THE GOLD BRICK

THE GOLD BRICK

By
BRAND WHITLOCK

Author of
THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT
HER INFINITE VARIETY THE HAPPY AVERAGE
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1910
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

CONTENTS

The stories in this book were originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, The American Magazine and Ainslee’s Magazine, and to these publications acknowledgments are due for their courtesy in giving permission for republication.

THE GOLD BRICK

THE GOLD BRICK

TEN thousand dollars a year! Neil Kittrell left the office of the Morning Telegraph in a daze. He was insensible of the raw February air, heedless of sloppy pavements; the gray day had suddenly turned gold. He could not realize it all at once; ten thousand a year—for him and Edith! His heart swelled with love of Edith; she had sacrificed so much to become the wife of a man who had tried to make an artist of himself, and of whom fate, or economic determinism, or something, had made a cartoonist. What a surprise for her! He must hurry home.

In this swelling of his heart he felt a love not only of Edith but of the whole world. The people he met seemed dear to him; he felt friendly with every one, and beamed on perfect strangers with broad, cheerful smiles. He stopped to buy some flowers for Edith—daffodils, or tulips, which promised spring, and he took the daffodils, because the girl said:

“I think yellow is such a spirituelle color, don’t you?” and inclined her head in a most artistic manner.

But daffodils, after all, which would have been much the day before, seemed insufficient in the light of new prosperity, and Kittrell bought a large azalea, beautiful in its graceful spread of pink blooms.

“Where shall I send it?” asked the girl, whose cheeks were as pink as azaleas themselves.

“I think I’ll call a cab and take it to her myself,” said Kittrell.

And she sighed over the romance of this rich young gentleman and the girl of the azalea, who, no doubt, was as beautiful as the young woman who was playing Lottie, the Poor Saleslady at the Lyceum that very week.

Kittrell and the azalea bowled along Claybourne Avenue; he leaned back on the cushions, and adopted the expression of ennui appropriate to that thoroughfare. Would Edith now prefer Claybourne Avenue? With ten thousand a year they could, perhaps—and yet, at first it would be best not to put on airs, but to go right on as they were, in the flat. Then the thought came to him that now, as the cartoonist on the Telegraph, his name would become as well known in Claybourne Avenue as it had been in the homes of the poor and humble during his years on the Post. And his thoughts flew to those homes where tired men at evening looked for his cartoons and children laughed at his funny pictures. It gave him a pang; he had felt a subtle bond between himself and all those thousands who read the Post. It was hard to leave them. The Post might be yellow, but, as the girl had said, yellow was a spiritual color, and the Post brought something into their lives—lives that were scorned by the Telegraph and by these people on the avenue. Could he make new friends here, where the cartoons he drew and the Post that printed them had been contemned, if not despised? His mind flew back to the dingy office of the Post; to the boys there, the whole good-natured, happy-go-lucky gang; and to Hardy—ah, Hardy!—who had been so good to him, and given him his big chance, had taken such pains and interest, helping him with ideas and suggestions, criticism and sympathy. To tell Hardy that he was going to leave him, here on the eve of the campaign—and Clayton, the mayor, he would have to tell him, too—oh, the devil! Why must he think of these things now?

After all, when he had reached home, and had run up-stairs with the news and the azalea, Edith did not seem delighted.

“But, dearie, business is business,” he argued, “and we need the money!”

“Yes, I know; doubtless you’re right. Only please don’t say ‘business is business;’ it isn’t like you, and—”

“But think what it will mean—ten thousand a year!”

“Oh, Neil, I’ve lived on ten thousand a year before, and I never had half the fun that I had when we were getting along on twelve hundred.”

“Yes, but then we were always dreaming of the day when I’d make a lot; we lived on that hope, didn’t we?”

Edith laughed. “You used to say we lived on love.”

“You’re not serious.” He turned to gaze moodily out of the window. And then she left the azalea, and perched on the flat arm of his chair.

