Chapter VII: Book II: By the People (2)

"Well," Pusey answered, "there is of course that aspect of the case, Mr. Garwood. I do not say that I will not support you, neither do I say I will. I will say this, that if you are nominated I shall support you for election earnestly and heartily; I may be permitted to add, perhaps, effectively. But for the present I prefer not to commit myself. You understand my position, both as a citizen and as an editor. Of course conditions may arise under which I would give you my vote and my support."

"May I ask what those conditions are?" Garwood leaned over to ask.

"I do not say, mark me," Pusey replied in a corrective tone, "that the conditions exist now, but that they may arise."

"Could you indicate them?"

"I would prefer, Mr. Garwood, to let events take their own course and shape themselves. The convention has not been called yet, and is some weeks off; there will be ample time. I wish for the present to feel that I am free to pursue the course that seems wise to me--as a citizen and as an editor, you understand."

"Very well," said Garwood, "I am at least glad to know that you are uncommitted; I am also glad I called, and"--he arose--"I shall perhaps do myself the honor to call again." He bowed and left, and when he had gone, and the mockery was all over, Pusey took the pipe from the tobacco box, filled it, and lighted it from a gas jet he kept burning for that very purpose. He smoked in a way that evinced no enjoyment in tobacco whatever; he smoked in a dry, habitual way, as he talked, and ate, and wrote, but now he enjoyed his reflections, for Garwood, who once had spurned him, had called and humbled himself. Suddenly, however, an idea struck him, and hastily leaning over and hooking his toes in their carpet slippers behind the legs of his chair, he wrote feverishly for an instant. When he had done he read the item over, drew a line down through it, marked it "must," and hung it on his copy hook.

The item appeared the following evening in the _Citizen_. It was this:

"Hon. Jerome B. Garwood called upon us yesterday afternoon. The congressman is looking extremely well, despite his long and arduous duties in the Capital, and the severe heat that marks the recent season of the year at Washington. The congressman is home for the summer. Call again, Congressman."

The evening following the _Advertiser_, the organ of the opposition which, in Polk County at least, had never been called into responsibility, copied Pusey's personal item and made this comment:

"When the congressman calls again he will be wise to take the post-office with him, or something equally as substantial as that which he is said to have received over at Springfield in the long ago."

VI

It was summer, the full flushed summer of central Illinois and the corn stood tall on the Sangamon bottoms, flashing its heavy blades in the sun. Miles and miles it spread across Logan, and Polk, and on into Moultrie County, where the Kaskaskia flows widening down to join the Mississippi at a place where the Sucker state found the picturesque beginnings of its history. There were long, calm days of scorching heat, and other days, when the clouds closed over the plains, and the humid air was too heavy to breathe. But still the corn flourished, rustling in the warm winds that blow forever across the rolling prairies, and ripened fast against the time when it should be hauled to the distilleries along the placid Illinois or stored in long cribs to await the ever-expected rise in the grain market at Chicago. Viewed from some impossible altitude, the great, green corn fields were broken here and there by smaller fields of wheat, in which some venturesome farmer reaped a little crop hardly indigenous to that black soil, and to the eastward, over the broad pastures of virgin prairie, blocky cattle browsed and fattened at their leisure. The mud roads lay deep in powdered dust, the whole land droned in the full tide of warm summer life, and men everywhere were glad, like the insects that made the throbbing air vocal with their endless shrilling, like the cattle that huddled through the long afternoons in the shade of some wind-break of slender young trees, like the corn itself forever glinting in the sun.

Of all the thousands of people, happy as the summer in their toil, there was none who would have ascribed his happiness to the government under which he lived. Few of them, indeed, at that busy season took any interest in their government. Later on in the fall, when the summer was over and the fields but bare ground, spiked with short-pointed stalks, when the corn and the cattle had been shipped to Chicago; in the days when the darkness and the rain would come, they would think of government, perhaps become excited about it. But now, all over the Thirteenth Congressional District, a few men in each county seat were gratuitously attending to government for them, plotting and scheming to place certain names on the ballot, confident in the knowledge that in November the people would divide themselves arbitrarily into parties, and go through the empty formality of ratifying the selections that would result from all their manoeuvers and machinations. Thus the business of the people's government is carried on.

In Grand Prairie, Garwood, troubled and afraid, knew that in each of the seven counties that comprised his district there were little cliques of men to whom this business of carrying on the people's government was somehow, though no one could tell just how, entrusted. If he could get enough of these men to think, or at least to say that he should go back to Congress, they would choose certain of their followers as delegates, and these would name him. In all that great fertile land, in those seven counties, out of two hundred thousand people it was not even necessary that he secure the eighty-three who would make a majority of the delegates to the congressional convention; it was only necessary that he secure half a dozen men, for these half dozen would name the delegates who would express the wishes of those two hundred thousand people. And not only this, but this handful of men would thus choose the other officers of all those two hundred thousand individuals. They were men who did not especially have at heart the interests of the people, even of that portion of the people known as the "party" they represented. They had only their own interests at heart, and they conducted the people's government for what they might themselves get out of it in money and in power. Behind them, it is true, were oftentimes men who were either too respectable or too unpopular to engage in politics; men who controlled large affairs, but these also were interested in nothing but their own business and the making of money. The happiness of the people was not for them to consider; fortunately, that was left to the winds; to the rolling prairies; to the sight of the broad fields and the cattle huddling at noon-time in the shade; to the songs of birds, and insects, and children; to the sun and the glint of the sunlight on the corn. When the selection of candidates had been made, and the choice was between two men, Garwood knew that there were enough of those two hundred thousand ready to fight for the word by which his party was called to place the name of its candidate on the pay-roll of congressmen.

