Chapter IV: Part 4

“Yes,” answered Mr. Meredith, and then, when the governor had motioned them to take seats, and Jamie had worked and wiggled himself away back into a deep leather chair, with his legs and feet sticking straight out in front of him, Mr. Meredith told the governor the whole story. When he had done, the governor rose and went over to where Jamie sat in the big chair, his arms stretched along the chair’s arms.

Jamie would have wriggled out of the chair, but he had not time to do so. And then, as he looked up into the grave, kind face, His Excellency, speaking very seriously, said:

“My boy, you have done the people of Chicago and the people of Illinois a great service--a service you will understand some day--and now, on their behalf, I wish to thank you for it.”

MACOCHEE’S FIRST CAMPAIGN FUND

Squire Goddard had been renominated as mayor of Macochee for the fifth time, and for three weeks had played his customary checker games with the firemen in the town hall, serene in the conviction that he could not fail of reëlection. Then suddenly he awakened to the fact that he had been the victim of a gum-shoe campaign. Election was but a week off, and something had to be done. So they raised a campaign fund. Now, Macochee, in that day, had never had a campaign fund. The state committee never put any money into Gordon County, even in a presidential year. The Republicans didn’t have to, and the Democrats knew better. The local candidates, of course, had little expenses of their own--for cigars, for carriages when there were township meetings out in the little red school-house, for printing the tickets (in the days before we had the Australian ballot), and for Ganson’s hack to use at the polls on election day, but they were stingy in these things. Macochee and Gordon County always went right, anyhow. Joe Boyle, Captain Bishop, Major Turner, old Bill Williams and John Ernest had been parceling the fat offices in the court-house among themselves ever since the war, and all a county convention ever had to do was to renominate the old ticket, and it went through in November without a scratch. Sometimes, because of curious constitutional prejudices against a county treasurer succeeding himself, they had to run Captain Bishop for county clerk, and let old Bill Williams have the treasury, but it only meant, after all, changing the combination a little, and beyond the trouble of moving some favorite old desk chairs, which had molded themselves to rheumatic backs, from one side of the court-house to the other, the ring remained undisturbed in that ancient, life-giving pile. Of course they had to find a new candidate for prosecuting attorney every six years, but, fortunately, the crop of young lawyers is one that never fails, whatever party is in power down in Washington.

And so, among a virgin electorate, the advent of a campaign fund was an impressive event. The people felt that they had entered upon a new era in their political life, just as they did when the council bought the new fire apparatus and began to agitate the question of bonding the town for water-works--a proposition, by the way, upon which the leading citizens sat down quickly enough, because it meant taxes--while the line of loafers leaning against the court-house fence increased, waiting for the distribution. They had vague notions about a campaign fund in Macochee. The amount was reputed to be five hundred dollars, and, technically, it was in the custody of the court-house ring, but as they had never had a campaign fund to disburse before, and could not decide how to proceed, it was temporarily locked in the county treasurer’s vault, where, not being interest on the public moneys, it was comparatively safe. Meanwhile they were sticking closer than brothers. They would not allow one of their number out of their sight. They went to their meals in relays, and held night sessions in the treasury, losing sleep and rest, so that all their latent diseases, rheumatics, phthisis, lumbago, gravel, and so on, were aggravated. They became cross, jealous and suspicious, full of envy, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, back-biters, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things. They swore as they had not sworn since the battle of Port Republic. They cursed each other, they cursed Horace Goddard, and when these subjects failed, they cursed young Halliday.

Young Halliday was at the bottom of all the deviltry in Macochee. He had not been out of Harvard a month before all the good people in the town were wagging their heads sadly and saying: “Tsck! Tsck! Tsck!” He parted his hair in the middle. He brought home a habit of dropping his r’s, and of pronouncing his a’s with a broad accent, as, for instance, when he said “rawther;” he smoked cigarettes, puffed a heavy brier pipe, wore red neckties and knickerbockers, and he drank beer. And he did something else, something that struck the moral fiber of the town on the raw. He changed his politics and became a Democrat!

Being a Democrat in Macochee is like being a Republican in Alabama. There are hardly enough Democrats in Macochee--outside of the fifth ward, which is Irish--to hold primaries, and they always have mass conventions to hide their political nakedness. Hank Defrees, the only Democratic lawyer in Macochee, insisted that conventions were necessary in order to keep up the party organization. He liked to go over to Columbus every two years as delegate to the state convention. It afforded him an outing and a chance at the whisky in the Neil House. Besides, it is something to go to the state convention with the solid vote of any county, even Gordon, in your vest pocket. The local Democrats humored Hank. He had been their only available timber for Common Pleas judge and prosecuting attorney, and he had been sacrificed on the altar of his party times enough, surely, to entitle him to whatever there was in sight.

But George Halliday had been reared a Republican. His father had been an Abolitionist, the friend of Salmon P. Chase, and his home had been known in its time as one of the stations of the underground railway. He had voted for John C. Fremont, and he had voted a straight Republican ticket ever since. George had responded to these home influences sympathetically, and had given early promise of that vital interest in politics for which Ohio mothers ardently look in their sons. His first experience in politics was in 1876, when he took an active part in the Hayes-Tilden campaign, crying after the little Catholic boys from the parochial school, on his homeward way at evening:

“Fried rats and pickled cats,
Are good enough for Democrats.”

And once he marched with a party of his playmates in a torchlight procession, under a transparency which announced exultantly:

“Hurrah for Hayes! He’s the man!
If we can’t vote, our daddies can!”

