Chapter VII: Preface: To the New Edition (7)

Slowly the night fell. After leaving Harper's Ferry the outside world vanished, and when the brakeman called "Washington," it was nearly eight o'clock of a damp, chilly night. He was so eager to see the Capitol, which the kindly fat man behind him had assured him was but a few steps away from the station, that he took his valise in his hand, and started directly for the dome, which a darkey with a push-cart, pointed out to him with oppressive courtesy.

There was an all-pervasive, impalpable, blue-gray mist in the air, cold and translucent; and when he came to the foot of the grounds, and faced the western front of the Capitol building, he drew a deep breath of delight. It thrilled him. There it loomed in the misty, winter night, the mightiest building on the continent, blue-white, sharply outlined, massive as a mountain, yet seemingly as light as a winter cloud. Weighing myriads of tons, it seemed quite as insubstantial as the mist which transfigured it. Against the cold-white of its marble, and out of the gray-white enveloping mist, bloomed the warm light of lamps, like vast lilies with hearts of fire and halos of faint light.

He stood for a long time looking upon it, musing upon its historic associations. Around him he heard the grinding wheels, the click of the horses' hoofs upon the asphalt pavement, and heard the shouts of drivers. Somewhere near him water was falling with a musical sound in a subterranean sluiceway. At last he came to himself with a start, and found his arm aching with the fatigue of his heavy valise. He struck off down the avenue. It seemed to swarm with colored people. They were selling papers, calling with musical, bell-like voices--

"Evenin' Sty-ah!" "Evenin' Sty-ah!"

Horse cars tinkled along, and a peculiar form of elongated 'bus, with the word "Carette" painted upon it, rolled along noiselessly over the asphalt pavement. An old man in business dress, with rather aristocratic side-whiskers, came toward him, walking briskly through the crowd, an open hand-bag swung around his neck; and as he walked he chanted a peculiar cry--

"Doc-tor Ferguson's, selly-brated, double X, Philadelphia cough-drops, for coughs _and_ colds, sore throat or hoarseness; five _cents_ a package."

Innumerable signs invited him to "meals at 15 and 25 cts." "Rolls and French drip coffee, 10 cts." "Oysters in every style," etc.

The oyster saloons were, in general, very attractive to him, as a Western man, but specifically he did not like the looks of the places in which they were served. He came at last to a place which seemed clean and free from a bar, and ventured to call for a twenty-five cent stew.

After eating this, he again took his way to the street, and walked along, looking for a moderate-priced hotel. He did not think of going to a hotel that charged more than seventy-five cents for a room. He came at length to quite a decent-looking place, which advertised rooms for fifty cents and upwards. He registered under the clerk's calm misprision, and the brown and wonderfully freckled colored boy showed him to his room.

It was all quite familiar to him--this hotel to which a man of moderate means is forced to go in the city. The dingy walls and threadbare carpet got geometrically shabbier at each succeeding flight of stairs, until at length the boy ushered him into a little room at the head of the stairway. It was unwarmed and had no lock on the door; but the bed was clean, and, as he soon found, very comfortable.

XXIV.

RADBOURN SHOWS BRADLEY ABOUT THE CAPITAL.

He woke in the morning from his dreamless sleep with that peculiar familiar sensation of not knowing where he had lain down the night before. There was something boyish in the soundness of his sleep. He heard the newsboys calling outside, although it was apparently the early dawn. Their voices made him think of Des Moines, for the reason that Des Moines was the only city in which he had ever heard the newsboys cry. He sprang from his bed at the thought of Radbourn. He would hunt him up at once! He was surprised to find that it had snowed during the night, and everywhere the darkies were cleaning the walks.

Walking thus a perfect stranger in what seemed to him a great city he did not feel at all like a rising young man. In fact the farther he got from Rock River the smaller his importance grew, for he had the imagination that comprehends relative values.

On the street he passed a window where a big negro was cooking griddle-cakes, dressed in a snowy apron and a paper cap. He looked so clean and wholesome that Bradley decided upon getting his breakfast there, and going in, took his seat at one of the little tables. A colored boy came up briskly.

"I'd like some of those cakes," said Bradley, to whom all this was very new.

"Brown the wheats!" yelled the boy, and added in a low voice, "Buckwheat or batter?"

"Buckwheat, I guess."

"Make it bucks!" the boy yelled, by the way of correction, and asked again in a low voice, "Coffee?"

"If you please."

"One up light."

While Bradley was eating his cakes, which were excellent, others came in, and the waiters dashed to and fro, shouting their weird orders.

"Ham _and_, two up coff, a pair, boot-leg, white wings."

Bradley had a curiosity to see what this order would bring forth, and, watching carefully, found that it secured ham and eggs, two cups of coffee, a beefsteak, and an omelet. He was deeply interested in the discovery.

He recognized the most of the men around him as Western or Southern types. Many of them had chin whiskers and wore soft crush hats. The negroes interested and fascinated him: they were so grimly ugly of face, and yet apparently so good natured and light hearted.

On the street again he saw the same types of men. He wondered if they were not his colleagues. As for them, they probably took him for a Boston or New York man, with his full brown beard and clear complexion.

