Chapter XII: Book III: For the People (2)

"And oh," she said, "Ah must tell yo' abaout his being o'dehed to proceed along the South Fo'k of the--something-oah-othah--Ah must write to-day and get the name of that rivah--all hidden by cottonwoods along its banks, just lak in the books, yo' know--and destroy all Piegan Indians. He was a shavetail then, and didn't know a Piegan Indian from a Sioux, and he nea'ly brought on a wah. If it hadn't been fo' his old first se'geant--Oh, his men all love him, Ah know--eve'ybody does!"

And so she flowed on, while Emily sat and listened with the mellowed smile of an indulgence almost motherly.

"And we ah going to live in Washington at first, he's General--What's-his-name's aide now, yo' know. That's why he's allowed to weah aiguillettes; Ah must show them to yo' in his photograph. But when he's changed, we'll probably have to go to some weste'n post. Think of mah living aout theah--an ahmy woman! Ah'll have an Indian to cook fo' us, and yo' and Je--Mistuh Gahwood must come aout and visit us. He can get himself appointed on a committee to inspect ahmy posts, yo' know, yo' all can save lots of money that way. Ah've grown economical since Ah'm going to mah'y an ahmy officeh. They get awfully small salaries; it's a shame. But Mistuh Gahwood can have himself put on the committee----"

"I'm afraid Washington has corrupted you, Dade," said Emily.

"Corrupted me?" the girl repeated. "Co'se it has, it corrupts eve'ybody. That's what eve'ybody does down theah. It's all pull--that's the way Ahthu' got his detail as aide."

Emily's face had lost its smile, and had sobered.

"Yes," she breathed with a sigh. "Did you see Jerome there?"

Dade looked at Emily questioningly an instant, and then she hastened to say:

"How stupid of me! To sit heah and talk of Ahthu' when Ah ought to have known that yo' all weh dying to heah abaout yoah husband. Oh, yes, Ah saw him at a distance a numbah of times, and one day Ah met him in the rotunda of the Capitol. We weh in the gallery, Ahthu' and Ah, and had heahd him make a speech."

Emily had leaned forward a little; her lips were parted, and her teeth showed in the first smile of real interest she had displayed. She laid her hand lightly on Dade's arm, finding it a comfort to touch some one who had been there in Washington, some one who had seen him in his proper place, some one who had heard him speak, who had spoken to him and touched his hand.

"What speech was it, Dade?" she asked, eagerly. "The one in the tariff debate, or----"

"Oh, goodness me'cy me!" ejaculated Dade. "Ah don't know what it was on--yo' can't tell a wo'd they say, they all make so much noise. Ahthu' said it was lak a sun dance of the Ogallalla Sioux."

"Tell me, how did he look?" Emily's eyes were glistening.

"He looked splendid, Emily, splendid. He rose, yo' know, suddenly, and began to speak befo' Ah knew it was he at all. And he grew excited, and all the othahs crowded in to heah--it must have been a great speech."

Emily made Dade tell her all she could recall out of her scattered memories of that scene, and the glow in her eyes mingled all the love she had borne him, all the hopes she had cherished, and all the high envy of Dade, to whom it had been given to be there and behold that scene.

"And how is he looking, tell me that?" asked Emily when Dade had told her at last that she could think of no more to tell.

Dade turned toward her as if she had an unpleasant revelation to make, and said, hesitatingly:

"Well, Emily--he's grown fat!"

She thought of the trim, narrow-waisted figure of her own brown soldier lover. But Emily only laughed.

"Yes," she observed, "Mother Garwood says his father filled out at his age."

Then Dade resumed her celebration of Beck once more, and described for Emily the glories of the Army and Navy ball. And when she had done, she sat, her chin on her little white fist, and looked dreamily out of the open window into the cool green foliage of the trees, where some robins were building a nest. Emily likewise fell into reverie, and they sat there a long time before the reverie was broken. It was Dade at last who said:

"Emily, ah mah'ied people happieh than single people?"

The childishness of the question was lost upon Emily, whose thoughts had been busy with the unpleasant task of contrasting her own girlhood's dreams and their fulfilment with the dreams of Dade and their promise.

"No," she said in reply. Her voice was a mere hollow note.

"Ah yo' all happy?" said Dade.

"Y-yes," Emily answered. Her voice was still pitched on that hollow note.

Dade turned her head and looked at Emily. She saw her great eyes blinking, the tears brimming to their long lashes. She looked and wondered, looked as long as she dared. And the wide, wide distance between them she did not try to span by any words, but together they sat, and pondered on the great thing that had come into their lives, as it comes into all lives, with its hope and its frustration of hope, its joy and its death of joy, its peace and its tragedy.

VI

Though it was still early in May, though the business of the nation was pressing for attention, though the reforms promised by the party in power had not been brought to pass, and though two months must elapse before the candidates for the presidency could be nominated, six before a president could be elected, and nearly a year before he could be inducted into office, the coming national conventions already wrought a curious effect in the nation.