The few men who would thus tell the people whom to choose were subject to influences. The question was: what influence to employ in each particular instance. There was but one other consideration; these men were likely at times to lose their occult power, and to be superseded by other men; so that it was necessary to know just who was the man in each county then in control. For instance, in Polk County, Rankin had been this man, for so long a time in fact that his power had extended to other counties. But Rankin's power had been in part destroyed; there were now two men in Polk County to be considered--Rankin and Pusey. Unless one could get both, it was necessary to make a choice between them. But it was impossible to get both, and it was a delicate matter selecting one or the other.

Had Garwood been a man with a genius for details and organization, or even possessed of an untiring patience, he would have known just what men in each county were at any given time doing the governing for the people of that county. That would have required tact and perseverance; it would have entailed an endless amount of letter-writing and consulting, and this, amid all the fascinations of his new life at Washington, was irksome to him. He knew now too late, the right man in his own county. As to the other counties, he must still lean on Rankin and trust him. So the choice as between Pusey and Rankin seemed to be decided for him.

Rankin came back to Grand Prairie at the end of the week, and an announcement he then made was sufficient to excite all the men in the Thirteenth District who at that time were interested in government.

VII

Rankin's announcement was a simple one, and was made without flourish. It was merely that at a meeting of the congressional committee held the day before at Lincoln, a congressional convention had been called to assemble at Pekin, on Tuesday of the following week. The announcement was a surprise to none more than to Garwood himself. It reached him in the mysterious way that news spreads, on his way down town Monday morning, and, when it was mentioned to him he smiled blandly with his old cunning as if he had known it all along. He hastened to his office, and waited there half an hour before Rankin appeared, perspiring, florid and expanding with self-satisfaction.

"Well," he said, standing an instant in the doorway and fanning his streaming face with his hat, "think you'd lost me?"

Garwood, not having had time to estimate the political effect of the move Rankin had made, and somewhat annoyed with Rankin for not having told him of his intentions before executing them, took refuge in the congressional demeanor he had studied from numerous impressive models in the District of Columbia.

"I have been awaiting a conference with you," he said. He had also learned at Washington to call meetings where there was to be political scheming, "conferences."

"Well," said Rankin, dropping his wide hat to the floor, "I thought I'd see if it could be done first, and tell you afterwards."

"So I assumed."

Rankin glanced at Garwood somewhat uneasily. He did not like the new mood of Garwood.

"Oh, it's all right," he assured him, "wait till I tell you. I knew that Sprague and Pusey were at work, but they needed time. Our play was to force their hand at once. What we want is a speedy convention so--what?"

"I said I was not so sure of that," Garwood repeated.

"Well, I say yes," said Rankin. "Man alive! They'll skin us; give 'em time. Anyway Friday night I wired Sam McKimmon and Jim O'Malley and Joe Hale to meet me Saturday at Lincoln. I went over and there they were. I told 'em where we was at, an' what Sprague 'as doin'. They agreed 'ith me that we'd ought to get a move on, an' we decided quick--convention fer a week from to-morrow at Pekin--Joe insisted on that. I wired Heffron an' Schmidt an' Carman las' night. It's fixed now. What do you think of it?"

"Well, I don't know; if I had had--"

"Well, you'll say it's the thing when I show you this. Look'e here." He drew a crumpled telegram from his pocket, struck it open with the back of his fingers, and handed it to Garwood. "Look at that!"

Garwood read it. It was a telegram from George Schmidt, the committee-man from Moultrie County, voicing an indignant protest.

"It's all right, I reckon. Heh?" Rankin smiled triumphantly. "Maybe ol' Con hain't mad!"

For the first time Garwood was reassured. If Sprague was mad, it must be all right, proceeding on the common assumption that anything which harasses the enemy is a point gained.

"I don't know but you're right," he said, relentingly.

"Ain't I?" said Rankin, smiling more complacently and triumphantly than ever. "Reckon they won't ketch your Uncle James nappin' more'n onct, even if the weather is hot."

And as if he had just reminded himself of the heat he stripped off his coat, hung it over the back of his chair and pulled his shirt sleeves far up his hairy arms for greater comfort.

"Why did you select Pekin?" Garwood asked, presently.

"'Cause it's fartherest from Sullivan fer one thing, an' then Joe Hale wanted to get it fer his home town. He was a little skeery at first. I had to fix him--promised him you'd have him appointed postmaster. You'll have to do it." Garwood scowled the scowl that comes when the vexed question of patronage is mooted, but said:

"I'll take care of him."