The negroes attracted his eyes constantly. They drifted along the street apparently aimlessly, many of them. Their faces were mostly smiling, but in a meaningless way, as if it were a habit. He soon found that they were swift to struggle for a chance to work. They asked to carry his valise, to black his boots; the newsboys ran by his side, in their eagerness to sell.

As he went along, he noticed the very large number of "Rooms to Let," and the equally large number of signs of "Meals, Fifteen and Twenty-five Cents." Evidently there would be no trouble in finding a place to board.

As he entered Radbourn's office, he saw a young lady seated at a desk, manipulating a typewriter. She had the ends of a forked rubber tube hung in her ears, and did not see Bradley. He observed that the tube connected with a sewing-machine-like table and a swiftly revolving little cylinder, which he recognized as a phonograph. At the window sat Radbourn, talking in a measured, monotonous voice into the mouthpiece of a large flexible tube, which connected with another phonograph. His back was toward Bradley, and he stood for some time looking at the curious scene and listening to Radbourn's talk.

"Congress brings to Washington a fulness of life which no one can understand who has not spent the summer here," Radbourn went on, in a slow, measured voice, his lips close to the bell-like opening of the tube. It had a ludicrous effect upon Bradley--like a person talking to himself.

"The city may be said to die, when Congress adjourns. Its life is political, and when its political motor ceases to move the city lies sprawled out like a dead thing. Its streets are painfully quiet. Its street cars shuttle to and fro under the burning sun, and its teamsters loaf about the corners drowsily. The store-keepers keep shop, of course, but they open lazily of a morning and close early at night. The whole city yawns and rests and longs for the coming of the autumn and Congress.

"It is amusing and amazing to see it begin to wake up at the beginning of the session. Then begins the scramble of the hotels and boarding-houses to secure members of Congress. Then begins"--

The girl suddenly saw Bradley standing there, and called out, "Some one to see you, Mr. Radbourn!"

Radbourn stopped the cylinder, and turned.

"Ah, how do you do," he said, as if greeting a stranger.

Bradley smiled in reply, knowing that Radbourn did not recognize him. "I'm very well. I don't suppose you remember me, but I'm Brad Talcott."

Radbourn rose with great cordiality. "Well, well, I'm glad to see you," he said, his sombre face relaxing in a smile, as he seized Bradley by the hand. "Sit down, sit down. I'm glad to see an old class-mate."

"Don't let me interrupt your work. I was interested in hearing you talk into that thing there."

"Oh, yes, I was just getting off my syndicate letter for this week. Sit down and talk; you don't interrupt me at all. Now tell me all about yourself. Of course I have heard of your success, State Legislature and Congress and all that, but I would like to have you tell me all about it."

"There aint very much to tell. I had very little to do with it," said Bradley.

They took seats near the window, looking out upon the square, and upon the vast, squat, Egyptian, tomb-like structure, that rose out of the centre of the smooth, snow-covered plat, across which the sun streamed with vivid white radiance.

There was a little pause after they sat down. Radbourn leaned his head on his arm, and studied Bradley earnestly. He seemed older and more bitter than Bradley expected to see him. He asked of the old friends in a slow way, as if one name called up another in a slowly moving chain of association. They talked on for an hour thus, sitting in the same position. At last Radbourn said--

"How far I've got from all those scenes and people! and yet the memory of that little old town and its people has a powerful fascination. I never'll go back, of course. To tell the truth, I am afraid to go back; it would drive me crazy. I am a city man naturally. I am gregarious. I like to be in the centre of things. It'll get hold of you, too. This city is full of ruined young men and women, who came here from the slow-moving life of inland towns and villages, and, after two or three years of a richer life, find it impossible to go back; and here they are, struggling along on forty-five cents a day at hash-houses, living in hall bedrooms, preferring to pick up such a living, at all kinds of jobs, than to go back home. I'd do it myself, if I were"--

He broke off suddenly, and looked at Bradley in a keen, steady way. "And so you're a congressman, Talcott? Well, I'm glad of your success, because it shows a man _can_ succeed on the right lines--in a measure, at least."

"Well, I've tried to live up to most of your principles," smiled Bradley. "I've read all the things you've sent me."

"Well, you're the wildest and most dangerous lunatic that ever got into Congress," Radbourn said, gravely. "Do you expect to talk any of that stuff on the floor?"

"Well, I--I hoped to be able to say something before the session closes."

"If you do, it will be a miracle. The House is under the rule of a Republican Czar, and men with your ideas or any ideas are to be shut out remorselessly. Let me tell you something right here; it will save time and worry: You want to know the Speaker, cultivate him. He's the real power. That's the reason the speakership becomes such a terrible struggle. It decides the most tremendous question. In his hand is the appointing of committees, which should be chosen by the legislators themselves. The power of these committees is unlimited, you'll find. They can smother bills of the utmost importance. Theoretically they are the servants of the House. Actually they are its autocrats."

"I didn't realize that."

"I don't suppose it is realized by the people. This appointing of the committee is supposed to save time, and yet the speakership contest consumes weeks, sometimes months. It will grow in ferocity."

"Can't something be done?"

"Try and see," he said rising. "Well, suppose we got out and walk about a little. I infer you're on to see the town. Where are you stopping?"

