promptly admitted. “A sufficient motive
is utterly lacking, if we eliminate partisan hatred. It was shown that
Whalen killed him in an impulse of passion, and that alone saved him
from the death penalty. But I feel that my reasoning is valid. The
conviction was strengthened by Whalen’s manner and expression the other
day. He never killed Brokoski, I tell you.” Gilman smote his thigh for
emphasis. “Why he chooses to die in prison a silent martyr I don’t
know--but the woman does.”

The governor assumed a sitting posture.

“Damn it!” exclaimed Gilman, after a momentary silence, “if those
stupid police had examined the mud in the alley beneath the window that
night, they would have found tracks that would have changed the course
of this whole business.”

The governor bent farther forward, burying himself in an intense
concentration of mind. For a time interminable to Gilman, he sat thus.
His cigar went out. The ice in his glass melted, spun on the crystal
brim, and sank with a tiny splash and tinkle. The little pile of burned
cigarettes, the black ends of consumed cigars, the mass of tobacco ash
deposited in a whisky glass, absorbed its tepid liquid, and stunk.
The room grew chill, and the mists of the fountain which played in
mournful solitude beneath the rocking elms in the grounds, permeated
the atmosphere. The brooding night added her terrors and her cares.

Gilman took a sip of liquor, lighted a fresh cigarette, rose, and
walked up and down the room. He thought of the election, so near at
hand. He looked at the governor bowed there before him. What was
Whalen, or the woman, or anybody to him? Let the prisoner die! What
was he to the governor? John Chatham’s party needed him, his country
needed him, his time needed him, mankind and human progress needed
him. If he pardoned Whalen, what was to become of him? The conviction
of Brokoski’s murderer alone could save him from such apparent
stultification, here on the eve of an election at which, in the foolish
phrase of modern politics, he sought vindication. Was this conviction
possible? The bare thought halted Gilman beside the governor. He laid a
hand on his shoulder.

“These abstruse propositions wouldn’t stand before a jury in a criminal
court,” he said. “Let Whalen stay.”

The governor lifted his head.

“But you just now said that he was not Brokoski’s murderer.”

Gilman hesitated. When he spoke, he said:

“A jury of twelve sworn men has said that he is.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days after the private secretary’s return, the newspapers were full
of stories concerning his movements. Whalen’s picture was exploited,
correspondents sought the governor for interviews, and the _Courier_
charged that, in his desperation, he intended to pardon Whalen, that
he might have, in his campaign, the assistance of that skilled and
unscrupulous manipulator. The pack of country newspapers took up the
_Courier’s_ cry. Whalen’s illness was either ignored, or referred to as
feigned, at the direction of prison authorities and the governor. And
yet a certificate pigeonholed in Gilman’s desk, signed by the prison
physician, stated that Thomas Whalen had pulmonary tuberculosis and was
in a moribund condition.

In his office in the city William Handy, the chairman of the state
central committee, read these newspaper stories, and swore as he did
so. That night the shrewdest and maddest politician in the state stole
out of town. The next morning Gilman was surprised when the big man
burst through the door marked “private,” brushed by him and entered,
unannounced, the governor’s chambers. Before the stately door swung to
behind him, Gilman heard him demand:

“What’s all this I hear about your pardoning Tom Whalen?”

The private secretary did not hear the governor’s reply, for with
deliberate step he had crossed the room and closed the door. He heard
nothing clearly, for Handy’s voice came to him smothered, and the
governor’s not at all. Once he thought he heard “mawkish sentiment,”
and “the action of a political imbecile,” but what he mostly
distinguished was muffled profanity. The young man for the first time
in his experience was delighted when his bell buzzed just then. When
he entered upon the scene, the governor, rocking complacently in his
high-backed chair, was saying:

“But what if it’s my duty?”

“Duty be damned!” shouted Handy, rising to his feet, and smiting the
desk with a heavy fist he had had folded during the conversation. The
wrath which the politician had kept bottled up overnight had burst out
at last.

“I am running this campaign,” he cried, “and as long as I do run it,
I do not propose to tolerate such incredible folly as pardoning Tom
Whalen.”

