Chapter VI: Preface: To the New Edition (6)

Cargill came in a little later, and greeted Bradley with a nod while crossing the room to look at the blackboard.

"Draw up a chair," he said, and they took a seat at the table, while the business of the office went on. "You'll be interested in knowing something about this business," he said to Bradley. "It's as legitimate as buying or selling real estate on a commission; but so far as the popular impression goes, there is no difference between this and a bucket-shop."

"It's all very new to me," said Bradley. "I don't know the difference between this and the bucket-shop."

"Ninety-three and seven eighths bid on wheat," called Bergen from a slip, as he walked back and chalked the latest intelligence upon the board.

"Well, there is a difference. In this case, we simply buy and sell on commission. These are real purchases and sales. The order for wheat is transmitted to Chicago and registered, and has its effect upon the market; whereas in a bucket-shop the sale does not go out of the office, and, if there is a loss to the customer, the proprietor gains it. In other words, we buy and sell for others, with no personal interest in the sale; the bucket-shop is a pure gambling establishment, where men bet on what other men are going to do. But that ain't what I had you call to talk over. I want you to meet Bergen. Chris, come over here," he called. "I want to introduce the Honorable Talcott of Rock River. He's started in, like yourself, to reform politics.

"The reason why I wanted you to meet Bergen," Cargill went on, "is because he is a sincerer lover of literature than myself, and like yourself, I imagine, believes thoroughly in the classics. He's translating Ibsen for the Square Table Club. His idea of amusement ain't mine, I needn't say."

"New York still hammers away on the market. Partridge quietly buying to cover on the decline."

"Excuse me a moment," said Bergen, returning to business.

Cargill took an easy position. "I don't know why I have sized you up as literary in general effect, but I have. That's one reason why I took to you. It's so damned unusual to find a politician that has a single idea above votes. And then I'm literary myself," he said, his face a mask of impenetrable gravity. "I wrote up the sheep industry of Iowa for the Agricultural Encyclopædia. That puts me in the front rank of Des Moines literary aspirants.

"Towns like this," he said, going off on a speculative side track, "have a two-per-cent. population who are inordinately literary. They recognize my genius. The other ninety-eight per cent. don't care a continental damn for Shakespeare or anybody else, barring Mary Jane Holmes, of course, and the five-cent story papers. But literary Des Moines _is_ literary. They stand by Shakespeare and Homer, I can tell you, and they recognize genius when they see it. By the way, Bergen," he said, calling his brother-in-law to him again, "we must make this young man acquainted with our one literary girl."

"Wheat is ninety-four bid. New York strong." It was impossible to hold Bergen's attention, however, with a sharp bulge on the market, and Cargill was forced to turn to Bradley again.

"There is a girl in this town who has the literary quality. True, she has recognized my ability, which prejudices me in her favor, of course. In turn I presented her with my report on the sheep industry."

Bradley laughed, but Cargill proceeded as if there were nothing funny in the situation--

"And she read it, actually, and quoted it in one of her great speeches. It made the reporter bug out his eyes. He said he had observed of late quite a vein of poetry running through Miss Wilbur's speeches, which lifted them out of the common rut."

Bradley lost sight of the humor in this speech at the sound of Ida's name, and his face flushed. He had not heard her name spoken by a third person in months, and had never dared to say it out loud himself.

Cargill went on: "She's an infernal heretic and suffragist and all that, but she's a power. Her name is Wilbur--Ida Wilbur. Used to lecture for the Grange or something of that kind. Is still lecturing, I believe, but the Grange has snuffed out."

Six or eight men came into the larger room talking loudly and excitedly about the market, and Cargill's attention was drawn off by the resonant reports of the Chicago market.

"The market shows great elasticity. Western advices contribute to the Bull feeling."

"Do you know Miss Wilbur?" Bradley asked when Cargill came back, being afraid Cargill might forget the topic of conversation.

"Yes, I meet her occasionally. I meet her at the Square Table Club, where we fight on literature. They call it the Square Table Club, because they disagree with the opinions of the most of us real literary people of the town."

Bradley managed to say, in a comparatively firm tone of voice, that he had heard of Miss Wilbur as a Grange lecturer, and that he would like to know more about her.

"Well, I'll introduce you. She aint very easy to understand. She is one of these infernal advanced women. Now, I like thinkers, but what right has a woman to think? To think is our manly prerogative. I'm free to admit that we don't exercise it to much better advantage than we do our prerogative to vote; but then, damn it, how could we stand wives that think?"

Bradley had given up trying to understand when Cargill was joking and when he was in earnest. He knew this was either merciless sarcasm or the most pig-headed bigotry. Anyhow he did not care to say anything for fear of drawing him off into a discussion of an impersonal subject, just when he seemed likely to tell something about Ida's early life.

It was a singular place to receive this information. He sat there with his elbow on the desk, leaning his head on his palm, studying Cargill's face as he talked. Over at the other end of the room, the operator was feeding himself on a pickle with his left hand, and receiving the telegrams from the far-off, roaring, tumultuous wheat exchange, every repeated message being a sort of distant echo of the ocean of cries and the tumult of feet in the city. They were as much alone and talking in private as if they were in Cargill's own room at the hotel. Cargill talked on, unmindful of the telephone, the telegraphic ticking, and the brisk, business-like action of his partner.