Bradley named the hotel with a little reluctance. He knew how cheap it was; and since he had discovered that congressmen were at a premium in boarding-houses, he saw that he must get more sumptuous quarters than he had hitherto occupied. They went out into the open air together. The sun was very brilliant and warm. The eaves were running briskly. The sky was gentle, beautiful, and spring-like. The fact that he was in Washington came upon Bradley again, as he saw the soaring dome of the capitol at the head of the avenue.

"What you want to do is to get on good social terms with the so-called leaders," Radbourn was saying. "Recognition goes by favor on the floor of the House. We might go up to the capitol and look about," Radbourn suggested.

They walked up the steps leading to the west front of the building. Everywhere the untrodden snow lay white and level.

"This is the finest part of the whole thing," Radbourn remarked, as they reached the level of esplanade. "It has more beauty and simple majesty than the main building itself, or any structure in the city."

It was magnificent. Bradley turned and looked at it right and left with admiring eyes. It gleamed with snow, and all about was the sound of dripping water, and in the distance the roll of wheels and click of hoofs. The esplanade was a broad walk extending the entire width of the building, and conforming to it. It was bottomed with marble squares, and bordered with a splendid wall, breast-high on one side, and by the final terrace running to the basement wall on the other. Here and there along the wall gigantic brazen pots sat, filled with evergreens, whose color seemed to have gradually dropped down and entered into the marble beneath them. The bronze had stained with rich, dull green each pedestal and irregular sections of the marble wall itself.

Below them the city was outspread. Radbourn pointed out the Pension Office, the White House, the Treasury, and other principal buildings with a searching word upon their architecture. The monument, he evidently considered, required no comment.

As they entered the dome, they passed a group of men whose brisk, bluff talk and peculiar swagger indicated their character--legislators from small country towns.

"Some of your colleagues," Radbourn said, indicating them with his thumb. As they paused a moment in the centre of the dome, one of the group, a handsome fellow with a waxed mustache and hard, black eyes, gave a stretching gesture, and said, "I'm in the world now."

His words thrilled Bradley to the heart. He was in the world now. Des Moines and its capitol were dwarfed and overshadowed by this great national city, to which all roads ran like veins to a mighty heart. He lifted his shoulders in a deep breath. It was glorious to be a congressman, but still more glorious to be a citizen of the world.

They passed through the corridors in upon the house floor, which swarmed with legislators, lobbyists, pages, newspaper men and visitors. Radbourn led the way down to the open space before the speaker's desk, and together they turned and swept the semi-circular rows of seats.

"Everywhere the visitor abounds," said Radbourn. "Western and Southern men predominate. It's surprising what deep interest the negro takes in legislation," he went on, lifting his eyes to the gallery, which was black with their intent and solemn faces. "See this old fellow with his hat off as if he were in the midst of a temple," he said, nodding at a group before the speaker's desk.

Bradley looked at the poor, bent, meek, old man with a thrill of pity. He observed that many of the negroes were splashed with orange-colored clay.

Members began to take their seats and to call pages by clapping their hands. The cloak-rooms and barber-shop resounded with laughter. Newspaper men sauntered by, addressing Radbourn and asking for news. And here and there others, like Radbourn, were acting as guides to groups of visitors.

In the midst of the growing tumult a one-armed man entered the speaker's desk and called out in snappy tenor--

"Gentlemen, I am requested by the door-keeper to ask all persons not entitled to the floor to please retire."

Bradley started, but Radbourn said, "No hurry, you have fifteen minutes yet. As a member-elect you have the courtesy of the floor anyway. Do you want to meet anybody?"

"No, I guess not. I just want to look on for to-day."

"Well, we'll go up in the gallery."

Looking down upon the floor and its increasing swarm of individuals, Bradley got a complete sense of its vastness and its complexity and noise.

"It makes the Iowa legislature seem like a school-room," he said to Radbourn.

At precisely noon the gavel fell with a single sharp stroke, and the speaker called persuasively, "The house will _please_ be in order." The members rose and stood reluctantly, some of them sharpening their pencils, others reading while the chaplin prayed sonorously with many oratorical cadences, taking in all the departments of government in the swing of his generous benediction.

Instantly at the word "Amen," like the popping of a cork, the tumult burst out again. Hands clapped, laughter flared out, desks were slammed, papers were rattled, feet pounded, and the brazen monotonous clanging voice of the clerk sounded above it all like some new steam calliope whose sounds were words.

"You see how much prayer means here," said Radbourn.

A good deal of the business which followed was similar in character to the proceedings at Des Moines. Resolutions were passed with two or three aye votes and no noes at all, while the rest of the members looked over the Record, read the morning papers, or wrote on busily. The speaker declared each motion carried with glib voice.

At last a special order brought up an unfinished debate upon some matter, and the five minute rule was enforced.

"You're in luck," said Radbourn. "The whole procession is going to pass before you."

As the debate went on he pointed out the great men whose names suggested history to Bradley and whose actual presence amazed him. There was Amos B. Tripp, whom Radbourn said resembled "a Chinese god"--immense, featureless, bald, with a pout on his face like an enormous baby. The "watch dog of the house," Major Hendricks, was tall, thin, with the voice and manner of an old woman. His eyes were invisible, and his chin-beard wagged up and down as he shouted in high tenor his inevitable objection.

