Chapter VI: Part 6

Underwood belonged to one of the oldest families of Chicago--the name had been known there before the fire. His father, who had lately taken him into his law firm, continued to cling in his conservatism to an old stone house in Michigan Avenue long after his neighbors had abandoned their mansions to uncertain boarders, and either retreated farther south or advanced to the North Side. John Underwood had come out of Harvard with a young lawyer’s ambition in politics, an ambition that had the United States senate merely as a beginning of its home stretch, and when the year rolled around in which state senators were to be elected in the odd numbered districts he decided that it was time to begin.

The newspapers had scented the sensation that lurked in the candidature of a young man like Underwood in a district like the First, and because he was rich, because he wore good clothes, because he went into what is called society, promptly dubbed him a reformer, and thus weighted he had set out upon his race for the nomination. He liked to see his name in the newspapers, liked to think of himself as a reformer, though he was embarrassed in this attitude by the fascinating figure of the political boss he had hoped to become--a well-dressed, gentlemanly boss, of course, who, while at home in those saloons where he permitted the convivial familiarity of the boys, nevertheless took his luncheons at his club. He fell into a way of speaking of the First as “my district,” spoke of it, in fact, as if he, instead of Malachi Nolan and “Cinch” Conway, owned it, and when certain ward politicians in the first days of the campaign called upon him, Underwood was pleased to lend them money, just as he was pleased to comply with the requests of certain others who organized the John W. Underwood First Ward Campaign Club, and sent a committee to inform him that they were assembled in the club rooms ready to transact business, and beer only four dollars a keg. He winked confidentially at himself in the mirror that night as he gave a final touch to his white cravat and surveyed his fine young form arrayed in evening clothes for the reform banquet at the Palmer House. His speech was _The Tendencies of Modern Politics_. The newspapers said it was a very brilliant speech, breathing lofty political sentiments that were bound to make John W. Underwood votes. Also, the Reform Club indorsed his candidature.

As Underwood leaned against the greasy wall of the little hall on lower Clark Street this morning, the whole campaign flashed before him, just as the events of a lifetime are said in books to flash before the mind of a drowning man. He recalled every vivid detail of the call Baldwin had made upon him, how he entered his private office without troubling the pale, pimpled office boy to announce him, how he lifted from his carefully parted hair his straw hat with its youthful band of blue, and laughed out, “John, my boy, how are you? Hot, isn’t it?” He could see Baldwin as he sat in the solid oak chair that stood intimately beside his roll-top desk, fanning his ruddy face with the hat, which had impressed a broad red band on his forehead. Underwood had been glad enough to close _Cooley on Taxation_ and revolve his chair to face Baldwin, just as if he had been a client, for Baldwin was the most important politician who had ever called upon him professionally.

Underwood remembered clearly how Baldwin’s excellent teeth glistened when he smiled, how he lighted a Turkish cigarette and, tilting up his chin, blew a long, airy stream of blue smoke through the thick hairs of his mustache. He could even remember how carefully Baldwin sheltered the flame of the match for Underwood’s cigarette, in that curious spirit of economy men always practice with regard to matches, much as if there were only one match left in the whole world. And then he could recall almost word for word their conversation. Baldwin had frankly told him that Conway had him handicapped, because he had the city hall with him and controlled the Fifth Ward. Simmons, Baldwin had said, didn’t cut much ice; he had some labor leaders with him, and would get a bunch of delegates from his own ward, but that was about all. In fact, said Baldwin, concluding his judicial summing up, Conway could win out, hands down, if it were not for his recent quarrel with Malachi Nolan. Underwood remembered that during all this frankness he had reflectively drawn rude little geometrical figures on an envelope and had been somehow afraid to look up at Baldwin, for the noted lobbyist had sat there transfixing him with an eye that could read the mind of a man when it was impinged on politics--that is, practical politics--as easily as it could a poker hand across a table stacked with blue chips.

He knew Baldwin had come with some practical proposition, and when the lobbyist suggested that he was too respectable, and would run better in some residence district, that the boys looked upon him as a reformer, and that the silk stockings were not practical enough to help him, Underwood had felt that at last it was coming. It was simple enough. Baldwin had been talking that very morning about Underwood’s candidature to Mr. Weed of the Metropolitan Motor System, and to Mr. Peabody, president of the Gas Company, and they had been very much interested. They had an anxiety to see good men nominated that year, for they had large business interests that were more or less affected by legislation, and had feared they would have to settle on Conway. Conway had experience in legislative matters, and had been friendly enough in the city council, yet they felt they could hardly trust him--he was such a grafter, and in such things, Baldwin blandly assured Underwood, they had to depend upon a man’s honor alone, and so they had sent Baldwin to suggest that Underwood meet them at luncheon, and talk matters over. Baldwin, with his love of ease and luxury, had preferred a dinner over at the Cardinal’s in the evening, but Mr. Peabody had something on hand with the trustees of his church and couldn’t meet them then. Baldwin had taken out his watch at this point, with the air of a man who suddenly remembers some important engagement--the details all came back with a fidelity that was painful--and stood awaiting Underwood’s reply, with the open watch ticking impatiently in his palm.

