Chapter X: Book II: By the People (5)

It was a warm afternoon, and the sun shone down with a cruel suggestion of spring--cruel, because one must instantly remember that it was only December, and that the winter lay all before. They took their luncheon that day in the Senate restaurant and Emily assured Jerome that she had never enjoyed any luncheon so much in her life. She was tempted in the spirit of holiday that was upon them, to drink some of the wine Jerome said they must have to make the repast perfect, but her conscience, or her sense of responsibility as the keeper of Jerome's conscience, would not let her. As they sat there over their oysters, Emily was happier than she had been for months, and she looked proudly across the table at Jerome and compared him to the distinguished men he was constantly pointing out--senators with whose names she had long been familiar, whose faces she had so often seen in the newspapers. There was a species of reassurance in her immediate observation that they were, after all, very human men, who, despite the partisan bitterness they could not conceal behind the euphemisms senatorial courtesy moved them to employ in their contributions to the _Congressional Record_, nevertheless foregathered companionably, Republicans and Democrats, and even Populists, and joked and laughed like common brotherly men. The little bell that was always jingling them away to roll-calls up in the Senate chamber, snatching them, as it were, from their lobsters and salads, or, in the cases of the older and hence more dyspeptic statesmen, their bread and milk, just as they were being served, filled that little room in the basement with a fine excitement, which reflected its warmth in her glowing cheeks, and sent its exhilaration coursing through her veins as happily as if she had consented to drink the wine Jerome still urged upon her.

As she looked at all those great men, and looked at Jerome, thinking how much more handsome he was than they, she projected her thought to the time when he would be a senator from Illinois and they would appear together in the Senate restaurant, in their turn to be pointed out. The pleasing sense of distinction was already with her, because of the company they were in, though Emily had speedily learned that most congressmen in Washington go about unnoticed, and that not all of the senators are known by sight.

"Not until the cartoonists take them up," Jerome had explained to her.

"You'll go splendidly in a cartoon!" she said, enthusiastically.

"Would I?" he rejoined. "Well, that's hardly a compliment. You know, the cartoons are all hateful, outrageously hateful--at least, the good ones. Those that praise are always absurd and flat."

As they were finishing their luncheon, three men came in and took a table across the room. When Garwood saw them he bowed, and some signal evidently passed between them, for Garwood excused himself for an instant from his wife, and went over to join them, leaning over their table to whisper for a moment. When he came back he said:

"Em, I'm awfully sorry, but I find I shall be detained here at the Capitol for about half an hour. We have a meeting of a subcommittee I'm on. I'm awfully sorry," he added as he saw her face fall, "but if you can go back to the hotel--I'll put you on the car--I'll join you there at two."

He led her down the hall past the Senate post-office, then out to New Jersey Avenue, where he put her on the car that took her back to the lonesome little hotel.

It was long past midnight when he rejoined her there.

XX

Emily sat at her window, across which the rain slanted dismally into the street below. Jerome lay in bed sleeping still, though it was now nearly noon. He slept hard after his labors on the subcommittee, and she had sent the nurse with the baby to patrol the long hallway, in order that the child might not awaken his father, and she had gone about herself noiselessly, to the same end. She had tried to read, but could not. She had fancied a long letter to Dade Emerson, describing her Washington trip, but the enthusiasm she had imagined for this letter, the first in a long while in which she had anything to relate that would compare with the letters Dade was able to write, colored as they were with the picturesqueness of Old World travel, could not that morning ring true.

She had thought the day before, when they were in such gala mood, that the old lover-like intimacy was growing upon them again, and she had told herself that a winter thus together in Washington would once more intertwine their lives into one harmonious and beautiful fabric; that all their dreams would come true. She had carefully scanned all the senators and public men she had seen, intent upon knowing them, at least by sight, and she had resolved, too, that she would study the details of public questions more deeply that she might be of real help to her husband, as he grew in statecraft.

But--she had felt her heart turn cold and dead within her as she recognized, in her curiously intricate train of morbid thought that these very resolves proved the existence of conditions she had refused to acknowledge, and now she sat before the window, her little chin on her hand, looking vacantly out. Over the way a Catholic church, built of stone, held one of its oaken doors ajar. She saw a woman, evidently a poor woman, for she wore a shawl over her head, enter the church. Somehow the sight added to her despondency.

She was roused by a knock on the door. A bell-boy stood there with a tray. She took the cards, and read the names of Joseph Hale, and Freeman H. Pusey. Hale had written his name upon the blank card supplied by the hotel; Pusey's was a sample of his own job work and proclaimed him as editor and proprietor of the Grand Prairie _Citizen_, Daily and Weekly. She thrilled a little at the thought that she was in the presence of the reality of a delegation of constituents calling upon their congressman; and then a great flood of homesickness rolled over her, a homesickness that was the more acute because these men were not known to her, and could only suggest home, not realize it for her here so far away from that home.