"Yes," Rankin went on, "you'll have to. He says he can land a delegation from Tazewell all right. Their county convention's Thursday. There's thirty votes to start on. O'Malley says Logan's all right, too. They'll have a mass convention called fer Saturday. That'll be twenty-four more--fifty-four." Rankin leaned over to Garwood's desk and began to make figures on an old envelope. "Fifty-four," he repeated. "Mac thinks he can fetch up his county; that's eighteen more--seventy-two in all. With our twenty-two here that'll make--le's see, two'n' two's four--seven an' two's nine--ninety-four. An' you're nominated, ol' man."

And Rankin, dropping his pencil, slapped Garwood on the knee, though an instant later he regretted having taken what once would not have been a liberty, for he had a sudden intuition that a new divinity now hedged his congressman. But he speedily covered his slight confusion by proceeding:

"An' now we've only got a week to get ready in, but a week's as good as a month. We must cinch the thing in Tazewell an' Logan an' Mason. That end o' the district's our's naturally. We'll give 'em Piatt an' DeWitt; an' Moultrie--course they've got that coopered up already."

Garwood placed the tips of his fingers together and knitted his brows in thought. Rankin dutifully awaited the result of his thinking.

"Don't you think," the congressman said presently, "that we could gain a few more votes here in Polk? Perhaps, with certain concessions, Pusey might--"

Rankin did not, however, dutifully await the full expression of the thought.

"Concessions hell!" he cried. "Concessions to that little whelp? Well, I should say not! We'll lick him, an' then ram it down his throat!"

Rankin breathed heavily as he exploded this imperfect figure.

"We want to clean that little mess up right now, onct an' fer all," he added, when he could get breath again. He was puffing in a fat, angry way. "No, sir, you'n I'll take a run down to Havana, find Zeph Bailey, an' see if we can't sew up them eighteen votes from Mason. Then we'll hike up to Pekin an' attend Joe Hale's convention. Then on Saturday we'll drop into Lincoln, an' you'll make 'em a speech. I'll also make a few well chosen remarks myself--at the other end o' the hall. We'll concentrate on them counties. Course, it won't do no harm to make a try in DeWitt an' Piatt, but I don't look fer much there. We only need eighty-three votes; we've got ninety-four in sight--ef none of 'em gets away."

Rankin had a faculty of reassuring himself, and the faculty was somehow stimulated after the first pangs of defeat had been soothed.

"How sure is Tazewell?" Garwood inquired, still with his finger tips together, his eyes half closed in cogitation.

"Well, now, Joe Hale hain't a goin' to let that post-office get away from him. You can count on them thirty sure. Jim thinks Logan's all right--they like you over there, you know, an' Mac says Mason'll be solid. But we'll have to watch that. We may lose out there, but I don't think so--aw, hell, no!" Rankin refused to credit his own fears. "We'll get 'em. Damn it, we must get 'em!"

He struck his own knee this time, and with his fist.

This hasty calling of the convention was like a bomb-shell in the camp of the Sprague following, to use one of the war-like expressions that are trite in our sanguinary partisan politics. Pusey admitted as much when he wrote daily editorials denouncing the committee and what he called the snap judgment it had taken. The announcement, too, was not received with much favor in the other counties, for the time in which to call their county conventions was short, and the politicians were put to much trouble to form the combinations on which their own interests depended. But the four men who had met at Lincoln were a majority of the committee, and their action was conclusive. The other members, those from DeWitt, Piatt and Moultrie Counties had, like the rest, been notified by telegraph, and even by mail, but Rankin had taken care to send their telegrams at a late hour, knowing that the telegraph offices in the little towns were not open at night. Their letters of course reached them the next day--too late for them to get to the meeting.

And so over the district, the preparations for the county conventions went forward. Rankin and Garwood made their trip, and made their speeches, and when they came home Rankin claimed solid delegations from Logan, Mason and Tazewell. The delegation from Tazewell was instructed for Garwood; those from Logan and Mason were not. Rankin also claimed votes in the DeWitt and Piatt delegations, and formulated such an elaborate equation that he was able to demonstrate to any one that Garwood would be nominated on the first ballot, and with votes to spare.

Pusey made no claims in his newspaper. He was ever shrewd enough and shifty enough not to do anything openly that could stultify him in the future, but Rankin said that telegrams were constantly passing between him and Sprague. Garwood did not have his interview with the little editor. He had thought of it, and had even broached the subject to Rankin again, but Rankin was implacable in his hatred and vigorously opposed any such movement. In the strenuous fight that was coming on, and even then begun, he displayed again all of his old commanding resolution, and Garwood fell under the spell of his strong will.

"They'll find Jim Rankin a pretty active corpse!" he was continually saying to Garwood.

So the week passed, the county conventions were all held, and then a silence brooded over the political camps in the district as the delegations, like the mobilized detachments of an army, waited for the time to come when they should move on Pekin and begin the great battle.