Gilman, wide-eyed, gazed in amaze at the two men. Handy stood glaring
at the governor, his fist fastened where it had fallen. The governor’s
lips were tightly compressed. A sheet of scarlet swept over his dark
face. Both men were strong-willed. The tensity of such a moment
could not long endure. Its contagion spread to Gilman’s nerves. The
governor’s splendid frame seemed to dilate, and Gilman suddenly became
conscious that the admiration he had always given the man had never
before measured up to the fullness of John Chatham’s deserts. It was
with relief that he saw the governor’s glance turn from Handy to bend
on him.

“Gilman,” he said, “have a pardon made out for Thomas Whalen.”

This answer to Handy’s threats was punctuated by a flash from the
governor’s eyes.

“And Gilman--” the governor continued.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wire that woman--what’s her name?”

“Barry?”

“Yes--Barry--wire her to come. I think I shall prefer to tell her
myself.”

Handy dropped, heavy with exhaustion, into his chair. He tried to
speak, but had trouble with his articulation. When he mastered his
tongue, he could only blurt:

“Now you have done it, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” said the governor in gentle assent, “I have done it.” The sigh
that ended this remark was one in which a heart-burdening care was
dissipated. It was a sigh that resolved a vast difficulty.

When the woman came the next morning, Gilman led her at once into the
governor’s presence. Before him lay a large document, lettered in
preposterous script, lined in red ink. The woman knew this imitation
parchment to be the pardon of Thomas Whalen. The governor rose and
stood until she had seated herself, and then said, drawing the pardon
on the desk to him, “I have decided to grant the application for
Whalen’s pardon.”

The woman’s fingers clawed the carved arms of the chair. Gilman stared
with parted lips. The governor continued as he hastily scanned the
pardon:

“I take this action because circumstances recently revealed lead me to
believe that Whalen is innocent.”

The governor dipped his pen in the ink.

“They form a very abstruse proposition,” he said, poising his pen
nicely in his fingers, “and I am not sure that every one can grasp it.”

The governor spoke meditatively. The two persons in the room silently
regarded him. Something in the man, in the moment, impelled awe. He set
his hand to the paper to write, but paused an instant longer. His eyes
wandered from the document. As he raised them over her, the woman bowed
her head. Out through the open window, out through the summer morning,
over the wimpling foliage of the trees, far, far away they gazed. And
then he sighed, as a woman sighs, and turning, signed the pardon of
Thomas Whalen. A moment he sat still as an ancient statue, and then
dropping the pen on the desk, he turned toward Gilman with a smile. The
action relieved the young man from the spell which bound him.

“Are you going before the people with that story I worked up?” he cried.

Fiercely, without awaiting a reply to a question already answered, he
wheeled on the woman.

“Do you see what he has done? He has given up all--he has killed
himself! He says Whalen is innocent--and doesn’t even know upon whom to
fasten suspicion! Don’t you--my God, woman--can’t you see?”

Slowly the situation was borne in upon her understanding. Her mouth
opened with a gasp, her eyes widened.

“Why!” she said, jerking her words from a choking throat. “He knows who
did it. I told him. It was--me.”

The door latch clicked behind her. She turned in the direction whence
came the sound, and repeated, as if the interrupter contradicted her:

“Yes, I did it. I killed Brokoski.”

Her strength failed her. She sobbed convulsively.

“Yes--I--did--it,” she repeated. “I--did--it.”

Gilman stared in wonder. Here, then, was the person who had stood
in the alley beneath the window that night, whose footprints would
have led him to the solution of his mystery, to the end of his clever
chain. The problem of her motive for slaying Brokoski alone remained.
He longed to ask her, but she had collapsed unconscious in her chair.
Turning to the governor he implored light. A word informed him of the
accidental killing of Brokoski by a jealous woman who was trying to
shoot his vis-à-vis. Then he demanded in tones reproachful:

“Why did you not tell me this?”

“Because,” the man quietly responded, “I do not war on women.”

The door whose latch had clicked had opened wide, and William Handy
entered, smiling.

Governor Chatham was assorting papers on his desk, as a man would whose
routine work had received a trifling interruption. Handy remained on
his feet.

“John,” he said, “John, I take off my hat to you. I admire your nerve.
I recognized it years ago, that day you presided over our convention
in the old seventh district--remember?--the day you turned me down so
hard. Remember?”

The governor smiled.

