Chapter II: Part 2

“McCray, you don’t know me well,” Holman began; “I’m an old-timer--a Has-been, as I overheard a man say this morning. You’re a young man; you come from my district--or, perhaps, I’d better say I come from yours. I came here one session, just as you have done, from old Jasper, and I served, in all, four sessions. During that time I saw a lot of life and of men; I learned a lot, too, and then I gave it up--and quit. This morning I came back for a little holiday, and I strolled over to the house to see how the old place looked once more, just as all the Has-beens do; they always manage to get back, some way or another, every session; it’s a habit, a fever, a disease--get it once, a fellow never gets over it. Well, this morning, as I stood there looking around I saw you; and that and one thing and another reminded me of something. I saw you sitting there--young, ambitious, bright, with the world before you,--and, well, my boy, I took a kind of liking for you all of a sudden; but that’s neither here nor there. What I was reminded of, curiously enough, was another young fellow I used to know years ago--a fellow that didn’t look so much like you, perhaps, and yet who was like you in many ways.

“It must have been, let’s see, back in the--well, no matter, I don’t exactly recall just now, and it isn’t material. But this young fellow came up from down our way to take his seat for the first time in the legislature. He was a young lawyer, smart, good-looking, a fellow every one liked. He had the gift of the gab; he could make a rattling speech, was strong on the stump and good before a jury. Everybody wanted to see him succeed. He was ambitious--ambitious as Lincoln, ambitious as the devil. His ambitions were not selfish--that is, not so damned selfish. He was no reformer, nothing like that; but he really wanted to help his people, wanted to do something to make life a little easier, a little better for the average fellow--like those he knew back home. He didn’t have, perhaps, any very clear idea how he was going to do this, but he wanted to do it somehow, and, vaguely enough, I reckon, he felt that the chance would turn up. Back home, too, there was a girl--you got a girl, McCray?”

The young man, startled by the abrupt question, turned up to Holman, who shambled along a head taller than he, a face that went red; a smile came to it, then, suddenly, it went gray and he turned away.

“Beg your pardon,” said Holman, “that’s none of my business, of course. But this fellow of mine, he had a girl back there. I knew about it; we were young members, first term, and he used to tell me things. And he wanted to marry this girl and make her happy. He thought, you see, that by being something, doing something in the world, he could do _that_.”

They were by this time far out Sixth Street, at the edge of town; a little farther on lay the open country. They came to a pasture with a broken fence and a tree.

“Let’s sit down here,” Holman said, “and rest, and I’ll get on with my story.”

They sat side by side on the bank at the roots of the elm, and Holman, having finished his cigar and being a man who seemed to require tobacco in some form every moment of the day, drew out a long plug and a knife and cut a piece and put it comfortably into his mouth.

“Chew?” he said, proffering tobacco and knife. McCray shook his head, but lighted a cigarette. And the old and the new generation sat there side by side on the bank.

“Interested?” asked Holman.

“Yes; go on.”

“Well, this young fellow I’m telling you of--the legislature was just a stepping-stone to him; that’s what he thought and that’s what everybody thought; beyond that were congress, governor, senator, everything. He went right ahead, was popular and influential, got good committees, and when he got up to speak the house grew quiet--you’ve seen it that way yourself--and he worked and studied, and back home there was the girl--and they wanted to get married. But he was poor--mighty poor.”

Holman leaned over, stretched out his long, thin arm--McCray noted the frayed cuffbands--and plucked a spear of young grass, pulled the thin, transparent, whitish-green blade out of its delicate sheath and, squinting his eyes, examined it minutely, as if it were the most engrossing object of study in the world.

“A legislature, McCray,” he went on, “is the damnedest thing in the world, the rottenest, most demoralizing, hell-fire sort of institution there is. All politics is that way, no matter where you find it. Sometimes I think you can’t get within forty rows o’ apple trees of it without being polluted. A man, to go to a legislature and stay there any time and come out whole and safe and sound, has to be made of pure gold. Now, this young friend of mine, he was, as I’ve said, all right at heart, and pretty strong, too, most ways; good family, good blood and all that; and back home there, in safe surroundings, he’d ’ave got along all right till the end. But in the legislature a fellow’s away from home, away from all his customary moorings, and most of the members get it into their heads that at the capital all the rules are suspended, and I reckon they are--that’s about what government, as we administer it, amounts to.

“No one from home ever shows up there. The only ones that come around come to get something for themselves, and it’s always something they have no right to and oughtn’t to have. They come with all kinds of plausible reasons and lies and temptations--damned sneaking, hypocritical, white-washed sepulchers! Eminent and respectable citizens, best people and all that! And unless a fellow has his eyes wide open all the time, has his principles clear and fixed and knows enough to apply ’em every minute, knows what a bunco game it all is, and is of pure gold besides--as I said--why, he gets all tangled up and lost--yes, lost. It pretty much all comes from the cities. We poor jays from the country districts don’t know anything about the cities; we take what they tell us, or did in my time. We think if we just pass a few laws to make our fellow-citizens in the cities good, regulate their beer for ’em and all that, that nothing else is required of us; so these fellows come down from the city and get us to do their dirty work for them. In those days there was a fellow here, a lobbyist, a good-looking man, about the size and favor of--well, Baldwin back there--saw him talking to you this morning--same kind of a man exactly, smooth, genial, polished, well-dressed, polite, good fellow, and all that.