VIII

Emily's baby had had his morning bath, and after a long wrestle had at last fallen asleep, his little lips sucking automatically in his dreams, while her father, after a struggle almost as wearing, had been induced to go for a morning walk before the heat of what promised to be a sultry day should rise with the mounting sun. She had carried a tray with Jerome's breakfast up to him, and when he had eaten it he had rolled over and resumed his snoring, made more gross by the dissipations of his campaigning the night before; and now she drew a long sigh as she sank into her chair on the veranda to think that a few moments of rest might be hers at last. She rocked vigorously, as though the mere physical exercise might rest her fatigued limbs; the slow motion with which she lifted a stray lock from her brow and fastened it back in her hair told how weary she was. In her lap lay a letter which the postman had just handed her. It was a large, square envelope, of gray paper, the texture and tone of which would have told that it was foreign, even if the German stamp had not already put that fact in evidence. Emily had recognized the anglicized writing in which it was addressed as that of Dade; and the post-mark told that the travels of the Emersons had led them once more to Wiesbaden. Emily allowed the letter to lie a moment unopened in her lap, partly from inertia, more, perhaps, from a love of anticipating the pleasure its reading would give her. The breaks in the vast monotony of her life were so few that she disliked to have them too quickly over.

And then, she found a charm in the romantic spell anything that comes out of the Old World still weaves for us of the New. She loved to picture Dade, in some smart Parisian gown--the very thought of which brought back to her Dade's way of calling things, especially her own dresses, "_chic_"--escaping from her hypochondriacal mother, now with petulant disrespect, now with gushes of affection, to wander with some young man down wide avenues, shaded with lindens. Sometimes she pictured the young man in civilian dress, but this morning he wore the uniform of the German army. She could see Dade, trailing her brilliant parasol over her shoulder, looking up into his face, and speaking to him in her melodious French--no, she corrected her little drama, it would be this time in her rich German which she had affected to prefer to French. Some day, she was sure, these light and transient affairs would end seriously for Dade, so seriously that she would find herself enthroned over the stately household of some old German castle with a titled military husband. How many years would then elapse before Dade would be back in Grand Prairie, with the air of the _grande dame_, lifting her lorgnette in the foreign way that would come so naturally to her? Would she grow matronly and have some yellow-haired, outlandish son with her? Would--

She heard a noise upstairs, and turned her head slightly, growing rigid as she listened for the warning cry of the baby. She waited, but no further sound came, and she lay back to resume her dream. But it had been broken, the thought of the baby had brought her back across all the intervening seas, back to Grand Prairie and her daily duties there. She sighed, and languidly tore open the letter.

When Emily had read the first of the many pages that made up the letter she laid it down in her lap to grasp to the uttermost the striking import of its tidings and there spread over her tired face a new smile, born of the pleasure women find in that clairvoyance with which they like to think themselves gifted in affairs of the heart--Dade was engaged! Her morning dream of the moment before had been prophetic; it was coming true!

Dade wrote of him in her highest vein of ecstasy. He was not an officer, though he had been, but he was noble, and Emily gathered that he was in politics, though Dade did not put it that way. A Prussian he was, with the sounding name of Baron Wolf von Waldenburg. He was not rich, though he had some means, but what he lacked in the aristocracy of his money he made up by the aristocracy of his lineage--an old family, with a seat near Spandau, and a house in Berlin, where Dade and he would live. They would have to economize, Dade wrote, and try to get along somehow with few servants, not more than six. Their "_ménage_" would be humble, but Berlin was the _dearest_ place to live. The baron was in the government there, and of course they would have the _entrée_ to the court circle. Dear mamma would live with them. Dade appealed to Emily to know if it was not altogether too lovely, and as for the baron she was sure that Emily could not help loving him, he was the dearest little man that ever lived; so proud, so haughty, but with such distinguished manners.

"And isn't it funny," Dade raged on, "to think that we both should marry public men? I know Mr. Garwood would like him--they would admire each other's brains anyway. And you must come and visit us when we are at home in Berlin--doesn't it sound _fine_? Just think! While you are enjoying the gay life of your capital I shall be enjoying the gay life of mine! Don't you remember how we always used to say--"

The words somehow struck Emily's heart cold. "While you are enjoying the gay life of your capital--" It was not the expatriation which Dade so frankly confessed that struck her at first, though a sense of that came after her own personal pang had been absorbed in the habitual resignation with which she accepted the life that was so far from all her girlish dreams.

The letter became somewhat more coherent as it progressed. Dade explained that they had come to Wiesbaden, not this time for her mother's health so much as for her own. Her physicians had advised it; she was run down, and as she was to be married in the fall, the baron wished her to be in good health. They might run over to America before the wedding; she wasn't sure; it would all depend. And they had not decided yet where they would be married, certainly, however, not in Grand Prairie--there would be no place there for the baron to stay.

Emily finished the letter, and laid it in her lap with another sigh. She was all sighs this summer morning. And yet she could not, and would not, formulate to herself the reason why she sighed. She might with impunity have compared her own life with Dade's, for it was not the life that Dade was leading for which she sighed that summer. Once, perhaps, in looking from afar upon the society life of the cities as it was reflected in the newspapers, it had seemed to her that she might be happy there. She recalled having expressed something of this to a man from Chicago who had spent a day with her father. He was a lawyer, with a large practice, but one who nevertheless gave much of his fine talents to the poor, the forgotten, and the despised. For this he was called eccentric, sometimes crazy, often a socialist. She remembered him always as he sat in her father's library that evening after dinner--he had come down on some business relating to the bank, and had dined with her father. She remembered his strong face; a face wondrous in its sympathy, wondrous in its kindness, wondrous in its sadness. It seemed to reflect not only all the sorrow he had seen, but all the sorrow he had perceived in his deep, penetrating knowledge of life. She always pictured him as he sat in the library that evening. She had expressed, in her girlish way, something of her wish for a larger life, by which she then meant life in a larger place, and never could she forget the lift of his gentle eyes, or the smile that came to his weary visage as he said:

"Grand Prairie is as big as Chicago, and a country cross-roads as big as either."