Of course, Underwood had understood--and he wished ardently to be nominated and elected. He could see himself swinging idly in a big chair behind a walnut desk in the senate chamber, just as an actor sees himself, with an artist’s ecstatic, half-frightened gasp, in some new part he is about to study. The position would give him much importance, he would be riding back and forth between Chicago and Springfield on a pass, it would be so pleasant to be addressed as senator, to be consulted, to head delegations in state conventions and cast the solid vote for any one he pleased; besides, it would be a good training for Washington, he could practise in oratory and parliamentary law just as he practised on friendless paupers over in the criminal court when his father influenced some judge to appoint him to defend an indigent prisoner. It meant only one little word, he could be wary of promises. His heart had expanded, he had turned half around in his chair to face Baldwin, when suddenly the reformer within him rose to object, pointed to his ideals, rehearsed the speech on _The Tendencies of Modern Politics_, recalled all the good words the independent papers had spoken of him, urged the beauty of great sacrifices for principle. At the idea of self-sacrifice, Underwood had felt a melting self-pity, he admired himself in this new rôle of a self-sacrificing reformer. And so he flung the cigarette out of the window, watched it whirl down to the melting tar of the roofs below and said firmly:

“I have an engagement this morning, Mr. Baldwin. I’m sorry, but I guess I can’t come.”

Once more Underwood saw the pleasantness leave Baldwin’s face, saw him fleck a flake of ash from the white waistcoat he wore with his summer suit of blue, and snapping the lid of his watch shut, he once more heard him say in a final and reproachful tone:

“Well, all right; sorry, my boy.”

Underwood wondered that morning in the noisy convention hall, whether, if he had the decision to make over again, he would decline such influence. It had been the cause of much doubt and some regret at the time. The boss within him had protested--surely it was a political mistake--and the boss was louder than the reformer, and more plausible. He came forward with a brilliant scheme. He recalled Baldwin’s reference to the rivalry between Nolan and Conway. Underwood remembered that when he suggested the possibility of Nolan’s running for the nomination himself, Baldwin had shaken his head--there wasn’t enough in it, he said. Nolan could do very much better in the council, where he was. Besides, Mr. Weed and Mr. Peabody disliked him.

Underwood thought out his scheme that afternoon, while hunting in the digest for cases in point to be cited in a case his father was preparing for the appellate court. The work of looking up cases in point, while its results are impressive and seem to smell of the lamp, had in reality grown quite automatic to Underwood, and as he loafed over digests and reports and jotted down his notes, he elaborated the scheme, just what he would say and do, how he would appear, and so forth. And so, when he entered Malachi Nolan’s place in Dearborn Street, early that evening, he was fully prepared. The details of this incident came back just as the details of Baldwin’s visit had done--the empty saloon, the alderman himself leaning over his bar, his white apron rolled into a big girth about his middle, the cigar in the round hole at the corner of his mouth gone out, denoting that it was time for him to go down the alley to Billy Boyle’s and get his porterhouse and baked potato.

Underwood watched Malachi Nolan mix his Martini cocktail, splash it picturesquely into a sparkling glass and bejewel it with a Maraschino cherry, then gravely take a cigar for himself and stow it away in his ample waistcoat. Then, as Nolan mopped the bar with professional sweep of his white-sleeved, muscular arm, Underwood unfolded his brilliant scheme, skirting carefully the acute suspicions of an old politician. But Nolan mopped, blinking inscrutably, at last putting the damp cloth away in some mysterious place under the counter. The fat Maltese cat, waiting until the moisture on the bar had evaporated, stretched herself again beside the silver urn that held the crackers and the little cubes of cheese. Still Nolan blinked in silence, like a hostile jury with its mind made up, until at last, in desperation, Underwood blurted out his proposition. Nolan blinked some more, then, half opening his blue Irish eyes, grunted:

“Well, I like your gall.”

Underwood’s spirits fell, yet he was not disappointed. It was, after all, just what he had expected. It served him right for his presumption, if nothing more--though the subdued reformer within had hinted at other reasons. He hung his head, twirling his empty glass disconsolately. He did not see the light that twinkled in the blue eyes, he had not then known how very ready Nolan was to form any combination that would beat Conway and Baldwin, especially with a reformer like himself who had money to spend on his ambitions. He had not discerned how badly the man whom the newspapers always cartooned with the First Ward sticking out of his vest pocket, needed a reformer in his business, as the saying is. Hence his glad surprise when Nolan wiped his big hand on his apron like a washer-woman and held it out, saying:

“But I’m wit’ ye.”

Then the campaign, under Nolan’s management, in the most wonderful legislative district--a cosmopolitan district, bristling with sociological problems, a district that has fewer homes and more saloons, more commerce and more sloth, more millionaires and more paupers, and while it confines within its boundaries the skyscrapers, clubs, theaters and hundred churches of a metropolis, still boasts a police station with more arrests on its blotter than any other in the world. Night after night, with Nolan’s two candidates for the house, he spent in saloons where a candidate must treat and distribute his cards that the boys may size him up; lodging houses and barrel houses in lower Clark Street, where sweating negroes and frowsy whites drank five-cent whisky with him; blazing saloons along the levee, where even the poor, painted girls at the tables lifted their glasses when he ordered the drinks for the house; crap games and policy shops in lower Clark Street, the Syrian, Arabic, Chinese and Italian quarters down by the squalid Bad Lands, and at last a happier evening along the Archey Road. Underwood had three weeks of this, and as he stood in the convention hall that morning, unwashed, unshaven, his linen soiled, his shoes muddy, his own friends would not have known him, though he cared little enough for this now--they had all forgotten to go to the primaries the day before, and those for whom he had sent carriages had been too busy, or too respectable, to respond. The taste of bad beer and the scorch of cheap cigars still smacked in his mouth--indeed, he did not get them entirely out until he came back from Mt. Clemens two weeks after the nomination.