“Now, Baldwin--I mean the fellow--well, damn it!” Holman suddenly exploded in his exasperation, “it _was_ Baldwin! He had a bill he was trying to pass, a crooked bill, of course, one of those bills like this street-car bill I heard of to-day, to take something that by rights belonged to the people of the city, a street, or the ground under a street, or the air over a street, or the room in the middle of a street, and give it to half a dozen eminently respectable and pious citizens to use for themselves and exploit and get rich on. Baldwin was trying to pass that bill, and the session was nearly done, and he needed just one vote. And he looked around and he settled on this young friend of mine; he knew his hopes, his wants, his necessities--knew all about him, for that’s Baldwin’s business and his way. I needn’t go into the details; he worked with him a whole day and nearly a whole night; explained that it was really a good thing for the city, that this young fellow’s constits were not interested in the city, anyway, didn’t know anything about it, nor care anything about it. ‘It can’t hurt you,’ Baldwin would say. ‘Your people won’t know or care; of course, if it was something they were interested in it might be different’--and all that. And then, finally, ’way in the night, when the young fellow was worn down in will, and tired and weak and dazed anyway, Baldwin began to count the money down on the table, among the stinking whisky glasses and cigar butts, thousand-dollar bills, green as that grass there, one--two--three--like that.” McCray, with a kind of fascination, watched Holman as with slow gesture of his long hands he turned over, as it were, and laid down one after another those thousand-dollar bills. “And the young man fell,” said Holman at last. And then he was silent, his gaze fixed afar on some light across the fields.

“Well,” Holman resumed, “Baldwin was right in one way, at any rate; the people, the young fellow’s people down home, didn’t care. They never do care; they don’t take the trouble. They never knew, anyway, and they elected him again and re-elected him. And he got married and things seemed to go along all right with him; you would have said he was to be envied. But, while nothing seemed to change outside, something did change inside the young man; and the worst of it was, it was a change that he didn’t know or realize. It was like some disease, working away, working away there inside of him, without any pain or any symptoms even; he had no idea of it. But there it was, working away, working away. He found, at first, that it was easy enough to get money, and he got it and he spent it and it never did him any good, never a bit, neither him nor his family. Easy money, they call it; but there’s no such thing. All money, even easy money, is hard; you got to pay somehow, you got to pay!

“He changed by slow degrees; first he got careless and slovenly in his thoughts, and, after a while, didn’t think much anyway, and couldn’t; he just talked and talked and talked and made loud speeches--became a windbag, a blatherskite, a bore and a nuisance in the land, to himself and everybody. There’s a lot of them in this land; all they need to make a speech is room enough to work their jaws in. His old wishes and longings to be of some use in the world died out of him; he had no aims, no mark to head for, no place to go. He became ineffectual; after while all there was to him was that one vote of his in the house, and by and by that wasn’t worth much; it kept declining in value, he got cheaper and cheaper, and finally--just naturally petered out.

“Then, when he was slouchy in morals and mind and character, he got slouchy in person; his habits weren’t bad, perhaps; he was no drunkard or anything like that, but just--oh, sloppy, every way. And his wife, his little wife--she was a fine, pretty girl, McCray, when he married her--she, of course, had to pay, too, along with him; he dragged her down. She was patient and kind and always hopeful, but they were poor, and under the stress of their necessities he would get peevish and cross, and sometimes when, say, a Saturday night would come and there wasn’t anything in the house to eat--well, he’d look at the children and get mad--mad at himself, primarily, though he didn’t say so or admit it even to himself--and he’d take it out in nasty, mean ways with her and the children. Finally, she gave up; she didn’t know why, she never knew what had happened, or, if she did, she never even hinted it--and the whole family was just going down to hell and the devil. There wasn’t any outward tragedy to make it striking or dramatic or even interesting.

“And then, after everybody half knew or half guessed, and had ceased to respect him, he came back here to Springfield once, as we all do, and happened to see Baldwin, and found him the same, scarcely a day older, though he himself was gray and withered. It hadn’t hurt Baldwin; he was well-dressed, respectable, popular, received everywhere--clubs, society, church and all, just as the men were whose dirty money Baldwin handled. And Baldwin’s wife, she wasn’t old and sad and hopeless; she was going out in society, president of a big woman’s club, talked about safe little reforms, charities and philanthropies. And Baldwin’s daughters were over in Europe getting the last finish on their education.”

Holman had a feeling that McCray was no longer listening and, glancing aside, saw that McCray’s face was buried in his hands. And with pity in his long, gray face he looked at him a little while, then laid a hand on McCray’s shoulder.

“Do you know,” he said, “why I told you this story? You see, I didn’t want to make you feel bad; I only wanted to show you. Because there’s a lot in you--a big, beautiful future.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” cried McCray. “All but that last--all but that last.”

“Why not that?”

“Because it’s too late. Oh, Holman, it’s too late--too late! If it were only yesterday! But now--it’s too late!”

And McCray bent forward, bowed in pain, and wept.