That was a fine campaign, extending far beyond autumn, and during the long winter evenings he had been allowed to sit up, sometimes until after nine o’clock, to hear his father read in the Cincinnati _Gazette_, of the bloody deeds of the Ku-Klux Klan. The strange, cabalistic words froze the very blood in his veins. At night he would hear the drumming of horses’ hoofs, and see white-sheeted forms galloping by in the gloom. Sometimes they halted and looked at him through big black eyeholes.

These were the Ku-Klux, and he was afraid, until the evening his father came home radiant, sat down to the supper table with a smile that gave a fine cheer to the room and said:

“Well, we got Hayes in.”

Later, when he was in the high school, he became a member of the Blaine and Logan marching club, wore a red oilcloth cape and carried a torch. As he trudged along Macochee’s streets, strangely unfamiliar in the darkness, breathing the smoke of the flaring torches, intoxicated by the tired throbbing of the bass drum, he would shout in unison with the hoarse voices of excited men:

“Blaine--Blaine,
James--G.--Blaine!”

Then the procession, debouching into the Square, was swallowed up by the crowd; nothing remained of it but extinguished reeking torches scattered here and there among the thousands of restless heads. George wriggled his way up to the festooned band stand, he saw the pale speakers and the countless vice-presidents--his father was one of the vice-presidents--and he listened to the inspiring song of the Glee Club:

“Dinna ye hear the slogan,
Jimmy Blaine and Johnny Logan?
The plumed knight and warrior bold
Are bound to gain the day.
The golden gates are creaking
While the Yankee boys are speaking,
And the Johnnies are retreating,
For we’re bound to gain the day.”

His eyes had been blurred by the tears, his heart had ached with the secret pain of patriotism. He had registered sweet vows; he never could forget--and yet, now, just as his education was complete and he was ready to enter upon his career, just as the new sign of the new firm of Halliday and Halliday, attorneys-at-law, was swinging at the foot of the stairs in the People’s National Bank block, he had turned Democrat. It was a sore subject at home. He and his father no longer discussed the tariff question. Mrs. Halliday said it made her nervous, as it might anybody.

That winter Halliday did nothing more serious than to attend a Catholic fair in Father Hennessey’s church, and make a speech awarding the prize some one had won in the raffle. But in the spring, Hank Defrees, loafing around among the boys, told them the thing to do was to nominate George for mayor on the Democratic ticket, and it was done. When old Horace Goddard heard of the nomination, he chuckled until his great belly shook, and actually invited Captain Bishop and the rest of the boys, who had gathered at the post-office to wait for the seven o’clock mail, around to Cramer’s drug store to have a drink. The cronies all laughed as they drank--though they said, with soberness, that they felt sorry for old Judge Halliday himself.

It was a cruel thing to do, and it was young Halliday’s idea alone. He was a youth with aspirations, and he saw in the nomination something more than the mere compliment Hank Defrees had intended. Therefore Squire Goddard’s checker game was interrupted by a black-coated delegation of Protestant clergymen. It was a Monday morning, and they must have come straight from preachers’ meeting with their impudent questions. They wanted to know whether or not it was true that the liquor laws had not been enforced, and how he stood on the saloon question generally. The old squire puffed profusely and made promises. The next day a committee of saloon-keepers was called. The old man blew out his varicose cheeks and sputtered:

“I’ve ran for mayor o’ this ’ere town now goin’ on five times, and I’m dog _damned_ if I ever heerd such a lot o’ fool questions before!”

The next day it was rumored that Father Hennessey had told his parishioners that Squire Goddard could not be trusted. Then the storm broke. The W. C. T. U. held a mass meeting and issued an appeal to save the boys. That night husbands were put on the rack of domestic inquisition. They had it pointed out to them that there was a drunkard in every fifth family--statistics proved it--and parents didn’t want their boys exposed any longer to such temptations. No one knew where the statistical lightning was going to strike.

“Suppose you want to intrust the regulation of the rum power to the Democrats, do you?” sneered the husbands, with ironical grunts, thereby moving the previous question and closing the debate. Nevertheless, after that the mayor was kept busy explaining, which is the direst necessity that can befall a candidate. He encountered Halliday in the Square one day, and blazed forth:

“You’re gittin’ too smart ’round this town all to onct, young feller. You know more’n your pap a’ready, an’ if he can’t l’arn ye no respec’ fer yer elders, I will.” He shook a palsied fist at the youth, as he added, in a tone almost pitiable: “An’ I’ll tell him jest what you done, too.”

Defeat might have killed the old man, and the campaign was beginning to tell on him. But when they raised the fund, it was as a hot and sweetened toddy to warm the cockles of his heart. While he had no adequate concept of it, and while the manner of its working was a mystery to him, he did not doubt its efficacy. He felt safe. Also, as the subject of the only campaign fund Gordon County had ever known, he felt a supreme importance, which swelled out his chest and filled him with a ripe content. He even found himself taking the opposition with some zest, now that it was certain to be non-effective. Three days more, thought the squire, and it would be all over. He imagined some sort of civic triumph for himself. He dreamed of a serenade by the Macochee Silver Cornet Band, in the evening, under the shade of the pine trees about his home. He dramatized himself as bowing and smiling on the front porch. He would go out just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose, and the Cincinnati paper in his hand. It would be thus more spontaneous, more democratic. Mandy would stand behind him, holding the lamp high. The front picket fence would be black with people. He wondered if there would be enough of the campaign fund left to provide the cake she must offer the band boys, and whether a part of its office was to meet such contingencies. So the old squire sat in his old chair, the split bottom of which had been worn shiny years ago, and smoked his old pipe, with sharp, dry puffs of contentment.