"Yes, I have known her ever since she was a girl. Her father was a queer old seed of a farmer, just out of town here, cranky on religion--a Universalist, I believe. Had the largest library of his town; I don't know but the largest private library outside of a city in the State. His house was literally walled with books. How he got 'em I don't know. It was currently believed that he was full of information, but I never heard of any one who was able to get very much out of him. His wife had been a beauty; that was her dowry to her daughter.

"The girl went to school here at sixteen. I was a student then, six or seven years older than she, and I remember there were about six of us who used to stand around the schoolhouse door to carry her books for her; but she just walked past us all without a turn of the head. She didn't seem to know what ailed us. She was one of these girls born all brains, some way. I never saw her face flushed in my life, and her big eyes always made me shiver when she turned them on me."

"Wheat falls to ninety-three and a fourth. There is a break in the market. New York is still hammering," called the operator, his mouth full of pie.

Cargill was distinctly talking to himself, almost as much as to Bradley. The hardness had gone out of his eyes, and his voice had a touch of unconscious sadness in it.

"Does Miss Wilbur live here?" Bradley asked, to start him off again.

"Yes, she went into the Grange when she was eighteen, just after she graduated from our university here. Had a good deal of your enthusiasm, I should judge. Expected to revolutionize things some way. I don't take very much interest in her public work, but I thoroughly appreciate her literary perception." He had got back to his usual humor.

"Chris, when does the club meet next?"

"Friday night, I believe."

"All right. I'll take you up, and introduce you into the charmed circle. They pride themselves on being modern up there, though I don't see much glory in being modern."

Bradley stood for a moment at the door, looking at this strange scene. It appealed to him with its strangeness, and its suggestion of the great battles on the street which he had read of in the papers. The telegraph machine clicked out every important movement in Chicago and New York. The manager called up his customers, and bawled into the telephone the condition of the market and the significant gossip of the far-off exchange halls. It was so strange, and yet so familiar, that he went away with his head full of those cabalistic sentences--

"New York still hammering away. Partridge quietly buying to cover on the decline."

XX.

AT THE STATE HOUSE.

That the invitation to attend the Square Table Club over-shadowed the importance and significance of Bradley's entrance into public life, was an excellent commentary upon his real character. The State House, however, appealed to his imagination very strongly as he walked up its unfinished lawn, amid the heaps of huge limestone blocks, his eyes upon the looming façade of the west front. He walked the echoing rotunda with a timid air; and the beautiful soaring vault was so majestic in his eyes, he wondered if Washington could be finer. There were a few other greenhorns, like himself, looking the building over with the same minute scrutiny. He entered all of the rooms into which it was possible to penetrate, and at last into the library, a cheerful, rectangular room, into which the sun streamed plenteously.

There was hardly any one in either the Senate or the Representative Halls except farmer-like groups of people, sometimes a family group of four or five, including the grandmother or grandfather. They were mainly in rough best suits of gray, or ostentatiously striped cassimere. The young men wore wide hats, pushed back, in some cases, to display a smooth, curling wave of hair, carefully combed down over their foreheads. He was able to catalogue them by reference to his old companions, Ed Blackler, Shep Watson, Sever Anderson, and others.

Soon the crowds thickened, and groups of men entered, talking and laughing loudly. They were wholly at their ease, being plainly old and experienced members. They greeted each other with boisterous cries and powerful handshaking.

"Hello, Stineberg, I hoped you'd git snowed under. Back again, eh?"

"Well, I'll be damned! Aint your county got any more sense than to send such a specimen as you back? Why weren't you around to the caucus?"

Bradley stood around awkwardly alone, not knowing just what to do. Perhaps some of these men would be glad to see him if they knew him, but he could not think of going to introduce himself. Being new in politics, there was not a man there whose face he recognized. The few that he had met at the hotel were not in sight. He felt as if he had been thrust into this jovial company, and was unwelcome.

The House was called to order by one of the members of the capital county, and prayer was offered. He sat quietly in his seat as things went on. The session adjourned after electing temporary speaker, clerk, etc. Bradley felt so alien to it all that he scarcely took the trouble to vote; and when the committee on credentials was appointed, he felt nervously in his pocket to see that his papers were safe. He felt very much as he used to when, as a boy, he went to have his hair cut, and sat in torture during the whole operation, in the fear that his quarter (all he had with him) might be lost, and trembling to think what would happen in such a case.

That night he moved to a new boarding-place. He secured a room near the Capitol, and went to supper in a small private house near by, which had a most astonishing amplitude of dining-room. He felt quite at home there, for the food was put on the table in the good old way, and passed around from hand to hand. The mashed potato tasted better, piled high, with a lump of butter in the top of it; and the slices of roast beef, outspread on the platter, enabled him to get the crisp outside, if it happened to start from his end of the table. There were judges and generals and senators and legislators of various ranks all about him. Crude, rough, wholesome fellows, most of them, with big, brawny hands like his own, and loud, hearty voices. It was impossible to stand in awe of a judge who handled his knife more deftly than his fork, and spooned the potato out of the big, earthen-ware dish with a resounding slap. He began to see that these men were exactly like the people he had been with all his life. He argued, however, that they were perhaps the poorer and the more honorable part of the legislature.