Holman waited until the boy’s grief subsided, and then, by degrees, he got the story. To McCray it was an irreclaimable and tragic wreck of life. But to Holman, in the broader vision his own sins had made possible, and in some of his judgments of men, perhaps too broad--if, indeed, that may be--the case was not at all hopeless. He had not, it is true, been prepared for a revelation so complete and damaging, but it presented to him no irrevocable aspect. McCray, with the proclivity of youth to fixed and fated facts, saw the thing consummated and complete, the contract wholly executed; but Holman did not regard it as even executory, and he cited for McCray the old adage about the bad bargain.

“We’ll just give the stuff back to Baldwin.”

“Before?”

“No,” said Holman stoutly, “afterward. After the vote; we’ll have that satisfaction. Keep him on the hooks.”

“Well,” said McCray. “But here, you take it. It--burns--” He gave to Holman a roll of bills, and sighed in relief. “You have saved me,” he said; “you have saved my soul.”

“Oh, to hell with your soul!” Holman said, with more orthodoxy than he was accustomed to evince. He was not sufficiently accustomed to the highly moral to relish its too bald expression; perhaps his experience had been of one other as yet unrecognized benefit--it had made him wholesomely afraid of cant, and whatever good his spiritual adventure of that day had done, or was to do him, he was in little danger of becoming a Pharisee.

* * * * *

Greggerson, the clerk of the house, in shirt-sleeves, a handkerchief stuffed into his collar, had himself taken the reading-desk that night. Above him the speaker, bent forward, watched the proceedings like some bird of prey, smiting his desk sharply with his gavel now and then, or pointing it fiercely at some one. Above the speaker, in placid folds, was the flag, and from their large canvases on either side of the house, Lincoln and Douglas surveyed the scene from the calm altitude of their secure place in American statesmanship.

When the bill had come over from the senate half an hour before, the crowd had rushed over with it, burst into the house and pushed down the aisle, choking the passage. Holman saw several senators come over to see the end; he saw the governor’s private secretary, and old Benson, the governor’s political manager, and--Baldwin, suave and bland as usual, yet, as Holman could see on a second closer look, intensely anxious and concerned. He was paler than Holman had ever seen him. The air of the chamber was hot and fetid; there was a low, ominous grumbling. Dalby was on his feet on the Republican side, Quinn on the Democratic--the program under Baldwin’s eye and the speaker’s would be hurried through. In the curious way in which secrets cease to be secrets and permeate the mind of the mass, it was generally known how every man would vote, and it was understood that the climax, somehow, would come with the calling of the name of McCray, of Jasper. The roll-call moved slowly on down the alphabet; Greggerson’s voice resounded; its boom could have been heard through open windows three blocks away:

“Lyendorf!”

“Aye.”

“Lynn, of Sangamon!”

“No.”

“Lynn, of Vermilion!”

“No.”

“McBroom!”

“No.”

“McCoy!”

“Aye.”

“McCray!”

Holman strained forward with the crowd. McCray hesitated, looked up, then shouted:

“No!”

There was a sharp volley of applause, a clapping of hands which had in it perhaps, a certain too self-righteous quality; and there were human groans and hoots, and at his elbow Holman heard an oath and turned to face Baldwin. The face of the lobbyist was white with rage and moist with fine globules of perspiration, and there were revealed to Holman in the brilliant, new illuminations of that moment certain lines that once had not been there, lines not drawn by age, and Holman saw them with a fierce, vindictive joy.

But McCray was coming, battling his way down the aisle, escaping the congratulations, curses, praises, objurgations of the men who crowded about him. He got away from them and came back, and, as he took Holman’s hand, his tired, drawn face was touched with a smile. Baldwin, there beside them, saw it, stared at Holman incredulously and said:

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

But Holman had no attention for Baldwin then.

“Let’s get out of this,” he said to McCray.

And when, out of that weltering chaos, they found themselves in the rotunda, in the mysterious semi-gloom that filled its great, inverted bowl, the gloom which all the electric lights could not wholly dissipate, Holman quickly drew his hand from his pocket, pressed it into McCray’s, and said:

“Here, this belongs to--” Holman hesitated, as at a new point in ethics.

“To Baldwin,” said McCray. “Yes,” he went on wearily, “I’ll give it back to him.”

“To think of an old Has-been like me,” said Holman, “that hasn’t seen so much easy money in a coon’s age--and to go toting it around all day in his pocket! McCray, I’m afraid I’m getting too damned civic! I’ll be a reformer next, and back in politics!” He laughed again. “We’ll wait here a little. Baldwin’ll be along, and I’ll stay and see you safely through it.”

Baldwin was coming even then, and in a moment espied them there by the rail. He had recovered himself; the mask of years could not be lowered long; he came on leisurely, even pausing to light a cigarette. Holman hailed him:

“Lost out, didn’t you, George?”

“So it seems,” Baldwin replied. “When you do business on honor you must expect to be betrayed once in a while. It’s all in the game. But where do you come in, Jim--an old back number like you?”

“Does seem funny, doesn’t it? An old Has-been like me! Well, I saw a good thing coming off and I declared myself in. But McCray has a little business with you, and when you’re through with him, maybe I can make it plain to you.”