“This ain’t flattery,” said Handy, seating himself in a leather chair.
“You’re not only all I’ve said, you’re a devil of a good fellow to
boot.”

Handy spoke seldom. He never wrote letters, but sent word, according
to an ancient maxim uttered by one of the political fathers. But when
he did speak, he spoke bluntly, in the same tone in which he would
have called a man a liar. The governor raised his hand to stay Handy’s
compliments.

“Yes, John,” he persisted. “You’re a hell of a good fellow, but,” he
added, “you’re a damn poor politician.”

There was the faintest shadow of a smile on the governor’s face. Handy
closed his eyes until they were the merest slits. He puffed his cigar
back to life.

His head was wrapped in scarfs of smoke.

“When does the grand jury sit?” he inquired, after a time.

“Not till the December term.”

“We can have a special one impaneled. I’ll have Donnelly call it.”

Donnelly was a judge of dignity and erudition, and Handy spoke of him
as if he were his hired man, which he was.

“The boys’ll be glad to get Tom back in the nineteenth. O’Rourke says--”

“Look here, Handy,” said the governor, whirling about in his chair,
and speaking as sharply as a precinct captain at a primary. “I want
none of Tom Whalen’s work in the nineteenth--not while I’m running for
governor. But then,” he added gravely, “he’s only going back to the
nineteenth to die.”

Handy grunted. “Well, I’ll have Fitzgerald pinch the girl anyway, and
keep her in the Division Street station till after election.”

The governor looked at Handy. “William,” he said, “you might as well
understand now, that that would be wholly useless. I am convinced
of Whalen’s innocence absolutely, beyond all doubt, but it will be
impossible to get a jury to convict the one who did kill Brokoski on
such evidence as convinced me.”

“But she confesses,” urged Handy.

“To whom?”

“To you.”

“Exactly. But what if that confession be a privileged communication?”

Handy looked up in amazement. “You don’t mean you wouldn’t testify?”

The governor’s countenance lost its legal expression, and became
suddenly human. If Handy had been a thinner man he would have jumped
when the governor said:

“Do you think I would send a woman to the penitentiary to elect myself
governor?”

“Are you sure confessions to a governor are privileges?” inquired
Handy, who was adhering to practical things.

The governor’s face put on its legal mask again, and he replied:

“Well, the question is unsettled--”

“Who presides in the criminal court this winter?” inquired Handy,
“any of our fellows?” Handy’s whole philosophy of life was pull. The
governor resumed, without answering:

“The question has never been decided. Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, upon
the trial of Aaron Burr, ruled, if I remember, that a _subpœna duces
tecum_ might be issued to the president for a letter addressed to him,
leaving the question of the production of the letter--”

“Oh, say, John,” broke in Handy, “Burr’s dead, isn’t he? And he wasn’t
a good fellow, anyway, or he’d never got in that far. Go on with your
legalities--I myself do not propose to go to jail for contempt for
refusing to testify.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“What have you to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Handy, “only I happened to be inside that
door just now when she confessed--and there’s Gilman besides.” Handy,
his cigar tilted upward, smoked on voluminously and smiled through the
smoke with deep satisfaction. The governor averted his face. Lines of
trouble drew themselves across his brow. Presently he turned to the
chairman.

“Handy,” he said, “I may be reëlected and I may not--probably not.
However that may be, I insist upon this: I want that woman, for the
present, let alone. I have faith in the people. I am willing to go
to them on my record. They may or may not reëlect me. I shall not,
at any rate, have my motives impugned. I only want, when the turmoil
has subsided, when the subject can be viewed with clear eyes and
investigated by clear heads and clean hands, to see justice done.”

“Oh,” said Handy, “to hell with justice.”

“Well, then,” asked the governor, “what do you say to a little mercy
now and then?”