He wrote a note to Judge Brown, telling him that he was settled, but was taking very little part in the organizing of the House. He did not say that he was disappointed in his reception, but he was; his vanity had been hurt. His canvass had attracted considerable attention from the Democratic press of the country, and he expected to be received with great favor by them. He had come out of Republicanism for their sake, and they ought to recognize him. He did not consider that no one knew him by sight, and that recognition was impossible.

He was at the Capitol again early the next morning, and found the same scene being re-enacted. Straggling groups of roughly-dressed farmers loitered timidly along the corridors, brisk clerks dashed to and fro, and streams of men poured in and out the doors of the legislative halls. Bradley entered unobserved, and took a seat at the rear of the hall on a sofa. He did not feel safe in taking a seat.

It was a solemn moment to the new legislator as he stood before the clerk, and, with lifted hand, listened to the oath of office read in the clerk's sounding voice. He swore solemnly, with the help of God, to support the Constitution, and serve his people to the best of his ability; and he meant it. It did not occur to him that this oath was a shuffling and indefinite obligation. The room seemed to grow a little dimmer as he stood there; the lofty ceiling, rich in its colors, grand and spacious to him, seemed to gather new majesty, just as his office as lawmaker gathered a vast and sacred significance.

But as he came back to his seat, he heard a couple of old members laugh. "Comin' down to save their country. They'll learn to save their bacon before their term is up. That young feller looks like one of those retrenchment and reform cusses, one of the fellers who never want to adjourn--down here for business, ye know."

Their laughter made Bradley turn hot with indignation.

The selection of seats was the next great feature. The names of all the members were written upon slips of paper and shaken together in a box, while the members stood laughing and talking in the back part of the house. A blind-folded messenger boy selected the slips; and as the clerk read, in a sounding voice, the name on each slip, the representative so called went forward and selected his seat.

Bradley's name was called about the tenth, and he went forward timidly, and took a seat directly in the centre of the House. He did not care to seem anxious for a front seat. The Democratic members looked at him closely, and he stepped out of his obscurity as he went forward.

A young man of about his own age, a stalwart fellow, reached about and shook hands. "My name is Nelson Floyd. I wanted to see you."

Floyd took the first opportunity to introduce him to two or three of the Democratic members, but he sat quietly in his seat during the whole session, and took very little interest in the speakership contest, which seemed to go off very smoothly. He believed the speaker implicitly, when he stated the usual lie about having no pledges to redeem, and that he was free to choose his committee with regard only to superior fitness, etc., and was shocked when Floyd told him that a written contract had been drawn up and signed, before the legislature met, wherein the principal clerkships had been disposed of to party advantage. It was his second introduction to the hypocrisy of officialism.

If he had been neglected before, he was not now; all sorts of people came about him with axes to grind.

"Is this Mr. Talcott? Ah, yes! I have heard of your splendid canvass--splendid canvass! Now--ahem!--I'd like you to speak a good word for my girl, for the assistant clerkship of the Ways and Means"; while another wanted his son, Mr. John Smith, for page.

He told them that he had nothing to say about those things. "I am counted with the Democrats, anyhow; I haven't any influence."

They patted him on the shoulder, and winked slyly. "Oh, we know all about that! But every word helps, you know."

Going out at the close of the session, he met Cargill.

"Well, legislator, how goes it?"

"Oh, I don't know; smoothly, I guess. I've kept pretty quiet."

"That's right. The Republicans have everything in their hands this session."

"Hello, Cargill!" called a smooth, jovial voice.

"Ah, Barney! Talcott, this is an excellent opportunity. This is Barney, the great railway lobbyist. Barney, here is a new victim for you--Talcott, of Rock."

"Glad to see you, Mr. Talcott."

Bradley shook hands with moderate enthusiasm, looking into Barney's face with great interest. The lobbyist was large and portly and smiling. His moustache drooped over his mouth, and his chin had a jolly-looking hollow in it. His hazel eyes, once frank and honest, were a little clouded with drink.

"Cargill is an infernal old cynic," he exclaimed, "and he is corporation mad. Don't size us up according to his estimate."

It did not seem possible that this man could be the great tool of the railway interest, and yet that was his reputation.

Cargill moralized on the members, as they walked on: "Barney's on his rounds getting hold of the new members. He scents a corruptible man as the buzzard does carrion. Every session young fellows like you come down here with high and beautiful ideas of office, and start in to reform everything, and end by becoming meat for Barney and his like. There is something destructive in the atmosphere of politics."

Bradley listened to Cargill incredulously. These things could not be true. These groups of jovial, candid-looking men could not be the moral wrecks they were represented. He had expected to see men who looked villainous in some way, with bloated faces--disreputable, beery fellows. He had not risen to the understanding that the successful villain is always plausible.