She had pondered a long time on those words and it was long before she had won an inkling of their meaning. And then she had met Garwood, and it had seemed that at last she had found the way to life. She had felt that Jerome was designed for a big work in the world, and the hand of destiny had been plainly apparent when he was sent to Congress. She had dreamed of being by his side in Washington, a help and an inspiration in the mighty things he was to do. Now he had been one term in Congress, and all that his life held seemed to be an endless scheming and striving to remain there; the great work he was to do for others altogether lost sight of in the great struggle for mere existence in the place he had won. And for her there was the same old life at home, changed only by the addition of new cares, of new responsibilities, the conditions ever growing harder, her perplexities ever deepening.

But she put Dade's letter back in its square envelope, and went in. It was growing warm outdoors. Her father had come home tired from his walk; the baby had awakened cross with the heat; Jerome had got up and was calling her to serve him in his dressing, and to pack his valise for his trip to the Pekin convention.

IX

Garwood, with Rankin and his other more intimate supporters started for Pekin on Monday morning in order to be on the ground early. They found themselves none too soon, for the delegates had already begun to gather, and by night the old town was fully invested by politicians. They strolled in twos and threes under their serious hat brims, along the shaded streets where the wonted quiet of the town deepened to a repose in which they best could whisper their little schemes. They were to be found in noisy groups in the saloons and bar-rooms, but as the chiefs and leaders were at the hotel, there the interest centered. Many of the visitors, taking chairs from the office of the hotel, where the lights, burning under the low ceiling, made the heat unbearable, placed them along the curb, and then all through the summer evening, they tilted back and talked, their cigars glowing in the darkness, their laughter now and then breaking on the ears of the youths and maidens who strolled by. Upstairs in one of the rooms of the hotel, a poker game was in progress; in another, Garwood held a levee amid a thick cloud of cigar smoke, for which the open box of cigars on the table provided a constant fuel. Sprague also had his headquarters, and in another room the congressional committee was in session.

The room was strewn with paper and the ashes of cigars, and there was a holocaust of insects on the floor under the oil lamps, and though the morning was luminous and still when the meeting ended the tired and sleepy members were glad of the breath of its sweet air. The dawn had come long before. Now the sun was mounting in the east, flashing his heat in trembling rays down on the green corn fields. The sky was burnished clean of clouds, and glistened like metal. Far down in the west, where the mists had long since rolled away from the Illinois River, was a low lying hill of cloud, dazzling white and moveless, resting on the horizon. As the committee-men, spent with a night of wrangling, gazed up into that morning heaven they knew how hot the day would be, a day hot as no day other than a convention day ever is.

Rankin, as he stood on the hotel steps and gazed, removed his hat, and wiped his brow with a gesture of weariness unusual to him. The long strain of the battle would soon begin. Would it end as that other battle two years ago had ended? He had waited long for his reward, he must make one more winning fight to vindicate his right to it. It meant much to him--four years in the post-office at Grand Prairie--he could rest when he sat down in that envied chair. He would move the desk into the window on Main Street, and then all his friends, and, what was sweeter still, all his enemies could see him sitting there. With this dream his habitual cheerfulness came back to him, and he turned and went inside with a quicker step. There was still work for him to do. The committee was to meet again at half-past nine to complete the little details, and, besides, he must prepare a program to place in the hands of the temporary chairman; a program on which would be written just what motions were to be made, who was to move a committee on credentials and on permanent organization, and who were to be appointed on these committees, and then who was to nominate the permanent chairman, and so forth. Thus it is by such forethoughtful organization that one chases a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. Rankin went to his room and with a window open to lure any breeze that might come with the morning, he wrote out his schedule of the people's wishes.

Garwood lay snoring in one of the two beds the room contained. He had remained in his headquarters until they had been emptied, then he had joined in a poker game; an hour before Rankin entered he had fallen heavily into bed.

There, in the morning, Rankin worked on while Garwood slept. He thought several times, scratching his head in dilemma, of awaking his leader, but he forbore and let him sleep. At last he finished, and then lay down himself, without undressing, to get what rest he could.

He slept lightly for a time, then awoke. The sun, already sickeningly hot, was pouring through the open window, he was bathed in perspiration, the heat was insufferable.

Garwood roused. While he was washing and shaving, he said:

"Will Bailey preside?"

"Yes--we put it through after a fight."

"He'll do."

"Yes," answered Rankin, spluttering in the water he lifted to his face in the bowl of his two palms, "he's got nerve."

He groped for a towel.

"Did you write the resolutions?" he asked Garwood.

"Not yet," said the congressman; "I must do that."