But they were balloting for permanent chairman now. It would be a test vote; it would disclose his own strength and the strength of Conway. He looked over the red faces before him. He saw Conway himself moving among the delegates, snarling, cursing, quarreling with the friends of years; he saw Conway’s candidate for the house, McGlone, over in the Second Ward delegation, his coat off, a handkerchief about his fat neck, a fuming cigar between his chubby fingers, turning on his heavy haunches to revile some man who was numbered with Nolan’s crowd; he saw in the First Ward delegation, Malachi Nolan, clean-shaven, in black coat and cravat, his iron gray hair cropped short, calm alone of all the others. He would have looked the priest more than the saloon-keeper, had he smoked his cigar differently. Now and then he solemnly raised his hand, with almost the benediction of a father, to still the clamor of his delegation, which, with its twenty-one votes, was safe at all events for Underwood.

Muldoon was Conway’s man--they would try to make the temporary organization permanent. D’Ormand was Underwood’s candidate. And Muldoon won. Underwood had lost the first round.

The candidates for senator were to be placed in nomination first. Underwood stood in the crowded doorway and heard Conway’s name presented. Then, in the cheering, with his heart in his sanded throat, he heard the chairman say:

“Are there any other nominations?”

There was a momentary stillness, and then he heard a thick, strong voice:

“Misther Chairman!”

“The gentleman from the First Ward.”

“Misther Chairman,” the thick, strong voice said, “I roise to place in nomynation the name of wan--”

It was the voice of Malachi Nolan, and Underwood suddenly remembered that Nolan was to place his name before the convention. He listened an instant, but could not endure it long. He could not endure that men should see him in the hour when his name was being thus laid naked to the world. Reporters were writing it down, perhaps the crowd would laugh or whistle or hiss. Besides, candidates do not remain in the convention hall; they await the committee of notification in some near-by saloon. He squeezed through the mass of men who stood on tiptoes, stretching their necks to see and hear the old leader of the First Ward, and fled.

The first ballot was taken--Conway, 31; Underwood, 30; Simmons, the dark horse, 8; necessary to a choice, 35. The vote was unchanged for twenty-six ballots, till the afternoon had worn away, and the trucks had jolted off the cobblestones of Clark Street, till the lights were flaring and hot tamale men, gamblers, beggars, street walkers, all the denizens of darkness were shifting along the sidewalks, till the policemen had been changed on their beats, and Pinkerton night watchmen were trying the doors of stores, till Chinamen shuffled forth, and Jewesses and Italian women emerged for their evening breath of air, bringing swart and grimy children to play upon the heated flags. The hall was lighted, just as if some Italian festival were to be held there. The reporters’ places at the table were taken by the men who did politics for the morning papers, themselves reduced at last to the necessity of taking notes. They brought reports of the results in other senatorial conventions held about town that day--it seemed to be assured that John Skelley had carried the country towns, Lemont, Riverside, Evanston, and so on. In certain west side districts this man had won, in certain north side districts that man had been successful. It looked as if the old gang was going to break back into the legislature.

And so the interest in this one remaining convention deepened, the strain tightened, the crowd thickened. The delegates, tired and sullen, shed their waistcoats, tore off their moist and dirty collars and settled down to an angry fight. The amphitheatrical arrangement of the chairs had long been broken. The ward delegations now formed circles about their leaders. The damp arabesques wrought by the janitor’s superficial sprinkling-can had long since been superseded by arabesques of tobacco juice. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, the spent ballots with which the stubborn contest had been waged. The First Ward delegation was in a solid ring, and in the center of it sat Malachi Nolan, his elbows on his knees, tearing old ballots into tiny specks of paper and strewing them on the floor, but keeping all the while a surveying eye on the Fifth Ward delegation, now divided into two groups, one of which surrounded Howe, the other huddling about Grogan, the lawyer, who, with disheveled hair, a handkerchief about his neck, stood glaring angrily at Nolan, his eyes shadowed by heavy circles telling of weariness and the strain.

Now and then the leaders made desperate attempts to trade, harrying Simmons, offering him everything for his seven votes. Simmons himself, in his turn, tried to induce each faction to swing its strength to him.

But the situation remained unchanged.

Once Nolan sent for Underwood and whispered to him. He thought he knew one or two Conway men who could be got very cheaply, but the boy shook his head--the reformer within him demurred--and yet he smiled sardonically at the reformer thinking of the primaries and the convention itself.

Then Malachi Nolan caught the chairman’s shifty eye and moved an adjournment until morning. But even as he spoke, Grogan scowled at Muldoon, shook his head at his followers, and the room rang with their hoarse shouts:

“No! no! no!”

Heartened by this confession of weakness on Nolan’s part, they kept on yelling lustily:

“No! no! no!”

They even laughed, and Muldoon smote the table, to declare the motion lost.

On the forty-seventh ballot, one of the Simmons votes went over to Conway, and there was a faint cheer. On the forty-eighth, one of the Simmons votes went to Underwood, and parity was restored. On the forty-ninth, Underwood gained another of Simmons’ votes--Nolan, it seemed, had promised to get him on the janitor’s pay-roll in the state house--and the vote was tied. This ballot stood:

First Second Fifth
Ward Ward Ward Total

Conway -- 10 22 32
Underwood 21 4 7 32
Simmons -- 5 -- 5

The Simmons men were holding out, waiting to throw their strength to the winner. When the sixty-seventh ballot had been taken, Muldoon, squinting in the miserable light, at the secretary’s figures, hit the table with the chair leg and said:

“On this ballot Conway receives 32, Underwood 32, Simmons 5. There being no choice, you will prepare your ballots for another vote.”

