Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

I come now in my recollections (which are verified by the volume of the “Proceedings of the Electoral Commission,” by the official “Journals” of the two Houses, and by the “Congressional Record”) to the details of the proceedings of the two Houses and of the Electoral Commission. On December 14, 1876, the Democratic House of Representatives passed a resolution in the following words:

Whereas there are differences of opinion as to the proper mode of
counting the electoral votes for President and Vice-President, and
as to the manner of determining questions that may arise as to the
legality and validity of returns made of such votes by the several
States;

And whereas it is of the utmost importance that all differences of
opinion and all doubt and uncertainty upon these questions should
be removed, to the end therefore that the votes may be counted and
the result declared by a tribunal whose authority none can question
and whose decision all will accept as final: Therefore,

Resolved, That a committee of seven members of this House be
appointed by the Speaker, to act in conjunction with any similar
committee that may be appointed by the Senate, to prepare and
report without delay such a measure, either legislative or
constitutional, as may in their judgment be best calculated to
accomplish the desired end, and that said committee have leave to
report at any time.

This resolution was sent to the Senate, and in response thereto, on December 18 the Republican Senate passed a resolution in the following words:

Resolved, That the message of the House of Representatives on
the subject of the presidential election be referred to a select
committee of seven Senators, with power to prepare and report,
without unnecessary delay, such a measure either of a legislative
or other character, as may, in their judgment, be best calculated
to accomplish the lawful counting of the electoral votes, and the
best disposition of all questions connected therewith, and the due
declaration of the result: and that said committee have power to
confer and act with the committee of the House of Representatives
named in said message, and to report by bill or otherwise.

On December 21 the Senate appointed, as members of its select committee, Messrs. Edmunds, Morton, Frelinghuysen, Logan, Republicans; Messrs. Thurman, Bayard, and Ransom, Democrats. (Mr. Logan declined the appointment and Mr. Conkling was appointed in his place.) On December 22 the House of Representatives appointed, as the members of its committee, Messrs. Payne, Hunton, Hewitt, Springer, Democrats, and Messrs. McCrary, Hoar, and Willard, Republicans. These two committees proceeded to consider the subject separately; and they held conferences from time to time with a view to agreeing upon one measure to accomplish the great objects named in the resolutions of the two Houses. After much discussion and deliberation, the two committees agreed that there should be reported in the Senate the bill which, without amendment in either House, became the law under which the procedure of the two Houses and the Electoral Commission took place. This bill was reported by me to the Senate January 18, 1877. After much debate and the rejection of sundry amendments it passed the Senate, January 24, by a vote of forty-seven yeas and seventeen nays. The negative votes were nearly all cast by Republicans. The bill was then sent to the House, where, on January 26, it was referred to the House committee on the subject, and on the same day was reported to the House by Mr. Payne without amendment. After debate it passed the House without any amendment, by a vote of one hundred and ninety-one yeas and eighty nays. The negative vote was composed, as in the Senate, very largely of Republicans. In the Senate, before the final vote was taken, it was perfectly understood that the bill would pass by a large majority in the form in which it came from the committee. It was seen, apparently, that some gentlemen who were supposed to have hopeful visions of their political future felt that they could safely vote against the bill, of which, if it were followed by the success of Mr. Hayes, it could be said to be quite unnecessary; and if it were followed by the success of Mr. Tilden it could be said that disaster to the Republican party had been brought about by the foolish conduct of the Republicans who supported it.

Previous to the passage of the bill no law existed providing what should be done, when in pursuance of the Constitution the two Houses should meet and the president of the Senate open and cause to be read the certificates of electoral votes from the various States, if a difference of opinion between the Houses should arise concerning the validity of any electoral vote. Two radical and opposing contentions were being put forward by the more excited of the two parties. One side said that the Constitution gave the president of the Senate the power and duty to decide the result after the state certificates should be opened and read. The other side maintained that the president of the Senate had no power other than to preside, open the sealed packages received by him from the various States, and cause them to be read; and that it was in the power of the two Houses concurrently to decide what votes should or should not be counted. Both these contentions were thought by the Senate committee--and I hope by the House committee also--to be absolutely erroneous. The Constitution had not made the president of the Senate the judge of election returns. His only duty was to receive, preserve, open, and cause to be read and summed up the certificates of the action of each of the States, which he had received as provided by the Constitution. To decide what persons mentioned in the certificates were lawful electors was no part of his duty.

If the concurrent power of the two Houses to judge of the elections existed, no votes on which the two Houses disagreed could be counted. In such a case how long would each House “in the heat of conflict keep the law”? The only things certain to happen in such instances would be reprisals, and then--anarchy and open war.

I think few sane persons of intelligence can believe that the wise and far-seeing builders of the Constitution intended to leave open such an avenue to destruction; and so they did provide, after granting to Congress affirmative powers on enumerated subjects, that Congress should have power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any Department or officer thereof.” On this firm rock the select committees of the two Houses rested the provisions of the Electoral Law which we reported.