An old man with abundant hair, blue-white under the perpendicular light, arose at the back part of the room, making a fine picture outlined against the deep red screen. His manner was courtly, his ruddy face pleasing, his voice musical and impassioned.

"He's the dress parade orator of the house," observed Radbourn.

"I like him," said Bradley, leaning forward to absorb the speaker's torrent of impassioned utterance. When he sat down the members applauded.

Most of the orators conformed to types familiar to Bradley. There was the legal type, monotonously emphatic, with extended forefinger, which pointed, threatened and delineated. His speaking wore on the ear like a saw-filing. Then there was the political speaker, the stump orator, who was full of well-worn phrases, who could not mention the price of wool or the number of cotton bales without using the ferocious throaty-snarl of a beast of prey.

He was followed by the clerical type, a speaker who used the most mournful cadences in correcting the gentleman on his left as to the number of cotton bales. His voice and manner formed a distinct reflection of the mournful preacher, and the tune of his high voice had the power of calling up the exact phraseology of sermons--"Repent, my lost brother, ere it be too late," "Prepare for the last great day, my brother," while he actually asserted the number of cotton bales had been grossly over-stated by the gentleman from Alabama.

On going down the stairs, Radbourn called his attention to the paintings, hanging here and there, which he called "hideous daubs" with the reckless presumption of a born realist to whom allegory was a personal affront. Radbourn showed him about the city as much as he could spare time to do, and when he released him, Bradley went back to the capitol, which exercised the profoundest fascination upon him.

He had not the courage to go back to the private gallery into which Radbourn had penetrated, but went into the common gallery, which was full of negroes, unweariedly listening to the dry and almost unintelligible speeches below.

He sat there the whole afternoon and went back to his hotel meek and very tired.

Radbourn introduced him to a few of the members the next day. It was evident that nobody cared very much whether he had been elected or not. Each man had his own affairs to look after, and greeted him with a flabby hand-shake and looked at him with cold and wandering eyes. It was all very depressing.

He grew nervous over the expenses which he was incurring, although he constantly referred himself back to the fact that he was a Congressman, at a salary of six thousand dollars. His economy was too deeply ingrained to be easily wiped out. He seldom got into a street-car that he did not hold a mental debate with himself to justify the extravagance.

He went about a good deal during the next two or three days, but he continued at the cheap hotel, where he was obliged to keep his overcoat on in order to write a letter or read a newspaper. He went twice to the theatre. He bought a dollar seat the first time, which worried him all through the play, and he did penance the following evening by walking the twenty blocks (both ways), and by taking a fifty-cent seat. He figured it a clear saving of sixty cents. He really enjoyed the play more than he would have done in a dollar seat and consoled himself with the reflection that no one knew he was a Congressman, anyway.

* * * * *

He told Radbourn at the station that he had enjoyed every moment of his stay. As the train drew out he looked back upon the city, and the great dome its centre, with a deep feeling of admiration, almost love. It had seized upon him mightily. He had only to shut his eyes to see again that majestic pile with its vast rotundas, its bewildering corridors and its tumultuous representative hall. Life there would be worth while. He began to calculate how long it would be before he should return. It seemed a long while to wait.

XXV.

IDA COMES INTO HIS LIFE AGAIN.

After his return home he accepted every invitation to speak, because that relieved the tedium of his life in Rock River. He took an active part in the fall campaign in county politics, and he delivered the Fourth of July address at the celebration at Rock River amid the usual blare of bands and bray of fakirs and ice-cream vendors, while the small boys fired off crackers in perfect oblivion of anybody but themselves.

It was magnificent to occupy a covered carriage in the parade and to sit on the platform as the centre of interest, and to rise amid cheers, to address the citizens of the United States, to point to cloud-capped towering peaks, to plant the stars and stripes upon battlements of ancient wrong, and other equally patriotic things.

No occasion was complete now without him. The strawberry festival that secured his presence felicitated itself upon the fact and always insisted on "just a few words, Mr. Congressman."

The summer passed rather better than he had anticipated. About a month before his return to Washington he received a letter from Ida asking him to be present at a suffrage meeting in Des Moines, and he accepted the invitation with great pleasure. He had been wondering how he could see her again without making the journey for that purpose, which he could not bring himself to do.

It was a soft, hazy October day and the ride to Des Moines was very beautiful. The landscape seemed to be in drowse, half-sleeping and half-waking. The jays flew from amber and orange-colored coverts of maples and oaks across the blue haze of the open, and quails piped from the hazel-thickets. Crows flapped lazily across the fields where the ploughmen were at work. The threshing machines hummed and clattered with a lower, quieter note, and as Bradley looked upon it all, the wonder of his release from the toil of reaping and threshing and ploughing came upon him again.

Ida was glad to see him. She gave him her hand in a frank, strong clasp.

"You'll stay to tea with us, of course," she said. "There is no one here but mother and I, and we can talk things all over. This is my mother," she said, presenting an elderly lady with a broad, placid face. She said nothing whatever during his stay, but listened to all that was said with unchanging gravity. It was plain she worshipped her daughter, and never questioned what she said.