When he left the Capitol and went down the steps with Cargill, he felt that he had fairly entered upon the work of his term.

"Now, young man," said Cargill, as they parted, "let me advise you. The fight of this session is going to be the people against the corporations. There are two positions and only two. You take your choice. If you side with the corporation, your success will be instantaneous. You can rig out, and board at the Richwood, and be dined out, and taken to see the town Saturday nights, and retire with a nice little boost and a record to apologize for when you go back to Rock River; that is, you can go in for all that there is in it, or you can take your chances with the people."

"I will take the chances with the people."

"Well, now, hold on! Don't deceive yourself. The people are a mob yet. They are fickle as the flames o' hell. They don't know what they do want, but in the end the man that leads them and stands by them is sure of success."

The daily walk down from the Capitol was very beautiful. As the sun sank low it struck through the smoke of the city, and flooded the rotunda of the building with a warm, red light, which lay along the floor in great streams of gold, and warmed each pillar till it glowed like burnished copper. At such moments the muddy streets, the poor hovels, the ugly bricks, lost to sight beneath the majesty and mystery of the sun-transfigured smoke and the purple deeps of the lower levels (out of which the searching, pitiless light had gone), became a sombre and engulfing flood of luminous darkness.

"Here, here!" Cargill said one day, when Bradley called his attention to the view, "a man can swear and get drunk and be a politician; but when he likes flowers or speaks of a sunset, his goose is cooked. It is political death."

XXI.

BRADLEY AND CARGILL CALL ON IDA.

Bradley had come to like Cargill very much. He was very thoughtful in his haphazard way, but not at all like Radbourn. Bradley compared every man he met with Radbourn and Judge Brown, and every woman suffered comparison with Ida Wilbur.

He went down to meet Cargill on the night of the promised call. He found him seated on the small of his back, his hands in his pockets. His absurd little hat (that seemed to partake of his every mood) was rolled into a point in front, and pulled down aggressively over his eyes. He was particularly violent, and paid no attention whatever to Bradley.

"No, sir; I am not a prohibitionist. My position is just this: If we vote prohibition in Iowa, the government has no business to license men to sell contrary to our regulations."

"That's state's rights!" burst in the other man who was trembling with rage and excitement.

Cargill slowly rose, transfixing him with a glare. "Go way, now; I won't waste any more time on you," he said, walking off with Bradley. "Let me see, we were going to the club to-night." He looked down at his boots. "Yes, they are shined; that puts a dress suit on me." As he walked along, he referred to Miss Wilbur. "She is a great woman, but she is abnormal from my point of view."

"Why so?" inquired Bradley.

"Well, look at the life she leads. On the road constantly, living at hotels. A woman can't hold herself up against such things."

"It depends upon the woman," was Bradley's succinct protest against sweeping generalizations.

It was crisp and clear, and the sound of their feet rang out in the still air as if they trod on glass at every step. They talked very little. Bradley wanted to tell Cargill that he had already met Miss Wilbur, but he could not see his way clear to make the explanation. Cargill was unwontedly silent.

The Norwegian girl ushered them into a pretty little parlor, where a beautiful fire of coal was burning in an open grate. While they stood warming their stiffened hands at the cheerful blaze, Ida entered.

"Mr. Cargill, this is an unexpected pleasure."

"I wonder how sincere you are in that. This is my friend Mr. Talcott."

Ida moved toward Bradley with her hand cordially extended. "I think we have met before," she said.

"I call him my friend," said Cargill, "because he has not known me long enough to become my enemy."

"That is very good, Mr. Cargill. Sit down, won't you? Please give me your coats." She moved about in that pleasant bustle of reception so natural to women.

Cargill slid down into a chair in his disjointed fashion. "We came to attend the intellectual sit-down."

"Why, that doesn't meet to-night! It meets every other Friday, and this is the other Friday."

"Oh, is it? So much the better; we will see you alone."

Ida turned gravely to Bradley. "Mr. Cargill is not often in this mood. I generally draw him off into a fight on Mr. Howell's, Thackeray or Scott."

"She prefers me in armor," Cargill explained, "and on horseback. My intellectual bowleggedness, so to say, and my moral squint are less obtrusive at an altitude."

Ida laughed appreciatively. "Your extraordinary choice of figures would distinguish you among the symbolists of Paris," she replied.

This all seemed very brilliant and droll to Bradley, and he sat with unwavering eyes fixed upon Ida, who appeared to him in a new light, more softly alluring than ever--that of the hostess. She was dressed in some loose, rich-colored robe, which had the effect of drapery.

"When did you get back?" Cargill inquired, a little more humanly.

"Yesterday, and I am just in the midst of the luxury of feeling at home, with no journeys to make to-morrow. I have a friend I would like to introduce to you," she said, rising and going out. She returned in a few moments with a tall young lady in street dress, whom she introduced as Miss Cassiday.

In a short time Cargill had involved Miss Cassiday in a discussion of the decline of literature, which left Ida free to talk with Bradley. It was the most beautiful evening in his life. He talked as never before. He told her of his reading, and of his plans. He told her of his election to the legislature.

"Ah, that is good!" she said; "then we have one more champion of women in our State House."