In framing this act the two committees carefully and intentionally refrained from changing in any way any law then existing that might affect either way the fundamental merits of the existing controversy; and so, when the bill was under debate in the Senate, and Mr. Morton, a member of the committee, who did not concur in its report or in the passage of the bill, moved to amend the same by providing “That nothing herein contained shall authorize the said commission to go behind the finding and determination of the canvassing or returning officers of a State authorized by the laws of the State to find and determine the result of an election for electors,” I moved to amend the amendment so as to make it declare that the commission should have authority to go behind the returns. The purpose of my motion was to make it impossible that any inference should exist from Mr. Morton’s proposition being rejected that the commission should be granted by the act any authority either way that did not already exist. I, of course, voted against my own amendment and only one senator voted for it. The amendment of Mr. Morton was defeated by a majority of more than two to one. Thus the bill passed without any amendment at all, as before stated.

The act provided that the Electoral Commission be composed of fifteen members consisting of five justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, five senators, and five members of the House of Representatives. The members of the commission were the following: Justices, Clifford from Maine, Miller from Iowa, Field from California, Strong from Pennsylvania, and Bradley from New Jersey; Senators, Edmunds of Vermont, Morton of Indiana, Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, Bayard of Delaware, and Thurman of Ohio; Members of the House, Payne of Ohio, Hunton of Virginia, Abbott of Massachusetts, Hoar of Massachusetts, and Garfield of Ohio.

The law provided that the fifth of the five justices to compose that part of the commission was to be selected by those justices assigned to the First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, and that the senior in service should be president of the commission. It required that each House, by a _viva voce_ vote of its members, should appoint the five senators and the five representatives provided by the law, which was done. Mr. Watterson says that it was believed by the Democratic members of the House that justice Davis of Illinois would be appointed as the fifth justice composing the commission, and that it was also believed that Justice Davis would be “sure for Tilden.” I had no belief upon the subject other than that founded upon my knowledge of the capacity and character of Justice Davis; and that led me to believe that he, as well as the other justices, would follow what they thought, after hearing the cases, was the law; and I believed that neither the Constitution nor the law authorized the commission to overthrow the regular returns of any State and make what must necessarily be an endless inquiry into what the votes of the people of any State had been in point of numbers, either for or against the Republican or Democratic electors. That right, by the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, was given to the States alone.

After the Electoral Act had been passed Justice Davis was elected senator from Illinois and consequently became ineligible; and the four justices selected Justice Bradley (from New Jersey) as the fifth justice of the commission. Mr. Watterson thinks that if Justice Davis had been a member of the commission he would have voted as Justice Bradley did. I agree with him in that belief.

Although the act made no provision in respect of the political character of the members of either House to be appointed, it was agreed by those representing the two parties in each House that the members selected for the commission should be three Republicans and two Democrats of the Senate and three Democrats and two Republicans of the House. Each side had faith enough in the honor of the other to be sure such would be the case, as it was. Thus the Electoral Commission was formed.

The commission met and organized January 31, 1877, only thirty-four days before the final ceremony of the election of the President must take place.

All its members were present, and the certificates of the appointments of its members, before named, were presented and recorded, showing that the Senate had by a unanimous vote appointed the persons before mentioned to be members of the commission, and that the House had appointed as its members of the commission the gentlemen named above. All the members of the commission took and subscribed the oath of office required by the statute--that they would “impartially examine and consider all questions submitted to the Commission and a true judgment give thereon, agreeably to the Constitution and the Laws.” The commission adopted simple rules of procedure and notified the two Houses that it was ready for business.

On the first day of February the two Houses met in the Hall of the House, and the opening of the electoral certificates was begun, proceeding in alphabetical order, as the act required. The votes of the States of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Delaware were read without objection and recorded as returned. The next State alphabetically was Florida. Three separate packages, which had in due course come to the hands of the president of the Senate from that State, were presented by him, the first one of which, purporting that the electors of the State had voted for Mr. Hayes, was objected to by Democratic members of the House and Senate in the manner authorized by the Electoral Act; and objections to the other certificates were in like manner made by Republican members of both Houses. Whereupon all these papers and objections were transmitted to the commission for consideration and decision. The case was correctly understood to involve substantially the same questions that would arise in respect of Louisiana and South Carolina; and the case was argued on both sides by eminent counsel and patiently heard by the commission until February 9, when, after consultation and discussion, the majority of the commission decided that the certificate showing the election of Hayes and Wheeler was the true and lawful certificate of the State of Florida and should be counted as such, upon the ground stated, as required by the act; “That it is not competent under the Constitution and the law, as it existed at the date of the passage of said act, to go into evidence aliunde the papers opened by the president of the Senate in the presence of the two Houses, to prove that other persons than those regularly certified to by the Governor of the State of Florida, in and according to the determination and declaration of their appointment by the board of state canvassers of said State prior to the time required for the performance of their duties, had been appointed electors, or by counter-proof to show that they had not.”

The members of the commission voting in favor of this decision were (alphabetically stated) Mr. Justice Bradley, Messrs. Edmunds, Frelinghuysen, Garfield, Hoar, Mr. Justice Miller, Mr. Morton, and Mr. Justice Strong. Those who voted in the negative were Messrs. Abbott, Bayard, Mr. Justice Clifford, Mr. Justice Field, and Messrs. Hunton, Payne, and Thurman.