She told the boy to show the gentlemen to the parlor, and to say that Mr. Garwood would be down presently.

When she awakened her husband, as she thought the importance of the visit justified her in doing, he roused and writhed his big arms over his curly head.

"Who are they?" he yawned.

She read the names.

"Oh, let 'em wait," he said, then he rolled heavily over, stretched, and went to sleep again. She went down to the parlor herself to meet the two men.

"I'm Mrs. Garwood," she said, "and I'm glad to see any one from home. Mr. Garwood was detained very late last night by an important committee meeting and is still sleeping. Can you come back later, or will you wait? I do not like to rouse him just now--he is quite worn out," she added, selecting for them the alternative she preferred. They adopted her selection and said they could come back in the afternoon.

"We can go out and see the town a little," said Hale. "We've never been in Washington before, ma'am. Great place, ain't it? Do you think we could see the president? I'd like to see how he looks in his place. I helped put him there."

Hale spoke with the glow of personal pride, and with the sense of personal ownership the American feels in the ruler he has helped to raise to power, and is just as ready to pull down if he doesn't do all things to suit him.

Pusey and Hale were back again before Garwood had finished the coffee and roll which he had ordered sent to his room.

"Sit down, boys," he said, speaking with his mouth full of the roll, "I'll be at your service presently. What have you been doing to kill the time? Seeing the sights?"

"Well, we went up to look at the president," said Hale, for Pusey was looking out of the window with his usual lack of interest, until a belated fly crawled torpidly over the cold pane, and then he tapped at it with his little stick.

"See him?" asked Garwood.

"No, couldn't get near him. Guess he's got the swelled head, hain't he?"

Garwood laughed.

"Oh, well, you know he's busy. Possibly he was at a cabinet meeting. Let's see, is this Friday? I'll fix it for you though. I'll take you over to see him before you go back. When'd you get in?"

"Just got here this morning," said Hale. "I come to talk over with you that little matter about--" He looked all around the room as if spies were concealed somewhere, "about the post-office at Pekin--you know."

"Oh, yes!" said Garwood, with unusual cheerfulness for a congressman when a post-office is mentioned, "I'll take care of that, Joe."

Garwood got up, with a wrench of pain.

"God," he exclaimed, "I feel old this morning."

"Ain't you well?" asked Hale, solicitously.

"Oh, just a touch of rheumatism, I reckon--head aches, too, like the devil. Wait till I kiss the baby good by and I'll be with you."

He went into the adjoining room.

"Fond of his family, ain't he?" said Hale, approvingly.

"I believe I've heard as much intimated," answered Pusey.

Garwood returned with his overcoat and hat and gloves, and they went out. He spent the day with them, tramping about through the rain, and at night took them to the theater, one of the sacrifices a congressman must make when his constituents come to Washington.

When he returned to the hotel at midnight, and went up to his rooms, he found his wife sitting before a fire she had had laid in the grate. She was dressed and her little traveling-bag stood on the marble-top center table, with her hat and veil and rolled-up gloves beside it.

"Why!" he said, in surprise, "what's the matter?"

She turned and lifted to him a face that was stained with tears. Then she rose, holding out her arms towards him.

"Oh, Jerome!" she said. "I'm--going home!"

"Why--Em--dearie! What's the matter! Tell me, what's the matter?" He had gone close to her and taken her in his arms, and he made his question the demand of a man who does not like to deal with tears:

"What's the matter, I say, tell me!"

A tone of terror had got into his voice.

"Look!" She drew a telegram from the bosom of her dress, and held it toward him. When he took it, she hid her face on his breast and shook with great sobs.

He took the telegram with his free hand, flirted it open and read:

"Your father ill. You had better come home at once. Dr. G. S. Larkin."

"Doctor G. S. Larkin!" Garwood said, repeating the signature, "that's like him, to sign it Doctor."

"Oh, but Jerome," his wife cried, "that's of no importance--how he signs it--now." And she wept afresh, as if he had added an affront to her misery.

"Well, there, dear, don't cry. It's all right. Must you go, think?" He released her and she sank into the chair again.

"Oh, yes," she moaned, drooping toward the fire, "I must go at once. Oh, you were so long in coming! I needed you so, and wanted you so! I ought to have gone on that train to-night." She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Poor, lonely old man!"

The words half enraged Garwood, but he kept silent. He did not know what else to do--only to wait.

"Where's baby?" he asked presently.

"He's sleeping," she said, "in there." She waved her hand wearily toward the door. "He's all ready--we're _all_ all ready. When can we go?"

"Well, you can't leave now until to-morrow," he said, trying to be tender with her. "Hadn't you better get to bed and get some rest?"