“Oh, I have no further business with Mr. McCray. I’m quite through with _him_.” And he turned his back deliberately on the young man.

McCray bit his lip, then remembered and became humble, and, putting forth his hand, said:

“Here--here’s your--money.”

Baldwin turned, took the money, thrust it carelessly into his pocket, and said:

“I can’t count it here, of course. I _presume_ it’s all there.”

“Yes,” said Holman, “it’s all there. Such work is done on honor, you know.”

“Thank you.” Baldwin delicately drew on his cigarette, blew the smoke upward. “But--that question, Jim, that one unanswered question. Where do you come in? What is there in this for you?”

Holman looked at him from top to toe with a long, cold, steady gaze.

“Well, George,” he began slowly, “for me there’s nothing in it, in the way you think--in the only terms you can think in, I mean. There is, however, in another way, a lot in it; a lot I haven’t dreamed of for years. All day, while arranging and planning this--the idea came to me suddenly this morning--I’ve been looking forward to this moment, thinking of what I’d say and what satisfaction I’d have in saying it. I thought that that satisfaction would pay me for all you’ve done--for all you’ve tried to do to this boy here--for all--no, damn it! not for all!--all hell and eternity couldn’t pay you for _all_ you’ve done--to other boys like him. But now, as I look at your face and study it, I see that you just couldn’t understand, that’s all; you have lost the ability to understand--and--well, George, that mere fact will pay you, so I won’t try to say it. I’ll say only good-by, and when you get home to that wife and those daughters of yours--just remember that Jim Holman asked you how you could look them in the eyes. Do that and maybe--you’ll understand.”

Baldwin stared at him; the mask shifted an instant, then, instantly restored, he turned away.

“He looks old, after all,” said Holman. “It has changed him, too....” He drew out his watch. “I can catch that midnight train on the Alton. I’m going to get out of here now; I’m going home to old Jasper. There’s a little woman there I want to see, a little woman and some children, and I’m going home--now, at last, to look them in the eyes.”

WHAT WILL BECOME OF ANNIE?

Spring had come back to Leadam Street. The moist cobblestones had steamed in the new sun all the afternoon; sparrows were sweeping up to the eaves, trailing strings and long straws after them; from the back porches of the flats were loud, awaking, tinny sounds, breaking the long silence. The clank of the cable-cars was borne over the roofs, clearly now in the damp, heavy atmosphere; from somewhere came the jingle of a street piano. Floating down the mild afternoon, came the deep, mellow note of some big propeller, loosing her winter moorings at last and rousing to greet the tug that would tow her out of the narrow river. Kelley, the policeman, strolled along the sidewalk, with his hands locked behind him, his nose in the air, sniffing eagerly and pleasurably. He had left off his skirted overcoat, and changed his clumsy cap for his helmet.

Annie had sat at her window all the afternoon, but, as the spring day wore toward its close, she began to realize that only the melancholy, and none of the promise of this first spring day had touched her. She had thrown open the window, to test the quality of the air. Now and then a warm breath came wandering in off the prairies, though when it met the cold, persistent wind from the lake, it hesitated, and timidly turned back. But Annie would not let herself doubt that the spring had come. She knew that in time the prairie wind would woo its way until it would be playing with the waves of the lake itself, the little waves that danced all day, blue and white, in the sunshine. And then the summer would come, and on Sunday afternoons Jimmy would take her out to Lincoln Park, and they would have their supper at Fisher’s Garden.

Leadam Street was dull enough on week days; on Sundays it was wholly mournful.

Once Annie saw a woman, with a shawl over her head and a tin bucket in her hand, go into Englehardt’s place, down the street. The woman went in furtively, and brushed hastily through the “Family Entrance,” though why could not be told. She went there nearly every hour of every day. Then Annie was left alone. She did not turn inward to the flat; that was too still and lonesome, and it was growing dark now, as the shadows gathered. She heard the strenuous gongs of the cable-cars over in State Street, and she could imagine the crowds, gay from their Sunday holiday, that filled them, clinging even to the running-boards. She might have gone out and been with them, as every one else in the street seemed to have done, but she would not for worlds have been away from home when Jimmy came. She heard the jingle of the street piano, too; she wished it would come down that way. She would gladly have emptied her purse for the Dago.

It was not unusual for Annie to be left alone, and she had grown used to it--almost; as used as a woman can--even the wife of a politician. Jimmy had told her that she must not worry at any of his absences; an alderman could never tell what might detain him. She had but a vague notion of the things that might detain an alderman, though she had no doubt of their importance. At times she thought she felt an intimate little charm in the importance that thus reflected itself upon her, but, nevertheless, her heart was never quite easy until she heard Jimmy’s step on the stair and his key in the latch, and then--joy came to the little flat, and stayed there, trembling and fearful, until he went away again. She had grown to be so dependent on Jimmy. Ever since she had been graduated from the convent his great, strong personality had stood between her and the world, so that, as her girlhood had merged into womanhood, she had hardly recognized the change, and she remained a girl still, alone but for him; he was her whole life. She had doubted his entrance into politics at first, just as she had doubted his going into the saloon business, though she scarcely understood either in their various significances. Father Daugherty had told her she was a fortunate girl to have Jimmy for a husband, and that had been enough. Her only objection was that politics seemed to keep Jimmy away from home oftener than the old work in the packing-house used to; she had trembled at it at times, and at times had grown a little frightened. His success in politics had pleased her, of course, and made her proud, but it could not have made her prouder of him than she had been. He was all-sufficient for her; no change could make any difference.... Without Jimmy, what could she have done? He had never been gone so long before; here it was Sunday evening; he had left at eleven o’clock Saturday morning; there was to be an extra session of the council Saturday night, an unusual thing, and she had not been surprised when she awoke to find that it was Sunday morning--and that Jimmy had not come.