THAT BOY


It must have been sometime in the winter or spring of 1891 that I first
saw him. I had just been elected to the legislature. It was the famous
Reform Session, you will remember, that proved to be of such benefit
to stenographers and space writers. During the six months that general
assembly lasted I lived at the St. James hotel. It is probable that I
first saw the boy behind the counter of the cigar stand in the lobby of
the hotel. It is probable that I had seen and spoken to him many times
before I gave him any especial notice. What first arrested my attention
was a law book. I had stopped at the cigar stand one evening after
dinner to get some cigars, and as he rose to attend upon my wants, he
took the book from his lap and laid it down upon the counter. While
he was under the counter getting out a box of the brand I wished--for
I never relish, somehow, cigars taken from a show case--I turned the
book over and idly looked at its title. I remember very well that it
was Reeves’ _History of the English Law_. It struck me as rather odd
that a boy behind a cigar stand should be reading such a book. It was
not a book that law students, in my state, at any rate, generally read.
I know that I never read it (through) and probably never shall read it,
although it is, of course, a wise and ancient book. I asked him why he
read it.

“Why,” he said, “I’m studying law!”

As I lighted a cigar, I looked at the boy. He was tall and overgrown,
and thin with his overgrowth, with spare wrists that thrust themselves
out of frayed cuffs. His face was sallow, and he was not good to
look upon. His clothes were worn bare to the threads. He had every
appearance of being poor, almost hungry. I fancy I disliked him.

“When do you expect to be admitted?” I asked casually.

“Oh,” he replied, blithely enough, “in two or three years. Then I go
into politics.”

This, I have said, was in 1891. If anything impressed me, it was the
hopelessness of it all.

In 1893, early in the summer, I went down to the capital to argue a
case at the June term of the supreme court. In the evening, after
a hard day in court, I strolled out Lafayette Street to mollify my
nerves. Toward the edge of the town I saw a thin youth walking with a
girl. The girl wore a white dress. The evening was balmy. The moon was
shining. The lilacs were in bloom, and their odor was on the air. As we
passed each other, the youth’s appearance struck me as familiar. At the
time I thought that he was the boy who used to tend the cigar stand in
the St. James, and read Reeves’ _History of the English Law_, whom I
had naturally forgotten.

In the spring of 1898--I remember the time, not, of course, because it
has anything to do with the boy but because we were then engaged in the
track elevation cases--I went over to the Gregory Building one morning
to see Judge Goodman, in order to get him to consent to the Updegraff
case going over the term. That was a case which involved the doctrine
of merger, and I needed some additional time for preparation.

As I entered the offices of Goodman, Peck, Gilmore and Eckhart,
I turned to the office boy, who was sitting near the door at the
futile little desk all office boys occupy, and on which they scribble
mysterious things, to ask whether the judge was in. When I spoke to the
boy he looked up and smiled and called me by name. He seemed to be, for
some reason, glad to see me, as if I had been some one from home. In
fact, he said:

“Have you been down lately?”

I examined him quite attentively for an instant. He had half risen from
his chair, and stood, or hung, in an awkward attitude over his desk.
Presently I recognized him as the boy who used to tend the cigar stand
in the hotel at the state capital, and read Reeves’ _History of the
English Law_. I asked him what he was doing in the city.

“Why,” he said, in apparent surprise at my question, “I’m practising
law!”

His eyes, in his pale face, dilated with a childish pride, until they
were large and round and brilliant. He had drawn himself quite erect,
and now he waved his hand toward the wall, and there I saw, in a new
oak frame, the old familiar law license the supreme court issues to
poor devils with illusions. There it was, bearing the seal of the
court and the signatures of the seven justices. I read the boy’s
name, written on the imitation parchment. It was the first time I had
ever known what he called himself. I was amused by his having had his
license framed.

“So you are in Judge Goodman’s office, are you?” I said, rather
ineptly, to be sure, but merely to have something to say.

He made the obvious reply, and spoke of Judge Goodman’s kindness to
him. I asked him how he was getting along.

“Well,” he replied, “rather slowly, of course--just at first, you
know. But then I think if I can stick it out a while--say five or six
years--I’ll be all right.”

I kept on looking at the old familiar law license, and thinking of my
own. I have not seen it for years. I think my wife has it somewhere,
in a tin tube with the diplomas and our marriage certificate and her
father’s discharge from the army and other family charters, if it is
not lost.

Then--for I felt that I should say something--I asked him how everybody
was in the capital.

“I don’t get down any more,” he said; “it costs, you know.”

And then he was silent, and I did not care to look in his eyes. I
noticed that the black cravat he had on was very old, and worn through
in places. Also that he was actually out at the elbows, as to the right
arm at least, for there, in the sleeve, was a ragged hole that showed
the soiled lining of his coat. Presently the boy said:

“When you go down, tell them you saw me, won’t you?”