X

The convention was to meet at ten o'clock, but at that hour, while the hotel was left desolate, the Circuit Court room in the old brick court house where the convention was to sit, was still empty, and scarcely divested of any of its solemnity by the chairs that had been set in order for the accommodation of the representatives of the people who were to deliberate there. For half an hour the delegates had been gathering at the somber building, and now clustered in groups in the historic portico that had witnessed, so many years before, one of the great debates between Lincoln and Douglas. The delegates found the shade grateful, and leaned against the gray stone columns smoking the cigars which the candidates had supplied with such prodigal generosity. With them were many spectators and the curiosity of these was hardly larger than the curiosity of the delegates, who, though they had all the power in their hands, could only speculate, not as to what they would do with the power, but what would be done with it for them, and they awaited the coming of their leaders with a calm, almost amusing submission to their desires and designs.

The morning advanced, and with it the heat increased, until at length some of the delegates, on whom the deputed dignity of the people sat with such weight that they wished to feel some of its importance by taking their seats, entered the court room. There they resumed their curious speculations as to whether Garwood or Sprague would be nominated, awaiting the advent of some hand strong enough to gather them all together and mold them to its own purposes.

But at length and suddenly there was a noise and in through the doors poured the crowd that had remained outside, bringing with it a palpable breath of heat. In the center of the throng was Jim Rankin, his smiles scattered abroad for all. He worked his way with heavy shoulders into the court room, and with an authoritative stride swung down towards the judge's bench where the presiding officer of the convention was to wield his gavel.

On the wall the big clock bearing the advertisement of a local jeweler judicially ticked away three quarters of an hour before Rankin mounted the judge's bench. He had been sitting meantime, in the jury box, whispering to Judge Bailey as composedly as though the whole convention was not waiting for him to perform the last rite that would invoke its political life. He had even removed his coat, and sat in his rounded white shirt sleeves, with the self-possession of a judge himself, who knows that the session of court cannot begin until he wills it and that none dare show impatience lest he embarrass his cause. But now and then some delegate, showing no more respect for Rankin than the ordinary American freeman really feels for a judge, however much custom compels him to dissimulate in court, would cry: "Get a move on you, Jim," and at last Rankin arose, put on his coat, whispered a last word to Bailey, and mounted the raised platform where was ordinarily enthroned the impersonated authority of the statute in such case made and provided and the whole peace and dignity of the people of the state of Illinois.

Rankin's figure showed fine and burly, half of it towering above the judge's desk, as he looked over all the heads before him, where, somehow, he was determined to count eighty-three votes for Jerome B. Garwood. He stood there huge and powerful until something of his strength impressed the delegates before him, until he felt, as they themselves felt, a moral mastery over their minds. His dignity, showing in the broad reach of his heavy shoulders, shining from his sleepless eyes, had in it all of the accumulated fire of his anger at the opposition that had dared assail him, and he wished it to be felt. He singled out Pusey, bowed among the very men who knew Jim Rankin best, for the concentration of his gaze. Somewhere he had got a gavel, as it was supposed, though it was not a gavel, but a gager's flat mallet, or bung-starter, ironically symbolic of the real power that lay behind him, though no one there saw the irony. And with this in his fat and hairy fist he gave three heavy raps.

"The convention will be in order," he said. The simple words were the consummation of all the months of scheming and toiling that had gone before in that Thirteenth District, and the delegates insensibly braced under the idea.

"I ain't goin' to make any speech," he began, and then paused an instant before he added, with an intense significance, "at this stage of the proceedin's."

Some among the delegates caught the threat that lurked in the statement.

"But," Rankin went on, "the committee has chosen as temp'rary chairman o' this convention Judge Zephaniah P. Bailey of Mason County."

There was a hum of human interest in the crowd. But Rankin had not done. He still stood there, and the delegates cocked their ears to hear the rest. One or two leaders among the Sprague faction rose to their feet in readiness for parliamentary action.

"An' fer temp'rary sec'etary, Joseph Hale of Tazewell."

Instantly the Sprague leaders began to shout:

"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!"

Their cries were reinforced by the shouts of half the delegates, the half, approximately, that were there to vote for Sprague. The Garwood men sat tight, with soft smiles of satisfaction.

One of Sprague's lieutenants, Randolph, began an impetuous speech, shaking his fist and a mass of disordered hair at Rankin. The chairman, however, mauled the desk with his gavel, and did not wait for quiet to say:

"I'll interduce to you your temp'rary chairman, Judge Zephaniah P. Bailey o' Mason County."