In the first place, that strange artificial thing which men call business felt a peculiar numbing influence stealing over it. Men began to move cautiously, to speak guardedly, to control their opinions. They grew crafty and secretive, as if the trend of events depended on what, in the next few months, they said or did. The great question, of course, was not what should be done to make the people better and happier, though there was abundant pretense that this was so, but who should get hold of the offices, for only so far as the holding of offices and the drawing of salaries could make men and those dependent upon them happier, did this question of the joy of humanity enter into the calculations of men.

Those already in office sighed as they thought of the rapidity with which their terms had rolled around and wondered how they might stay in. The greater army of those who had been out of office, and for whom the time had dragged so slowly by, were wondering how to get in. To succeed in either case it was not necessary that men should have programs of reform and progress, or to have any real understanding of the theories of government, it was only necessary for them to say that they belonged to one or the other of two great parties into which the people had arbitrarily divided themselves, and to be able to control, somehow, other men in the casting of their votes.

There were, of course, two or three other parties, small and without hope of success, so that the men who belonged to them could honestly say what they thought, but it was not considered respectable or dignified to belong to any of these smaller parties, and the men who adhered to them were ridiculed and ostracized and made to feel ashamed.

Everywhere in Washington, where all depend in some way upon the Government, in the cloak rooms of the two houses of Congress, in the rotundas and lobbies of hotels, in the clubs and bar-rooms, in drawing rooms and parlors, and in the secret chambers of the White House itself, men talked of nothing but these national conventions. In Congress business was dragging. The usual daily sessions were held, and perfervid speeches were delivered, but there was no legislation, which was perhaps just as well. Both parties feared just then the possible effect legislation might have on the voters, and each sought to put the other in an unpopular attitude before the people. In a word, as the correspondents wrote in the lengthened specials they wired to their newspapers each night, the politicians at Washington were playing politics.

To Garwood, however, this life was full and satisfying. To saunter over to the House at noon, to saunter back, to lean at the corner of the little bar in the Arlington, one foot cocked over the other, his broad hat on the back of his head, and the Havana cigar between his teeth tilted at an angle parallel with the line of his hat brim, thus preserving to the eye the symmetry of the whole striking picture he knew he made--this was existence for him.

"You'll be on yoah state delegation to the national convention, I take it, suh?" Colonel Bird would say to him.

"Well," Garwood would reply, "I don't know yet whether I'll go on at large or not. It'll all depend on the situation when we get down to Springfield. Unless the boys feel that I could do more good somewhere else, I'll go on. Anyway, I'll go from the district."

"Well, you'll be theah, I'm suah, suh. Boy--make us anothah of those mint juleps. And, boy!--if you will allow me, suh----" the colonel bowed in his courtly old-school way to Garwood--"don't mash the mint this time, just pinch the sprigs, oah twis' them, so as to avoid the bittah flavah you othahwise impaht to yoah concoction. I find it ve'y difficult, Colonel," the old gentleman continued, turning to Garwood, "to get a julep made prope'ly out of Kentucky."

It pleased Garwood to be addressed as colonel, as it pleases any man, and he was conscious of a momentary regret that he had not induced Colonel Warfield to ask the governor of Illinois to appoint him as an aide-de-camp on his staff, so that the title might be his. He resolved to have that done if--but his mind darkened at the prospect of all he must suffer and endure before his political fortunes could again be considered secure. Another campaign with all its uncertainty lay before him, and there was no Rankin any more to lean on. He preferred to close his eyes to the future, and to live to the full the happy moments that flew by so swiftly.

The colonel had insisted on their seating themselves at one of the two or three small tables in the little bar-room, so that he might sip his julep in the lazy deliberation so dear to his Southern nature, and as they sat there, other members dropped in, and were invited by the colonel with a hospitable wave of his white hand to join them.

They were all glad to do so, for Colonel Bird represented one of those Kentucky districts dear to the congressional heart, which not only afforded a romantic background for his own picturesque figure, but possessed a higher attribute in this, that it always returned the colonel to Washington without contest or question. He was never troubled about renomination or reëlection. He had been speaking of that district for years--ever since he had accepted the benefits of the amnesty proclamation, which he affected to despise--with a calm proprietary air that filled the souls of the men gathered about him in the afternoon of this warm spring day, with a longing far above all the other longings of spring.

The colonel had laid off his planter's hat, and with his paunch pressed against the table, sat and tinkled the ice in his tall glass as if he loved its cool music, and awaited the serving of the others whom he had invited to become of his party. He sat erectly, as his paunch forced him to do, and now and then, in a way that added to his dignity, stroked the mustaches and imperial that were white as cotton against his red face. But his relief was apparent when at last the bartender brought the fragrant glasses with their cool crystal reflecting the green of the little sprigs of mint, and then he bowed, as well as he could, and formally awaited the pleasure of his guests.

"How!" said Ladd, of Colorado, in the big western voice that so heartily expressed the amenity that all felt due the occasion.

"Suhs," replied the colonel, "yoah ve'y good health."

The colonel took a long pull at the straw, and then straightening himself, sat, warm and red and pompous, the glossy bosom of his shirt arching itself to meet his imperial as though it would do its best to replace the starched frills that his antebellum personality lacked.

"Well, Colonel, whom are you Democrats going to nominate?" asked Van Beek, of New York.