The squire looked forward to disbursing the fund himself, but the court-house ring still clung to it in indecision. Friday morning, when they met, election was but three days off, and the ring agreed that they must get down to business. Major Turner said, with profound wisdom, that money could be used to best advantage in the saloons. Charley Bassett--he was prosecuting attorney then--asked, with a lawyer’s passion for fine distinctions, in what sense the major employed the word “used.” Before the major could reply--he had knit his brows and was whittling a fresh chew from his plug, to irrigate his thought--old Bill Williams said:

“No, that won’t do; we must use it to get out the vote.”

“Well,” said Bassett, who always annoyed the old fellows with his young haggling, “how’ll you get out the vote?”

The auditor, with an effort at something definite, said:

“Why, we must have organization--that’s what wins in elections these days.” He shook his head, in a keen triumph, for the phrase pleased him, as phrases do please politicians. He began to conceive himself--gladly, as a great political leader, as an organizer of victory. “Organization, that’s the word,” he persisted, and then, growing bolder, he brought his fist down on his fat knee, and plunged on heedlessly into detail.

“You just give me that fund,” he said, “and I’ll--I’ll show you,” he brought up lamely.

“Well, tell us how you’d spend it,” insisted Bassett. “What’d you buy first? Remember, election’s only next Tuesday.”

“Why, why,” hesitated Williams, “I’d spend it gittin’ out the vote. I’d git kerriages, and have signs painted to hang on the horses, readin’,” and he lined the imaginary letters on the rough palm of his left hand with the gnarled forefinger of his right, “‘Republican City Committee--Vote for Goddard.’”

The old squire, tickled with the sound of the last legend, broke in with:

“You’ve got the idee, Billy.”

“Course,” said Williams, expanding more and more, “I seen ’em that way when I was in Columbus onct, on ’lection day. Get about five good two-horse kerriages--”

But the captious Bassett, remembering that old Bill’s son-in-law, Hi Wellman, kept the livery stable, interrupted him by saying:

“Oh, that wouldn’t cost more’n twenty dollars, and, anyway, we can use our own buggies, same as we’ve always done.”

Captain Bishop, who had been carefully combing his whiskers with his fingers, then advanced his scheme.

“Seems to me,” he said, “that we’d ought to have a campaign committee, with a treasur’ and a finance committee, and let the treasur’ pay out only on warrants drawed by the finance committee--then there’d be no question.”

“No, there’d be no question,” said Bassett cynically, “there’d be no question. And the finance committee could draw warrants for their own arrest, while they’re about it.”

The ring gasped, and though the captain tried to say something about business methods, they were all silent for a long time, chewing their tobacco gravely and thoughtfully, until the squire nervously ventured to ask:

“But what do you think we’d best spend it fer?”

“Votes,” said Bassett laconically.

“That’s surely what we want,” said Judge Ernest, speaking for the first time. The old men in the circle wheeled toward the probate judge. They had not been surprised at what Bassett said, for he never attended service, and was reputed to be a free-thinker, but Judge Ernest was a pillar in the church.

“Why, John,” said Major Turner, “you don’t mean to say you’d buy votes?”

“Didn’t say I would, did I?” snapped the old man, wriggling uneasily in his Delaware chair. “I meant that the money ought to be used so as to produce votes.”

“Exactly,” assented Bassett.

“And if it don’t do that,” the judge went on, “why we’d ought to give it back to them as contributed.” The judge offered this solution with a new hope dawning in his heart, for he had mourned over the ten dollars he had invested in the fund. A murmur of approval ran around the ring, and the old squire, fearing the dissolution of the fund, was the only one in the room whose face did not glow.

“I’ll tell you, boys,” said Joe Bogle, “we might whack her up among the crowd and everybody do the best they can with their share.”

“That’s what I call a grand su’gestion,” said Judge Ernest, shaking his head approvingly.

But Bassett shook his head the other way. “No,” he said, “that won’t do, we want some system in this thing. It ought to be changed into dollar bills and then given to the central committeemen to use in their wards election day. Of course we won’t need so much in the strong Republican wards--we’ll put it out in Lighttown and down in Gooseville among the niggers, and some of it across the tracks among the boys in the shops--that’s where it’ll tell.”

But the ring stubbornly opposed the idea of letting that pile of money go out of its hands. They put only young men on the city committee, and the honor and importance were enough for them. They would be wanting office next.

The old squire voiced the protest.

“’Pears to me,” he whined, “that as I’m runnin’, I’d ought to have a leetle of it fer my own expenses on ’lection day. I’ve been givin’ of my services to the party now fer nigh on to twenty year, not countin’ my term in the army, and it’s expensive, ’specially with that young Halliday carryin’ on the way he is--”

“No one never made up a fund for none of us, Hod Goddard,” chorused the old fellows.

“Yes, and there’s others on the ticket besides you,” interrupted Bassett. “Let each candidate spend his own money if he wants to. You hain’t paid your assessment yet, anyhow.”

“But I’m the head o’ the ticket,” stammered the squire, his red face deepening to purple.

The booming of the town clock in the court-house tower startled the ring, and the county officials glanced at their big silver watches. They were already half an hour late for their dinners.

“And my wife told me to fetch home some meat,” said Bassett, forgetting all else as he seized his hat.

And so the conference broke up. Saturday night came, they had no solution, and, like those that do business in great waters, were at their wits’ end.

Sunday morning a report spread through the town that caused the ring to take heart of grace. It was a report of serious defections in Halliday’s ranks. Jerry Sullivan, Scotty Gordon, old man Garwood, Rice Murrell and even Hank Defrees had been going about town all Saturday afternoon and evening, and everywhere they went they told people it was no use--Halliday couldn’t be elected. He might have been two weeks ago, if he had acted differently, but now--they shook their heads. They couldn’t stand for him any more--he needn’t look to them for support--he hadn’t treated them right--they had been fools to expect anything from such a dude. Five hundred dollars, they said, judiciously used, would settle his hash. They wished they had the management of it, they would revenge themselves for his slights and insults. And these were representative men, even if their portraits had not been made in half-tone for the _History of Gordon County_.