Just then one of the Conway men from the Second Ward left his place, and touched one of Nolan’s fellows in the First Ward delegation--Donahue--on the shoulder. Donahue started. The man whispered in his ear, and returned to his delegation, keeping his eye on Donahue. Underwood looked on breathlessly. Nolan, revolving slowly, held his hat for every vote--last of all for Donahue’s. The man dropped his folded ballot into the hat and hung his head. Nolan calmly picked the ballot out of the hat and gave it back to Donahue, who looked up in affected surprise.

“What’s the trouble, Malachi?” he said as innocently as he could. He was not much of an actor.

“This won’t do,” Nolan said, giving the ballot back to the man.

“It’s all right, Malachi, honest to God it is!” protested Donahue.

“Thin I’ll just put this wan in for ye, heh?” said Nolan, drawing another ballot from the pocket of his huge waistcoat and poising it above the hat.

The crowd had pressed around the First Ward delegation. The convention had risen to its feet, craning red necks, and out of the mass, Grogan cried:

“Aw, here, Malachi Nolan, none o’ that now!”

Nolan turned his rugged face toward him and said simply:

“Who’s runnin’ this dillygation, you or me?”

“Well--none o’ your bulldozing--we won’t stand it!” replied Grogan angrily, his blue eyes blazing.

“You get to hell out o’ this.” And so saying, Nolan dropped the ballot into the hat and turned to face the chair.

“Have you all voted?” inquired Muldoon.

“First Ward!” the secretary called.

Nolan squared his shoulders, not having looked in his hat or counted the ballots there, and said slowly and impressively:

“On behalf av the solid dillygation av the First Ward, I cast twinty-wan votes for John W. Underwood.”

“Misther Chairman! Misther Chairman!” cried Grogan, waving his hand in the air, “I challenge that vote! I challenge that vote!”

“The gentleman from the Fifth Ward challenges the vote--”

“Misther Chairman,” said Nolan, standing with one heavy foot on his chair and leveling a forefinger at Muldoon, “a point of order! The gintleman from the Fifth Ward has no right to challenge the vote av the First Ward--he’s not a mimber of the dillygation!”

“Let the First Ward be polled,” calmly ruled Muldoon. Nolan took his foot from his chair and stepped to Donahue’s side. Every man in the First Ward delegation, as his name was called from the credentials, cried “Underwood!” As the secretary neared the name of Donahue, Nolan laid his hand heavily on the fellow’s shoulder.

“Donahue!” called the secretary.

The fellow squirmed under Nolan’s hand.

“Donahue!”

“Don’t let him bluff you!” cried some one from the Fifth Ward.

“Vote as you damn please, Jimmie!”

“T’row the boots into ’im, Donnie!”

“Soak him one!”

“Take your hands off him, Bull Nolan!”

So they bawled and Donahue wriggled. But the hand of Nolan, like the hand of Douglas, was his own, and gripped fast. Grogan, his face red, his eyes on fire, leaped from his place in his delegation, and started across the chairs for Nolan. The big saloon-keeper gave him a look out of his little eye. His left shoulder dipped, his left fist tightened. Grogan halted.

“Vote, Jimmie, me lad,” said Nolan, in a soft voice.

“Underwood!” said Donahue, in a whisper. His weak, pinched, hungry face turned appealingly toward Grogan. His blear eyes were filmy with disappointment.

“He votes for John W. Underwood, Misther Chairman,” said Nolan complacently. The vote was unchanged. The chairman ordered another ballot.

And then, all at once, as if a breath from a sanded desert had been blown into the room, Underwood was sensible of a change in the atmosphere. The air was perhaps no hotter than it had been for hours at the close of that stifling day, no bluer with tobacco smoke, no heavier with the smell borne in from Clark Street on hot night winds that had started cool and fresh from the lake four blocks away, a smell compounded of many smells, the smell ascending from foul and dark cellars beneath the sidewalk, the smell of stale beer, the ammoniac smell of filthy pavements, mingled with the feculence of unclean bodies that had sweated for hours in the vitiated air of that low-ceilinged, crowded room. It had a strange moral density that oppressed him, that oppressed all, even the politicians, for they ceased from cursing and from speech, and now sat sullen, silent, suspiciously eying their companions. It was an atmosphere charged with some ominous foreboding, some awful fear. Underwood had never felt that atmosphere before, yet, with a gasp that came not as an effect of the heat, he recognized its meaning.

A hush fell. Muldoon, his black, curly locks shining with perspiration, was leaning on his improvised gavel, his keen eye, the Irish eye that so readily seizes such situations, darting into every face before him.