The morning wore away, and she had made all the arrangements for the dinner she would have awaiting him. She had gone about lightly, happily, all the day, singing to herself, the gladness of the new spring in her. But, one by one, all the tasks she could think of were performed, even to drawing the water for his bath and laying out his clean linen. And then, when there was nothing else to do but wait, and nothing with which to beguile her waiting, she had taken her post at the window to watch for his cab.

The day waned, the Sunday drew wearily toward its close, as if it sighed for Monday, and the resumption of active life. The street grew stiller and stiller. She heard the voice of a newsboy, far out of his usual haunts, crying an extra. She could not distinguish the words in which he bawled his tidings, and she thought nothing of it. One of Jimmy’s few rules was that she was not to read the papers. But, when the heavy voice was gone, she found that it had had a strange, depressing effect upon her; she longed for Jimmy to come; the day had dragged itself by so slowly, and something of its somberness had stolen into her soul. She sighed, and leaned her chin on her arm; her back was growing tired, and beginning to ache. Then suddenly she heard horses’ hoofs, and the roll of a carriage in the street. She rose and leaned far out of the window to welcome him. The cab drew up; it stopped; the door opened. But the man who got out was not Jimmy. It was Father Daugherty. She knew him the instant she saw the fuzzy old high hat thrust out of the cab, and caught the greenish sheen of the shabby cassock that stood away from the fringe of white hair on his neck in such an ill-fitting, ill-becoming fashion. The old man did not look up, but tottered across the sidewalk.

Annie gasped, and scarce could move. In a moment more she heard the old steps on the stairs, the steps that for forty years had gone on so many errands for others, kind and merciful errands all of them, though for the most part sad. He was soon beside her, and she looked up into the gentle face that was so full of the woes of humanity. He had driven at once from the hospital in the cab they had sent to fetch him. Jimmy’s last words had been:

“What will become of Annie?”

The death of Alderman Jimmy Tiernan at any time would have been a shock. When death came to him by a pistol-ball it created what the newspapers, in the columns they were so glad to fill that Monday morning, defined as a profound sensation. This sensation was most profound in two circles in the city, outwardly unconnected, though bound by ties which it was the constant and earnest effort of both to keep secret and unknown.

The city council had had a special session on Saturday night, and had passed the new gas franchise. Alderman Tiernan had had charge of the fight. Malachi Nolan was away, and Baldwin had picked out Tiernan as the most trustworthy and able of those of the gang who were left behind. Jimmy had felt the compliment, and gloried in it. It was the biggest thing that had fallen to him in his political life, and he was determined that he would make all there was to be made out of the opportunity. Not in any base or sordid sense--that is, not wholly so; that would come, of course, but he felt beyond this a joy in his work; the satisfaction of mere success would be his chief reward, the glory and the professional pride he would feel. He relished the fight against the newspapers, against “public opinion,” whatever that was; against the element that called itself the “better” element.

He was fully determined that no step should be misplaced; he counted his men over and over again; he checked them off mentally, and it all turned out as he had said. Every one was present, every one voted, and voted “right,” when the roll was called; the new gas franchise was granted; Jimmy had delivered the goods.

It was natural that such a glorious victory should be celebrated, and the gang, when it assembled in Jimmy’s place, immediately after the session was over, could not restrain its impatience. The boys longed to have the fruits of the day’s work; with their wages they could celebrate with glad, care-free hearts. But Jimmy was of a Gaelic cunning. He would not jeopardize the victory at that stage by any indiscretion. He saw at a glance the mood the gang was in. He smiled, as he always smiled--and any one, to see his smile, must have loved him--but he shook his head.

“The drink’s in you, boys,” he said, “and you can’t trust your tongues. You’ll have to wait. Monday night you’ll be over. Then we’ll talk business.”

Subconsciously, they still were sober; in a strange dual mentality they saw the safety there was in his decision; and, in the paralysis of will his magnetism worked in them, they loved him the more for it. They remembered that it was just what Malachi would have done. And so, noisy and excited as they were, they applauded his sagacity. Then they gave themselves over unreservedly to their appetites. It was a famous night in the annals of the gang. Jimmy himself joined in the revelry. And in the calm, silent Sunday morning, with the new sunlight of spring glaring in his swollen, aching eyes, he found himself, with a companion, in a Clark Street chop house. Just as they were going to order breakfast, a young man came in, with a black look in his eyes. No one saw it then, though they all remembered it afterward. Jimmy greeted him as gaily as he greeted everybody, but the young man did not warm to Jimmy’s greeting. There were words, the quick rush of anger to Jimmy’s face, a blow, and the pistol shot. At first the newspapers were glad to trace some sinister connection between the franchise fight and the tragedy. Afterward, they said it was only some private grudge. No one dreamed that Jimmy Tiernan had an enemy on earth.