Jerry Sullivan lived on the hill behind the priest’s house, and was the “darlint” of all the old women in Lighttown. He was a lad of power in the Fifth Ward. Scotty Gordon lived across the tracks in the Second Ward and worked in the shops. Old man Garwood lived just at the edge of town, on the Blue Jacket road, in the Fourth Ward, and Rice Murrell, the Reverend Rice Murrell, the pastor of the A. M. E. church--who had turned Democrat when they took the janitorship of the court-house away from him--could do more with the colored voters down in Gooseville than any man, save Judge Halliday, and he was out of politics. Hank Defrees, of course, who still shivered under the fringe of a ragged garment of respectability by clinging to a heavily mortgaged home far out on Scioto Street, where the better element of the town began to thin out into social mediocrity, stood for the aristocratic Third Ward, with its normal Republican majority of two hundred and eleven. The Democrats had never been able to make up a ward delegation in the Third, and Defrees for years and years had sat in all city and county conventions very much at large.

Such a defection, on the eve of election, was serious, as every one recognized. Just after dinner, on Sunday, Judge Halliday, who had disclaimed all interest in the campaign, beckoned his son into the parlor, darkened for secrets, and said to him in a whisper that Mrs. Halliday plainly heard over the banister of the staircase in the hall:

“Did you know that Hank Defrees and that Sullivan boy and Gordon and old man Garwood, and even Rice Murrell, are around working against you?”

George gasped with surprise.

“And did you know,” the father whispered on, “that the Republicans have raised a corruption fund--five hundred dollars, I understand?”

“Yes, I heard that,” said George, “must be getting desperate, you fellows, eh?”

“Now, my son,” said the judge, with brows lowered, “you know I would have absolutely nothing to do with such a business as that. You know my opinions on such things too well.”

“Oh, of course, father,” said the boy, “that’s all right. I know you wouldn’t countenance it--”

“And I was just going to say,” the elder man continued, “that while I do not agree with you, and while I would not vote for you--at least, I do not think I would--I was just going to say that if you need any money yourself, to meet any of the--ah--legitimate expenses of your campaign, why, just call on me.”

The boy grasped his father’s hand, and when he could speak, he said:

“Thank you, father, thank you, but not now--it isn’t worth it--but I’ll see what’s the matter with these Indians, anyway.”

George went to his offices, over the People’s National Bank and waited an hour in the rear room, a dark and dingy room, with the dust of a country law office deep on everything, and one ray of sunlight scrambling in through the heavy shutters from the alley. Then one after another, up the worn and splintered stairs with tin signs of insurance agents and notaries public on every step, five men clambered. They were grinning when they entered the room, grinning and standing about awkwardly, all save Hank Defrees, who was solemn and imponderable, chewing his tobacco as gravely as if he were making an appearance in court.

“Well,” said George, standing in the middle of the floor, “anything happened?”

The men all looked at one another, hesitating to speak, but finally Scotty Gordon said:

“Happened! Well, I guess yes.”

“What?” queried George.

“Well,” he began, “now I done it, and last night old Bill Williams hunted me up in Jake Fogarty’s saloon, and, well, he offered me fifty dollars to use if I wanted it.”

“Say,” Jerry Sullivan broke in--“Captain Bishop offered me seventy-five.”

“And didn’t you take it?”

“Why, no,” said Jerry.

“What did you tell him?”

The lad’s eyes twinkled.

“I told him,” he answered slowly, “that it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket.”

“Good for you,” said George. “And now, Mr. Garwood?”

“Well,” said the old man, “don’t know as I got much to say. Major Turner, though, ’as ’round to my house this morning, an’--Well, he offered me fifty dollars if I felt the way I had been reported, and thought I could use it.”

“Judge,” said George, turning to Defrees, “it’s up to you.”

The old lawyer took his tobacco in his fist and chucked it away. “Joe Bogle,” he said, “told me he knew where there’s a hundred for me if I could do any good with it.”

“And, doctor,” said Halliday, facing around to the Reverend Mr. Murrell, who stood solemn in his black garments and white tie, “what happened to you?”

The old negro glanced all around him cautiously and even craned his neck to peer into the room beyond.

“Well, suh,” he began, “Judge Ernest ’as out this mornin’ to hyah me preach, an’ aftah service was ovah, he drawed me to one side, and ’gin to talk politics. He ast me how I felt towa’ds you all, Mistuh Halliday, an’--Ah didn’ like to say it--but you done tol’ me, ’membah.”

“That’s right,” said George, urging the parson out of his hesitation, “you made it strong, I hope.”

“Wellum, Ah tol’ the judge that Ah wasn’ pow’ful strong on you any moah, sense, Ah said, you all hadn’t felt ’sposed to help us ’ith the subscription fo’ the new roof on ouah chu’ch.”

“That was clever,” said George, “damned clever--I beg your pardon.” The old negro’s eyes had widened till their whites showed, and he had raised his hands, holding up his yellow palms before George. “But go on.”

“Well, suh, the jedge ’as al’ays had an interest in ouah spiritual welfare, an’ so he ’lowed we’d ought to be holpen out some.” The old man paused and swallowed ceremoniously. “An’ so, gen’lemen, he offered me a hundred an’ fifty dollahs.”

The dark eyes of the old man shone with a strange new luster.

“What did you say?”

“Well, suh,” the preacher hesitated, “Ah took it.”

George brought his hand down on the parson’s shoulder with a heavy slap and he laughed. “Good, Bishop, good.”