"Oh--no--no," she moaned. "I couldn't sleep."

"But, dear, you'll need your strength, you must try; think of baby."

"Poor little fellow!" she said, as though he had been deserted. She clasped her knee in her hands and rocked back and forth. Garwood was silent, looking at her helplessly.

She grew calmer after awhile, and said:

"My poor little visit was doomed from the first; I knew it, Jerome."

"Oh, now, don't look at it that way," said Garwood, in a big round voice. "You'll soon be back, father'll be better; he's all right. You can bring him back with you, and we'll have a good time here all together."

She shook her head hopelessly.

"You go telegraph, Jerome; tell them when I'm coming."

Garwood was glad to escape to the office and the bar.

XXI

Rankin had been at home all day, helping his wife with the washing. The larder was growing lean in the Rankin home, though Rankin himself laughed with his usual optimism, and said that it would be all right again in a few days. The evening had come and he had gone out into the yard to do his chores. Though the air was cold he was in his shirt sleeves, and he went about his work singing loudly the staves of an old hymn:

"'There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
In-fi-nite day--'"

"Jim!" his wife's voice called from the back door.

"Yeoup!" he shouted back, and then sang on:

"'--excludes the night,
An' pleasures banish pain.

"'There everlastin' spring abides,'"

"Oh, Jim!"

"Yeoup!" he shouted, as the call came the second time. "Whatch y' want?"

"Come here!"

"All right--

"'An' never-with'rin' flowers; Death, like a narrow sea, divides This heavenly land from ours.'"

Rankin stooped in the anguish of a fat man, and gathered up an armful of the kindlings he had been splitting, and started toward the house. As he stamped up the steps into the kitchen, he sang on:

"'Sweet fields beyond the--'

"Hello, kid," he suddenly said, interrupting his own song, "where'd you come from?"

He stretched out his right arm and covering his little son's head with his big palm he rolled it round and round on the boy's shoulders as he passed. And then suddenly Rankin felt a strange unnatural chill in the atmosphere of his home. There was the supper table laid, the baby was already sitting up to it, pounding his tin waiter hungrily with his spoon, while his little sister tried to distract his attention from his own hunger by cutting antics on the dining-room floor.

The pleasant odor of fried potatoes filled the kitchen, the coffee steamed in the pot, its fragrant aroma had reached him even in the woodshed. It was the hour of all others in the day that he liked; he would take the tin pan presently out to the cistern pump and blow like a porpoise as he washed his face, then he would swing the pan at arm's length, scattering the water afar, and come groping into the kitchen toward the long towel that hung in an endless belt on a roller behind the door. And then they would have supper, and he could joke his little wife and his little boy, and give the baby prohibited tid-bits from his plate.

He felt the change in the atmosphere again as he sat down to the supper table, and yet he did not reason about such things, or probe their causes deeply. He thought it was their poverty that was worrying his wife. That cloud sometimes darkened the home for them of late.

"Well, cheer up," he said, as he sat down to the table, his coat still off; "we're poor but honest parents. Remember, Mollie, what the good Book says: 'I have never seen the righteous forsaken, ner his seed beggin' bread.' I can't qualify under the first clause, but I can under the second. There never was a better man than your Grampa Rankin, Willie. How'd ye get along at school to-day?" he asked presently, still addressing the boy. "You want to get a hump on yourself; I'm goin' to put you in Jerry Garwood's office one o' these days, an' make a lawyer of you, ye know."

But try as he would to rally them he failed, and he looked curiously at last from his son to his wife, and back again. Then it dawned upon him.

"Look'e here," he said, placing his fists on the table, his knife sticking up from one, his fork from the other, "you two's got some pleasant surprise fer papa; I can see it in your faces. Le's see, is this my birthday? What kind of a game're you an' mama puttin' up on the old man, anyhow?" He looked at his son.

"Jim," said his wife, and her tone almost froze him. He looked at her motionless, his mouth and eyes open. "Jim," she said, in a low voice, "the postmaster's been appointed."

He dropped his knife and fork, a sudden gleam came to his eyes, then the grin broke out all over his big face. He stretched out his hand to wool his boy's head again, when his wife looked across the table at him and cried:

"Oh, Jim, no--don't--you don't understand. It's not you--it's Pusey."

He stared at her in utter silence for a minute, his wife looking at him with tears in her eyes, and her son trying hard to swallow the lump that came into his throat when mother cried. The little girl looked up with big eyes; even the baby was still. At last Rankin spoke.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Willie heard it, down town, on his way home from school."

"I don't believe it," he said doggedly.

"Oh, hones', papa," the boy protested, as if his veracity had been impugned, "cross my heart it's true! It's hangin' up down town in front of the telegrapht office, an' it's in the paper, too. I heard _ever'body_ talkin' 'bout it, hope to die I did."