"Yes, I will do what I can," he said.

"I will be here to hear you. I am one of the committee in charge of the bill."

The firelight fell upon her face, flushing its pallor into a beauty that exalted the young farmer out of his fear and reticence. They talked upon high things. He told her how he had studied the social question, since hearing her speak in Iowa City. He called to her mind great passages in the books she had sent him, and quoted paragraphs which touched upon the fundamental questions at issue. He spoke of his hopes of advancement.

"I want to succeed," he said, "in order that I may teach the new doctrine of rights. I want to carry into the party I have joined the real democracy. I believe a new era has come in our party."

"I am afraid not," she said, looking at the fire. "I begin to believe that we must wait till a new party rises out of the needs of people, just as the old Free-soil Party rose to free the slaves. Don't deceive yourself about your party in this State. It is after the offices, just the same as the party you have left. They juggle with the tariffs and the license question, because it helps them. They will drop any question and any man when they think they are going to lose by retaining him. They will drop you if you get too radical. I warn you!" she said, looking up at him and smiling with a touch of bitterness in her smile; "I am dangerous. My counsel does not keep men in office. I belong to the minority. I am very dangerous."

"I'm not afraid," he said, thrilling with the intensity of his own voice. "I will trust human reason. I'm not afraid of you--I mean you can't harm me by giving me new thoughts, and that's what you've done ever since that day I heard you first at the picnic. You've helped me to get where I am."

"I have?" she asked, in surprise. His eyes fell before hers. "It will be strange if I have helped any one to political success."

Bradley was silent. How could he tell her what she had become to him? How could he tell her that she was woven into the innermost mesh of his intellectual fibre.

"You've taught me to think," he said, at last. "You gave me my first ambition to do something."

"I am very glad," she replied, simply. "Sometimes I get discouraged. I speak and people applaud, and I go away, and that seems to be all there is to it. I never hear a word afterwards; but once in a while, some one comes to me or writes to me, as you have done, and that gives me courage to go on; otherwise I'd think people came to hear me simply to be amused."

She was looking straight into the fire; and the light, streaming up along her dress, transfigured her into something alien and unapproachable. The easy flex of her untrammelled waist was magnificent. She had the effect of a statue, draped and flooded with color.

Cargill's penetrating voice cut through that sacred pause like the rasp of a saw file. He had been listening to his companion till he was full of rebellion. He was a bad listener.

"But what is success? Why, my dear young woman"--

"Don't patronize us, please," Ida interposed. "I speak for poor Miss Cassiday, because she's too timid to rebel. Nothing angers me more than that tone. Call us comrades or friends, but don't say 'My dear young woman!'" She was smiling, but she was more than half in sober earnest.

Cargill bowed low, and proceeded with scowling brow and eyes half-closed and fixed obliquely upon Ida. "Dear comrades in life-battle, what is success? You remember the two lords in Lilliput who could leap the pack thread half its width higher?"

"Don't drag Swift into our discussion," Ida cried. "Mr. Cargill's a sort of American Swift," turning to Bradley. "Don't let him spoil your splendid optimism. There is a kind of pessimism which is really optimism; that is to say, people who believe the imperfect and unjust can be improved upon. They are called pessimists because they dare to tell the truth about the present; but the pessimism of Mr. Cargill, I'm afraid, is the pessimism of personal failure."

There was a terrible truth in this, and it drove straight into Cargill's heart. Bradley was pleased to see Ida dominate a man who was accustomed to master every one who came into his presence. There was a look on her face which meant battle. She did not change her attitude of graceful repose, but her face grew stern and accusing. Cargill looked at her, wearing the same inscrutable expression of scowling attention; but a slow flush, rising to his face, showed that he had been struck hard.

There was a moment's pause full of intense interest to Bradley. The combatants were dealing with each other oblivious of every one else.

"I admire you, friend Cargill," Ida went on, "but your attitude is not right. Your influence upon young people is not good. You are always crying out against things, but you never try to help. What are you doing to help things?"

"Crying out against them," he replied, curtly.

Ida dropped her glance. "Yes, that's so; I'll admit that it has that effect, or it would if you didn't talk of the hopelessness of trying to do anything. Don't feel alarmed," she said, turning to the others, "Mr. Cargill and I understand each other very well. We've known each other so long that we can afford to talk plain."

"This is the first time she ever let into me so directly," Cargill explained. "Understand we generally fight on literature, or music, or the woman question. This really is the first encounter on my personal influence. I'm going home to stanch my wounds." He rose, with a return to his usual manner.

Ida made no effort to detain them. "Come and see me again, Mr. Talcott, and don't let Mr. Cargill spoil you."

After leaving the house, the two men walked on a block in silence, facing the wind, their overcoats drawn up about their ears.

"There's a woman I like," Cargill said, when they turned a corner and were shielded from the bitter wind. "She can forget her sex occasionally and become an intellect. Most women are morbid on their sex. They can't seem to escape it, as a man does part of the time. They can't rise, as this woman does, into the sexless region of affairs and of thought."