"Well, suh," the colonel began, speaking gravely and with much consideration, as if he were indeed to deliver the judgment of his party's convention. "Pehsonally, I'd like to see a Southe'n gentleman, of cou'se. But that reminds me of an old friend of mine, who came down to see me 'long in the spring of seventy-six to ask that same question, suh. You all remembah that the' was a good deal of discussion goin' on in ouah pahty that yeah about ouah p'ospective candidate. The friend to whom I refeh was an old fellah who lived neah mah place, and he always came ovah to see me whenevah I got home f'om Washington, in o'deh to discuss the political issues of the day. I received him, and we sat down on the po'ch, and aftah I'd called mah house niggah to make us some juleps--I wish, suhs, we had those juleps heah to-day, though I do not wish to dispa'age the liquah ouah landlo'd se'ves heah, not at all, suhs." He inclined his head apologetically toward the bar. "I had known this old man fo' a long pe'iod of tahm. He was a po' fahmah, but--he rode in mah troop."

The colonel paused again, that the company might have time to appreciate the paternal relation of officer and man who had ridden with Morgan's Raiders, and then went on:

"I rehea'sed the names of seve'al of the distinguished gentlemen whose names had been brought fo'wahd by theah friends fo' the high office. The' was Tilden, and Seymoah, and Bayahd, and Thu'man, and othahs you'll remembuh, but none of them seemed somehow to impress the ol' fellah favo'ably. No, suh, none of the names seemed to impress the ol' fellah favo'ably, till at las', I added: 'And then, theah's some mention of Davis,' meaning the distinguished ju'ist of yoah state, suh," the colonel explained, bowing to Garwood, who, as if expressly deputed thereto by the governor of Illinois, bowed the acknowledgment that seemed to be due the honor thus conferred upon that commonwealth.

"At the magic name of Davis, the po' ol' man's eyes lit up with Promethean fiah," the colonel continued, his own little eyes sparkling, "and, leaning fo'wahd, trembling like an aspen leaf, with the delight he was almost afraid to indulge, he looked cahfully all about him, and took his long seegah from his lips, and then he whispehed: 'But, Colonel, ain't yo' all afeahed it's a _leetle_ airly?'

"And so, suhs," the colonel resumed, having bent his purple face to sip his julep and to give his companions opportunity to pay his story the tribute of the laugh he demanded, "I feah in this instance, suhs, it's a _leetle airly_ fo' a Southron.

"But, se'iously, suhs," the colonel went on, after a proper pause, "I'm goin' back to Kentucky the end of this month. I'll go ovah to Frankfo't, and I'll go to the Capitol Hotel, and theah I'll meet the friends of mah own state, and aftah that, I'll have some idea of whom I shall suppoht when we all get up to Chicago."

"Like to get over to Frankfort, don't you, Colonel?" asked Conley of Ohio, in the bald way that men had of inducing the colonel to talk about Kentucky.

"Well, suh, yes, suh, in a ce'tain sense I dew. It's ve'y pleasant to' a gentleman to meet all his old friends and comrades in ahms, as I do theah, but I will say this, suhs, that theah is at Frankfo't an aggregation of men who seemingly fo' ages have been hanging onto the public teat theah, suhs, and who, if the good Lawd would see fit to snatch them to his bosom, would be the subjects of a special dispensation of divahn Providence in which I could acquiesce, suhs, with an enthusiasm that would be tuhbulent and even riotous."

After this the colonel, feeling that politeness demanded the elimination of himself from his conversation, temporarily at least, turned to Garwood and said:

"Have you got a contes' on in yoah district this yeah, Colonel?"

"I always have had," said Garwood, and a sudden rueful expression overspread his countenance, "and I know no reason to expect any change in the ordinary routine this year."

"Well, suh. I wish I weh at liberty to go into yoah district this fall and make some speeches fo' you," said the colonel, with that naïve conceit of his which led him to feel that his presence would save the day for Garwood.

"If you could go out there _now_, with your gun, and in approved Kentucky style, kill off a few men I could name, I would like it almost as well," Garwood replied.

The colonel made no answer to this. But he looked a stern rebuke at Garwood, as at one who trifled with grave and serious matters.

They sat there and drank and listened to the colonel's stories until the evening came, until the night itself had fallen. And then Garwood received Pusey's telegram, and it smote him dumb in the middle of a laugh. He had only time to ask Colonel Bird to request a leave of absence for him, before he hurried away to pack his bag. The colonel was delighted, of course, to have the opportunity to act for a friend in any matter. In fact, nothing could please him more than to be enabled to rise in his place in the House in all that morning dignity which no dissipation of the previous night could impair, and address the Speaker. And it may have been merely to show his appreciation of the confidence thus reposed in him, that he went with Garwood to see him safely aboard his train, on which he was to speed westward, with troubled mind, through the mountains and over the plains, out to Illinois.

VII

Garwood's train, like most trains that go through Grand Prairie, was late that evening, and the white twilight upon which Emily had depended for protection as she waited at the station, had deepened to a gloom that almost absorbed her little figure, clad in the black of her mourning garb, though the little toque and jacket she wore were of a vernal fashion that lent a smartness to her attire. She had determined to spend the half hour she had to wait beyond the moment scheduled for the train's arrival, in fancying herself again in her husband's arms, and in imagining his joy at being once more at home with her, but the memories of her last visit to this station on that rainy December night long ago, when she had reached home from her broken visit to Washington, would crowd in upon her, and torture her, setting in train thoughts that assailed her resolute cheerfulness.