Rankin stared at his son an instant, and then slowly turned his gaze on his wife. A look had come into his face which it grieved her to see, a look of utter, despairing anguish.

"Jim, you know you mistrusted something, you know you did. You'd never own up to it, but you know you did."

Rankin's lip quivered, and then, suddenly, he bent his elbows, put his arms on the table before him, and bowing his curly head upon their enormous muscles he burst into tears. His huge back heaved with his sobs, and his wife, hastening around to him, put her arms about his shoulders, laid her thin cheek to his curly hair, and then as her own tears rained fast, she said at last:

"Don't, Jimmy, don't; you'll break my heart. I wouldn't mind it--you can get somethin' else."

"Oh, 'tain't that," came his voice, "but I thought he was my friend, I thought he was my friend. I made that boy, an' I was so proud of him. An' now--an' now--he's thrown me down, he's thrown me down!"

He ceased his sobbing and was still. His wife stood by him, patting him now on the back, now running her fingers through his curls. At last he raised himself, rubbed the tears from his eyes, and, pulling out his handkerchief, blew his nose with a mighty blast.

"Your supper'll get cold. The old man's a fool, hain't he, Fannie?" He looked at his little daughter, and then in turn at them all, saw their tear-stained faces, and then he said:

"Well, I'm makin' a pleasant home an' fireside campaign fer ye here, hain't I? But I don't b'lieve it, that's all, I don't b'lieve Jerry Garwood 'uld throw me down, without some good reason. I won't believe it yet. There's some explanation."

"Jim," his wife smiled proudly at him, "they say you're a hardened old politician, but you've got too soft a heart. Didn't I tell you that somethin' 'as up last summer when you got back from Pekin? Didn't I tell you somethin' 'as up when you told me Pusey had gone down to Washington? Didn't I tell you you'll better go or you'd get left?"

"Well, now, Mollie," he began apologetically, "you know I didn't have the price in the first place, an' secon'ly, Jerry told me, _told_ me, with his own lips, right down there in that old office o' his'n, that it was--all--right, that I needn't worry, that he'd promised it, an' I'd get it. An' what 'uld I want to run down to Washin'ton botherin' him 'bout it any more fer? You know congressmen don't want the'r constits trailin' 'round after 'em down there." He leaned back in his chair and spread his hands wide, as if to exculpate himself entirely.

"Well, you've been in politics long enough to know--" began his wife with a faint little sneer.

"Oh, course," Rankin interrupted her, "if it 'ad been anybody else, I mightn't 'a' been so easy. I'd a camped on his trail till he done it, but Jerry--Jerry--I never thought it o' him." He shook his head sadly.

"Now, Jim, just look here a minute," his wife returned. "You told me yourself that you noticed a change in him when he come home from Washington las' summer. Now, didn't you?"

"Well, maybe there was a little, but that 'as all right. I expected that, I expected that as he growed bigger an' greater, an' got in 'ith all them heavy timbers down to Washin'ton he'd naturally grow away from us some. I knowed he couldn't al'ays have a big dub like me trailin' along, but I thought he'd al'ays be my friend. I thought he'd keep his word." His eyes widened as he lapsed into abstraction.

But presently he roused himself with a mighty shake, and reached across the table with his coffee-cup in his hand.

"Another cup, Mollie," he said, "I don't believe it," he insisted, setting his jaw, "I won't believe it. I'll go down town to-night an' find out about it."

His wife shook her head with a little smile that told what an amiable hopelessness there was about him.

"And when you find out it's true, what'll you do then?" she asked, as she gave him back his cup.

"Well," he said, sucking in his mustache, "I'll live on here in Polk County, an' we'll continue to have three square meals _per_. But Jerry'll have some explanation, you'll see."

"Yes, I don't doubt that," said Mrs. Rankin dryly.

* * * * *

The news of the illness of old Ethan Harkness--men had begun to call him old when he ceased to work--had been of interest to Grand Prairie, and the return of his daughter from Washington had added a zest to the interest, but it was all forgotten in the announcement that Pusey had been appointed postmaster.

It had been so generally recognized that Rankin was to have the appointment, that Grand Prairie had been denied its quadrennial sensation of a post-office fight, and the only feeling that the boys had been able to display was one of impatience to have Rankin, as a deserving and efficient party worker, displace the old postmaster the instant the new president was inaugurated. Garwood had explained time and again that the president was determined to permit all present office-holders to fill out their terms before appointing new ones, and he had strengthened his explanation by reminding them that the civil service rules were so strict that there was no prospect of dislodging the present incumbents of post-office places and putting new men in their stead.