At the hospital, Jimmy opened his eyes, and on his face, grown very white, there was a smile again, the last of his winning smiles. His friends were with him, and they wept, unashamed. Then he rolled his head on his pillow, and spoke of Annie. The calm Sister of Charity pressed her rosary into his hand, and stooped to listen. They had just time to send for Father Daugherty.

Down in the ward, the sadness that had come to Leadam Street spread blackly. Many a man, and many a woman, and many a child, cried. The poor had lost a friend, and they would not soon forget him. In the long days of the distant winter they would think of him over and over. Every one in that ward was poor, though the reformers, condescending that way whenever Jimmy was up for reëlection, somehow never grasped the real significance of the fact. And it was a somber Monday around the city hall. Jimmy had been a man with a genius for friendship. The gang mourned him in a sadness that had added to it the remorse of a recent sobriety, but their grief, genuine as it was, had in it an evil bitterness their hearts would not have owned. They were restive and troubled. Whenever they got together in little groups, they read consternation in one another’s faces, and now and then they cursed the caution they had extolled on Saturday night. Besides these varied effects, Jimmy’s death, while it could not create a crisis in the market, nevertheless gave rise to nervous feelings in certain segments of financial circles. It was inevitable that financial and political circles should overlap and intersect each other in this matter, and there were conferences which seemed to reflect a sense of personal resentment at Jimmy for having been murdered so inopportunely. In the end, the financiers were peremptory with Baldwin. He must fix the thing some way. And he assured them that he would give the appointment of the administrator his immediate attention. Already, he said, he had a man in view who would be reasonable and practical. There were suggestions of strong-handed methods, but that was never George R. Baldwin’s way. He went out with his air of affability unimpaired. Meanwhile, political and financial circles could only wait and hope.

* * * * *

The excitement of the first few days following the tragedy kept Annie’s mind occupied; but, when the funeral was over, and she returned to her little flat, when the neighborly women had at last gone back to their homes and their interrupted duties, and the world to its work, Annie was left to face life alone. She could not adjust herself to the change, and fear and despair added their blackness to her grief. Father Daugherty knew how great a blow Jimmy’s death would be to her, and, though he gave what comfort he could, he left her grief to time. He did not belong to the preaching orders. But, as he pondered in his wise old head, he shrewdly guessed that the careless Jimmy would hardly have made provision against anything so far from his thoughts as death, and he perceived that if Annie were to be protected from a future with which she, alone and unaided, would hardly have the capacity to deal, some one must act.

Long ago might Father Daugherty have celebrated his silver jubilee as pastor of St. Patrick’s, but he was not the man for celebrations. The parish was one big family to him, and he knew the joys and sorrows, the little hopes and pathetic ambitions of every one in it. The sorrows of his children he bore in his own heart; they had wrought their complex and tragic tale in his face. The joys he left them to taste alone; but he found too much sorrow to have time for joy. During all those years, he had given himself unsparingly; if it was all he had to give, it was the most precious thing he could have given--a daily sacrifice that exhausted a temperament keenly sensitive and sympathetic. So he had grown old and white before his time. Many a man had he kept straight when times were hard and the right to work denied him; many a widow had he saved from the wiles of the claim-agent. The corporations and the lawyers hated him.

And so, on Monday morning, the clerks of the probate court had scarcely had time to yawn reluctantly before beginning a new week’s work, when Father Daugherty appeared to file Annie’s waiver of her own right to be appointed administratrix of the estate of James Tiernan, deceased, with an application for the appointment, instead, of Francis Daugherty as administrator.

“He must keep a set of blanks,” whispered one clerk to another.

As Father Daugherty went about his inventory, he saw that the result would be what he had expected. Jimmy had left no estate, no insurance, nothing but the saloon. And that, with Jimmy dead, was nothing, for its value lay all in Jimmy’s personality and the importance of his position in politics. The fixtures would hardly pay for the burying of him. When the debts the law prefers had been paid, Annie would have scarce a penny. The world might preserve a respectful and sympathetic attitude during the few exciting days when it was paying its last conventional tributes to the dead man, but it kept itemized accounts meanwhile, and it could not long pretend to have forgotten material things. It would present its bills, and they must be paid. Annie would have hardly a cent to meet them with. And Father Daugherty knew, even if Annie did not know, what the world would do then.

Yet he smiled, though he shook his head, as he thought of the free-handed, indiscriminating generosity that had been akin to the improvidence of Jimmy’s nature. And now he had but one more duty to perform; the safe in Jimmy’s saloon had not been opened. No one, not even the bartender, knew the combination, and Father Daugherty had a locksmith to drill the lock. The gang had attended Jimmy’s funeral in black neckties, and had mourned him sincerely, but, now that he was buried, their attitude became the common worldly attitude, with perhaps a little more than the usual aggressiveness in it. They were in a quandary as to the bundle in the new gas franchise, and many conferences with Baldwin had nerved them to desperate expedients. So it was on Baldwin’s advice that they determined to be represented at the opening of the safe. Two of the number were detailed to this duty, McQuirk of the Ninth, and Bretzenger of the Twenty-fourth. When they made their demand on Father Daugherty, explaining that they came in their capacity as Jimmy’s nearest friends, he assented with a readiness that relieved them both, and delighted Bretzenger, though McQuirk, who knew Father Daugherty better than his colleague did, was fearful and suspicious. Father Daugherty said that he had thought of having witnesses, and they would serve as well as any. It was very kind of them.