They sat down at the table.

"Mr. Talcott, this is Christine," said Ida, introducing a comely Norwegian girl who came in with the tea. "Christine takes care of mother while I'm away."

"Ay tank sometime she take care of me," Christine smilingly replied.

Avoiding family matters, Ida talked on general subjects while the rest listened. She over-estimated Bradley's education, his reading, but he was profoundly thankful for it. He had never heard such talk. It was literature to him. She spoke with such fine deliberation and such choice of words. He felt its grace and power without understanding it. It seemed to him wonderful.

"I should like to be a novelist," she said. "I'd like to treat of this woman's movement."

"Why can't you do it?" he asked.

"I lack the time, the freedom from other interests. But if I could be a novelist, it would be a novelist of life."

He never remembered all that she said, but she made an impression that was almost despair upon him by her incidental mention of books that he had never read, and of authors of whom he had never even heard.

They walked to the church together along the side-walks littered with fallen leaves, and when they entered the side door she began to introduce him to the ladies who swarmed about her the moment they caught sight of her. Bradley felt embarrassed by their multiple presence, but was proud to be introduced by Ida. They moved to the platform. He had never spoken at such a meeting before and he was nervous. He spoke first and spoke well, but he would have done better with Ida's face before him. When she spoke he sat looking up at the beautiful head and feeling rather than seeing the splendid lines of her broad, powerful and unconfined waist. The perfume of her dress and its soft rustle as she moved to and fro before him made him forget her words.

Cargill came up to the platform after the speaking and said jocosely, "Well, Legislator, you're getting ahead. You're laying a foundation for post-mortem fame, anyway. I hear you've been on to Congress."

"Yes, I went on and stayed a few days."

"How'd you like it?"

"How do you do, Mr. Cargill," said Ida at his elbow. "Aren't you out of place here?"

"Not more than usual," replied Cargill. "I'm always out of place."

"Do you know Mr. Birdsell?" she asked, presenting a powerful young man with a singularly handsome face. He had clear brown eyes and a big, graceful mustache. For just a moment as he stood beside Ida, Bradley shivered with a sudden suspicion that they were lovers.

"Mr. Birdsell happens to be on from Muscatene," Ida explained, "and happened in to see a suffrage meeting. He's trying to reconcile himself to the idea of woman's emancipation."

"He'll find a sympathizer in me," put in Cargill.

Bradley studied Birdsell with round-eyed steady stare. He was a superb type of man. It gave Bradley a feeling of awkwardness to stand beside him and a consciousness of stupidity to listen to their banter, but Ida dismissed Cargill and Birdsell summarily and walked home with Bradley. He was not keenly perceptive enough to see that Ida put Birdsell off with a brusqueness that argued a perfect understanding.

They walked home by the risen moon side by side. He had not the courage to take her arm and she did not offer it. He referred again to Washington and she asked him to remember the women in his legislation.

"I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I must reach the farmer's wives again as I did in the days of the grange. I feel for them. They are to-day the most terrible proofs of man's inhumanity. My heart aches for them. There is a new farmer's movement struggling forward, the Alliance. I'm thinking of going into that as a lecturer. Do you know anything about it?"

"No, not much."

They had reached the gate, and they stood there like lovers in the cold, clear moonlight just an instant, but in that lingering action of the woman there was something tender which Bradley seized upon. He asked again--

"You'll let me write to you again, won't you?"

"Certainly. I shall follow your career with the deepest interest. I wish you'd think of this alliance movement and advise me what to do. Good-by." She extended her hand.

"Good-by," he said, and his voice choked. When he turned and walked away Washington was very far away indeed and political honors cheap as dust.

XXVI.

CONGRESSIONAL LIFE.

He found Washington less lonely for him on his return. There were many new members, and they sought each other socially and soon managed to have a good deal of talk among themselves, notwithstanding the studied slights of the old members. One member, Clancy, who grew profane at times, said, "These old seeds think they're hell's captains, but I guess we can live if they don't shake hands."

Most of the members were married and lived with their families in rented houses, but others, who were too poor to bring their families or who were bachelors like Bradley, lived in boarding houses. Bradley secured a room and board in a house near the capitol, because he seemed to be nearer the centre of things when he could look out upon the dome.

It surprised him to learn how humbly most of the congressmen lived. They were quite ordinary humans in all ways. Of course some of the senators of great wealth lived in fine houses, but they were the exception, and the poorer members did not conceal their suspicion of these great men.

"It aint a question of how much a man's got," Clancy of Iowa said, "but how he got it. I've simmered the thing down to this: Living in a hash-house aint a guarantee of honesty any more than living in a four-story brown-stone is a sure sign of robbery, but it's a tolerably safe inference."

These rich senators and representatives, owners of vast coal tracts, or iron mines, or factories, rode up to the capitol with glittering turn-outs, their horses' clanking bits and jingling chains, warning pedestrians like Clancy and Talcott, to get out of the way. For the first time in his life Bradley met great wealth with all of its power. It shocked him and made him bitter.

He took little interest in the organizing of the house. His experience in Des Moines taught him to sit quietly outside the governing circle. He accepted a place on one of the minor committees and waited to see what would develop.