Garwood of course sympathized with the boys; he didn't believe in civil service reform himself; but preferred, he said, the good old Jacksonian doctrine of "to the victors belong the spoils," but they must all see how powerless he was. Interest in the post-office situation accordingly had declined, and the subject was scarcely ever mentioned, except to illustrate, in curbstone arguments, the absurdities of civil service reform. But when the appointment was made public, and the boys realized that after all Rankin's preëmption had not held valid, and that the field had been open all the time, they felt they had been the victims of a conspiracy, and had been cheated of one of the rights vested inalienably in the politician, if not in the people.

Pusey announced his own appointment in the _Citizen_, simply enough and modestly enough, and in the same issue he referred to the appointment of Joseph Hale as postmaster at Pekin. In another column there was a long leaded article headed "Special Washington Correspondence," and signed with the editor's initials, and it told of his trip to Washington, of his meeting with the great president, and of the excellent public services their own congressman, the Hon. Jerome B. Garwood, was performing. And then it went on with grave and learned dissertations on political subjects, uttered with as much authority as the Washington correspondents of the New York and Chicago newspapers assume when they sit down to write their daily misrepresentation of political life at Washington.

Pusey received his congratulations without a change of expression. He went tapping along the sidewalk with his little stick, plucking at the vagrant hairs on his chin and chewing the stogy he was smoking, as if nothing of moment had happened. If the fact that he had risen in Grand Prairie to a place of power and influence impressed Freeman H. Pusey, his wizened face never displayed it.

XXII

When Emily got out of the frowzy day coach in which she had made the last stage of her long journey from Washington and glanced along the station platform, a sense of her loneliness, made more acute because the ugly scene was otherwise homelike and familiar, rolled over her. She had wired Doctor Larkin from Olney, where she had left the St. Louis sleeper, but no one was there to meet her, not even old Jasper. She gasped at this last of all the evil portents of the twenty-four hours that had dragged by like so many weeks since she bade Jerome good by in Washington--her father must be worse, they could not leave him.

The night was cold, with a dampness that pierced her marrow, after the foul atmosphere of the overheated car. It had been snowing; some of the heavy saturated flakes lay in patches, but now a fine mist was falling, and the greasy boards of the station platform shone in all the reflected lights of the tired and panting train. With the weary nurse and the healthy baby that slept through all these trials in which it was not as yet his lot to share, she clambered into the old hack that always stood there, and there was something of a welcome in the face of the driver as he held the door a moment to inquire:

"To Mr. Harkness's, ma'am?"

He slammed the door and they rattled away. She was glad that he had spoken of her father as one still alive, and all the way home, as they went lurching and splashing through the December mud that mired the streets, she built her hopes upon this little omen.

The old house was dark, and the trees in the yard stirred mournfully in the winds that were creeping up from the west. One dim light shone normally in the hall, but another, unusual and sinister, shone in the room above--her father's room. The window was closed--she was glad of that. Both of the lights were so dim that they seemed only to point the gloom that had settled stilly on the whole place.

The doctor, coming forward with the soft tread and monitory finger of the sick room, met her in the hall. She rushed to him, and seized his hand.

"He's alive?"

The doctor smiled with professional reassurance.

"Yes, he's better this evening. I've told him you were coming."

Tears came into her eyes and moistened the veil she hurriedly unwound. She tore off her wraps, and laid her hat on the hall tree. She rubbed her palms briskly together, pressed her fingers to her hair and her temples, and then:

"I'll go to him at once."

She started for the stairs, but paused there, leaning wearily on the baluster.

"What is it, Doctor, tell me?"

"Well," the medical man said, "a general collapse. He was out Wednesday, and it rained, and he caught cold. Thursday he developed a bad attack of the grippe--and his heart action is weak, you know. He would not give up."

"No, that was like him," said Emily, as people always say of their loved ones at such a time, in the effort to recognize their strong qualities ere it be too late.

"He would not give up until Friday, but I made him go to bed then. The next day I feared his lungs were involved--he did not wish me to send for you."

Emily was blinking back her tears.

"But I thought it best. He will improve now, I am confident, and if we can control the pulmonary difficulty, I am sure of it."

She had turned and hastily gathering her skirts, ran up the stairs. She hesitated a moment in the doorway of his room, and by the dim light of the tiny star of gas saw the outlines of the form under the white counterpane. She fluttered across to the bed, and sank softly beside him. She laid her hand on his hot dry brow.

"Father--I've come."

The old man stirred and tried to turn his head.

"I'm glad," he said. "It was a long ways."

"I'm going to nurse you, and make you well," she said with a cheer in her voice of which her heart was void.