The priest and the two aldermen waited in the saloon for two hours while the locksmith drilled away silently. The street door was closed; the crape still hung from the handle that had never gone unlatched so long at a time before, the curtains were drawn, and outside the crowds for ever shuffled by on the sidewalk, all oblivious to the little drama of hopes and fears that was unfolding its cross-purposes within. The saloon was dark, and an electric bulb glowed to shed light for the locksmith. The two aldermen puffed their cigars in silence, save for an occasional whisper, one with another. Father Daugherty’s gaunt form leaned against the dusty bar, strangely out of keeping with such a scene, though the saloons in his parish knew him, especially on Saturday nights, when he conducted little raids of his own, and turned his prisoners over to their wives. Now his weary visage was relaxed in patient waiting. At last the locksmith dropped his tools, and said:

“There!”

The thick steel doors swung out on their noiseless hinges. The two aldermen sprang to the side of the safe. The priest drew near slowly, but his little eyes were turned on the aldermen, and they fell back a pace. Then the priest’s long figure sank to a kneeling posture, and he peered into the safe. There was nothing in view. It was strangely empty, for a safe of its monstrous size and mystery, and the tenacity of its combination. He thrust in his hand and fumbled through all its hollow interior, and then he drew forth--a soiled linen collar! It was ludicrous, and for once he laughed, a little laugh. There was not a ledger, not a book.

“He kept no accounts, your riverence,” said McQuirk.

“It was just like him,” said Father Daugherty. But he kept on with his search. And, when he opened the little drawer of maplewood, he found a parcel, done snugly up in thick brown paper. He tore it open, and there swelled into his sight packages of bank-notes almost bursting in their yellow paper straps. The bills were new, and as freshly green as the spring itself; more tempting thus, some way, to the reluctant conscience. The two aldermen bent over the black, stooping figure of the priest, their eyes fixed on the money. There it was at last, the bundle itself, the price of, or a part of the price of the new gas franchise. The priest straightened painfully, and got to his feet. He held the bundle in his thin fingers, and glanced at his witnesses, with a keen and curious eye. They met his gaze, expectant, eager, drawing dry, hot breaths. Involuntarily, they extended their hands. Father Daugherty looked at them, and a little twinkle of amusement showed in the eyes that were wontedly so mild and sad.

“Would you?” he said.

The two aldermen hastily raised their hands, and together, in strange unison, wiped their brows. The room had suddenly grown hot for them, and their brows were wet, though Father Daugherty was cool and composed, as he ever was. Yet they remembered; they could not so easily give up; it was theirs by every right. They could have cursed Jimmy just then for his excessive caution. It was McQuirk’s quick mind that thought first.

“Maybe there’s writing,” he said.

Father Daugherty looked long and thoroughly, running his thin hand deep into pigeon-holes and back into the partitions, until the sleeves of his shabby coat were pushed far up his lean wrist.

“Not a scrap,” he said.

“Then, maybe--” But McQuirk drew Bretzenger away, and they went into the darkness that lay thick as dust in the back of the long room. Meanwhile, Father Daugherty searched the safe through and through. He found nothing more. The strong-box had had but one purpose, and it had served it well. Then slowly, painfully, with the clumsy, unaccustomed fingers that had had small chance to count money, he turned the packages over, counting them carefully, wetting his trembling fingers now and then. The man who had drilled the safe stood looking on, with eyes that widened more and more.

“How much is there, Father?” he said, at length. He extended a grimy forefinger hesitatingly, as if to touch the package the priest balanced on his palm. But he did not touch it, any more than if it had been something sacred in that clean, sacerdotal hand.

“Fifty thousand,” the priest answered. His voice was a trifle husky.

“Fifty thousand!” the man exclaimed. And then he added, in awe: “Dollars! Doesn’t look like that much, does it?”

“No,” Father Daugherty answered. He had been a little surprised himself. There was something disappointing in the size of the package. He had never seen so much money before, and its tremendous power, its tremendous power for evil, as he suddenly thought, was concentrated in a compass so small that the mind could but slowly wheel about to the new conception. The locksmith spoke.

“Might I--might I--hold it a second--in my own hand?” he said.

The priest gave the bundle into the hand hardened by so much honest toil. The man held it, heaving it up and down incredulously, testing its weight. Then he gave it back.

“Thanks,” he said, and sighed.

The two aldermen had returned from their little conference.

“Your riverence,” began McQuirk hesitatingly, “might we have a word with you--in private?” He looked suspiciously at the workman. The priest went with them a little way apart.

“We know about that,” McQuirk pointed to the bundle.

“You do, do you?” said the priest sharply.

“Yes, Father,” Bretzenger said. “It’s--it’s--well, it belongs to the company, sir.”