“Dearest,” she said, “I am serious. I know all this means to you. We’re human, and we don’t like to ‘chip at crusts like Hindus,’ even for the sake of youth and art. I never had illusions about love in a cottage and all that. Only, dear, I have been happy, so very happy, with you, because—well, because I was living in an atmosphere of honest purpose, honest ambition, and honest desire to do some good thing in the world. I had never known such an atmosphere before. At home, you know, father and Uncle James and the boys—well, it was all money, money, money with them, and they couldn’t understand why I—”

“Could marry a poor newspaper artist! That’s just the point.”

She put her hand to his lips.

“Now, dear! If they couldn’t understand, so much the worse for them. If they thought it meant sacrifice to me, they were mistaken. I have been happy in this little flat; only—” she leaned back and inclined her head with her eyes asquint—“only the paper in this room is atrocious; it’s a typical landlord’s selection—McGaw picked it out. You see what it means to be merely rich.”

She was so pretty thus that he kissed her, and then she went on:

“And so, dear, if I didn’t seem to be as impressed and delighted as you hoped to find me, it is because I was thinking of Mr. Hardy and the poor, dear, common little Post, and then—of Mr. Clayton. Did you think of him?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to—to cartoon him?”

“I suppose so.”

The fact he had not allowed himself to face was close to both of them, and the subject was dropped until, just as he was going down-town—this time to break the news to Hardy—he went into the room he sarcastically said he might begin to call his studio, now that he was getting ten thousand a year, to look for a sketch he had promised Nolan for the sporting page. And there on his drawing-board was an unfinished cartoon, a drawing of the strong face of John Clayton. He had begun it a few days before to use on the occasion of Clayton’s renomination. It had been a labor of love, and Kittrell suddenly realized how good it was. He had put into it all of his belief in Clayton, all of his devotion to the cause for which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and in the simple lines he experienced the artist’s ineffable felicity; he had shown how good, how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at once he realized the sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would delight and hearten Clayton’s followers, how it would please Hardy, and how it would touch Clayton. It would be a tribute to the man and the friendship, but now a tribute broken, unfinished. Kittrell gazed a moment longer, and in that moment Edith came.

“The dear, beautiful soul!” she exclaimed softly. “Neil, it is wonderful. It is not a cartoon; it is a portrait. It shows what you might do with a brush.”

Kittrell could not speak, and he turned the drawing-board to the wall.

When he had gone, Edith sat and thought—of Neil, of the new position, of Clayton. He had loved Neil, and been so proud of his work; he had shown a frank, naïve pleasure in the cartoons Neil had made of him. That last time he was there, thought Edith, he had said that without Neil the “good old cause,” as he called it, using Whitman’s phrase, could never have triumphed in that town. And now, would he come again? Would he ever stand in that room and, with his big, hearty laugh, clasp an arm around Neil’s shoulder, or speak of her in his good, friendly way as “the little woman?” Would he come now, in the terrible days of the approaching campaign, for rest and sympathy—come as he used to come in other campaigns, worn and weary from all the brutal opposition, the vilification and abuse and mud-slinging? She closed her eyes. She could not think that far.

Kittrell found the task of telling Hardy just as difficult as he expected it to be, but by some mercy it did not last long. Explanation had not been necessary; he had only to make the first hesitating approaches, and Hardy understood. Hardy was, in a way, hurt; Kittrell saw that, and rushed to his own defense:

“I hate to go, old man. I don’t like it a little bit—but, you know, business is business, and we need the money.”

He even tried to laugh as he advanced this last conclusive reason, and Hardy, for all he showed in voice or phrase, may have agreed with him.

“It’s all right, Kit,” he said. “I’m sorry; I wish we could pay you more, but—well, good luck.”

That was all. Kittrell gathered up the few articles he had at the office, gave Nolan his sketch, bade the boys good-by—bade them good-by as if he were going on a long journey, never to see them more—and then he went.