The station agent had begun by energetically chalking on the blackboard that was nailed under the wide eaves of the little chalet that did for a station, the number of minutes the train was late. When that time fled by, and the train did not come, he rubbed out his first figures and chalked in others; when the minutes these inadequately symboled had gone by like the rest, he gave over the effort and flatly told Emily, with a helpless gesture that spoke his refusal to be any longer responsible, that he did not know when the train would come. He glanced at the lights on his semaphore, and then shut himself into his little ticket office, where the telegraph instrument, ticking feverishly away, indicated some remaining spark of life in the railroad's system.

Emily had been worrying for some time about all the possible things that might happen to the baby during her absence. She had been worrying about the dinner she had ordered in place of their usual supper, but that, she was sure, had long ago grown cold, and was beyond reach even of a woman's worry.

The train came at last, when every one about the station had collapsed into an attitude of having given it up entirely, and Emily forgot her long wait in the joy with which she rushed forth to greet her husband. She saw his big figure emerging from the last coach on the train. His hat was pulled down to his brows, and he looked out upon the desolate scene that the little station presents to the traveler who enters Grand Prairie by that road, with the crossness of a passenger whose train with almost human perversity had been losing time ever since it started. When he saw Emily he did not quicken his pace, though he walked on in her direction, with a long face that told her he was entitled to her pity and sympathy for all that he had to endure in life. She ran toward him, and he bent his head that she might embrace his neck and kiss him. She clung there an instant, and when she released him his eyes were searching the barren platform.

"Nobody else here?" he asked.

"Why, no, dear--who would----"

"Isn't Pusey here?"

"Pusey?" she repeated, in surprise. But Garwood made no answer. He was thinking of the old days when he was always met by Rankin, and usually by half a dozen of Rankin's followers gathered together to give _éclat_ to the congressman's home-coming. But now there was no one to meet him but Emily.

He insisted upon a carriage to be driven home in, saying the ride from Olney in the common coach had nearly killed him, and when, above the rattle of the old hack's windows, Emily said:

"I'm so glad to have you home again," her last words somehow expressed the whole situation against which his nature was in revolt, and he cried out:

"Yes, home again! Nice time to be called away from Washington! What are they all trying to do here now, do you know?"

"They seem," Emily replied, "to be trying to defeat you for a third term."

"Well, I sometimes wish they'd succeed," said Garwood; "sometimes I get sick of this whole business of politics, and wish----"

Emily was sitting upright, her face turned away from him in her disappointment.

"So do I," she acquiesced, in a low voice.

"Well," Garwood growled, as if she and not he himself had suggested the very disaster which of all others he most feared, "they won't beat me this time, I'll tell 'em that. I reckon Jim Rankin's at the bottom of it all."

VIII

The curtains were drawn at the windows of Garwood's law office that night, but the thin lip of light that outlined the casement told to belated men in Grand Prairie that a conference was going on within. The primaries were but two days off, and a vague uncertain quality in the rays that straggled into the gloom and lightened the rusty gilt letters of Garwood's sign, creaking as it had done for so many years in the wind, might have hinted to the imaginative something of the straits in which the little council gathered within found itself.

Had such a one been acquainted with politics in that prairie district, and had seen Jim Rankin pass by at midnight under the trees that swayed the thick black shadows of their foliage dizzily to and fro on the wide stone sidewalk, and noted the curious smile that glimmered an instant on Rankin's face, when from force of old habit he raised an upward glance, he would have concluded that serious obstacles beset the way of Jerome B. Garwood in that career to which as a man of destiny he had believed himself ordained, and from which the inconstant and ever-changing circle of his friends had expected so much.

Garwood had come home to find his political condition desperate. He himself, out of the anger that showed black in his face during those hot and trying days, described the situation as a revolt and, had he been possessed of the power, would gladly have punished the rebels by such stern repressive measures as autocratic governments employ in the terror their inherent weakness inspires.

Amid the spring delights of Washington public life he had become swollen with new ambitions. He not only wished to be renominated for Congress, but he wished also to be placed at the head of the Polk County delegation to the state convention called to meet in Springfield early in June; and beyond this, he had the higher wish to be sent as delegate to the national convention at Chicago. He would have preferred, of course, to be named as one of the Big Four delegates at large from Illinois, and when his imagination had been more warmly stimulated by Colonel Bird's mint juleps, he had dramatized himself as electrifying the national convention by some fine extemporaneous flight of oratory, in which he should soar in an instant to the pinnacle of a national fame, and from that rare altitude behold new and illimitable possibilities of political future. It was, therefore, with a shock of disappointment to which he had not the power to reconcile himself that he had obeyed Pusey's urgent telegram and had come home to find his very political existence at stake.

Sprague, reviled and reproached as a perennial candidate by those in the district who were themselves perennial candidates, was once more in the field seeking congressional honors. His county, Moultrie, had held its convention, and once more instructed its fifteen delegates for him. Over in Logan, General Barrett, having had a glimpse of the promised land at the Pekin convention, had so far departed from the reserve and dignity of his eminent respectability as to have himself declared a candidate, and he had been indorsed by his county. These candidatures did not seriously alarm Garwood, but a new complication had been suddenly added to the situation of such grave portent that he had summoned about him those who, having received government offices of varying degrees of importance, still felt themselves bound to his support.