“What company?”

“Well, you know, the new ga--ah, that is, Mr. Baldwin, the lawyer. You know him?”

“George R.?” asked Father Daugherty.

“Yes, your riverence,” said both men hopefully. “It should go back to him.”

The priest looked at them, and they caught again that amused expression in his face. It put them ill at ease, and it roused resentment in Bretzenger, who felt that this calm priest could read him too well.

“None of it belongs to you, then, I suppose?” observed Father Daugherty.

“Ah, well--of course,” McQuirk urged, and his tone showed that he was trying, in his crude way, to impress the priest with an honest disinterestedness. “Of course, Jimmy was entitled to his piece.”

“Sure!” Bretzenger said, swelling with the little virtue he had found to help him.

“But you say it ought to go back to Baldwin, eh?”

“That’s what we think, sir,” they chimed.

“Well, he can come and identify it,” said Father Daugherty. He slowly wrapped the package up, and, unbuttoning his long, rusty coat a little way down from the throat, stuffed the money into an inner pocket. The deed seemed to madden Bretzenger, and he moved a step forward. The two others saw his motion. The priest did not move, but he turned a look on them, and raised his hand, and McQuirk quailed, a superstitious fear in his eyes. He stiffened his arm before Bretzenger, and stayed him. And then the priest stepped quietly to the safe, and pushed its door to with an arm that seemed too weak and frail to stir the heavy steel.

“It looks to me, Michael,” he was saying gently, as if addressing McQuirk alone, “like personal property, and, as I’m the administrator, I suppose I’ll have to take charge of it. If any beside our dead friend own it, let them come forward and prove their claim, and identify their property in open court.”

Father Daugherty reported the whole affair to the probate court, and the judge when the time for filing claims had elapsed, and he had waited for the particular claim he knew would not be presented, ordered a distribution of the property. Then Father Daugherty went to the flat to see Annie, bearing the bundle, the original bundle, the bundle that had bought the new gas franchise. Something of the dramatic quality in the situation had got into the old priest’s heart. He knew that Annie would appreciate it all so much better if she could see the fortune, and feel it, and he would let her do so for an instant before he put it away in the safety deposit vaults to await opportunity for its investment.

She looked at it long and long, lying there in the lap of her black gown. She could not grasp the amount, though the old priest, leaning forward, with the enthusiasm of a boy shining once more, after so many years, in his hollow eyes, said over and over:

“Look at it, my child! Feel it! It’s fifty thousand dollars! And it’s all yours!”

She patted it, tenderly and affectionately, with a soft and reminiscent caress, so that the priest knew that it was not for anything that package of money might hold for her in a material way, then or afterward, but rather for what it gave back for a moment to her desolated heart. And the priest was glad of that, and thereafter silent. He had had doubts. He would feel better when the money had passed out of his hands, and he sometimes questioned whether it would ever do good in any one’s hands. But he had a sense of humor, too, a grim sense in this instance, when he thought of certain political and financial circles, even if he did dust his thin hands carefully with his spotless handkerchief when he laid the money down.

Annie’s eyes had filled with the ready tears that welled to their sweeping, black lashes, and trembled there as she raised her eyes to him.

“Ah, Father,” she said, “he was so, _so_ good to me, always--and so kind! And see how thoughtful he was--to leave me all this! Oh, Jimmy, my poor Jimmy!”

And she rocked forward, like an old woman, and wept.

THE VINDICATION OF HENDERSON OF GREENE

Baldwin, the lobbyist, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and swaying with the train as it swung out on to the rocky ledge that paves the Valley of the Desplaines, contemplatively cut the end from a fresh cigar and said:

“But I’m not so sure, after all. My experience with the Bailey bill shook my faith in that proposition.”

The two other men in the salon looked up with startled eyes.

Baldwin had been driven over from his Michigan Avenue home and caught the Alton Limited when it made the station stop at Twenty-third Street, where he boarded the last of its curtained Pullmans. This coach was the political institution known to Illinois statesmanship as the Springfield sleeper, and Baldwin and his two companions, Jennings, the secretary of state, and Denny Healy, a canal commissioner, had the capsulated coziness of its smoking compartment all to themselves. Down by Dwight they had fallen into a desultory discussion of the old question as to whether or not every man has his price. The question could hardly interest these men long, for, after many years’ constant contemplation, under the gray dome of the state house, of the weaknesses of men, they had come to an acceptance of the doctrine now grown frank enough to have no lingering taint of cynicism. Jennings, indeed, had just dismissed the subject by declaring:

“All men aire fer sale, an’ most of ’em damn cheap.”

And so the subject might have lapsed had it not been for Baldwin’s heterodoxy. That George R. Baldwin of all men should doubt the first maxim of their profession was beyond comprehension. Though he played his part in life with a suite of law offices in a skyscraper as a background, his serious business was lobbying bills through the legislature. His friends, who were many, boasted that he always stood by them, right or wrong. Which he did, indeed, and as they were generally wrong, the value of such friendship, or his opinions on practical politics, could hardly be overestimated. The day had been a hot one in Chicago, but now a cold draft of smoky air was sucking in through the narrow window-screen, on which the cinders hailed as the Limited plunged southward.