And suddenly came that for which they were waiting. A man entered the hall and strode straight across the floor into the Fifth Ward delegation, into the group where the Underwood men were clustered about their leader. He wore evening clothes, his black dinner-coat and white shirt bosom striking a vivid note in the scene. He walked briskly, but his mind was so intent upon his pose that it was not until he had removed his cigarette from his lips and had observed Underwood, that his white teeth showed beneath his reddish mustache in the well-known smile of George R. Baldwin. He elbowed his way into the very midst of the Underwood men from the Fifth Ward, and leading one of them aside, talked with him an instant, and then returned him, as it were, to his place in the delegation. Then he brought forth another, whispered to him for an earnest moment, and sent him back, with a smile and a slap on the shoulder. The third delegate detained him longer, and once, as he argued with him, the slightest shade of displeasure crossed Baldwin’s face, but in an instant the smile replaced it, and he talked--convincingly, it seemed. Before Baldwin returned this man to his delegation, he shook hands with him.

The secretary was calling the wards, and Nolan had announced the result in his delegation. The Fifth Ward was a long while in preparing its ballots. There was trouble of some sort there, among the Underwood men. Nolan was urging, expostulating, cursing, commanding. The air was tense. It seemed to Underwood that it must inevitably be shattered by some moral cataclysm in the soul of man. Grogan’s brow was knit, as he waited, hat in hand. The delegates voted. Feverishly, with trembling fingers, Grogan opened and counted the bits of paper. Then he sprang to his feet, with a wild, glad light in his face.

“Misther Chairman!” he cried, “the Fifth Ward casts twenty-five votes for Conway and four for Underwood!”

The three bolters in the Fifth Ward delegation sat with defiance in their faces, but they could not sustain the expression, even by huddling close together. They broke for the door, wriggling their way through masses of men, who made their passage uncertain, almost perilous. A billow of applause broke from the Conway men, and submerged the convention. Delegates all over the hall were on their feet, clamoring for recognition, but Malachi Nolan’s voice boomed heavily above all other voices. His fist was in the air above all other fists.

“Misther Chairman!” he yelled, “I challenge that vote!”

“Misther Chairman!” yelled Grogan, “a point of order! The gentleman isn’t a member of the Fifth Ward delegation and can not challenge its vote!”

“The point of order is well taken,” promptly ruled the chair. “The gentleman from the First Ward is out of order--he will take his seat.”

Men were screaming, brandishing fists, waving hats, coats, anything, scraping chairs, pounding the floor with them. There were heavy, brutal oaths, and, here and there, the smack of a fist on a face. In the tumult, the five Simmons votes went to Conway. Muldoon was beating the table with his club and crying:

“Order! order! order!”

“To hell with order!” bawled some one from the First Ward delegation.

“On this ballot,” Muldoon was calling, “there were sixty-nine votes cast; necessary to a choice, thirty-five. James P. Conway has received forty votes; John W. Underwood, twenty-nine, and George W. Simmons”--he paused, as if to decipher the vote--“none. James P. Conway, having received the necessary number of votes, is therefore declared the nominee of this convention.”

Underwood was stunned. He staggered through the horrible uproar toward the door. He longed for the air outside, even the heavy air of lower Clark street, where the people surged along under the wild, dazzling lights, in two opposite, ever-passing processions. His head reeled. He lost the sense of things, the voices about him seemed far away and vague, he felt himself detached, as it were, from all that had gone before. But as he pressed his way through the crowd that blocked the entrance, and plunged toward the stairs, he saw Baldwin, mopping the red band on his white brow. Baldwin recognized him, and said, with his everlasting smile:

“Sorry, my boy--next time!”

MALACHI NOLAN

Malachi Nolan sat by the roll-top desk in the front window of his saloon. The desk was unopened, for Malachi seldom had occasion to use it. The only letters he ever wrote were to whisky houses in Peoria or Louisville, and then the process was a painful one. His mighty haunches completely filled the chair, which, in turn, completely filled the space railed off in front of the partition that screened the bar. The saloon was in a basement in Dearborn Street, and, to get to it, you had to go down four stone steps, hollowed by countless feet in the long years he had kept there. Outside, over the door, a long, black sign bore his simple device--M. Nolan.

Malachi Nolan sat with his back to the window. His cropped gray hair showed his red scalp, the hard red skin on his face was closely shaven and shone on the points of his heavy jaw. In the round hole at the corner of his broad mouth was one of the long succession of cigars that had worn away the hole, sending up its perpetual incense. He never removed the cigar and seldom puffed it. It seemed to smoke of its own volition, and lasted a long time. When it consumed itself, Malachi replaced it with another. No one had ever seen him without a cigar in that hole at the side of his mouth. When he moved his thin lips to speak the cigar would stand out rigidly between his teeth. He spoke with his teeth clenched. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his shirt was clean and fresh, for he changed his linen daily, just as he shaved himself, relentlessly, every morning with a dull razor. On his glossy shirt front a great diamond, four carats in weight, sparkled leisurely as his enormous chest slowly rose and fell with his heavy breathing. This diamond was the central jewel of his alderman’s gold star, presented by constituents years before. The setting was so contrived that the stone could be unscrewed and made to serve as a stud. Malachi seldom wore the star, unless he went to a fire, or to a prize-fight across the Indiana line, or to the Olympic Theater, or got drunk.

As he sat there in his warm saloon on this raw March morning, Malachi read his paper, read it carefully and slowly, first the front page, column after column, then the second page, and so on, methodically, through all the pages, except the editorials, which he skipped. His lips moved slightly as he read, for he had to pronounce the words to himself in order to get their full meaning. He read his paper thus every morning of his life, and his paper was all he ever did read.