This night, then, they were gathered in the office where Enright now spent his days in the midst of a law practice so immature and modest that it could not keep the dust off the books that were piled all about. Pusey was there and Hale had hurried over from Pekin on receipt of a telegram from Garwood. Beside these were Kellogg, whom Garwood had succeeded in placing in the office of the secretary of state at Springfield, and Crawford, his private secretary. They were ranged on chairs uniformly tilted against the wall of the little private office, and the air was streaked with the customary clouds of tobacco smoke that indicate a political fire.

Hale lowered his chair to the floor, and bent over with his elbows on his knees, his head hanging and his face hidden. The others in the room, except Pusey, who was as indifferent as ever, had transfixed him with accusing eyes, though any one could have told that their attitude was feigned in order to keep in sympathy with the threatening mood of Garwood, who sat at his desk, and glowered at the Pekin postmaster.

"Why don't you speak?" demanded Garwood presently, as if Hale had been arraigned upon an indictment, and they were waiting for him to enter a plea.

Hale stirred uneasily, but he did not speak.

"My God!" said Garwood, petulantly, "I don't see why you couldn't have held Tazewell, anyhow!"

"Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Garwood," said Hale, at length, breaking under the pressure of all those accusing stares, "you see, it's like this. The people over our way are sore on the president, they're down on the administration----"

"Oh, hell!" cried Garwood, striking his desk in disgust, "I don't give a damn for what the people think about the president, or the administration. I ain't the president, nor the administration, either."

"But they think you're supportin' the administration--course,"--Hale hastened to disclaim any individual responsibility for so serious a charge--"I'm only tellin' you what they say."

"Well, didn't any of them read my speech the other day? Does that look as if I'm supporting the administration?"

Hale had no reply to make to this argument. He only heaved his heavy shoulders in something that approximated a shrug.

"When was Bailey over there?" Garwood demanded.

"Oh, he's been over off an' on for a month."

"Then why in hell didn't you write me!" said Garwood, turning angrily in his chair. His eyes blazed at Hale a moment, and then he tossed his head and looked away in utter disgust.

Hale had thrown him a glance that in its turn had some of the anger that was beginning to show in his reddening face, and he replied:

"Well, I didn't know it, that's why. You can't get on to Zeph Bailey; he wades in the water, he does."

Hale breathed hard, and no one had an answer ready. They all knew Bailey's mysterious habits, and Hale's explanation was sufficient to acquit him in the forum of their minds. Hale sensed instantly a new and defensive quality in the atmosphere; a current of sympathy seemed to set in toward him, and he kept on, feeling his advantage.

"Why didn't any of the rest of you wise guys get on to him when he come over and started to fix things right here in Polk County?"

And they had no answer for that. Garwood, sweeping the circle with a glance, and fearing a division in his own ranks, forced a smile of conciliation, and said:

"Oh, well, if Bailey's a candidate, we'll have to fight him, that's all. It's only one more, anyway, and----"

But the menace of Bailey's candidacy had cast upon his spirits a shadow too dense to be lightened by mere words, and his sentence died with the confident air he had been able for a moment to command. Hale, however, had been mollified, and took Garwood's manner from him, as he straightened up to say:

"Course, we'll make a fight for it. You've got some friends left in Tazewell, and so have I, and if we're licked, we'll die with our boots on, that's all there is to that."

"He has his own county, of course. And you say he has men at work up in DeWitt. Now, if he gets Tazewell and Polk--well----" Garwood flung out his hands hopelessly, as if to surrender. "Great guns, what's the use?"

"And Sprague'll throw Moultrie to him--that's fixed. Sprague knows he can't get it; he's just been acting as a stalking horse for Bailey," said Kellogg, anxious to bear his part in this conference, even if he could bring nothing cheerful to it.

"How did he ever get on the blind side of Sprague?" queried Garwood, peevishly.

"Oh, legislature," said Kellogg, proud to be able to show his knowledge of affairs in the state house at Springfield; "he put some of Sprague's fellows--Simp Lewis and some more of 'em--on the pay roll, and took care of brother-in-law Wilson when he made up the committees."

"H-m-m-m," Garwood mused, "Mason and Moultrie, and DeWitt--if he gets Tazewell or Polk now--I don't know what you gentlemen think about it, but it looks to me as if he had us pretty nearly skinned."

What they thought of it was not apparent, for none of them spoke, and silence settled over the little room, where Garwood's ambitions were trembling in the fateful balance. At last Pusey spoke:

"He hasn't got Polk _yet_."

Something of the determination which the little man had put into his tone affected the others, and they looked up with new smiles. A reaction set in and Garwood glanced at Pusey gratefully.

"Yes," he said, trying to resume his congressional dignity, with a smile that was intended to take from it its suggestion of distance, "you remember what the devil said:

"'--let us Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our enemy; our own loss how repair; How overcome this dire calamity; What reinforcement we may gain from hope; If not, what resolution from despair.'"