In the course of the discussions in the consultations of the commission on the Florida case, Senator Frelinghuysen, in support of his view that there was no power to go behind the regular returns, called the attention of the commission to the debates in the Senate on January 7, 1873, as reported in the “Congressional Record,” to the opinion expressed by Senator Thurman in the consideration of a resolution authorizing an investigation as to whether the election for President and Vice-President had been conducted in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1872 in accordance with the laws of the United States, in which Mr. Thurman was reported as saying, “There seems to be no way provided by Congress, and no way, I believe, that Congress, as the Constitution stands, can provide to try the title of an elector to his office”; and he proceeded to say, “I take it that the entire control over the manner of appointing the electors is one of the reserved rights of the State.”

Mr. Thurman, on hearing this read by Mr. Frelinghuysen, said: “I have changed my mind.” Mr. Frelinghuysen, also quoting from the “Congressional Record” reporting the proceedings of the Senate on February 25, 1875, in considering the bill then pending to provide for counting the votes for President and Vice-President, read from the speech of Senator Bayard on the subject, in which Mr. Bayard said, “There is no pretext that for any cause whatever Congress has any power, or all the other departments of the Government have any power, to refuse to receive and count the result of the action of the voters of the States in that election, as certified by the electors whom they have chosen.” (See official report of the Proceedings of the Commission compiled and printed by order of Congress, page 847.)

But it is a duty and a pleasure to say that I am sure both Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman voted with perfect honesty and sincerity. Thus it will be seen that the fundamental and controlling question in the three disputed elections before mentioned was not new.

That these decisions of the majority of the commission, recognizing the conclusive authority of the several States in holding elections and determining the result of their choice of Presidential electors, were fully in accordance with the Electoral Act and with the Constitution, is absolutely confirmed by the non-partizan action of Congress itself--at a time when there was no possible party bias or emotion upon the subject--in the passage of the act of February 3, 1887, wherein the very principles controlling the decisions of the majority of the commission were recognized and adopted, and whereby the very substance and almost the very form of the Electoral Act was enacted into law so far as it respected the rights of the States and the proceedings of the two Houses, without the intervention of an Electoral Commission. (See Supplement to the “Revised Statutes of the United States,” 1874-91, page 525.) If the Republican members of the Electoral Commission needed any vindication of their action, I feel sure (though the “Journals” of 1887 are not available in the city where I write) that this act of Congress, passed without party division, gives it completely.

The case of Florida having been thus disposed of, that of Louisiana was sent to the commission on February 12, and was decided upon the same principle governing the Florida case; but it was not finally determined and the vote counted until February 20. From that time until the second day of March, at four o’clock in the afternoon, when the final declaration of the election of Hayes and Wheeler was made, there was a continual and successful effort, growing more and more intense and violent, by the Democratic majority of the House of Representatives to delay final action by the two Houses in counting the whole electoral vote; and in the last case but one the House of Representatives rejected the vote of one of the Vermont electors by a party vote including, I think, that of Mr. Watterson; while the Senate, by a _unanimous_ vote on the yeas and nays, declared that the vote should be counted, which under the law validated the disputed vote. (See “Journal of the House,” and the “Congressional Record.”)

This illustrates the extremities to which the majority of the Democrats in the House went to prevent any final conclusion of the electoral proceedings under the very law that they themselves had almost unanimously voted for. What would have followed had this effort to prevent a regular conclusion of the proceedings been successful it was and is impossible to know. What _might_ have followed was a declaration of a majority of the House that there had been no election at all, after which Mr. Tilden (according to the law in case of failure to elect) could have been elected by the House,--as against the inevitable claim of Mr. Hayes that the returns as made to the president of the Senate in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, showed that he had been elected President of the United States.

In the then state of public feeling I think there can be little, if any, doubt that an armed collision of the supporters of the respective claimants would have taken place.

Mr. Watterson states that when the election by the people in the various States “ ... came to an end, the result showed on the face of the returns 196” votes for Mr. Tilden “in the Electoral College, 11 more than a majority.” The returns he speaks of must have been the _newspaper returns_, for, of course, on November 8, 1876, the day after the election, there could have been no official returns of any character in existence excepting, possibly, precinct and district returns of the local votes in some sections. He states that on the evening of the eighth of November Senator Barnum, the financial head of the Democratic National Committee, sent a telegram to “The New York Times” asking for the latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, and that from that unlucky telegram sprang all the woes of the Democratic party! The next day, after some telegraphic correspondence with Mr. Tilden--of the contents of which the public never has been informed--Mr. Watterson left Louisville for New Orleans, being joined en route by Mr. Lamar of Mississippi; and they were soon followed by the body of Democrats chosen by Mr. Tilden to go to the “seat of war.” President Grant, having been informed of the Pelton enterprise, appointed a body of Republicans to go there also to ascertain the truth and support a lawful and peaceable course. The names of some or all of these Republicans visiting New Orleans are given in Mr. Watterson’s article and have been already mentioned. His recital of what happened I have already referred to, though the object and purpose is not stated. But he does say, “There was corruption in the air,” and “It was my own belief that the Returning Board was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicans, and that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be to assist this scheme of blackmail.”