After he had made the break it did not seem so bad as he had anticipated. At first things went on smoothly enough. The campaign had not opened, and he was free to exercise his talents outside the political field. He drew cartoons dealing with banal subjects, touching with the gentle satire of his humorous pencil foibles which all the world agreed about, and let vital questions alone. And he and Edith enjoyed themselves: indulged oftener in things they loved; went more frequently to the theater; appeared at recitals; dined now and then down-town. They began to realize certain luxuries they had not known for a long time—some he himself had never known, some that Edith had not known since she left her father’s home to become his bride. In more subtle ways, too, Kittrell felt the change: there was a sense of larger leisure; the future beamed with a broader and brighter light; he formed plans, among which the old dream of going ere long to Paris for serious study took its dignified place. And then there was the sensation his change had created in the newspaper world; that the cartoons signed “Kit,” which formerly appeared in the Post, should now adorn the broad page of the Telegraph was a thing to talk about at the press club; the fact of his large salary got abroad in that little world as well, and, after the way of that world, managed to exaggerate itself, as most facts did. He began to be sensible of attentions from men of prominence—small things, mere nods in the street, perhaps, or smiles in the theater foyer, but enough to show that they recognized him. What those children of the people, those working-men and women who used to be his unknown and admiring friends in the old days on the Post, thought of him—whether they missed him, whether they deplored his change as an apostasy or applauded it as a promotion—he did not know. He did not like to think about it.

But March came, and the politicians began to bluster like the season. Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing editor of the Telegraph, had conceived it, and Kittrell had worked on it that day in sickness of heart. Every lying line of this new presentation of Clayton had cut him like some biting acid; but he had worked on, trying to reassure himself with the argument that he was a mere agent, devoid of personal responsibility. But it had been hard, and when Edith, after her custom, had asked to see it, he had said:

“Oh, you don’t want to see it; it’s no good.”

“Is it of—him?” she had asked.

And when he nodded she had gone away without another word. Now, as he hurried through the crowded streets, he was conscious that it was no good, indeed; and he was divided between the artist’s regret and the friend’s joy in the fact. But it made him tremble. Was his hand to forget its cunning? And then, suddenly, he heard a familiar voice, and there beside him, with his hand on his shoulder, stood the mayor.

“Why, Neil, my boy, how are you?” he said, and he took Kittrell’s hand as warmly as ever. For a moment Kittrell was relieved, and then his heart sank; for he had a quick realization that it was the coward within him that felt the relief, and the man the sickness. If Clayton had reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but Clayton did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn to the subject himself.

“You heard of my—new job?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Clayton, “I heard.”

“Well—” Kittrell began.

“I’m sorry,” Clayton said.

“So was I,” Kittrell hastened to say. “But I felt it—well, a duty, some way—to Edith. You know—we—need the money.” And he gave the cynical laugh that went with the argument.

“What does she think? Does she feel that way about it?”

Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with embarrassment, for Clayton’s blue eyes were on him, those eyes that could look into men and understand them so.

“Of course you know,” Kittrell went on nervously, “there is nothing personal in this. We newspaper fellows simply do what we are told; we obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the paper we have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a red-hot free-trader and used to write free-trade editorials for the Times—he went over to the Telegraph, you remember, and writes all those protection arguments.”

The mayor did not seem to be interested in Dick Jennings, or in the ethics of his profession.

“Of course, you know I’m for you, Mr. Clayton, just exactly as I’ve always been. I’m going to vote for you.”

This did not seem to interest the mayor, either.

“And, maybe, you know—I thought, perhaps,” he snatched at this bright new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time, “that I might help you by my cartoons in the Telegraph; that is, I might keep them from being as bad as they might—”

“But that wouldn’t be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil,” the mayor said.

Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner.

“Well, good-by, my boy,” said the mayor, as they parted. “Remember me to the little woman.”

Kittrell watched him as he went on down the avenue, swinging along in his free way, the broad felt hat he wore riding above all the other hats in the throng that filled the sidewalk; and Kittrell sighed in deep depression.

When he turned in his cartoon, Benson scanned it a moment, cocked his head this side and that, puffed his brier pipe, and finally said:

“I’m afraid this is hardly up to you. This figure of Clayton, here—it hasn’t got the stuff in it. You want to show him as he is. We want the people to know what a four-flushing, hypocritical, demagogical blatherskite he is—with all his rot about the people and their damned rights!”