The doctor pleaded for a trained nurse, but Emily, with the old-fashioned prejudice of women, indignantly refused, as though the mere idea involved some reflection upon her own powers, and her own constancy. For a week she watched by his side, and waited on him, taking his temperature hourly, and keeping a clinical chart like those she had seen in the hospitals, in the old days of her charities, determined that the lack of a trained nurse should not be felt. And then the congestion in his lungs passed, he breathed easily once more, his fever broke, and he lay, weak and faint, but smiling at her.

XXIII

Harkness gained steadily for a week, and then he began to grow restless and intractable. His whims and exactions exhausted Emily's strength, and when he could think of nothing else for her to do, he at last demanded that she read to him, and she had to settle to this labor, though her spirits wholly lacked that sense of leisure and repose so necessary to the enjoyment of such a task. He chose his old favorite, Scott, and for hours each afternoon, until the early twilight gathered in the room, she read to him from the novels he had loved so long. It was a test of her devotion, for she had long since outgrown Scott, as she had been fond of declaring, but he would not hear to Howells, nor Meredith, nor Hardy, nor any of the moderns.

One afternoon the doctor entered the room in the midst of the reading. He heard Emily's low, placid voice as he noiselessly approached the room upstairs where his patient lay:

"'At length the Norman received a blow which, though its force was partly parried by his shield, for otherwise nevermore would De Bracy have again moved limb, descended yet with such violence on his crest that he measured his length on the paved floor.'"

Emily closed the book upon her finger as he entered and stood just inside the door with the smell of the cold air and his own cigar upon him, but her father reared himself on his elbow, and, shaking his tousled gray head, said:

"We're just storming a castle, Doc. You sit down and wait, and then I'll attend to you."

The doctor smiled.

"I guess you're getting along all right without me any more," he said. And Emily took up her tale:

"'"Yield thee, De Bracy," said the Black Champion, stooping over him, and holding against the bars of his helmet the fatal poniard--'"

He was bolstered up in a big chair by the time Christmas drew on, and Emily was bustling happily about the house hanging wreaths of holly in the windows, and striving to draw out of all the uncertainties of the time a spirit of holiday warmth and cheer. She wrote Jerome all the details of the little celebration she was planning, and warned him to be home in time to hang up the baby's stocking for Christmas. By way of further inducement she said she had many things to tell him, though they could hardly have piqued his curiosity, for she straightway proceeded to relate them. She had had, for instance, a long letter from Dade, announcing dramatically that she and her mother were coming home. They were tired of Europe, and her engagement with the German baron was broken. She felt, after all, so she wrote, that she would rather marry an American--as if marriage were the whole duty of woman.

The ugly stories about Pusey's appointment as postmaster, and of the dire results to follow, had reached Emily, penetrating even to that shaded sick room, but of these she did not write. She had too many perplexities already, and with a power she could command in certain mental crises she put this subject aside, awaiting Jerome's coming and his explanation, and resolutely setting her heart toward the happier aspect of things she was always seeing in the future.

Congress adjourned for the holidays on Wednesday, but it was not until the following Monday that Garwood reached Grand Prairie. Emily had expected him Friday; the Chicago congressmen, as she had read in the newspapers of that city, had reached home on that day, been duly interviewed, and allowed to lapse into their customary obscurity, but Jerome delayed and no word came. When he did drive up to the house Monday evening, tired and worn with traveling, he explained that a conference had detained him. Emily did not display her usual interest in politics by pressing for details of the conference. There were things, she was slowly learning, that it were better to let pass.

She had kept his supper warm for him, and as soon as he had cleansed himself of the stains of travel, and had a look at the baby sleeping rosily in his crib, she had it laid in the dining-room. She sat across the table from him with the coffee urn before her.

"How's father?" he asked.

"He's better--but weak. He must not go out this winter. His heart's affected," she whispered, turning about with the soft-voiced mystery of a secret. "He mustn't know it. He's in low spirits, and the doctor says I'll have to stay more closely with him and watch him." Her voice fell as she repeated this judgment.

"Hm-m-m," Garwood mused. He stirred the sugar into his coffee, and then, as if seeking livelier topics, he said:

"So Dade's coming home, is she?"

"Yes; isn't it too bad about her engagement?"

"No, I think not--those foreigners are mostly a bad lot."

"She says she'll have to marry an American."

"Does she have to get married?"

Emily smiled faintly.

"She seems to think so."

"Mother well?" Garwood asked.

"Yes--you must go right over and see her."

"I'm pretty tired to-night."

"Yes, I know, Jerome, but it wouldn't do. You must go right away when you have done your supper."

Having thus disposed of all the necessary topics, Garwood rather hesitatingly approached the subject that lay on the hearts of both.

"How does the post-office appointment seem to strike them?"

He kept his eyes downward on the cigarette he was pinching.

"I don't hear much about it," Emily answered. And she colored. "You read the papers, of course."