His life was very quiet. Nothing was done before the holidays but organize, and he found a great deal of time to study. Radbourn came back during the early weeks of the session and resumed his work.

Clancy went to the theatre very often and attended all manner of shows, especially all that were free or that came to him as a courtesy.

"I've lived where I couldn't get these things," he said, "and I propose to improve each shining hour."

Attending Congress was quite like attending the legislature. Every morning the members went up to the great building, which they soon came to ignore, except as a place to do business in. They trooped there quite like boys going to school. It was the state legislature aggrandized--noisier, more tumultuous and confusing.

In a little while, Bradley ceased to notice the difference in gilding and jim-crackery between the senate and representative ends of the corridors. He no longer noticed the distances, the pictures, or the statues in the vaulted dome, but passed through the vast rotundas with no thought of them. The magnificence of it all grew common with familiarity.

The vast mass, and roar, and motion of the hall itself soon ceased to confuse or abase him. In proportion to membership, he doubted whether there were more able men there than in the State legislature. They were more acute politicians; they were wilier, and talked in larger terms, manipulating states instead of counties--that was all. The routine of the day was of the same general character, and gave him no trouble.

Some of the more famous of the leaders he absolutely loathed--great, bloated, swaggering, unscrupulous, treacherous tricksters. "I'll lend you my _support_," they said, as if it were something that could be loaned like a horse. He often talked them over with Radbourn, whose experience in and about Congress as a newspaper correspondent had given him an intimate knowledge of men, and had rendered him contemptuous, if not rebellious.

"The men counted party leaders are manipulators, as a matter of fact. They subordinate everything to party success. We've got to have another great political revolution to--to de-centralize and de-machinize the whole of our political method. Our system will break of its own weight; it can't go on. It is supposed to be popular, when in fact, it is getting farther and farther away from the people every year. Just see the departments. Do you know anything about them?"

"No, I don't," Bradley admitted.

"You're like all the rest. Every year the army of useless clerks increases; every year the numbers of useless buildings increases. The whole thing is appalling, and yet the people are getting apparently more helpless to reform it. Laws pile upon laws, when the real reform is to abolish laws. Wipe out grants and special privileges. We ought to be legislating toward equality of opportunity in the world, and here we go with McKinley bills, and the devil knows what else. By the way, to change the subject, what has become of Milton Jennings? He started out to be a great Republican politician."

"Well, he lives there yet; he's still in politics, but doesn't seem to get higher than a county office."

"He was a brilliant fellow, but he started in on the wrong side; there is no hope for him on that side in the West."

"He's married, lives just opposite the Seminary, seems to be reasonably contented."

Radbourn turned suddenly. "You are not married?"

Bradley colored. "No, I'm not."

Radbourn mused a little. "Seems to me, I remember some talk about your marrying that little--Russell girl?"

"Well, I didn't." Bradley had just a moment's temptation to tell Radbourn his whole secret, but he gave it up as preposterous.

* * * * *

Legislation was incredibly slow.

"Beats the devil how little we fellows amount to here," Clancy said one night after they had been sitting all day in their seats, while Brown of Georgia, Dixon of Maine, and others of their like had wasted hour after hour in all sorts of tedious discussions upon mere technicalities. "We can't even vote, by thunder! I'm going to make a great break one of these days and make a motion to adjourn."

Bradley laughed dutifully, for this was the ancient joke.

"It's an outrage," Clancy fumed. The speaker had refused to recognize him and he was furious. "The speaker's got everything in his hands. Say, do you know that it's all made up the day before who's goin' to be recognized?"

"Yes, I found that out some time ago," said Bradley quietly.

"Well, I feel like making a great big kick."

"It wouldn't do any good."

"Yes, it would, it would relieve my feelings. It's a pretty how de do, to send a man here to represent his constituents and then put the whole power of the house into the hands of the speaker and the committee on rules."

Bradley's seat came between two of the old members, Samuels of Mississippi and Col. Maxwell of South Carolina, and they were constantly talking across Bradley's back or before his face, ignoring him completely. It wore on him so that he fell into the habit of sitting over beside the profane Clancy in Bidwell's seat. Bidwell occupied the leather-covered lounge behind the screen so industriously that no one else felt privileged to throw himself down there.

The drinking disgusted Bradley, and the obscene talk which he heard in snatches as he went past sickened him. The same sort of attitude toward the female clerks was expressed by a certain class of the legislators. He began to wonder if he were not abnormal in some way by reason of his repugnance to all this desolating derision of really holy things. He found that while he had less religion than these men, they had infinitely less reverence for the things which he considered sacred.

Some of the better class of members invited him to their houses and he went occasionally, and if he found them uncongenial he never went again. He could not make calls out of duty. It seemed to him that they took very little interest in the higher side of politics and some of them he found were unaware of any higher side of life.

He could not help noticing that Washington was a city full of beautiful girls. His idolatry of Miss Wilbur could not prevent him from admiring them as they streamed along the walk to church. He sometimes looked wistfully at this flood of sunny laughing life that moved by him so near and yet so completely out of his reach. He knew at such times that he had missed something sweet out of his own lonely life.