Bradley lacked the courage to ask him to speak lower, and he went on. "She's had suitors enough and flattery enough to turn her into a simpering fashion-plate; but you can not spoil brains. What the women want is not votes; it's brains, and less morbid emotions."

"She's a free woman?" said Bradley.

"Free! Yes, they'd all be free if they had her brains."

"I don't know about that; conditions might still"--

"They'd make their own conditions."

"That's true. It all comes back to a question of human thinking, doesn't it?"

This seemed a good point to leave off the discussion, and they walked on mainly in silence, though two or three times during the walk Cargill broke out in admiration. "I never saw a woman grow as that woman has. That's the kind of a woman a man would never get tired of. I've never married," he went on, with a sort of confession, "because I knew perfectly well I'd get sick of my choice, but"--

He did not finish--it was hardly necessary; perhaps he felt he had gone too far. They said good-night at the door of the Windom, and Bradley went on up the avenue, his brain whirling with his new ideas and emotions.

Ida had rushed away again into the far distance. It was utter foolishness to think she could care for him. She was surrounded with brilliant and wealthy men, while he was a poor young lawyer in a little country town. He looked back upon the picture of himself sitting by her side, there in the light of the fire, with deepening bewilderment. He remembered the strange look upon her face as she rebuked Cargill. He wondered if she did not care for him.

XXII.

THE JUDGE PLANS A NEW CAMPAIGN.

The first three or four weeks of legislative life sickened and depressed Bradley. He learned in that time, not only to despise, but to loath some of the legislators. The stench of corruption got into his nostrils, and jovial vice passed before his eyes. The duplicity, the monumental hypocrisy, of some of the leaders of legislation made him despair of humankind and to doubt the stability of the republic.

He was naturally a pure-minded, simple-hearted man, and when one of the leaders of the moral party of his State was dragged out of a low resort, drunk and disorderly, in company with a leader of the Senate, his heart failed him. He was ready to resign and go home.

Trades among the committees came obscurely to his ears; hints of jobs, getting each day more definite, reached him. Railway lobbyists swarmed about and began to lay their cajoling, persuasive hands upon members; and he could not laugh when the newspaper said, for a joke, that the absent-minded speaker called the House to order one morning by saying: "Agents of the K. C. & Q. will _please_ be in order." It seemed too near the simple fact to be funny. The School Book Lobby, the University Lobby, the Armour Lobby, each had its turn with him, through its smooth, convincing agent.

He reached his lowest deep one night after a conversation with Lloyd Smith, an ex-clerk, and a couple of young fellows who called upon him at his room. Lloyd noticed his gloomy face, and asked what the trouble was. He told them frankly that he was disgusted.

"Oh, you'll get used to it!" the ex-clerk said. "When I first went into the House, I believed in honesty and sincerity, like yourself; but I came out of my term of office knowing the whole gang to be thieves. My experience taught me that legislators in America think it's a Christian virtue to break into the government treasury."

The others broke out laughing, believing him to be joking; but there was a ferocious look on his face, and Bradley felt that he might be mistaken, but he was not joking.

"They stole stationery, spittoons, waste baskets, by God! They stole everything that was loose, and at the end of the term, they seemed to be looking around unsatisfied, and I told 'em there was just one thing left--the gold leaf on the dome."

The others roared with laughter, and Bradley was forced to join in. But the face of the ex-clerk did not lose its dark intensity.

"Take salary grabbing. Why! they wanted me to certify to their demands for Sunday pay for themselves and their clerks, and I refused, and they were wild. I'm not an angel nor a Christian man, but I won't sign my name to a lie, and blamed if they didn't pass the order without my signature! Yes, sir; it's there on the record.

"Take nepotism. The members bring their wives and daughters down here, put them in as pages and clerks, or divide the proceeds when they have no relatives. Every device, every imaginable chicanery, every possible scheme to break into the State money box, is legitimate in their eyes, and worthy of being patented. Public money is fair game; and yet," he said, with a change of manner, "we have the fairest, purest and most honorable legislators, take it as a whole, that there is in the United States, because our State is rural, and we're comparatively free from liquor. Our legislature is a Sunday School, compared to the leprous rascals that swarm about the Capitol at Albany or Springfield."

"What is the cure?" asked Bradley, whose mind had been busy with the problem.

"God Almighty! there is no cure, except the abolition of government. Government means that kind of thing. Look at it! Here we enthrone the hungry, vicious, uneducated mob of incapables, and then wonder why they steal, and gorge and riot like satyrs. The wonder is they don't scrape the paint off the walls."

"Oh, you go too far; a legislator wouldn't steal a spittoon."

"No, but the fellow he recommends for clerkship does."

"My idea is that there are very few men who take money."

"I admit that, but they'll all trade their job for another job. Honesty is impossible. The Angel Gabriel would become a boodler under our system of government. The cure is to abolish government."

This conclusion, impotent to Bradley, was practically all the savage critic had to offer. Either go back to despotism or go ahead to no government at all.

After they went out, Bradley sat down and wrote a letter to Judge Brown, embodying the main part of this conversation: "It's enough to make a man curse his country and his God to see how things run," he said, at the end of writing out the ex-clerk's terrible indictment. "I feel that he is right. I'm ready to resign, and go home, and never go into politics again. The whole thing is rotten to the bottom."