Of course it was presumptuous in him, but I thought of those five or
six years. In that time he would learn--that and other things. Just
then Judge Goodman stuck his head out of his private room.

       *       *       *       *       *

I happened to go to the capital in May of that year. We were then at
war, you will remember. I told the man who kept the cigar stand in the
lobby of the St. James that I had seen the boy in the city, that he was
practising law there, and wished to be remembered to his friends. I
think I told him, also, that the boy was doing well, and already making
a favorable impression upon many of the older and more prominent
members of the bar. But the man shook his head and responded:

“Why, haven’t you heard? He’s gone to war--enlisted in the First
Infantry!”

I hid my surprise from the man, and told him I had heard that, of
course, but that the bar regarded his absence as merely temporary.

That summer I got into the habit of scanning the lists of sick and
disabled soldiers who were at Chickamauga and the other fever camps, or
in Cuba. I was especially likely to do this where the First Regiment
was concerned. It was a practice foolish in a way, because it took up
time in the morning, and was only a meaningless list of names, anyway.
But then, we were rather proud of the First in the city that summer,
for it was our crack regiment, you know, and my wife had one or two
acquaintances among the young officers, who reflected a certain glory
upon her, and gave a color to her conversation.

A friend of mine at the capital, a lawyer, often sent me, two or three
times a week, perhaps, copies of the local papers, and these frequently
published little bits of personal gossip about boys from that town
who had gone to “the front,” as they put it. The country papers gave
a more personal tone to their war articles than did the city papers.
These latter seemed to think that a war is got up especially for the
officers. Doubtless they were about right.

After a while, the First went to Cuba. The regiment got there too late
for active fighting in the operations about Santiago, but not too late
for duty in the trenches, with their freshly upturned earth, damp and
saturated with malaria. Nor did they get there too late for the fever.
Many of them contracted it, and some died of it. I used to read the
lists of the sick and dead, to see if the names of any of my wife’s
acquaintances in the field, line or staff, were among them.

Once in a while I would observe that some young soldier had died of
something or other and homesickness. One morning I happened upon a
name that impressed me as being familiar. After studying it a while,
I finally recognized it as the same name that had been upon the law
license that was framed in oak and hanging above the desk of the office
boy. There was printed after the name:

“Pernicious malaria and nostalgia.”

In the spring of the following year (1899) the bodies of several
hundred soldiers who had died in Cuba were brought home for final
interment. I happened to be in the capital again and heard that there
was to be a military funeral that afternoon. I had some curiosity to
see a military funeral, and so, having nothing else to do, went to the
church where it was to be held. You can imagine my surprise when I was
told that it was the funeral of the boy who had once tended the cigar
stand in the lobby of the St. James and read Reeves’ _History of the
English Law_, the boy who had afterward gone to the city to practise
law, and, later, enlisted in the First Infantry to die in Cuba. There
were not many at the funeral, for, of course, he was only a private.
There was a woman there in black, probably his aunt, or mother, for she
appeared to weep, and some girl. Out at the cemetery--Oak Wood, where
a general is buried--there were few persons besides the clergyman,
and the woman and the girl. A local militia company had sent a firing
squad, and it fired the salute prescribed for a private over the grave,
and a bugler stood at the head and blew taps, the soldier’s good night.
Happening to have a rose or two with me, I threw them into the grave.
The coffin, of course, had a flag over it, but that was about all there
was of the military funeral--hardly enough, indeed, to reward one’s
curiosity.

This, I believe, is all. The story hardly seems worth the telling,
now that it is written, but I fancied that I detected one or two
coincidences in my haphazard relations with the boy, like my reading of
his death in the paper, and my happening to be in the capital on the
day of his funeral, and so I set them down.

I forgot to say that I happened to have his law license with me that
day at the funeral. After he had enlisted in the First, perhaps I
should explain, I noticed it one day in the offices of Goodman, Peck,
Gilmore and Eckhart, where it was evidently in the way. So I let it
hang in my office all that summer and all the next winter, but in the
spring we needed the wall space for some new bookcases, and I took it
down. I think the girl who was at the funeral that day, whoever she is,
has it now.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.

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