The last scene in this eventful history mentioned by Mr. Watterson was “the Wormley conference,” as the consequence of what he correctly calls the Democratic “bluff” “filibuster” intended merely to induce the Hayes people to make certain concessions touching some of the Southern States; and he says that “It had the desired effect,” and that, satisfactory assurances having been given, the count proceeded to the end.

I have no personal knowledge whatever of the doings of the so-called conference, and had then no information even of its existence, and have therefore no comment to make upon it except that the filibuster was a “bluff” and would have died in time without issue from very shame of its bluffing actors.

I am glad that Mr. Watterson’s article has appeared at this time, before all the gentlemen, who in one form or another were personally connected with public affairs during the years 1876-77, have passed to the future life. Such as survive may now have an opportunity, if they think it worth while to take it, to defend themselves from accusations stated or implied in his article.

Recollections of ancient conversations, hearsays, or traditions are of very little value in showing what the very facts were; while written correspondence or other writings of the time would clarify and illuminate the events supposed to have happened. Mr. Watterson most correctly says that “Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknown which alters the estimate of the historic event or figure.” It is, therefore, very much to be regretted that he did not print every writing (of which he appears to know many) within his reach relative to the subject. He imputes to the members of the Republican party at that time officially or otherwise connected with public affairs the crime of bribing the State canvassing boards of the disputed States “at least in patronage, to make false returns in favor of the Republican electors.” As one of the few survivors of that stormy time, as the _last survivor_ of the members of the select committees of the two Houses who conducted the passage of the Electoral Bill, and as the last survivor of the members of the Electoral Commission, I feel bound to repel the imputation as wholly groundless. In all our frequent consultations during the whole time there never was a proposal, suggestion, or hint of ours, or on the part of any one of us, resorting to bribery in any form, or of promise of office or other benefit, or influencing or trying to influence any of the canvassing boards or other state officials to depart from their lawful duty.

I, and I believe all the others, thought that the Republican ticket had been truly and lawfully elected; and everything we did was to try by lawful means to save the cause we believed our party had fairly and lawfully won. We had not been educated under, and did not believe in, the standard of political morality Mr. Watterson sympathetically imputes to us; but we feared, as well we might from the Pelton work and other revelations of occurrences in the disputed four Southern States, that unlawful and more practical methods were being resorted to by our adversaries to pervert, if possible, the lawful course and result of the election. I cannot close this condensed statement without expressing my earnest and grateful admiration of the conduct of all the justices of the Supreme Court who were members of the Electoral Commission. They were pure, high-minded, and patriotic, trying earnestly to expedite our work. The venerable Justice Clifford, the president, performed his arduous duties with promptness and perfect impartiality. My memory of him and of his associates is among the most pleasant of my public life.

(For Colonel Watterson’s rejoinder, see page 285.)

_The_ GRAND CAÑON _of the_ COLORADO

_Six Lithographs drawn from nature
in 1912 for the Century by_
JOSEPH PENNELL

RICHARD WAGNER]

IF RICHARD WAGNER CAME BACK

BY HENRY T. FINCK

Author of “Wagner and His Works,” “Chopin,” “Success in Music,” etc.

The outcome of the first Bayreuth Festival, in 1876, was a deficit of $37,500. There was need of thirteen hundred subscriptions to cover the expenses, but barely one half that number had been secured, thanks to the hostility of the German press, which for years in advance had systematically decried the project as a humbug, and at the last moment actually got up a fake smallpox scare in order to frustrate the festival. Wagner was only sixty-three years old at that time, and therefore quite too young to be appreciated in a country where it seems to be held that the only real genius is a dead genius. A series of concerts given in London in the hope of covering the deficit referred to resulted in further losses. The plan of repeating the Nibelung performances in Bayreuth every year or two consequently vanished like a rainbow, and it was not till Wagner was ready with his swan-song, “Parsifal,” in 1882, that he found it possible again to invite the world to that Bavarian town. This time there was actually a surplus of $1500. Wagner was beginning to be appreciated! Six months later he died.

If he came back to-day, thirty years after, what would he find? If he glanced at the newspapers and the musical periodicals, he would note, perhaps not without some surprise, that no trace is left of the virulent opposition to his music-dramas which had thwarted his plans and made life a burden to him. He would see himself ranked with the classics, the musical world no longer divided into Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites, and most of those who do not personally care for his music yet willing to pay him the tribute of respect which they give to Bach and Beethoven.

It is not generally known that Wagner was forty-four years old and had written all but three of his operas before a single one of them was produced in Vienna, Munich, or Stuttgart, and that he was fifty-six and over before even his early works were staged in France, Italy, and England. He was obliged to publish “Rienzi,” “The Flying Dutchman,” and “Tannhäuser” at his own expense, and never got his money back. The leading musical firms in Germany were aghast at his asking $7500 for the publishing rights of “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre,” “Siegfried,” and “Götterdämmerung.” He needed money, and reduced his demand by one half; but again his offer was declined. Breitkopf and Härtel did buy “Lohengrin,” only to be jeered at for so doing by Mendelssohn, who thought it was a bad bargain. The same firm purchased “Tristan and Isolde,” but had to wait years to get back the sum expended.