They stared at him in amazement, wondering how it was possible for him to know what the devil had said, all except Pusey, who nodded appreciatively, to show his own relation to the world of letters. And then Hale drew a long breath and threw back his shoulders.

"Of course," he said, "if we can carry the primaries here in Polk, that will help us to win out over in my county. Can you do it?"

"How about Jim Rankin?" blurted out the tactless, maladroit Kellogg. The name cast a chill over the little gathering just as the new cheer was warming it, and they were all vicariously embarrassed by what, just at that time, amounted to a _contretemps_. If Rankin himself, passing by outside at that very moment, could have seen the expressive glances that were secretly exchanged before they all yielded to the impulse to fix unitedly on Garwood's face, he would have had a sensation to gladden him during all his homeward way. But Garwood met the situation with real dignity.

"Well, Jim will be against me, of course."

They might have demurred out of mere politeness, but Garwood added:

"And I can assure you, gentlemen, he is an antagonist not to be despised."

The mention of Rankin's name, however, had the final effect of forcing them to seek some positive means of dealing with the situation, and after the preliminary waste of time common to most conferences, they began at last to plan for the coming primaries. They were at it a long while, and when in the chill, ghastly hours of the early morning they separated, Garwood voiced what was doubtless in the hearts of all of them, when he said to Pusey:

"Remember, we have Jim Rankin to fight, Pusey."

Pusey switched his little eyes toward Garwood, but Garwood did not see them. He was thinking of other days.

IX

Garwood awoke after a few hours of restless sleep, snatched a hurried breakfast, seized his hat and was going away without a word, when Emily followed him through the hall and to the door, and with nervousness and suspense showing in her concentrated brows she looked up at him and said:

"I'll be glad when this day's over."

"So'll I," he rejoined, and then, though he had stepped on the veranda, he turned again. A sudden tenderness, springing from the need of support and sympathy he himself felt that day, overflowed his heart, and he pressed his fingers to her brow and touched the wrinkles.

"I don't like to see those there," he said, and as if in instant response to his whim, her smile smoothed them away.

"You'll send me word, Jerome, won't you?" she said, "the babies and I'll be watching and waiting, you know. Oh, I _wish_ we could help!"

He smiled his old smile at her loyalty.

"Good by," he said; "I'll keep you posted." And he ran down the steps. The rain was slanting down to make an ideal primary day, and Garwood was glad of the waiting carriage which, in the extravagance a man can always justify to himself in the midst of a campaign, he had ordered the night before. Emily watched him drive away, down the streaming street. Once he turned and looked back through the window at her, or she thought he did, and she waved her hand.

Then all the morning long she went about the house with the memory of his kiss upon her lips, and she sang at times, though her heart would forever leap into her throat when she thought of the bitter contest going on in the rain that was falling upon the green fields of Polk County. The rain fell steadily in the gloom with an impressiveness that would remind her of the silent fate which that day was deciding Jerome's future and her own.

She felt as if she were passing through a crisis in her life. She found it impossible to apply herself steadily to any one of the futile little tasks that are always awaiting the hand of the housewife, but wandered aimlessly about, unable to rest, unable to work, unable to do anything until she knew the event of that day. She had found a new faith in Jerome with the kiss he had given her at parting, and she lived over and over again that one last moment when he had smiled down into her eyes with the expression she remembered of other days. That moment and that kiss were enough to blot out all the years of her loneliness and renunciation, and as those years faded from her view she could look forward now with a new hope and a new confidence to the happier days she felt must come when this last battle had been fought. For she felt it would be the last battle; she determined that it must be the last battle; she could not endure the strain and suspense of another, and her soul's sincere desire took the romantic form of a prayer that Jerome return to her bearing his shield or being borne upon it.

The rain had come with a thunder storm early in the morning, but as the day advanced the temperature lowered and a cold, raw wind blowing from the west lashed out the last of the warm weather they had been having all over central Illinois. The hope of the spring seemed suddenly gone; the day, indeed, might have belonged to that dreary season of the fall, when gray clouds hang low and children long for the darkness that will bring the needed cheer of early lamp-light.

The streets were silent and deserted. Now and then, perhaps some grocer's wagon would lurch along, its driver slapping the streaming rubber blanket on his horse's back with his wet reins, and sometimes one of the town's tattered old hacks would rattle by. Here and there, near some cobbler's shanty, or by the door of a little barber shop, ward workers huddled in shivering groups, and every little while men drove out of town in buggies or buckboards, to look after the caucuses that were to be held that afternoon in the townships; but the people themselves, as their habit ever was, in Grand Prairie, evinced little interest in the political contest at this critical stage of its development, and seemed to be indoors waiting for the rain to cease.

Yet a great battle was raging in Grand Prairie that day, and Garwood's law offices were once more serving as political headquarters. All morning long the crowd of workers whom he had enrolled in his new organization thronged the outer office, each of them wishing to seize Garwood a moment for himself, as if his suggestion, or his complaint, or the news he bore was such that Garwood himself alone should hear it.