The man who, having awaited Rankin's announcement at the foot of the three steps that led to the rostrum, now took the gavel from him, was tall, and thin and spare. He had walked from the side to the center of his stage with splay-footed steps, and now he stood, bent awkwardly, almost helplessly, over the desk. He was dressed in gray, ill-fitting clothes, his ready-made coat hanging from his bony shoulders with that loose absence of identity which characterizes the garment fashioned for the type rather than for the individual. A standing collar, wide open in front, disclosed a protruding larynx; about the collar was knotted a stringy cravat of black. His hair was low parted on the left side, and hung in a great plume over the right temple. But the man showed in the face, a face smooth shaven, long and firm, with its heavy jaw, pointed chin, and level lips cut straight as the eyebrows that shadowed his eyes. And it was the eyes that marked and inspired the face. Small they were, and half closed, so that at first glance they seemed sleepy, yet when they opened they could flash sparks from a bright, determined mind. But always they showed uncommon shrewdness, and a knowledge of common people and common things, and now and then they twinkled with the keen, dry humor sleeping in the brain that lay behind them. It was beginning to be observed within the confines of his own county, Mason, that Zeph Bailey looked like Abraham Lincoln, a resemblance much prized and sometimes cultivated by the Illinois politician, with whom the physical resemblance too often suffices for the moral. Judge Bailey, however, was too independent to care to resemble any other man, even such a man as Lincoln. He had already had a term as county judge of Mason, had been a member of the lower House at Springfield, and was again a candidate for the Legislature, with ambitions, it was understood, to be Speaker. There was about this man, strange, silent, uncouth and awkward in appearance, that mysterious thing called personal magnetism, beloved of politicians, even beyond the boundaries of Illinois, above any resemblance to Lincoln, and this magnetism was shown the minute he appeared, for the delegates were silent; they raised their eyes to him, and the strange spell of his personality began to play upon them.

Rankin, who had instantly removed his coat on leaving the rostrum, and seated himself in the front row of delegates, though not yet with his fellows from Polk, turned to the man beside him and whispered, prophetically, reader of men that he was:

"You want to look out fer Zeph Bailey--he's a comin' man--smart 's a singed cat."

Rankin's comparison seemed to appeal to his neighbor, who did not know how commonly it was employed in Bailey's own home, and he nodded his instant appreciation.

"Looks like he had lumbago in the back," the man added. He was a DeWitt County delegate far removed from the limits to which Bailey's fame at that time had spread. And Rankin whispered back:

"Well, if he has, it must pain him considerable, fer his back bone runs clear down to his heels."

Bailey still stood there, bent painfully, and remained silent. The hand at the end of a thin wrist that had never known a linen cuff, held the gavel at an awkward angle, but an observer would have noticed that the handle was firm in his fist, and that when it fell, an instant later, it fell with sharp, stern blows, not upon its edge, but full upon its poll, sure sign that a strong man is in the chair.

"The convention--will be--in order."

He spoke in a sharp, penetrating voice, his words falling strangely into couplets, and then his thin lips closed firmly again. Hale had come forward and taken his seat at the old bow-legged table where the clerk of the court usually sat, and this act of his seemed to personalize the action of Rankin in seizing the whole temporary organization, and so maddened the Sprague men afresh. They had been willing to tolerate Bailey, partly because of his strange popularity, partly because of the recognized precedent that supported Rankin in naming the temporary chairman. There were precedents for such a selection of a temporary secretary, also, as there were precedents for almost everything in the Thirteenth District, but they had expected a test vote on the selection of that officer, and they felt strong then and willing that the issue be joined. When they saw how they had been balked, they were angry, and they vented that anger by shouting at Hale to come away, and now and then they turned their personalities upon Rankin, who only smiled, as if he beheld his work and found it very good.

Bailey cast his inscrutable little eye around the assemblage, and then rapped with his gavel. His thin lips moved, and men saw that he was going to speak. Those who knew him ceased to make noise, not liking to miss anything Zeph Bailey might say. In this desire, they pulled at their neighbors and said:

"Sh! sh! He's going to say something."

In the partial quiet they were thus enabled to produce, Bailey drawled:

"If the brethren--will be--seated--another opportunity--will be afforded them--to rise--for prayers--at a later stage--of the revival."

The tense quality of the situation was dissipated in a laugh, though all the possibilities hung undischarged, electrically, in the hot atmosphere. A moment longer Bailey waited and then he began his speech. While he spoke, he stood stooped over the desk, holding on to his gavel. He spoke all the way through in those sharp couplets of words, slowly wrought out. He bowed to custom only long enough to make the usual adjurations to the delegates to discharge their high duties faithfully, and he bestowed the customary partisan praise on the state administration and on the national administration. There was applause of course, which he endured calmly, bent over the desk, waiting for it to end. But when these formalities had been observed, he talked to them of common things, like the heat and the corn crop, and he made jokes about the distilleries that lined the Illinois River, and at his solemn sarcasms the crowd laughed.

Rankin was in high good humor. He had found a new man, and his beginning augured well for the success of the convention. When Judge Bailey stopped, there were cries of "Go on! go on!"

But the Singed Cat rapped instantly with his gavel and said:

"The convention--again--will be--in order."

And the speech was done.

"Gentlemen," he said, "what is--the further pleasure--of the convention?"

The judge uttered this formality with all parliamentary deference, and the twinkle deep hidden in his eyes showed that the irony of it was apparent to him, even if it was lost on the delegates.

The spell of his quaint oratory having been broken, instantly there was a shuffling of boots, and a dozen men sprang to their feet.

"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!" they chorused.

But Bailey's eyes, having lost the twinkle they had had when he asked the pleasure of the convention, now sought the type-written program lying on the desk before him, that he might be sure of Rankin's pleasure. And then, his eyes traveling from one to another of the many flushed faces that opened upon him, their cold gleam unerringly rested upon James of the Polk County delegation, and Bailey said:

"The gentleman--from Polk."

"Mr. Chairman," said James, hurriedly, "I move that a committee on credentials of seven members, one from each county, be selected."