Soon after Wagner’s death the tide turned, and if he came back to-day, he would enjoy a spectacle which would perhaps surprise him as much as the disappearance of his detractors. Though he had great faith in his “music of the future” (it was not he, but one of his enemies who dubbed it so), he would hardly be prepared to find that in New York, as in all the cities of Germany, his operas year after year now have a greater number of performances than those of any other composer, and that the same is true even in the cities of Italy, Spain, and France whenever it is possible to secure for them competent singers and conductors. But the most astonishing spectacle would be presented to him in the warehouses of the publishing firms, nearly all of which have whole floors stacked to the ceiling with reprints of his scores ready to be rushed into the markets the moment the copyright on them has expired a few months hence. While he might be wroth at a law which will thus suddenly reduce the income of his heirs, he could not but feel flattered on discovering that no other composer had ever been reprinted in such wholesale fashion, proof of unprecedented popularity.

If it were possible to communicate with him to-day, would he join his widow and son and their followers in petitioning parliament to make an exception to the copyright law in favor of preserving “Parsifal” forever for Bayreuth? I very much doubt if he would. In all probability he would say to them:

“My prose writings and letters should have made it clear to you that my chief reason for building a theater at Bayreuth for special model performances of my music-dramas was that the royal opera-houses of the empire had neither the means nor the good-will to produce these works in a satisfactory manner. To-day I find the situation entirely changed, the opera-houses vying with one another in their efforts to present my works in exact accordance with my wishes. There is therefore no reason for withholding ‘Parsifal’ from them any longer. They will stage it conscientiously, and henceforth not only those who are wealthy enough to travel to Bayreuth, but hundreds of thousands of others, will be able to hear it. That the Bayreuth atmosphere is not a necessity for the appreciation of my last work I infer from the reports from New York, where ‘Parsifal’ is always listened to in the devotional attitude which this semi-religious composition calls for.”

In 1852, Wagner wrote that a Lohengrin singer was yet to be born. Twenty-four years later, for the Bayreuth performances of the Nibelung dramas and “Parsifal” he selected his singers from all the German opera-houses; yet it is not difficult to read between the lines of his subsequent comments, appreciative and cordial though they were, that few of these singers approximated to his ideal, and in most cases he had to turn instructor to impart correct ideas of his new vocal style, in which melody and declamation are amalgamated. Emil Scaria, the wonderful _Gurnemanz_ of the Parsifal festival in 1882, was the nearest approach to his ideal. Lilli Lehmann was too young in 1876 to assume the part of _Brünhild_ in which she afterward established a new standard of singing, combining the Italian _bel canto_ with German realism of dramatic accent and emotional coloring.

That it was at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York that Lilli Lehmann first revealed this new art is a detail of operatic history which would interest Wagner if he came back to-day. When he composed “Tristan and Isolde” he had in his mind prophetic visions not only of Lehmann, but of Jean de Reszke, who established the same new standard for tenors. While good dramatic singers are still scarce, the general level has been raised, as Wagner would be the first to acknowledge. How happy he would have been could he have had at Bayreuth masters of his style as Nordica, Eames, Ternina, Krauss-Seidl, Gadski, Fremstad, Schumann-Heink, Matzenauer, Homer, Knote, Burrian, Reiss, Goritz, Alvary, the De Reszke brothers, Urlus, Braun, and Fischer, all of whom are or have been associated with the Metropolitan.

One of the most important changes Wagner would note relates to the importance now attached to orchestral conductors. Before he wrote his essay on conducting, the orchestral leaders as a rule were little more than mere time-beaters. He taught them by example and precept to be real interpreters, molding an orchestral performance to their own will as much as a pianist does the piece he plays.

What would Wagner say about the operas composed since his death? Of all of them he would, I believe, like best Humperdinck’s “Die Königskinder,” which, while written entirely in his own style, nevertheless is charmingly original in its melodies. He would certainly not admire the operas of Richard Strauss, partly because of their repulsive subjects, partly because of the violence they do to the human voice, but chiefly because this composer too often uses his large orchestral apparatus to hide his poverty of invention. On the other hand, he would be likely to denounce Debussy for his boycotting of melody in “Pelléas et Mélisande” and for his neglect of modern orchestral means of expression and coloring. Turning to Italy, he would smile at the two short operas of Mascagni and Leoncavallo, which, when first launched, were supposed to have dethroned him. Possibly he might admire Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and the last act of “Tosca.” In any case, he could not but feel flattered on noting how, after his death, Verdi, who was born in the same year as himself, but lived nineteen years longer, followed his methods in “Otello” and “Falstaff.” In other countries Wagner would find no indication of a genius able to alienate the affections of opera-goers from his music-dramas. There has been no progress, no important development, since his death.

FROM THE PAINTING BY WILHELM FUNK

(THE CENTURY’S AMERICAN ARTISTS SERIES)]

“BLACK BLOOD”

BY EDWARD LYELL FOX

WITH PICTURES BY WILLIAM H. FOSTER

Drifting mists enveloped the landscape, a thousand gray wraiths crawling through the air, their thin bodies changing, contracting, vanishing. Over toward Massapequa the sky was brightening, distant lights of purple and pink fighting their way through the mists, a dim burning of color like that of fire through smoke. Somewhere a rooster crowed; a dog barked drowsily. Already the vague shadows of the night were congealing into trees, a rail fence, farm buildings. Beyond them more trees, a stone wall, a red barn appeared. From the earth rose the fresh odors of a new day.