They counted the money out on the table--exactly four hundred and ninety dollars, the first campaign fund Macochee had ever known. Then they laughed and laughed and laughed.

When Halliday had laid his plans for the morrow’s battle before his companions, he leaned back in his chair and said, turning to the Reverend Rice Murrell:

“I don’t suppose, Bishop, that you approve of the use of money in politics, do you?”

“No, _suh_,” the old preacher replied, with a smart gravity, “an’ somepin’ done tol’ me, yist’day, when the jedge come to see me, that it ’as jus’ providential that this much o’ that filthy lucah ’as removed from corruptin’ ouah ’lections by bein’ placed in mah han’s.” His rolling eyes bulged and he dribbled at the mouth as he fingered the pile of bills.

“Well,” said George, “don’t put too big a roof on the church, and remember--Gooseville’s going to vote to-morrow.”

“Oh, nevah you feah ’bout Gooseville, mah brothah--she’ll be votin’ early an’ of’en to-morrah, an’ she’ll vote right.”

George Halliday was mayor of Macochee but one term. That is a trick that has been played once in every town in this free republic--but it can never be played twice.

A SECRET OF STATE

Over at the executive mansion, Governor Chatham and his private secretary were at dinner when the telegram came. The governor took the yellow envelope from the butler’s tray and tore it open. When he had read the message he passed it over without a word to Gilman. The private secretary’s eyes widened as he read it, and he exclaimed:

“Jim Lockhart dead!”

William, the black butler, stirred uneasily. The governor bent forward, and lifted his coffee to his lips. Gilman laid the despatch beside his plate, and, still looking at it, began to pinch the golden tip of a cigarette. William slid noiselessly to his side with a match. When Gilman had lighted his cigarette he said:

“Poor Jim!”

The governor responded:

“Yes, poor Jim.”

A strange quality in the governor’s tone gave expression to something more than sadness. His face was somber, immobile, inscrutable. He dropped his napkin, and, without lighting his cigar, though William stood by, shading the little flame of the ready match with his pale palm, he rose and went slowly into the library. About the walls were his beloved books. On the broad, heavy table of Flemish oak a shaded lamp rose over the magazines, the pamphlets, the scattered books and the Chicago newspapers, which reach Springfield at noon. In the wide chimney--over which is carved those words from the _Benedicte_, “Oh, ye Fire and Heat, Bless ye the Lord”--a brazier of Sangamon County coal was blazing. Outside a cold November rain was driving against the tall windows of the mansion. The governor sank into a deep leather chair. He supported his head in his hand and gazed into the fire.

Gilman followed, and seating himself, likewise fell into a melancholy reverie. The silence within, and the wind sweeping the rain back and forth like a broom without, oppressed him. He was a young man. Once or twice he looked at the governor, and then the silence, the wind and the rain forced him to speak.

“He seemed to be in perfect health when he went away Wednesday,” he said.

The silence deepened. The wind threshed the trees and the rain drenched the windows anew. Gilman spoke again. He said:

“The party’s lost a good man.”

“And I have lost another friend,” said the governor. He was growing old.

Without moving, still gazing deeply into the coals, after a little minute, he added:

“He was the most generous man I ever knew.”

“Yes; and I believe, after all, when the time came, he would have been with you for the renomination.” The governor stretched out his hand to stay Gilman’s speech.

“I was not thinking of that, Leonard.”

The governor did this gently, as he did all things. Gilman’s face reddened--for the fire was growing hot--and silence fell again between them. Gilman felt the silence. He flung his cigarette into the fire. Then he rose.

“Guess I’ll go over to the Leland,” he said. “Some of the boys may have particulars.”

The governor nodded acquiescence, but as Gilman reached the door that leads into the northwest drawing-room, he spoke:

“Before you go hand me the statutes, if you please. I suppose I have some duty to perform in an event like this.”

Gilman who longed only for action, bore with alacrity the three big calf-skin volumes to the library table, and turned to the index.

“I’ll find the section for you.” Gilman examined the second volume for an instant, and then said: “Here it is.”

“Read it, please,” said the governor.

And Gilman read: “‘Section sixteen. In case of the death of the treasurer, it shall be the duty of the governor to take possession of the office of such treasurer, and cause the vaults thereof to be closed and securely locked, and so remain until a successor is appointed and qualified; and at the time such successor takes possession of the office, he, together with the auditor of public accounts and any of the bondmen of the deceased treasurer who shall be present, shall proceed to take an account of all moneys, papers, books, records and other property coming into his possession; and the auditor shall take of such succeeding treasurer his receipt therefor and keep the same on file in his office.’ There,” concluded Gilman, closing the book, and then immediately reopening it, “that’s it--it’s chapter one hundred and thirty, section sixteen of the act of eighteen seventy-three, page twenty-three twenty-seven.”

“Now turn,” said the governor, “to the chapter on elections, chapter forty-six, I think it is, and see what it says about the appointment of a successor.”

Gilman tilted up the first volume, and inspected the red and black labels on its back; then he turned to chapter forty-six, and, running his finger down the pages until he found the section, read hurriedly, mumbling his words until he came to the vital sentence:

“‘When a vacancy shall occur in the office of secretary of state, auditor of public accounts,’ yes, here it is” (he accentuated the word) “‘_treasurer_, attorney-general, superintendent of public instruction’” (he was reading rapidly now and running words together) “‘or member of the state board of equalization, the governor’” (and now he raised his voice and read more slowly and distinctly) “‘the governor shall fill the same by appointment, and the appointee shall hold his office during the remainder of the term, and until his successor is elected and qualified.’ That’s section hundred and twenty-eight.”