"How shall--the committee--be appointed?" inquired the chair. Rankin glared rebukingly at James, and arose to go to him. He detected the chance of blunder whereby all his plans might go wrong.

"By the chair," he growled at James.

"By the chair," James repeated.

"Second the motion!" all the Garwood men yelled.

Randolph was on his feet.

"Mr. Chairman!" he cried, "I move you, sir, as a substitute--"

Randolph was ever parliamentary, but Bailey rapped him to order with the gager's mallet as if he had been a mere disturbing child, and said:

"The gentleman--from Polk; seconded by the gentleman from Tazewell, moves--that a committee--on credentials--consisting--of one delegate--from each county--be appointed--by the chair. As many--as favour--the motion--will say--"

"Mr. Chairman!" Randolph was advancing toward the desk with uplifted arm, his face was very red and already streaming with perspiration. "Mr. Chairman!" he yelled. "It has always been the custom in this district for the delegates to retire by counties and to select their own members for each committee. I move you, sir, as a substitute--"

"The gentleman--from Moultrie," drawled Bailey, "is out--of order. Those of you--who favor--the motion--of the gentleman from Polk--will say--'Aye.'"

A mighty chorus of "Ayes!" swelled up from the mass of delegates.

"Those opposed--'No.'"

Another heavy, deep-throated volume of "Noes" burst forth. Instantly Bailey swung his heavy gavel to his ear, and he said, though still in that deliberate way of his:

"The ayes--_seem_--to have it, the ayes--have it, and the motion is adopted."

Then his gavel fell. And as the storm broke upon him, he stood with the weak stoop in his back, and looked down on the three score and more of angry men who were howling at him. His face never showed sign of emotion, but with his small eyes blinking slowly, his thin lips closed, he looked at them, and then began a slow, monotonous, persistent tap, tap, tap of the gavel.

"The convention--_again_--will be--in order," he drawled, tapping with his gavel all the while. "The convention--_again_--will be--in order."

At last the storm wore out, and Randolph, and two or three of his men gathered in a little knot. After they had held their disheveled heads together in counsel for awhile, Randolph raised his hand, and hushed his delegates, and said, when he had stilled the clamor:

"Let 'em alone. It'll come out all right. We've got the votes."

Bailey meanwhile had ceased to tap, and now stood leaning on the gavel. He began to speak again:

"The chair--appoints," he said, his eye leaving his program and seeking the men he designated as members of the committee, "Messrs. James of Polk, White of Logan, Kemper of Mason, Brown of Tazewell, Harrington of DeWitt, Parker of Moultrie, and Johnson of Piatt."

All save Harrington, Parker and Johnson were Garwood men. The program was then followed, in choosing by the same process, the committees on resolutions and on permanent organization. There too the Garwood men were given the majority, though Bailey ignored Rankin's program in one instance, and that was in naming Randolph for the committee on resolutions, but he did it in some half humorous notion of his own that Randolph could there gratify his love for words, and do little harm. The Garwood men were not particular about the resolutions, though Rankin gave to Ben Fuller, Polk County's representative on the committee, a copy of the platform Garwood had written out.

Noon had come, and was pouring its heat into the court room. The committees having been chosen, the convention could do nothing more until they reported. Bailey therefore said:

"What is--the _further_--pleasure--of the convention?"

And Rankin arose.

"Mr. Chairman," he said, "I move that we take a recess until two o'clock."

Bailey put the motion and of course it carried. And then he said:

"And the convention--stands adjourned--until two o'clock this afternoon--at which hour--the riot--will be--resumed."

His gavel fell.

As he was descending from the platform, Rankin rushed heavily toward him, and at the same instant, Randolph also started for him. Before Rankin could congratulate him, Randolph was talking.

"Look here, Zeph, and you, too, Jim," he began in that curious inofficial tone which men use when their relations become personal again, "we demand a vote on this permanent organization business. We ain't going to be shut out altogether."

"Don't like my presiding, eh?" asked Bailey.

"Oh, I'd like it all right if it was on my side," Randolph laughed, "but we demand a vote."

"Oh, you'll get a vote, Hal," Rankin remarked, "all the vote you want 'fore you're through--eh, Zeph?"

"I always aim to treat every one fairly," answered Bailey.

Randolph looked at him, "Aw, come off!" he said, helplessly.

XI

The convention assembled at two o'clock, though with the only conspicuous deliberation that our deliberative bodies display, it was half-past two before Judge Bailey brought it to order by a crack of his gavel. The sun had seemed to hang still on the meridian. The white cloud that had mounded itself on the horizon in the early morning had slowly and majestically inflated all the day, until it covered the whole of the western sky, where it flashed in the focalized rays of the sun. Far down at the base of the pile of cloud, an ominous blackness was spreading, so that the farmers of the various delegations, trudging along the sidewalks toward the court house, with their waistcoats unfastened and their coats on their arms, prophesied rain, and, drawn out of the differences of factional feeling into the brotherhood of husbandry, they welcomed it with reciprocal felicitations for the common good it would do their corn. When they reached the court house, the heat was stifling; the day seemed to stand still with the sun, and the air they breathed fairly scorched their nostrils.