But these moments were few. He realized that there was no place in the social life of the city for him, and the librarian knew him better than the butlers in the houses of rich senators. He attended one or two public receptions and was thoroughly disgusted with the crush, and felt the essential vulgarity of the whole thing.

His life at the capital was not entirely that of the politician. He had in him capabilities for appreciating art and literature, which most of his colleagues had not. He studied upon economic problems, rather than upon partisan politics, and tried to grasp the meaning of social change and social condition, and to comprehend economic causes and tendencies. He spent many hours upon problems which were unconsciously unfitting him for partisan success.

His life was very full and happy, save for the dull hunger at his heart whenever he thought of Ida. He wrote to her still, but her replies still kept their calm, impersonal tone. One night, when he returned from the capitol, he found a letter from her enclosing some clippings.

"I have joined the Farmers' Alliance," she wrote. "I begin to believe that another great wave of thought is about to sweep over the farmers. The _spirit_ of the grange did not die. It has passed on into this new organization. The difference is going to be that this new alliance of the farmers will be deeper in thought and broader in sympathy. I never believed the grange a failure. It taught people by its failure. I'm going to Kansas to speak for them there. The alliance is very strong there. This order will become political. Its leaders are very enthusiastic."

She passed on to write of other things, but Bradley was deeply affected by this news. He had heard of the alliance obscurely, but had felt that it was only an attempt to revive the old grange movement, and that it could not succeed. But her letter set him thinking.

He wrote away on a speech till nine o'clock, and then went out for his usual walk about the capitol and its grounds, which had never lost their charm, as the city itself had. He had grown into the habit of going out whenever he wished to escape the paltry decoration, the hot colors, the vitiated air, of his boarding-place and the importunities of his fellow-boarders. He went out whenever he wanted to think great and refreshing thoughts, or whenever he felt the need of beauty or the presence of life.

XXVII.

BRADLEY'S LONG-CHERISHED HOPE VANISHES.

It had been snowing all the afternoon, and the shrubbery hung heavy and silent with heaped, clinging, feathery snow, dazzling white by contrast with the dark sustaining branches, and the yellow lamps flamed warmly amid the all-surrounding steely blue and glistening white. The damp pavements, where the snow had melted, were banded with gold and crimson from the reflected light of the lamps and the warning glare of car and carriage lights.

As Bradley breathed the pure air and walked soundlessly along the narrow paths and looked across the unflecked, untrodden snow up to the vast and silent dome, he shuddered in wordless delight. He hungered to share it with Ida. It was like fairy-land--so far removed from daylight reality; and yet the sound of sleigh-bells, the occasional shouts of coasters, and the laughter of girls added a familiar human quality to it all, and added an ache to the mysterious shuddering delight of it all. It was so evanescent; it would decay so quickly. The wind, the morning sun, would destroy it.

He walked up to the lonely esplanade, and saw the city's lights shine below him like rubies and amethysts, and saw far beyond the snow-heaped highlands, above which Jupiter hung poised, serene and lone, the king of the western sky.

How far away all this seemed from the brazen declamation, the monotonous reiterations of the reading-clerk, and from the sharp clank of the speaker's gavel! His ear wearied, his heart sick of the whole life of the farcical legislature, with its flood of corrupt bills, got back serenity and youth and repose in the presence of the snows, the silences, and the stars.

Again the impulse seized him to write to Ida and show her his whole soul; to dare and end once for all his ache of suspense. He went back to his room, and seized pen and paper. Everything he wrote seemed too formal or too presumptuous. At last he finished a short letter--

_Dear Miss Wilbur_:--

I do not know how to begin to say what I want to say. I am afraid
of losing you out of my life by not writing, and I'm afraid if I
write, I will lose you. It is impossible for me to say what you've
done for me. I never would have been anything more than a poor
farmer, only for you. I don't want to apologize to you for telling
you how much you are to me. I want to appeal to you to give me a
chance to work for you; that's all. I want you to give me some
hope, if you can.

I know I am asking a great deal even in that. I realize how
unreasonable it is. You've only seen me a few times; and yet I'm
not going to apologize for it. I must have it over with; I can't go
on in this way. Won't you write to me and tell me that I can look
forward to the future with hope?

Yours sincerely,
BRADLEY TALCOTT.

For the next ten days he was of little service to his country except the day he made his speech on the tariff question. It was his first set speech, and he had twenty minutes yielded to him by the gentleman from Missouri, who had charge of the bill. He had the close attention of the House, not only for his thoughts, which were fresh and direct, but also for the natural manner in which he spoke. He had lost a good deal of his "oratory," but had gained a powerful, flexible and colloquial style which made most of the orators around him seem absurd. The fine shadings of emotion and of thought in his voice struck upon the ear wearied with rancous yells and monotonous brazen declamations, with a cool and restful effect. At the close, the members crowded about to congratulate him upon his efforts, and for the moment he felt quite satisfied with himself.

It gave him a shock to see Ida's fateful letter lying upon the hat-rack in his boarding-house, where it had been pawed over by the whole household. He hastened to his room, and dropped into a chair with that familiar terrible numbness in his limbs, and with his heart beating so hard it shortened his breathing. He was like a man breathless with running. When his eyes fell on the writing, his hands ceased to shake, and his quick breathing fell away into a long, shuddering inspiration. He read the first page twice without moving a muscle. Then he turned the page, and finished it. It was not long, and it was very direct.