Malachi sat this morning, as on every other morning of the year, heavy, imponderable and solemn. The hour was ten o’clock. It was too early for business to begin in that saloon, so that the old bartender, who had been with Malachi for fifteen years, sat with his apron in his lap, against the whisky barrels that reached in rows from the slot machine back to the wooden stalls where many a campaign in the city council had been planned and its victory celebrated. The bartender was likewise reading a paper, the sporting news chiefly claiming his attention. By noon, aldermen and city hall employees would begin to drop in, and the place would liven up, but now the monotonous ticking of the Western Union clock on the wall could be heard all over the long room, and the big Maltese cat snoozed lazily at one end of the bar.

Malachi was not feeling as well as usual this morning, though his exterior was as clean and calm as ever. A fever burned beneath his great waistcoat, and on coming down he had drunk a bottle of mineral water. The truth is, that the night before, Malachi had so far departed from the habit of his methodical life as to drink much whisky, a thing he had not done for years, ever since the occasion, in fact, when celebrating a reëlection to the council, he had drunk so much that he was constrained to enter a barber shop in State Street, and terrorize the barbers by sticking all the razors in the floor, like a juggler he had seen playing with knives in a theater. The gang had been in the saloon until three o’clock that morning. They had just passed an ordinance granting a new franchise to the Metropolitan Motor Company, and in one of the walnut stalls the bundle had been cut, as the phrase is. The gang had grown so hilarious, as it always did on such occasions, that it had proposed a song by Malachi. Now, in his younger days, Malachi had been a great lad for song, and many a shindig in Bridgeport had he gladdened with his voice, but in the latter years it was seldom that he could be induced to exercise it. He would always plead his age and his flesh, and such was the solemnity of manner that had grown upon him with the years, that men in their sober hours never had the temerity to suggest anything so unbecoming his dignity. But on this night, heated by wine, and feeling, though they did not of course analyze the feeling, that so many improprieties had been committed that one more could not noticeably swell the score, they had been emboldened to demand a song. Malachi, standing by his own bar in his long frock coat and square-crowned stiff hat, twiddling his whisky glass just as if he were a casual visitor there, had resolutely shaken his head. But at two o’clock in the morning he had suddenly ordered the drinks for the house, and then, when the gang had given over all hope of his singing, save, perhaps, one or two who, deeper in their cups than the rest, had monotonously persisted in the invitation, he had spontaneously burst forth:

“Oh, Paddy, dear, and did you hear the news that’s going round?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground.
St. Patrick’s day no more we’ll keep, his colors can’t be seen,
For there’s a bloody law ag’in the wearin’ of the green.
I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, ‘How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?’”

And then the gang, unable to hold its enthusiasm, bellowed in chorus with the sadly cracked voice, which, nevertheless, retained the true old Irish lilt:

“She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
They are hangin’ men and women for the wearin’ of the green.”

They had sung it over and over, prolonging to a greater extent with each repetition the high note upon which in the song the word “men” falls. Once in tune, it was not so difficult to get Malachi to sing other songs, and he gave them, with the genuine flavor of the old sod, _Garryowen_. The gang became uproarious when he reached the stanza:

“Johnny Connell’s tall and straight,
And in his limbs he is complate,
He’ll pitch a bar of any weight
From Garryowen to Thomond gate.”

But the climax was reached when Malachi was at last induced to sing _The Night Before Larry Was Stretched_. This had taken time and diplomacy, for the more popular the song, the more difficult it was to prevail upon him to sing it, though at last he yielded, and the gang restrained itself as he began:

“The night before Larry was stretched,
The boys they all paid him a visit,
A bit in their sacks too they fetched,
They sweated their duds till they riz it:
For Larry was always the lad,
When a friend was condemned to the squeezer,
But he’d fence all the togs that he had
Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer,
And moisten his gob ’fore he died.”

The lagging last line was too much, and in their mad delight they began to pound Malachi familiarly on the back. And then he froze stiffly, drew himself up, ordered his cab and went home, and the song was never finished.

But now that morning had come and reason had returned with the light, he felt a chagrin at having suffered such a lapse in his dignity, and such a break in the resolution of years, and so was more solemn than ever.

When Malachi had read to the last line of the last column of the last page of his newspaper, he did not fold it and lay it aside as he did every other morning of the year. He turned to the first page and studied the picture there. It was the daily cartoon, and the central figure was intended for Malachi himself. That there could be no question of identity, the prudent artist had labeled it “Bull Nolan.” The figure was one that Malachi had seen in the newspapers in varying situations for years, and the aldermanic paunch, with massive chain and charm, the bullet head, with its stubble of hair and bell-crowned hat, the checked and braided clothes, the broad-soled shoes and checkered spats, the briskly radiating lines to symbolize his diamond, were supposed to embody the popular conception of the alderman’s personality. The inevitable cigar had fallen and lay fuming at his feet, the eyes and mouth gaped in palpable fear, and with a fat hand flashing other diamonds, this counterfeit presentment of Malachi Nolan was trying to protect the First Ward--peeping on a ballot from his waistcoat pocket--from a gentleman with high hat, side whiskers, gloves and cane, who, labeled “Citizen,” obviously impersonated the better element. The point of the cartoon was that the Municipal Reform League had resolved that Malachi Nolan be retired from public life. The League had had a banquet, and the speeches had breathed a zeal of reform such as only champagne and truffles can inspire. The resolutions rang like a declaration of independence; if the reform candidate, a gentleman of prominent probity, were beaten in regular convention, they would nominate him by petition.