But as the weeks wore on, he found that the indictment was only true of a certain minority, but it was terribly true of them; but down under the half-dozen corruptible agents, under the roar of their voices, there were many others speaking for truth and purity. The obscure mass meant to be just and honest. They were good fathers and brothers, and yet they were forced to bear the odium that fell on the whole legislature whenever the miscreant minority rolled in the mire and walked the public streets.

There was one count, however, that remained good against nearly all of the legislators: they seemed to lack conscience as regards public money. Bradley remembered that this dishonesty extended down to the matter of working on the roads in the country. He remembered that every man esteemed it a virtue to be lazy, and to do as little for a day's pay as possible, because it "came out of the town." He was forced to admit that this was the most characteristic American crime. To rob the commonwealth was a joke.

He ended by philosophizing upon it with the Judge, who came down in late February to attend the session during the great railway fight.

The Judge put his heels on the window sill, and folded his arms over the problem.

"Well, now, this thing must be looked at from another standpoint. The power of redress is with the voter. If the voter is a boodler, he will countenance boodling. Here is the mission of our party," he said, with the zeal of an old-fashioned Democrat, "to come in here and educate the common man to be an honest man. We have got a duty to perform. Now, we mustn't talk of resigning or going out of politics. We've got to stay right in the lump, and help leaven it. It will only make things worse if we leave it." The Judge had grown into the habit of speaking of Bradley as if he were a partner.

Bradley, going about with him on the street, suddenly discovered that the Judge's hat was just a shade too wide in the brim, and his coat a little bit frayed around the button-holes. He had never noticed before that the Judge was a little old-fashioned in his manners. No thought of being ashamed of him came into his mind, but it gave him a curious sensation when they entered a car together for the first time, and he discovered that the Judge was a type.

When Bradley made his great speech on the railroad question, arraigning monopoly, the Judge had a special arrangement with a stenographer. He was going to have that speech in pamphlet form to distribute, if it took a leg. He was already planning a congressional campaign.

Ida sat in the balcony on the day he spoke for woman's suffrage, and he could not resist the temptation of looking up there as he spoke. Everything combined to give great effect to his speech. It was late in the afternoon and the western sun thrust bars of light across the dim chamber which the fresh young voice of the speaker had hushed into silence. Ida had sent a bunch of flowers to his desk and upon that bouquet the intrusive sun-ray fell, like something wild that loved the rose, but as the speaker went on it clambered up his stalwart side and rested at last upon his head as though to crown him with victory.

But defeat came as usual. The legislators saw nothing in the sun-ray except a result of negligence on the part of the door-keeper. They all cheered the speech, but a majority tabled the matter as usual. The galleries cheered and the women swarmed about the young champion, Ida among them. Her hand-shake and smile was his greatest reward.

"Come and see me," she said. "I want to thank you."

The Judge was immensely proud of him. "A great speech, Brad; if I wasn't so old-fashioned and set--you'd have converted me. In private I admit all you say, but it ain't policy for me to advocate it just now."

"Policy! I'm sick of policy!" cried Bradley. "Let's try being right awhile."

The Judge changed the subject. He told the members at the boarding-house that it wouldn't hurt Bradley's chances. "People won't down a man on that point any more."

"Perhaps not in your county, but I don't want to experiment down in my county," said Major Root, of MacIntosh.

"I don't believe the people of Iowa will down any man for stating what he believes is right."

"Don't bet too high on that," said the Major in final reply.

The Judge dined with Bradley at the dining-room in the little cottage, and it gave Bradley great satisfaction to see that he used his fork more gracefully than the Supreme judge, who sat beside him, and better than the senator, who sat opposite. They had a most delightful time in talking over old legal friends, and the Judge was beaming as he came to pudding. He assured them all that the Honorable Talcott would be heard on the floor of Congress.

"We're the winning party now," he said. "We're the party of the future."

The others laughed good naturedly. "Don't be too certain of that." They all rose. "You surprised us sleeping on our arms," the general said, "but we're awake now, and we've got pickets out."

The Judge enjoyed his visit very much, and only once did he present himself to Bradley with a suspicious heaviness in his speech. He had reformed entirely since he had adopted a son, he explained to his old cronies.

On the day when the Judge was to return, as they walked down to the train together, he said, "Well, Brad, we'll go right into the congressional campaign."

"I don't believe we'd better do that, Judge."

"Why not?"

"Well, I could not be elected--that's one thing."

The Judge allowed an impressive silence to intervene.

"Why not? I tell you, young man, they're on the run. We can put you through. You've made a strong impression down here."

"I don't believe I want to be put through. I'm sick of it. I don't believe I'm a politician. I'm sick all through with the whole cursed business. I never'd be here only for you, pulling wires. I can't pull wires."

"You needn't pull wires. I'll do that. You talk, and that's what put you here, and it'll put you in Congress."

Bradley was in a bad mood.

"What's the good of my going there? I can't do anything. I've done nothing here."