_Dear Mr. Talcott_:--

Your letter has moved me deeply, very deeply. I would have
prevented its being written if I could. It is the greatest
tribute--save one--that has ever come to me; and yet I wish I had
not read it. I'm not free to make you any promise. I'm not free to
correspond with you any more--now. I've been trying to find a way
to tell you so indirectly, but your letter makes it necessary for
me to do so directly.

The rest of the letter was an attempt to soften the blow, but it fell upon him very hard.

The possibility which he had always feared had become a fact, the hope which he had kept in the obscure processes of his thought and which had filled a vital place in his action, dropped out and left him purposeless. This hope of somehow, someway having her near to him had been the mainspring of his action and it could not be withdrawn without leaving him disabled.

He returned to the letter again, and again studying each word, each mark. He saw in it her acceptance of some other--probably Birdsell.

Then he saw that she had withdrawn the privilege--the blessed privilege--of writing to her. She was determined to go out of his life completely. At times as he imagined this strongly, his throat swelled till he could hardly breathe. He would have cried if nature had not denied him that relief.

He saw how baseless his hope had been, and he exonerated her from all blame. She had been kind and helpful till he spoiled it all by a fool's presumption. He had always exaggerated her social position and her attainments, but in the depths of his self-abasement and despair every kindness she had done him and every letter she had written took on a new significance. On every one he saw her warnings. Every meeting he had ever had with her he now went over and over with the strange pleasure one takes in bruising an aching limb.

She had never been other than reserved, impersonal in his presence. She had shown him again and again that her intimate life was not for him to know. He remembered now the peculiar look of perfect understanding which flashed between Birdsell and Ida, which troubled him at the time, but which his cursed egotism had brushed away as of no significance.

His speech lay there on the table, it was waste paper now. He had no one left to address it to. His utter loneliness came back to him. His mind went back over the line of his life till it came again into the little opening in the Wisconsin woods where the pines wept or snarled ceaselessly--till his mother died in the moan and the snarl and shadow of them. His heart went out to her as never before since Ida came into his life.

The gloom and reticence of those dark-green forests had wrought him into the reticent, serious man he was. He was not gloomy naturally, he was strong and hopeful, but this was one of those moments which appall a man, even a young man--or more properly, especially a young man.

He did not go down to dinner, but sat in his room till late; then when hunger compelled, he went out to a vast cafe, where he could be more alone. It seemed that night as if all incentive to live were gone; but he went to the session next day in a mechanical sort of a way, and each day thereafter in the same way, though he took no interest in the proceedings.

Clancy had his suspicions and had to verify them.

"Talcott, you're off y'r feed. Girl gone back on yeh?"

Bradley refused to reply and Clancy took delight in spreading the story among his gang. They respected Bradley's physique too much to push him unduly, however.

Nature slowly reasserted itself, and as the weeks went by he regained his interest in the work; but the sparkle, the allurement of life, was gone, and he went about with more of the purely mechanical in his actions.

He read now every available bit of news relating to the farmers' rising in the West, in the hope that Ida's work would be mentioned in it. The papers were getting savage in their attack upon the movement in Kansas. It was said to mean repudiation; that it was a movement of the shiftless and unscrupulous citizens which destroyed the credit of the State and disturbed social conditions wantonly. The West seemed on the point of upheaval, and Kansas seemed to be the centre of the feeling of unrest.

XXVIII.

SPRING CONVENTIONS.

The session wore along monotonously--at least to those who like Bradley took no interest in the bitter partisan wrangling--and suddenly it came upon him that spring was near. There came a couple of sunny days after three days of warm rain and the grass grew suddenly green. A robin hunting worms on the lawn laughed out audaciously one morning as Bradley went across the path. There seemed to be a mysterious awakening thrill in every plant and animal. The distant hills grew soft in outline.

A few days and the Spirea Japonica flamed out in yellow, the quince in the hedges showed its rose-colored tips of bursting blooms and on the red buds grew wonderful garnet-colored fists soon to open into beautiful palms of flowers. The gardeners got out with rakes and wheel-barrows and lazily plodded to and fro upon the beautiful seamless green of the lawns, or spaded about the flowers beds in the countless little parks of the city.

A few days later and the old white mule and darkey driver came out upon the springing grass with the purring mower, and it made Bradley's blood leap with recollections of the haying field. The air began to grow sweet with the odor of flowers. The sky took on a warm look. The building took on a deeper blue in its shadows and the north windows became violet at noon. Bradley longed for the country, but the orange-colored mud of the suburbs kept him confined to the sidewalks.

On Easter Sunday the girls came out in their delicious dresses, looking dainty and sweet as the lilies each church displayed. New hats, new grasses and springing plants announced that spring had come. The "leaves of absence" indicated spring in the House.

As June came on, the question of re-election began to trouble some of the members. They began to get "leave of absence on important business," and to go home to fix up their political fences. There was no sign of adjournment. It was the policy of the Republicans to keep the Democrats out of the field.