Their clothes were soaked with the rain, their wet boots tracked the floor with mud, their umbrellas trickled little streams of dirty water. The air, already saturated with heavy moisture and foggy with the smoke of tobacco, which does for the smoke of battle in these political contests, was foul with the fumes of beer and whisky, while the whiff of an onion now and then brought to mind the long saloon of Chris Steisfloss below where the pink mosquito-netting had been removed for that day from the free-lunch table.

In his private office, his rumpled hair falling to his haggard eyes, his cravat untied, his long coat tails gathered behind the hands that were thrust deep in his trousers' pockets, Garwood strode back and forth silent and savage, chewing the cigar that smoked away in the corner of his mouth. Pusey was with him, tapping in and out of the room, and so was Hale. Hale had been there all morning, for, having no acquaintance in Grand Prairie, he could do nothing outside, and so he sat, feeling that his stolid, imponderable presence must somehow be a comfort to Garwood. And, besides, he did not know how he could decently get away.

Garwood spoke to neither of them; but walked the floor and rolled his cigar round and round in his mouth, spitting out pieces of it now and then savagely. Once at the end of the beat he was pacing he paused by the revolving bookcase in which he had kept his working library, the books he had needed at his elbow when he was digging into the law. These books, because of that rapid displacement which goes on in law libraries, so swiftly do the appellate courts grind out new decisions, were now out of date; the statutes were two sessions behind the Legislature, the digest had been superseded by a new edition, the last six numbers of his set of the reports were missing.

But he did not observe these things--a little volume had caught his eye, and he picked it up, blew the dust from it, and opened it. And as his glance fell on its pages, its well-read remembered pages, his face softened and there passed across its darkness the faint reflection of a smile. It was not a law book, for Garwood held it tenderly in his hand, as though he loved it, and men do not learn to love law books. It was a little leather covered copy of Epictetus, with the imprint of a London publisher on its title page, one that Emily had given him, and he had read it through and through, and it bore many loving marks on its margins.

It had lain there on that bookcase, possibly untouched, certainly unopened for years. He must have tossed it down there before his first campaign--how long ago that seemed! He turned over the pages and here and there he saw a marked passage, words that once had thrilled him, more than that, words that had comforted him, but now they were cold and dead, they no longer had any meaning or any message for him; he wondered for a moment why it was so. But his mind could not long desert its hard pressed post that day, and if for an instant he yearned for some of the peace of the days that little book somehow stood for, he tossed it back where it had lain so long, brushed his fingers together to fleck the dust from them, and resumed his pacing.

Noon came, the clock in the high school tower struck, the bell in the fire engine house tapped, the whistle at the woolen mills blew. The outer office was deserted, Pusey had left an hour before, and when Crawford and Hale suggested luncheon to Garwood, he shook his head so petulantly that they were glad enough to go out and leave him alone. When they had gone, he sank into his chair, sprawled his long legs out before him, and sat there scowling darkly.

He sat there a long while, but finally he roused, got up, opened the ugly walnut cupboard in his room, drew out a bottle and a glass and poured out for himself a generous draft of whisky. He drank the stuff without water, raw, and when he had taken advantage of his brief seclusion to light a cigarette, inhaling its smoke eagerly, he began to pace the floor again. Two or three times after that he stopped by the cupboard and took the bottle down; at last he did not put it back in its hiding place, but set it out openly on his desk. Now, the times he passed it without drinking were growing fewer and fewer.

Hale was the first to return. Garwood had just halted by his desk and poured himself another drink, and he stood with his hand still on the bottle when Hale burst into the room. The man's face plainly foreboded evil tidings, and he stood and stared at Garwood without speaking, as if he disliked to tell him what was on his tongue. Garwood had raised the glass, but with it at his lips he stopped and looked up to say:

"What in hell's the matter with you, Hale; are you drunk or crazy, or have you seen a ghost?"

"I've seen--Bailey."

"Bailey!" Garwood slowly lowered the glass to the desk, as if Hale had seen something more than a ghost.

"Yes."

"Out on--what's that long street? He was with Rankin, goin' west."

"Over to the woolen mills?" Garwood asked.

"I suppose so," said Hale. "You see, after Crawford and I'd got a bite to eat over at that restaurant on the other side of the square--what's the name of it?"

"Oh, damn the name!" exclaimed Garwood. "Go on."

"Well, anyways, after that I went out to try an' do somethin', but about all I could do was to hire 'bout half a dozen hobos who were goin' through from Chicago, and I was takin' them down to Enright so's he could vote 'em at all the prim'ries, you know, and I happened to look up--and there I see Bailey."

"What was he doing, did you say?" asked Garwood with the morbid fascination the recital of some painful fact has for the one it most concerns.

"Oh, he was just moseyin' along the street with Rankin, you know that slow, splay-footed, knock-kneed way he has of walking, don't you? Oh--there's no doubt it's him!"

Garwood slowly swallowed his drink, and had just turned to speak again, when Pusey entered.

"Did you know Bailey's here?" he demanded.

Pusey walked straight to the desk, and he had lifted the bottle before he replied:

"Yes."

"When did you hear?" Garwood asked.

"Just now. I repaired here instantly to apprise you."

"You did!" said Garwood. "Well, where in hell are you going to repair to next to do something about it? Where did _you_ see him?"