“Well,” said the governor, “I’ll name Hillman to fill the vacancy.” Hillman was the treasurer-elect, chosen by the people in November to succeed Lockhart. He was not of the party, however, to which the governor belonged. In Illinois, it will be remembered, treasurers are elected not quadrennially, as are the other state officials, but biennially, and a treasurer can not succeed himself. So that in the middle of an administration there is always an off year, and a reaction, and as the papers say, a stinging rebuke at the polls.

“M-m-yes,” said Gilman, “the boys won’t like it--but it’s only for a couple of months.”

“And as to sealing the treasury,” continued the governor, “I presume that the morning will be time enough for that.”

“Yes, it’s a bad night outside, anyway,” responded Gilman. The governor was lost again in thought. Gilman went on and out.

The governor, alone in the library, continued to gaze into the fire. Once he took from the table at his elbow a worn book, which he handled tenderly. He read in it for a while. It was _The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius_. But he did not read long. Presently he was sitting with the forefinger of one hand between the leaves of the book, which lay in his lap, musing on the fire again. Outside the rain drenched the tall windows of the mansion.

The clock in the hall tolled eleven. The governor rose, and went slowly up the staircase that winds gracefully from the great hall to the floor above, and thence to his chamber and his bed.

* * * * *

In a room on the parlor floor of the Leland, the windows of which looked down on Sixth street, a short, fat man was pacing the floor. His unbuttoned waistcoat showed a white shirt stretched over a large paunch. His hair was greased with perspiration, big drops of which stood out on his forehead, and slid down his pendulous, dewlapt cheeks. He had a bristling mustache, at which he gnawed when he removed his cigar from his lips, and a short goatee at which he plucked incessantly with his fingers. When his cigar was in his mouth, he rolled it about and ground it between his teeth. At times he spat pieces of the tobacco leaves fiercely into the grate. The cigar was burning unevenly, and fuming so that the little man winked his little eyes. On a table in the room, littered with the inevitable Chicago papers, and strewn with poker chips, stood an empty whisky glass. The rumpled counterpane of the bed showed that the little man had been tossing upon it. As he paced up and down he talked to himself, and at times swore.

“Hell,” he would say, “why the devil doesn’t he come!”

Occasionally he would draw out his watch, and scowl at its face. Then he would look at the old-fashioned brass crank on the wall, beside the door, which sometimes pulled a call-bell in the office below, and sometimes did not, but he did not ring it. He ran his fingers through his tumbled hair, and paced up and down.

The little man was William Grigsby, and he was the attorney-general of the state of Illinois. He had come down from the Jo Daviess hills, to serve a term in the house, and been nominated for the office he now held by the governor, John Chatham. John Chatham was his political creator, and the two men had once been friends. The administration had begun harmoniously enough, but before two of the four years of its political life had expired there was a split, and factions had formed. There had been a fierce fight for the control of the state central committee that year, and the struggle had been carried into the state convention, which nominated a state treasurer, a superintendent of public instruction, and trustees of the university of Illinois. In one faction were the governor, the auditor of public accounts, and, of course, his appointees, the adjutant-general, the railroad and warehouse commissioners and the trustees of the state institutions. In the other were the attorney-general and the secretary of state, Jennings. Lockhart, the state treasurer, had been neutral. He was everybody’s friend. The lieutenant-governor did not count. The superintendent of public instruction was not a politician, save in teachers’ institutes, where he was cheered and indorsed in classic resolutions.

And now Grigsby was an avowed candidate for governor, in opposition to his old friend, John Chatham, the man who had made him. Two years bring about great changes in politics. Grigsby, in that time, had grown corpulent, had hardened his liver and his heart, and was threatened with Bright’s disease.

The attorney-general continued to smoke and pace the floor, and swear. After a while he consulted his watch again, and then gave the old-fashioned brass bell-pull a vigorous jerk. Presently a negro boy came bearing a presumptive pitcher of water, the tinkling of the ice heralding his approach. The attorney-general would have welcomed iced water in the morning, but now he seized it from the black boy’s hand, set it down with a splash on his wash-stand, and shouted:

“Go and tell Jim to mix me a commodore.”

Just as the boy reached the door, it opened, and a tall man entered. The tall man seeing the boy, looked at Grigsby.

“What’ll you have, Hank?” said the attorney-general.

“A little whisky.”

“Bring Mr. Jennings some whisky,” ordered the attorney-general.

“Bourbon, boy,” added Mr. Jennings.

The boy withdrew.

The attorney-general paused before the fire, and looked up into the face of the secretary of state.

“Well, Hank,” he said, “I began to fear you hadn’t got my message. Heard the news?”

The secretary of state lazily pulled off his wet overcoat and flung it across the bed, and then, shaking the water from his broad-brimmed black slouch hat in the careless way they have down in southern Illinois, he tossed it after the coat, on which it fell with a damp slap. He stood six feet in height, and would have been taller had he not stooped. His face was long, his skin dingy and sallow, and his thin nose, beginning between deep-set eyes of steely blue, stretched down the middle of his visage, and precipitated itself over the black mustache that drooped thin and moist about his mouth. His hair, glossy black, though he was fifty, was flung straight across his brow and over his left ear, giving the effect of a mane. Behind, it greased the collar of a long black frock coat that wrapped him lankly. A narrow black tie hung unknotted at his throat. When he moved it was in that loose and lazy way that told, as his hat and his habit did, that he came from the country south of the old O. and M., which divides Egypt from the corn lands of central Illinois. He drew a rocking-chair to the grate, and stretching himself comfortably in it, with his feet upon the ash-strewn fender, drew from his hip pocket a plug of tobacco and gnawed on it. Then he drawled, in a voice haunted by musical echoes of southern ancestry:

“What news?”

“Why,” replied the attorney-general, “haven’t you heard? Jim Lockhart’s dead.”