"Of course," he answered, "but you can't tell anything from them. What did you think of it?"

"I was surprised."

"Surprised?"

"Yes."

"What at?"

"At you."

"Me?"

"Yes."

A heavy silence fell, and Emily sat there, her eyes on the silver sugar bowl she slowly fitted to a design in the tablecloth. Her lips, though, were set, and Garwood, stealing a glance at them, moved uneasily. Here was the first of his constituents he must reckon with.

"Well, Pusey'll make a good postmaster," he ventured at last, seeing that she was not likely to speak.

"Doubtless," she replied. "I hardly thought, though, that political appointments were a question of fitness nowadays."

"I thought you were a civil service reformer," Garwood answered, trying to laugh. But her lips remained obdurately tight, and he saw what her conscience would hold him to.

"I had supposed Mr. Rankin was to be appointed postmaster."

Garwood did not reply at once.

"Rankin seems to have become quite a protégé of yours," he ventured at last.

"I used to feel," she promptly replied, "that we were in some sort protégés of _his_."

Garwood could not contain himself longer.

"Well, I'm getting tired of having people talk as if Jim Rankin owned me! I'll show 'em!" he ended stubbornly.

"But, Jerome," she said, raising her eyes at last, and fixing them on his, "you promised him--didn't you?"

He wadded his napkin and flung it petulantly on the table.

"There it goes!" he said, as he scraped back his chair. "I supposed some such story would get out."

"But, didn't you?" she persisted.

Under her insistence he arose from the table irascibly. He stood looking at her while a hard smile rose to his lips.

"You're deeply concerned for Rankin, aren't you?"

"Jerome," she said quietly, looking at him with wide, unwinking eyes, "it is not Mr. Rankin I am concerned for--not for him half so much as for you."

He was led into sarcasm for a moment.

"You are quite solicitous--" he began, and then evidently thinking better of it, he tried to laugh her out of her seriousness.

"It's no use, Em," he said patronizingly, as he lighted his cigarette, "you women can never understand politics."

"We understand honor, though," she said, "although men, in their personal way of allotting the attributes to the sexes, say we don't."

He gave her a reproachful look, and left.

When he had gone, she went to her own room. Her heart was beating wildly. "I never spoke so to him before," she wailed in her heart. "I never spoke so to him before!" And then she flung herself full length across her bed, and burst into the tears that had long been flooding her heart to the very brim.

XXIV

Garwood came out the little door in the oaken partition that walled the private office of the postmaster at Grand Prairie, buttoned his long overcoat carefully about him, and drew on his gloves. He had been basking for half an hour in the loyal gratitude of the newly successful office-seeker, fur he had just left Pusey sitting rather uncomfortably at the well-ordered desk to which he had succeeded, whereon there were as yet no dirty paste pot, no enormous scissors, and no cockroaches fleeing from the wrath to come.

What qualms Emily had raised in Garwood's breast the night before had been wholly soothed by the adroit little editor who now was become the artful little postmaster, and in the outlining of Pusey's convincing plans for a strong and resistless machine, not only in Polk County, but in the entire district, Garwood felt the sweetness of a new security steal over him. He passed down by the long rows of lock-boxes, their little red numbers showing smartly on their little brass doors, and turned toward the wall to avoid the crowd that pressed up to the stamp window to have their Christmas packages weighed and mailed. Suddenly he saw Rankin.

The big fellow was coming on breathing heavily, with his overcoat flapping wide and his hands thrust deep in its outer pockets. His slouch hat was back on his brow, which was beaded with perspiration, and the drizzle of the holiday rain clung to his ruddy mustache. Garwood's heart leaped into his throat when he saw him and he felt his lips draw tense with nervousness, but he made one mighty effort, and had himself under control before Rankin raised his eyes to recognize him. In an instant they were face to face. Garwood smiled and held out his hand.

"Jim, my boy," he cried cheerily, "how are you? I'm glad to--"

Rankin halted, his hands still plunged deep in the pockets of his overcoat. His face grew redder, if possible, while Garwood's became very white. Rankin looked Garwood all over, from his carefully dented hat to his boots, still showing the shine he had had put on them at the Cassell House, though their soles were now caked with the rich Illinois mud the farmers had dragged into town on their wagon wheels. He looked him all over carefully, and then, with a contemptuous little laugh:

"Well--I'll--be--damned!" he said slowly.

Garwood withdrew the hand he had outstretched and held there so awkwardly, but he fancied there might be hope for him in Rankin's words, which would have served him as well to express his abundant good nature in other exigencies, as they did to show his anger and surprise in this.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he repeated, "I didn't s'pose you'd have the nerve!"

Garwood flushed. The shuffle of feet on the tiled floor had died into an attentive stillness. He knew that the throng was looking on absorbed in this most interesting meeting that all the possibilities of chance could have brought about in Grand Prairie that day. Garwood flushed and longed to escape.