"I saw him at the Cassell House, and Rankin--"

"Yes--Rankin," said Garwood. He ceased to give attention to Pusey, since the climax of his tale was already too fully known, but repeated Rankin's name in a reminiscent tone not unlikely to inspire pleasure in the breast of Rankin's successor, as if one should sigh for a first wife in the presence of the second. "Jim Rankin," he repeated, "that's the worst of it."

"You miss Rankin, heh?" piped Pusey, squinting at the drink he was pouring.

Garwood turned on him then, and shouted angrily:

"Yes, damn you, I do! If he were here now he'd have a suggestion; he'd have some resources. What have _you_ to offer?"

Pusey lifted the glass and even turned deliberately to hold it more in range with the window, so that the light could stream through it and bring out the rich, warm colors of the liquor. And then, carefully tilting the drink into his gullet, he put the glass down, sucked his mustache into his mouth to get the last lingering taste of the whisky, and said:

"Buy him."

"Who?" said Garwood.

"Rankin."

Garwood took an impetuous step toward Pusey, and then halting suddenly he stared at him in utter amazement. Hale turned on the little editor a look no less startled, but quickly glanced around at Garwood to see what he would do. The anger that had flushed Garwood's face slowly died out of it, and his lips began to curl into a mordant smile that slowly took on in turn the qualities of contempt and pity.

"Pusey," he said, not at all in the tone that Hale had expected to hear break from him, "Pusey," he said, "don't be foolish."

"Foolish?" repeated Pusey seriously. "Is it so foolish, think you?"

"Damnably foolish," Garwood replied.

"Pardon me," Pusey said, "you evidently misunderstood me."

"Misunderstood you? Didn't you suggest buying Jim Rankin? You evidently don't know men."

"Did I say Jim Rankin?" answered Pusey. "If I did, I meant Jim Rankin's men."

"Oh," Garwood and Hale exclaimed together in a weak, unconvinced note. Garwood looked at Pusey more charitably, and Pusey returned the look by one of subtlest meaning. Thus they stood and gazed at each other for a whole minute, that seemed, in the stillness that dripped into the room, a whole age.

It was, in the end, Hale who spoke.

"We'll have to do something, turn some sort of a trick, and do it quick. Zeph Bailey ain't here for nothing!"

Hale had drawn his watch from his pocket.

"What time is it?" Garwood asked.

Hale looked at his watch again.

"Two-thirty," he replied. He had once been a railroader.

"The bank closes at four," said Garwood. He began slowly and hesitatingly to button his waistcoat, and as though to occupy some irresolute moment that awaited the formation of big issues, he poured himself another drink, and gulped it, making a wry face. Another moment passed while the two men stood narrowly watching him.

"The polls close at seven, don't they?" he asked.

"Don't know but they do," replied Pusey.

Then Garwood, with the firmness of a final decision, put his hat on his head.

"You wait here," he said.

Then he bolted from the room.

X

The old ramshackle hack that had made its stand in front of the Cassell House so long that it had acquired the status of a local institution, was tearing furiously out Sangamon Avenue. The appearance of this ancient vehicle outside its proper habitat, usually betokened some emergency; and when Emily, with an ear keen for omens that day, heard the rattle of its rheumatic joints far down the street, and when she saw it verify her impression of disaster by turning in at the carriage gate and rolling up under the dripping trees, she flew to the door with her face as white as if she had seen a messenger boy coming with a telegram.

When she saw the door of the hack burst open before the hack itself could come to a stop, and Jerome imperil his bones by leaping out between its wheels, she was relieved to have him whole and sound before her eyes, for she had half expected to see his limp form borne in by careful attendants. Her fears were partly realized when she saw his gray face and the blue circles that lay under his eyes, and they were expressed in the breathless voice in which she exclaimed, as he leaped up the steps:

"Jerome! What is it!"

"Come in here--quick," he said. She followed him at speed, imploring him to confess that he was ill. He did not answer, but led the way in hot haste to the sitting room, and then across that to Emily's little writing desk, which stood open in the bay window. She watched him in wonderment as he fumbled in the breast of his coat and produced at last a paper, which, rustling forth, he spread before her on the desk. Then he seized a pen, plunged it in the ink, and pushing her into the chair he had dragged up to the desk, he said:

"Here Em--sign this--quick!"

She looked at him in amazement that each moment widened her eyes the more; looked at him and then looked at the paper he held to the leaf of her desk with a trembling finger. She took the pen mechanically.

"Here," he said, jerking out his words; "right there--under my name. You're to sign with me."

She noted the blaze in his eyes; the odor of tobacco and liquor he exhaled oppressed her; she looked from him to the paper on the desk, then back to him again. In her bewilderment she gasped:

"Why--what is it for?"

"Oh, it's a note!" he said, crossly, while his brows gathered in his impatience. "Sign it, quick! I haven't a minute to lose! I'll explain it to you afterward."

She looked again into his brilliant eyes, she felt his tainted breath upon her face, then something of his own fever of haste caused her heart to leap, and she put her name to the note below where Jerome had scrawled his own. Garwood snatched up the note and thrust it back in his pocket. Then he turned to go. But Emily arose and caught at him.

"Jerome! Dear! What is it! What has happened? What is it for?"

The tumult of his troubled soul broke forth and he poured it out upon her.