In the windows of the house on the opposite side of the road lights appeared. The figure of a man moved into shadow on a curtain and was gone. No sound came from within. Then a door creaked open, feet shuffled. Four men, carrying lanterns, issued forth and waited on the porch. They began to talk in hoarse, early morning voices. The door opened again; a powerful, soldierly looking man appeared. He said something in a foreign tongue, and the others, lighting their lanterns, hurried toward the barn.

When they were gone, Léon Giron, whom the newspapers called “the greatest automobile race-driver in the world,” lighted a cigarette and scowled. Indeed, he had begun the last ten days in the same way--the cigarette, the scowl. This daybreak practice on the Vanderbilt Cup Course had become distasteful. It was unnecessary, with the race as good as won. Still, his employees had insisted. Scowling again, Giron waited for his mechanicians to roll out the big Saturn.

He had thought of trying the twenty-mile cup course for speed or of studying the turns, most particularly the one just opposite, where the Jericho Turnpike bent into a right angle and continued as a narrow road. He was still undecided when from down the pike came the low rumbling of a motor. Louder and louder it grew, a growing succession of reports that split the quiet air like volleys of musketry. Now Giron could see the flames of its exhausts, the yellow and red flashes, wild fire shining through the mists. Now he saw the white bulk of the machine, the long, lean hood, the tilted steering-post, the two black forms crouched behind.

On it came, faster than the wind, a spew of flame and smoke, a voice-breathing thunder, a monstrous white dragon bursting the dawn. As Giron watched, as his trained eye timed instantly the frightful speed, as his experience whispered that for a car to rush the Jericho turn meant disaster, possible death, the man’s face showed only cold interest. Years before men had called him steel-nerved, ruthless, abnormally cruel.

But now the white car crashed past. Swerving, it threw up a wall of flying dirt, skidded terribly, shot across the road, seemed about to go off, but, righting, bellowed round “the Jericho,” and rushed toward Westbury. And as it went, as its dust-cloud trembled and fell, as its explosions grew fainter and fainter, Giron stood watching, a startled figure leaning far over the porch-rail, unbelief and venom in his face. And as he watched, waiting until the white car was only a speck dissolving toward Westbury, his lips began to move. To the air he talked doubtfully, musingly, saying aloud:

“I thought there was only one man who could take a turn like that. One man,”--his eyes glittered,--“Jean Lescault was his name, and I fixed him seven years ago.”

Turning abruptly, he walked toward the garage.

Meanwhile the white car, passing Westbury, had turned off the course and, rumbling contentedly, had come to a stop before Krugs. As you may know, Krugs, an old-fashioned Long Island road-house kept by a tidy German woman, has for years been the quarters of the cup-racers. Here in spacious stables are kept the machines of two companies, sometimes of three. Here in the uncomfortable rooms of the inn sleep their crews, drivers, mechanics, team-managers. In its low-ceilinged dining-room they sit, a score of them, smudgy-faced and in overalls, a careless, boyish company whose faces, were they not so lined, you would call young.

Nobody paid much attention to the white car as its heavy panting became quieter and then died away, nor did they notice the tall, strapping man with the boyish face who climbed out from the driver’s seat, nor the broken little figure who climbed with him. As one of the reporters had said, “Sammy Stevenson always looks as if he had just jumped out of a cold plunge.” The expression was very pat. The boyish Stevenson’s skin always seemed tingling, coloring; his eyes clear and wide-open; his body tense, full-blown, strong. And as he kept step with his companion in their walk toward the house, one would have said that the contrast was pitiless; for the other man was a cripple. One of his legs was shorter than the other; as he walked, his body swayed from side to side; his left sleeve was empty. His whole frame looked gaunt, emaciated, racked--racked, one thought immediately, by some terrible accident that had disfigured his face, lining it with a long, white scar. Though hideously ugly, broken in body, the little man walked with his head well up, his chin high. And Stevenson regarded him as he might have regarded a deity.

Out in Detroit, at the Mercury Motor-Car Company factory, everybody knew the little man as “Old Lescault.” Five years before this time he had appeared mysteriously, and in a few hours the factory had hired him as a “racing expert.” He had taken Sammy Stevenson from the testing service, put him on one of the racing-cars, and taught him “the game.” In his department his word was law. Even John Willard, the company’s gruff and positive president, who never had been known to take advice, obeyed this hideous little Frenchman, who ruled all with a word, a grimace, and made the sturdy, self-reliant Stevenson his personal worshiper and the hostile factory hands his sympathetic friends.

Just now Jean Lescault was busy explaining something to Stevenson. The young man listened intently.

“You’ll lose time on those turns,” Lescault was saying, “unless you take them the way I tell you. Instead of swinging wide and describing a curve, I want you to do this: rush the car right into the turn, jam on the brakes, skid around on your front wheels, and then shoot ahead. Look!” He quickly sketched a diagram on the breakfast-cloth. “There,” he exclaimed, looking up, “that shows how you’ll cut time on the fellow who curves around. It’s dangerous, but not if you keep your head. You tried it at Jericho this morning and made it. Do it at every turn hereafter.”