"Yes, y' have. You've been right on the railroad question, on the oleo question, and the bank question. It's going to count. That speech of yours, yesterday, I'm going to send broadcast in Rock County. The district convention will meet in June early. Foster will pave the way for your nomination, by saying Rock County should have a congressman. We'll go into the convention with a clear two-thirds majority, and then declare your nomination unanimous. You see, your youth will be in your favor. Your election will follow, sure. The only fight will be in the convention."

"Looks like spring, to-day," Bradley said. It was his way of closing an argument.

"Well, good-by. You'll find the whole pot boiling when you come home," the Judge said, as the train started.

As February drew on and the snow fled, the earth-longing got hold upon Bradley. It was almost seed time, with its warm, mellow soil, its sweeping flights of prairie pigeons, its innumerable swarms of tiny clamorous sparrows, its whistling plovers, and its passing wild fowl. The thought came to him there, for the first time, that nature was not malignant nor hard; that life on a farm might be the most beautiful and joyous life in the world. The meaning of Ida's words at last took definite and individual shape in his mind. He had assimilated them now.

* * * * *

Bradley gave himself up to the Judge's plans. He went home in April with eagerness and with reluctance. He was eager to escape the smoke of the city and reluctant to leave behind him all chance to see Ida. This feeling of hungry disappointment dominated him during his day's ride. He had seen her but twice during his stay in Des Moines, and now--when would he see her again?

This terrible depression and sharp pain wore away a little by the time he reached home, and the active campaign which followed helped him to bear it. He still wrote to her, and she replied without either encouragement and without explicit displeasure. The campaign was really the Judge's fight. Bradley was his field officer. Victory in the convention only foreshadowed the sweeping victory in October. He resigned as legislator, to become a congressman.

XXIII.

ON TO WASHINGTON.

In the west (as in rural America anywhere), the three types of great men in the peoples' eyes are the soldier, the politician and the minister. The whole people appear to revere the great soldier, the men admire the successful politician, and the women bow down before the noted preacher.

These classes of hero-worshipers melt into each other, of course, but broadly they may be said to separately exist. In colonial days the minister came first, the soldier second, the politician last. Since the revolution the soldier has been the first figure in the triumvirate, and in these later times the politician and his organ of voice the newspaper have placed the preacher last.

And there is something wholesome in such an atmosphere, the atmosphere of the West, at least by contrast. The worship of political success, low as it may seem, is less deplorable than the worship of wealth, which is already weakening the hold of the middle-class Eastern man upon the American idea. In the West mere wealth does not carry assurance of respect, much less can it demand subservience.

Bradley never dreamed of getting rich, but under Radbourn and the Judge he had developed a growing love for the orator's dominion. He hungered to lead men. Notwithstanding his fits of disgust and bitterness he loved to be a part of the political life of his time. It had a powerful fascination for him. The deference which his old friends and neighbors paid him as things due a rising young man, pleased him.

He looked now to Washington, and it fired his imagination to think of sitting in the hall where the mighty legislators of generations now dead had voiced their epoch-marking thoughts. It amazed the Judge to see how the wings of his young eagle expanded. The transformation from a farmer's hired man to a national representative appealed to him as characteristically American, and he urged Bradley to do his best.

The election which the young orator expected to be another moment of great interest really came as a matter-of-fact ending to a long and triumphant canvass. He had held victory in his hand until she was tamed. The election simply confirmed the universal prophecy. He was elected, and while the Democrats went wild with joy, Bradley slept quietly in his bed at home--while the brass band played itself quiescent under his window.

Now he fixed his eyes on Washington as an actuality. It was a long time before his term began, and at the advice of Judge Brown and others he packed his trunk in January to go on and look around a little in the usual way of new members. He went alone, the Judge couldn't spare the time.

The ride from Chicago to Washington was an epic to him. It was his next great departure, his entrance into another widening circle of thinking. He had never seen a mountain before; and the wild, plunging ride among the Alleghany Mountains was magnificent. He sat for hours at a time looking out of the window, while the train, drawn by its two tremendous engines, crawled toward the summit. He saw the river drop deeper and deeper, and get whiter and wilder; and then came the wooded level of the summit, and then began the descent.

While the reeling train alternately flung him to the window and against the seat, he gazed out at the wheeling peaks, the snow-laden pines, and the mighty gorges, through which the icy river ran, green as grass in its quiet eddies. On every side were wild hillsides meshed with fallen trees, and each new vista contained its distant peak. It was the realization of his imagination of the Alleghanies.

As the train swooped round its curves, dropping lower and lower, the valley broadened out, and the great mountains moved away into ampler distances. The river ran in a wide and sinuous band to the east and the south. He realized it to be the Potomac, whose very name is history. He began to look ahead to seeing Harper's Ferry, and in the nearing distance was Washington!

He had the Western man's intensity of feeling for Washington. To him it was the centre of American life, because he supposed the laws were made there. The Western man knows Boston as the centre of art, which he affects to despise, and New York appeals to him as the home of the millionaire, of the money-lender; but in Washington he recognizes the great nerve centre of national life. It is the political ganglion of the body politic. It appeals to the romantic in him as well. It is historical; it is the city that makes history.