“The hell he is!” responded Jennings. “I hadn’t heerd ary word. When’d he die?”

“This afternoon.”

“Sudden?”

“Rather.”

“What was ailin’ of him?”

The attorney-general smiled, a peculiar, mirthless smile.

The secretary of state ceased to rock.

“You don’t reckon now--”

“That’s it exactly.”

“I didn’t know it’d got that bad. What’d they give out fer the cause?”

“Oh, heart failure, I suppose.”

“Beats hell, don’t it?”

The secretary of state was silent. Presently he spoke again in an abstracted way:

“Well, Jim ’as a devil of a good feller, as good as you’d meet up ’ith in a coon’s age. An’ I reckon when it come to a show-down, he ’as our friend. If the boys ’p’ints an investigatin’ committee--Jim ’as al’ays a leetle too free ’ith the stuff.”

Grigsby said “Yes,” in a detached tone. Then there was silence for a space. The bell-boy knocked, bore in his tray and departed. The men nodded over the edges of their little glasses each to the other, and drank. Then Grigsby, wiping his lips, said:

“Hank, I didn’t send for you to-night to hold memorial services over Jim Lockhart. There’s something more important than that--there’s something damned important, and it concerns me.”

“You?”

“Yes, me. I’m in this thing just twenty thousand dollars.”

“The hell you are!”

“Just--twenty--thousand--dollars.”

Grigsby sank into a chair.

“Borrowed?” asked Jennings.

“Yes.”

“Public funds?”

“Well--I don’t know. Course--”

“Jim Lockhart didn’t have no private fortune--’ithout it ’as the int’rust.”

“Well, suppose it was.”

“An’thin’ to show fer it?”

“I gave him three notes--one for ten, two for five thousand each.”

“Well, you’re a bigger damn fool than I gave you credit fer bein’.”

The attorney-general, clutching his fingers into his hair, rested his elbows on his short knees, and bowed his head. “And with the governorship just in plain sight, too,” he groaned.

“Well, it wasn’t so damn plain,” said Jennings.

Then as his eye rested on the man bowed beside him, the sweat trickling down his tallow face, something in the droop of the figure touched a chord of pity in his heart, and the tall Egyptian laid a hand on Grigsby’s shoulder, saying in another tone:

“Don’t take on that way. Let’s see what can be done.”

“Yes, let’s,” assented Grigsby.

The Egyptian knitted the brows over his long, narrow nose.

“Hev you got any money?” he asked.

“I!” exclaimed Grigsby, with a sardonic grunt.

“Any property?”

“Only my house up home.”

“Hain’t you any friends up there, any bankers that’ll take care o’ this thing fer you?”

Grigsby laughed ironically.

“Cain’t you lay down on somebody fer it?”

Grigsby shook his head.

“How’s your quo ’arranto proceedin’s ’gainst the Chicago Consolidated?”

“It isn’t ripe yet,” said Grigsby, “and, anyhow, there isn’t time. Damn it, man,” he said, raising his voice, and striking his knee with his fist, “it’s got to be done now, to-night, or I’m lost. The governor, under the law, must seal the treasury at once, and you know just how long John Chatham’ll wait. We’ve got to take care of this thing to-night, to-night, I tell you. That’s why I sent for you.” The attorney-general spoke angrily, and with a puffed face that flushed an unhealthy red, and then added, stretching forth his hand and laying it on Jennings’ knee, “You’re my friend, ain’t you?”

“Sure,” said the secretary of state carelessly, and then knitted his brows again. After a few minutes he said:

“Say, Bill, you and the governor used to be friends, and he hain’t a bad feller, no-way. He got you your nomination, you know--why don’t you go to him--”

“Go to the governor?” cried Grigsby; “and tell him--tell _him_!”

“Bill,” said the secretary of state, “you don’t know the governor. He hain’t my kind, ner I his’n, but I’ll tell you one thing--he hain’t the man to take advantage of a feller. You’d be as safe in his hands as you would in mine--safer, maybe,” Jennings concluded, with a good-humored chuckle.

Grigsby emphatically, doggedly, shook his head.

“It never would do in this world,” he said, “never.”

“Why, you could get him to hold off till you could take care of it. You and him used to be such friends--tell him you’ll lay down fer the sake of old times--that’s the thing--tell him an’thin’ to get him to hold off fer a few days. Then you’ll have time to turn ’round.”

“Look here, Jennings,” said Grigsby, straightening up and glaring at the secretary of state, “Chatham’s got all you fellows hypnotized. You think he’s a little tin god, that he’s incapable of doing a mean act, of throwing a friend down, or anything of that sort. I tell you I know him better than all of you do. He and I used to be close, thicker’n--”

“You wasn’t borrowin’ money out o’ the state treasury them days, though, was you, Bill?” interrupted Jennings.

Grigsby colored.

“No, you was somethin’ of a reformer yourself.”

Grigsby colored more deeply.

“An’ as fer the throwin’ down--we know who done the heft o’ that. Course I don’t care--it suits me--but give a houn’ his dues.”

Grigsby’s color had changed by swift gradations of tone to splenetic blackness. He broke in upon Jennings’ indictment of him, and his defense of the governor:

“Oh, drop that--let’s talk business. I tell you I know Chatham, and I ain’t goin’ to put myself in his hands.”

He drew out his watch and opened it.

“It’s half-past eight now, and he doubtless knows Lockhart’s dead--probably he’s got the treasury sealed.”

Jennings’ brow was gathered once more in wrinkles that indicated thought. His face rapidly assumed an expression of determination. Presently he rose.

“Bill,” he said, “I’m goin’ to do somethin’ fer you I wouldn’t do fer any other livin’ man.”

Grigsby raised an appealing, yearning face.