Malachi studied the cartoon a long time, never changing expression, and when he finished, he folded the paper carefully and laid it on his desk, bestowed his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket, and then, placing a hand on each knee, sat and stared with widening eyes straight before him.

It was not a new experience to be thus caricatured. He had long since acquired a politician’s stoicism and could affect a reassuring indifference to attacks of the press; indeed, if a newspaper happened to elude him and slip into Nora’s hands, he could even pretend to like it. But this cartoon roused the fighting Irish in him.

Malachi had promised himself to retire from politics that spring, though his wary habit had kept him from taking the public into his confidence. He was rich, though not rich enough to give up saloon-keeping and become a contractor or a broker, and he had lately got the notion that he was growing old. But this successful politician, who so long before had landed in New York a homesick emigrant, had one great ambition unfulfilled. It was the common ambition of the exile--to see his home once more. When first elected to the council, after toiling years to save enough for his first small saloon, he had found, in the sentimental manner of his race, his chief joy in the fact that it was in the character of an ex-alderman he could go home to Ireland. Fate, of course, with her usual irony, had embittered his joy; Molly had died that very spring, she had not been spared even long enough to see him take his seat in the council chamber behind the one pathetic floral piece his constituents had placed upon his desk, but had left him to sit beside the candles at her wake, with lonesome little Nora crying at his knee. He felt that he had earned a rest. He had worked hard, mastered the intricate details of the water office and the special assessment bureau; he had done his part in making a town of wooden sidewalks a city of steel and stone; he had never betrayed his party or his friend. As for certain of his methods, well--if he thought of them at all--they were direct, and they won. So now that Nora was grown and had finished her education at St. Aloysius, he had decided to retire and take her with him on the long-dreamed-of trip back to Ireland--Ireland, where it was really spring that very morning.

But he wished to retire gracefully, to name his successor before he went, and how could he do this with the reformers making the fight of their lives against him? It would take Malachi Nolan some time to decide a question like that. He must think. Nora was young; after all, another term would make little difference; if he concluded to give some more lessons in practical politics to the reformers, she could take some more lessons on the piano.

Meanwhile, like a wise statesman, Malachi Nolan set about his day’s work. He had enough to keep him busy, so, drawing out his gold watch he carefully compared it with the clock, grasped the hour, rose deliberately, settled his ponderous body on his thick legs, and withdrew behind the partition. When he emerged to view again he was wrapped in his frieze overcoat, with his square-crowned hat pulled down to his eyebrows, ready for his morning visit to the city hall.

His progress over the great building was constantly impeded by men who stepped out of the rushing throngs of lawyers and lawyers’ clerks, city employees, court officials and politicians to shake hands with him, to whisper to him. He halted each time in a way that did not impair his Hibernian dignity, heard them with gravity, and walked on. He went to the water office to see why young Hennessey had been laid off; to the civil service commission to find out what opportunities the sixty-day list afforded; to the commissioner of public works to have some laborers put on the pay-roll; to the board of election commissioners to give in a list of certain constituents he desired to have appointed as extra clerks during the spring rush of work. He dropped in on the chief of police to get Murphy on the force; he saw the city clerk about a good fellow who had to be taken care of; he even followed the long hall to the court-house wing, where he whispered an instant to Judge Peters and had a friend excused from the jury.

And then he called on the mayor. A lieutenant of police, in gold stripes and stars, the velvet cuffs of his blue coat scrupulously brushed, was just going in. When the officer came out, the big policeman standing guard at the door raised his hand in a semi-military salute, and he kept a finger at his forehead until Malachi entered, thus declaring his abiding faith in the alderman’s political star, and his concern for his own official one.

The mayor sat at his great, square desk, with that look of nervous weariness Chicago gives the faces of its successful men, though the morning was young and the day’s strain scarce begun.

“Well, Alderman,” he said with a sigh, “what can I do for you?”

“Misther May’r,” said Nolan, “I come fer to ask a favor.”

The shade of weariness under the mayor’s eyes enveloped his brow, although he tried to wipe it out with his palm. Everybody came every day to ask favors.

“Now, Alderman,” he said, turning away fretfully, “I know. Please don’t ask me to interfere in your fight this spring. I’ll promise to keep hands off and leave you alone. Ain’t that enough?”

“Who said annything about my fight?” said Malachi. “It’s time enough to saay good marnin’ to th’ divil whin ye meet ’im, Jawn.”

The mayor looked a bit relieved, and turned toward Malachi with half a smile.

“Excuse me, Alderman, I supposed, of course--But what can I do for you?” He repeated his formula.

Malachi seated himself, and dangling his hat between his knees, he said:

“They’s a laad from my waard in the Bridewell, Jawn, an’ he’s a mother who’s wallopin’ a wash-board be th’ daay an’ night fer to make a livin’. His name’s James McGlone, an’ I’m afther a paardon fer ’im.”

The mayor scowled. “What’s he in for?”

“Damned if I know,” said Malachi; “he’s all the time in wan shcrape or anither with some o’ thim bla’gyaards down there.”

The mayor was turning a long blue pencil over and over, end for end, between his white fingers, making a series of monotonous tappings on his desk.

“Can’t you wait till after election?” he said at last.

“His time’ll be served out befoore that,” said Malachi, “an’ ph’at good’ll a paardon do ’im thin?”

The mayor continued the thoughtful tapping with his long blue pencil.