Stevenson nodded. Jean Lescault would be obeyed.

But Lescault wanted to tell him other things. It was his first morning on the course. For some reason he had seen fit to remain in New York despite Stevenson’s urging him to come down. Now, as they finished breakfast, and Stevenson, pushing back his chair, remarked that he was going out to see that the mechanics put away the car properly, a last question came to Lescault’s lips:

“How”--he paused--“how is Giron getting along?”

Stevenson hesitated before answering.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

“No,” said Lescault.

“I asked,” said Stevenson, “because if, being a countryman, he happened also to be a friend of yours, I shouldn’t want to repeat certain things. Most of the American drivers dislike him. They criticize him for not stopping when he knocked down that boy and broke his leg during practice the other morning. They say Giron couldn’t have known whether he killed him or not, and cared less. They say, too, that his manner is unbearable, conceited, and sneering.”

“But his work,” interrupted Lescault, impatiently,--“his driving, his skill, his nerve,--what of these things? Of the others I have heard.”

“His driving,” replied Stevenson, “is really wonderful. He’s a daredevil, cool, thorough, and skilled. The newspapers say nothing like his ability has ever been seen on the Vanderbilt Cup Course.”

“Damn the newspapers!” cried Lescault in a rage. “We’ll beat him. I tell you, we’ll beat him.”

As he slid up abruptly from the table and limped away, Stevenson noticed his eyes. In them was an expression that was not good to see.

Going to his room, Lescault locked the door behind him. He listened for a moment at the keyhole, and then; seizing his traveling-bag, emptied it on the bed. From a confusion of socks and shirts he rooted out a small tin box, set it aside, put back the bag, and composed himself on the edge of the bed. His slightest movement had become eager, stealthy. Holding the tin box on his knee, he patted it fondly. He produced a key, and chuckled as it grated in the lock. His hands were shaking as he threw back the cover and carefully took out the contents. Not gold or precious stones rolled out before him, not the hoard of a miser, the collection of a seeker of rare things, or the sacred relics of a family trust, but a heap of photographs! On the bed he spread them, arranged in some accustomed order, and as he bent over each his breath came with a low, hissing sound. His eyes, half shut, blazed queerly--eyes that looked not upon memoirs of love, but of hate.

It was a full minute before he moved. Then he snatched one of the photographs and held it from him, tearing the edges with his clenched hands. It was a full-length picture of a straight, soldierly looking man who might be called good looking were it not for the curl of his mouth. Below it was written:

“_Léon Giron, taken upon his arrival in New York._”

As he gazed at the man’s straight and powerful figure, Lescault’s mutilated face became savage in its hate.

“And I’d have been like you, Léon Giron, if you’d played square,” he accused the picture. “I’d have been like you, with my body whole and young and vigorous. Bah!” He threw it from him and picked up another.

“Ho!” he cried, “this is how you looked when you won the Grand Prix, when they pelted you with flowers after you had crossed the line, when with your dirty driving you sent me into a ditch and left me out on that road, dying, as you thought. But I didn’t die, Léon Giron.”

His voice had fallen to a whisper, strained, harsh, the way a man talks when some overpowering emotion takes him. He snatched up picture after picture,--racing scenes all of them,--only to examine each feverishly and fling it away.

“Here you are when you won the Targa Floria,--” he was talking rapidly, addressing one picture after another,--“when you won the Berlin cup, the Czar’s trophy, all _my_ races, all of them--mine, if you’d played square. And this is after you won at Brooklands. That was a year ago. I could have beaten you then, Giron. For three years I’ve been training a boy for you, teaching him all I know, more than you’ll ever know, about racing. I’ve given him every trick that used to beat you, confound you! that maddened on into throwing me into the ditch.

“And I’ve given that boy more. I’ve devised new tricks, new strategies, skill you’ve never dreamed of; and he’ll beat you, Léon Giron. He’ll beat you in the Vanderbilt. He’ll break you on the greatest day of your career. He, a boy, will make you a laughing-stock--you, the favorite. You’ve come from Europe, your great reputation preceding you but you’ll fail. And it’ll be the clean, strong body of young Stevenson, like mine was. But more than that, the brain of Jean Lescault will break you, Giron--the brain of poor old Lescault, working down in the pits.”

As he dropped the pictures one by one back into the box, as, trembling and leering, he gazed and spat upon the image of Giron, it seemed as though the beast in him might be trying to overpower the God. Thus it was Lescault’s custom to drink deeply of the vials of hate, to nurse his spleen, to envenom his whole being against this one man.

The idea had come to him one winter morning seven years before, when he had just left the hospital at Lariboisière. In a shop-window he had seen the photograph of Giron, flower-showered, coolly triumphant in his Grand Prix car. With rancor slowly filling his soul, Lescault had bought the picture, carried it to his room, brooded over it, conceived his awful hate, planned the reckoning that alone could satisfy it. Then he happened upon another picture in which Giron was again the central figure, and bought that, too, placed it alongside the other, and brooded. The overthrow of Giron became an obsession, in time a paranœa. Indeed, during the days immediately preceding the Vanderbilt race, Lescault, when not busy with Stevenson, spent most of his time in his room; and the pictures, shrine of his hatred, were always before him.