“Yest’day I deposited in Gregory’s bank over at Decatur twenty-four thousand dollars. It’s the fees received in my office durin’ the last quarter. It’s lucky fer you they was unusually large--”

“Yes,” said Grigsby, and his expression, expectant and hopeful a moment before, clouded, “but it’s in Decatur, and we’re in Springfield and we’ve got to have it now, to-night, if it’s goin’ to do us any good. What the devil did you want to deposit it in Gregory’s bank for?”

“Because,” replied Jennings, “Gregory’s rich, and a contributor, an’ he can deliver Macon County, and we’ll want Macon County’s ten votes, if I hain’t mistaken, one of these days. But never mind that now--it’s the on’y thing we can do.”

Jennings looked at his watch. “It’s now twenty-five till nine. A train goes out on the Wabash at nine-five. I’ll send Hennessey over on that train with a note to Gregory, an’ a check. He can get twenty thousand, an’ ketch a train back ’bout eleven-twenty, I think, anyway--that train that gets here at twelve-forty. You can take the money, put it back in the treasury, ’fore the governor seals ’er up, an’--”

Grigsby sprang toward Jennings and seized his hand.

“Hank, you’re the best friend I ever had,” he cried, and his eyes glistened.

“Aw, don’t talk like that,” said Jennings awkwardly.

“But can we trust Hennessey?” said Grigsby, the next instant, his eyes dilating, his hand suddenly dropping by his side.

“Hell, we’ve got to,” said Jennings. Then he strode across the room and turned the old-fashioned brass bell-pull.

When a black boy grinned in the doorway, Jennings sent for Hennessey, and soon, the old elevator having clambered to the parlor floor, there was a knock. Jennings yelled “Come!” and in the doorway stood a young Irishman, red-cheeked and with closely-cropped, silver-sprinkled black hair. In the cities, the hair of the Irish-American--especially in politics, and they are all in--turns gray early. Hennessey was strong in the Thirteenth Ward of Chicago, hence his job in the office of the secretary of state. Jennings had been writing while awaiting the Irishman’s coming. Turning to him the secretary of state gave his instructions, and he departed. As he closed the door Grigsby called:

“I’ll make it all right with you, Mike.”

Grigsby went to the window and pressed his face to one of the small panes, placing his hands as blinds beside his eyes as a little child does. The cold glass soothed his forehead deliciously. He saw Shorty, who has driven “statesmen” on their mysterious nightly rounds for generations, mount the box of his old hack and pull his reluctant horses into the street. Then he turned to confront the three hours’ wait. He poked the smouldering fire of soft prairie coal, gave Jennings a cigar, and was about to pull the old-fashioned brass bell crank that more cheer might be added to the factitious comfort he sought to create in the room, when Jennings, meditatively scratching his head, said:

“Bill, where’s them notes o’ yourn?”

“Why, in the treasury, I suppose.”

“Well, you’ll have to get some one who can open the vaults fer you to-night.”

Grigsby’s brow darkened, and the small cheerfulness that had begun to adumbrate itself in his face faded quite away.

“That’s so--I hadn’t thought of that.”

He pondered heavily and then said, the old note of fear in his tone:

“Has that vault a time lock?”

“I reckon.”

They were silent.

“Well,” said Grigsby presently, breaking the silence, “I’ll have to get Mendenhall.” Mendenhall was the assistant state treasurer, and was counted among the adherents of Grigsby.

“Better let me go,” said Jennings, taking up his coat and hat.

When he had gone Grigsby again paced the floor. Now he would pause at the window and look down into Sixth Street, where the rain, falling hopelessly and helplessly, was making pools in the depressions of the cedar block pavement that glinted in the white glare of the arc light spluttering before the hotel. Whenever the hoarse sounds of distant locomotive whistles came to him out of the wet night, he jerked forth his watch and sighed as he replaced it. Then he began to worry because Jennings did not reappear. He wondered if Governor Chatham would venture out in such a night to seal the treasury. He cursed Chatham, who had made him, and finally Jennings, who had saved him. Altogether, he passed a very bad two hours. And then Jennings returned. As the tall Egyptian entered the room, Grigsby demanded:

“Where you been?”

“Over to the St. Nick--met up ’ith some o’ the boys, an’ set into a little game fer a while.”

“See Mendenhall?”

“Yep--he’ll be ’long. Gosh! it’s a regular Shawneetown flood outside!” And the man waved his big hat in a wide arc, the spray from it spitting angrily as it sprinkled the fire in the grate.

“So it’s all right, is it?”

“Ump huh.”

“How about the time lock?”

“Oh, George says they don’t never use that--haven’t sence the day the senate ’p’inted that committee to count the money in the treasury. ’Member? By gosh, didn’t pore ol’ Jim hustle to get a special train an’ haul that money down from Chicago, though?”

The secretary of state wagged his long head and chuckled.

“That thing lost him e’enamost fifty thousan’ in int’rust, he tol’ me onct,” the secretary of state went on, “an’ he hain’t never been able sinct to make ary long loan.”

Again he laughed, and, the spirit of reminiscence being upon him, he went on: “One time ’fore the war, the legislature ’p’inted a countin’ committee, an’ ol’--oh, what’s ’is name?--you know--from Gallatin County--he ’as treasur’ then, an’ the’ wasn’ more’n about fifty thousan’ in the safe, but he ’as game, an’ when the committee ’peared next mornin’, he says, ‘Cert’n’y, gentlemen,’ an’ handed ’em out about ten thousan’ in them old green dollar bills, an’ says: ‘When yo’re done countin’ o’ _them ’ere_, I’ll give you all some more.’ An’ in ’bout an hour they reckoned they’d take _his_ figur’s--they’d have to do.”