“Well, Alderman,” he said after a while, “I’d rather not issue any pardons before election, if I can help it. These reformers are going to raise hell this spring, sticking their noses into everybody’s business, and--”

Malachi’s little eyes contracted until their blue twinkle was almost hidden.

“But, Jawn,” he said, “so much the more r’ason why ye’ll want the Firsht in th’ convintion.”

“Oh, well,” said the mayor, “if it’s important--” And he pressed a button under his desk. Before his secretary appeared he added:

“You say you don’t know what he’s in for?”

“I dinnaw,” Malachi replied, “Mallett sint him up befoore I could git over.”

“You ought to watch those things more closely, Alderman,” chided the mayor peevishly.

* * * * *

Malachi Nolan sat at twilight with a glass of hot toddy on the leaf of his desk, and he sipped it with heavy sighs, for he had taken cold out in the March weather, with pores opened by the relaxations of the night before. Through his windows he could see the lights glimmering in the rain that had followed the moist snow of the early morning, and thousands of feet trudging by under rolled-up trousers or skirts held ankle high. At intervals the feet would line up along the curb waiting for North Side cable-cars, and seeing them paddle in the dirty slush, Malachi in the selfish spirit of contrast, more than ever coddled in the warmth of the room, of the toddy over which he smacked his lips, and of the cigar he smoked so slowly and comfortably. As he sat and smoked and sipped, he thought again of Limerick--the breath of spring blows the fragrance of the hawthorne, white upon the bough; he hears the song of the mavis; he is walking homeward along the black path through the bog, and up the green boreen, and there before him is the little cottage, its thatch held down by sticks and stones, a long ash pole propping up its crumbling gable; there is the mud shed with the thills of the old cart sticking out of it; the donkey is standing by, sad as ever; and up the muddy lane little Annie in her bare feet is driving the cows to the byre; and then he sees his mother sitting in the low doorway, all at once he catches his first whiff of the peat smoke, and with the strange spell that odors work upon the memory, it makes him a boy again; again he is sheltered on a rainy day in the mud shed, playing shoot-marbles with Andy Corrigan and Jerry O’Brien; again he is in the little chapel with the leaky roof; he sees all the boys and girls--Mary Cassidy among them--standing on the bare clay floor; he brings his bit of stone to kneel on during mass, he even runs out for a piece of slate to give to Mary, who lays it in the puddle at her feet and spreads her handkerchief over it before she kneels. And when the mass is over he will take little Nora--little Nora? He placed his hand to his forehead in confusion, and then in a gasp it all comes over him--Mary is old, Andy and Jerry are old, little Annie is old and he is old--they are all gone away. He bowed his head.

And yet Nora yearned to go. Should he turn the ward over to Brennan and take her this spring? He could run for the legislature when he came back in the fall; a senator would be elected by the next general assembly, and the graft would be very good then. The compromise attracted Malachi, for at once it acquitted him of indecision, a quality of statesmanship he hated, and kept for him the life of power that had become as the very breath of his nostrils. He would have been happy but for this stuffy cold, and even as it was he smacked his lips and fetched a long sigh, as he put down the glass.

And then the door opened, and a chill, wet wind blew in, causing him to start up out of his chair. He looked to see who it was that thus broke upon his reveries--and it was a woman! Now, a woman had never been in Malachi Nolan’s place before. It was a thing he could never tolerate, if he could ever imagine it even, and he hastily glanced around to see how many men were at the bar, and who they were. His face showed positive alarm. But the woman entered. She was accompanied by a boy, who slouched in behind her, shutting the door at her solicitous command, and halted there, hanging his head. His eyes shifted suspiciously under the hat brim that shadowed his sallow, prematurely wrinkled face; his lips curled in an evil sneer that seemed habitual.

The woman fluttered her shawl about her shoulders, clutched it to her thin breast with one hand, while the other she stretched forth with a blessing, as it were, for Malachi, and as she spoke, her seamed and scarred old Irish face, bleached in the steam of many wash-days and framed in withered black bonnet strings, glowed with the light of mother-love.

“Praise be, Mal’chi Nol’n,” she began, in a high voice that immediately stifled the clinking of glasses and the laughter behind the partition. “May God bless ye--ye’re th’ foinest man in th’ whole town! To think of yer l’avin’ th’ laad out th’ way ye did--an’ so soon afther me havin’ th’ impidence to ask ye, too--shure a mither’s blessin’ an’ th’ blessin’ of th’ Vargin’ll be on ye fer gettin’ th’ paardon fer ’im. Shtep up here, Jamesy, and t’ank Misther Nol’n yersilf--he’s th’ best man--”

“Aw, tut, tut, tut, now, Misthress McGlone,” said Malachi, his face flaming with something more than the exertion of craning his neck to peer behind the partition, “tut, tut, now, don’t be goin’ on like that.”

But the woman, brave in the one subject upon which she could dispute the alderman, persisted:

“Shure, Mal’chi Nol’n, ye know it yersilf--shtep up here, Jamesy, an’ make yer t’anks to ’im. Th’ laad’s a bit bashful, ye must excuse ’im, sor, he’s th’ best b’y ever lived, though it’s mesilf says it p’hat oughtn’t to.”

The boy still hung back, but the old woman hitching up the shawl that was shamelessly revealing the moth-eaten waist she wore, plucked him by the sleeve, and dragged him to the rail that separated them from Malachi. The boy jerked away from his mother’s grasp, yet lifted his unsteady eyes for an instant to blurt out:

“Well, I’m much obliged, see?”