"Come on," he began, in a confidential tone, "over to my office. I was just going to hunt you up. I wanted to have a talk with you."

"No, you wasn't, either," Rankin exploded, "you damned liar you, you wasn't goin' to hunt me up; you know it, an' I know it. You 'as afraid to see me, you big stiff, an' you haven't got an'thin' to say to me either. I've had enough o' your _talk_ now, an' I don't want no more of it. What talkin' 's done hereafter, _I'll_ do myself, an' I'll begin it right now, an' right here--this place's good as any."

Garwood had drawn himself erect, and was struggling with his congressional dignity.

"Let me pass, sir!" he said, as sternly as he could.

Rankin drew a hand from his coat pocket, and stretched it toward Garwood. The congressman threw up his forearm as if to ward a blow, but Rankin caught him by the collar of his coat. He smiled pityingly.

"Oh, don't git skeered," he said, "I hain't goin' to hurt you."

"Remove your hand from me instantly, sir!" said Garwood, white with rage.

But Rankin held him fast in his big grip, and slowly backed him to the wall, and held him there, his head against the colored lithograph of soldiers decked in gala dress uniforms, hung there to lure honest country lads to the recruiting office over at Springfield and so into the regular army.

"Now, you listen at _me_!" said Rankin. "You're a liar an' you're a coward; you're a low-down, contemptible houn', you're a damned sight worser'n Pusey settin' in there; I just tell you this to let you know what I think o' you. An' now I want to serve notice on you, here'n now, publicly, that Jim Rankin's goin' to go right on livin' in this man's town, that he's goin' to figur' some in politics, that he's ag'in you, an' that you'd best get all you can out o' this term in Congress, fer I give you fair warnin' that you're servin' your last term. I'm ag'in you, an' I'm agoin' to camp down on your trail from this on, an' if you have the gall to show your face fer renomination ag'in, I'll make it my business to git you--an' I'll _git_ you!"

Rankin was breathing hard.

"Now, you can go, damn you," he said, and he released his hold on Garwood.

The congressman stood, his eyes glaring impotent rage out of a blank white face. They stood thus for a full minute, and then Garwood, readjusting his overcoat with a shrug of his shoulders, turned to walk away. The throng that had pressed closely about them silently parted to make a way for him, and he passed out of their midst. Rankin stood and gazed after him. He stood and gazed, and the people standing by in painful silence watched with him the figure of Garwood, rapidly making for the door, held as erectly and as dignifiedly as he could, for the man had need of all his dignity then. Rankin watched him out of sight. Then he turned. The crowd had found tongue, and a hum of voices arose. Several tried to speak to him.

"Served him just right," some one began, sympathetically.

"You go to hell," said Rankin, brushing the startled man aside. And then he went away, forgetting to post the Christmas letter his wife had intrusted to him.

Out in the drizzling holiday streets, Garwood hurried along, sick with the humiliation of the scene, but as he thought of it, his old habit of self-pity reasserted itself, and with this ruse he tried to lure back some of his old self-respect. So well did he succeed that when he reached home he was red with wrath and muttering. Emily, from her window, saw him coming, and hastened to meet him at the door.

"Why, Jerome, what is the matter?" she cried, when she saw his face.

He flung off his overcoat and hurled his hat at the rack.

"Well, I've seen your friend, Jim Rankin."

"Jim Rankin?" she exclaimed. "What in the world has happened?"

"I never was so mortified in my life! I never endured such insolence, such ignominy, such abuse!"

"Why--tell me--dear, where was it?"

"In the post-office, in the most public place in town, before a crowd of people--Ach!" He shook his head in disgust and wrath.

"Why, what did he say--tell me!" Emily almost screamed.

"I met him accidentally, I greeted him, I told him I wished to see him, to talk to him. I was going to take care of him--I had it all arranged to fix the whole damned business--"

"Jerome!"

He had never sworn in her presence before.

"But he wouldn't listen," he rushed on. "He poured out upon me a perfect torrent of profanity and obscenity; it was disgusting, humiliating; I should have struck him down!"

"But you didn't?" she asked, and her tone made her question half a plea. She bent toward him and laid her hands on his shoulders.

"No--I walked away."

"That was right," she smiled, "that was the dignified way."

She looked at him in her sympathy. She had all the morning regretted her words of the evening before, though they had not recurred to them at all in the time intervening. And she was glad of some excuse for ridding her breast of the conviction out of which those words had been spoken.

"I haven't any sympathy for him at all!" she exclaimed. "I did think--but this shows me how wrong I was, how I misjudged you. Can you forgive me, dear?"

She held her face close to his, and he stooped and kissed her.