Meanwhile Giron had become a byword with those thousands and thousands who a day hence would swarm Hempstead plains and watch him guide the big Saturn on its quest for the cup. The newspapers were full of him. They told of his rise, of his quarters at Jericho, of his mannerisms, of the almost slavish obedience that he exacted of his helpers; but they always spoke, too, of his nerve, his utter fearlessness, his immobile face, his calmness when the wind was singing in his ears and the wheels were sweeping the ground beneath him, as the whirlwind sweeps chaff. Yet of all the “stories” there was only one that presented Giron as he actually was. And that was done by a noted writer who had visited the course for “color.” This man saw beyond Giron’s indifference and coldness, and guessed ruthlessness and cruelty to be a strong part of him. Telltale lines had long ago written their revelations on Giron’s mouth, so that all might read who could.

And so came the eve of the race, with Giron the word on the public’s lips. The favorite, conceded beyond all doubt as the winner, he sat alone in his quarters at Jericho, scorning the gossip of the camps, hearing no word of the cripple who had been seen on the course with Stevenson, coolly confident, an eternal sneer on his lips, the ruthless fires of a _Messala_ in his eyes. No man could come between him and this greatest triumph of his career; no man could do it and live. He unconsciously felt it.

All that night the spectators descended upon the course, coming by train and trolley, luncheon-boxes and blankets in hand. Numberless droves of them came by motor, an endless, fiery-scaled snake that writhed slowly down the roads from New York, coiled round the course, moaned constantly, and waited. At dawn the race was to start; thirty of the most powerful automobiles ever made would pit their speed for three hundred miles, a harsh test, over an oblong of country road, with half a million people looking on.

Lescault, shivering despite his warm wraps, was in the repair pits as the cars began to come to the line. Tints of violet and pink were creeping over the fields, and in the growing light of morning the headlights of a row of automobiles drawn up behind the grand-stand fence began to look self-conscious and absurd. Behind him, in a box, he saw a party of men, their eyes heavy-lidded for want of sleep. They were drinking something from a metal bottle. Lescault decided it was coffee, and wished he had some. Then he forgot about the coffee, for far in the distance a sound, deep and droning, caught his ear. It was the voice of the Saturn. Lescault recognized it instantly.

In perfect control of himself he waited. He had left hysteria behind at Krugs, locked it in the same drawer with the pictures. Now, if never before, he must restrain himself. This day he must become again the old Lescault of the race-course, calm, emotionless. It would be hard at the sight of Giron, but he must be cool. And now he heard the booming of an engine; saw the fires of the Saturn’s exhausts burning the morning; saw the big red car come nearer and nearer, its engine, shutting off, thundering intermittently; saw it advance with its speed throttled, calmly, majestically, as a car of triumph should come; and on the conqueror’s seat sat Giron. Slowly it rolled past the repair trenches, past the Jupiter, the Green Dragon; now it was almost abreast the Mercury, and Lescault, timing his move, scrambled suddenly from the pit, and stood waiting on the road.

That Giron had seen him he knew. Lescault had caught the momentary surprise on his face, the exclamation on his lips. But Giron had swiftly regained his habitual sneer--a sneer that curled his lips as he passed the pit and spit deliberately at the feet of the man below him.

But Lescault’s self-control was superb, and as the Saturn rolled past, he looked after it, smiled, and spoke as he had spoken to the pictures, saying sweetly under his breath:

“Léon Giron, I’ve got you.”

The road was now jammed with masses of shaking, smoking steel. One car followed another, manœuvered for position, choked the course, thickened the bluish haze that, rising from the exhausts, hung almost as motionless as a canopy. Here were the trim-looking Vegas and their French drivers; the Green Dragons, with fierce-looking Italians behind the wheels; a curious cartridge-shaped car entered by an American concern; and the Mercury, called the “Ninety,” because of its tremendous horse-power. Stevenson was at the wheel, and as the grand stand saw his boyish, good-looking face, there were exclamations, then a rattle of applause, growing into steady cheering. Waving his hand and grinning, Stevenson stopped before the pit and, swinging himself over the rail, joined Lescault. He was dressed in white,--suit and skull-piece,--with black gloves, black streamers trailing from his hat, black puttees to his knees, a picturesque figure with his broad chest and shoulders. It had been Lescault’s wish that Stevenson, like the car, be in white and black. He remembered that some of the crusaders of old used to dress that way.

During those last minutes Lescault’s words to Stevenson were as an exhortation. Of technic he could give the boy no more, for his skill had been transmitted completely, astoundingly to him. So now, with his voice lowered, Lescault spoke with all his long-growing, loosened emotions; he impressed upon him that Giron was the one to beat, the only rival he need fear, and commanded him particularly to obey orders, do all that he said, nothing more. And Stevenson, who long ago had caught the fervor of this broken-bodied little Frenchman, felt a fierce yearning to be at the wheel, to be riding the wind, with all others falling as he rode. With an exclamation he sprang from the pit and scrambled into the car. The soul of jean Lescault would be driving the “Ninety” that day.