Benson was all unconscious of the inconsistency of having concern for a people he so despised, and Kittrell did not observe it, either. He was on the point of defending Clayton, but he restrained himself and listened to Benson’s suggestions. He remained at the office for two hours, trying to change the cartoon to Benson’s satisfaction, with a growing hatred of the work and a disgust with himself that now and then almost drove him to mad destruction. He felt like splashing the piece with India ink, or ripping it with his knife. But he worked on, and submitted it again. He had failed, of course; failed to express in it that hatred of a class which Benson unconsciously disguised as a hatred of Clayton, a hatred which Kittrell could not express because he did not feel it; and he failed because art deserts her devotees when they are false to truth.

“Well, it’ll have to do,” said Benson, as he looked it over; “but let’s have a little more to the next one. Damn it! I wish I could draw. I’d cartoon the crook!”

In default of which ability, Benson set himself to write one of those savage editorials in which he poured out on Clayton that venom of which he seemed to have such an inexhaustible supply.

But on one point Benson was right: Kittrell was not up to himself. As the campaign opened, as the city was swept with the excitement of it, with meetings at noon-day and at night, office-seekers flying about in automobiles, walls covered with pictures of candidates, hand-bills scattered in the streets to swirl in the wild March winds, and men quarreling over whether Clayton or Ellsworth should be mayor, Kittrell had to draw a political cartoon each day; and as he struggled with his work, less and less the old joy came to cheer and spur him on. To read the ridicule, the abuse, which the Telegraph heaped on Clayton, the distortion of facts concerning his candidature, the unfair reports of his meetings, sickened him, and more than all, he was filled with disgust as he tried to match in caricature these libels of the man he so loved and honored. It was bad enough to have to flatter Clayton’s opponent, to picture him as a noble, disinterested character, ready to sacrifice himself for the public weal. Into his pictures of this man, attired in the long black coat of conventional respectability, with the smug face of pharisaism, he could get nothing but cant and hypocrisy; but in his caricatures of Clayton there was that which pained him worse—disloyalty, untruth, and now and then, to the discerning few who knew the tragedy of Kittrell’s soul, there was pity. And thus his work declined in value; lacking all sincerity, all faith in itself or its purpose, it became false, uncertain, full of jarring notes, and, in short, never once rang true. As for Edith, she never discussed his work now; she spoke of the campaign little, and yet he knew she was deeply concerned, and she grew hot with resentment at the methods of the Telegraph. Her only consolation was derived from the Post, which, of course, supported Clayton; and the final drop of bitterness in Kittrell’s cup came one evening when he realized that she was following with sympathetic interest the cartoons in that paper.

For the Post had a new cartoonist, Banks, a boy whom Hardy had picked up somewhere and was training to the work Kittrell had laid down. To Kittrell there was a cruel fascination in the progress Banks was making; he watched it with a critical, professional eye, at first with amusement, then with surprise, and now at last, in the discovery of Edith’s interest, with a keen jealousy of which he was ashamed. The boy was crude and untrained; his work was not to be compared with Kittrell’s, master of line that he was, but Kittrell saw that it had the thing his work now lacked, the vital, primal thing—sincerity, belief, love. The spark was there, and Kittrell knew how Hardy would nurse that spark and fan it, and keep it alive and burning until it should eventually blaze up in a fine white flame. And Kittrell realized, as the days went by, that Banks’ work was telling, and that his own was failing. He had, from the first, missed the atmosphere of the Post, missed the camaraderie of the congenial spirits there, animated by a common purpose, inspired and led by Hardy, whom they all loved—loved as he himself once loved him, loved as he loved him still—and dare not look him in the face when they met!

He found the atmosphere of the Telegraph alien and distasteful. There all was different; the men had little joy in their work, little interest in it, save perhaps the newspaper man’s inborn love of a good story or a beat. They were all cynical, without loyalty or faith; they secretly made fun of the Telegraph, of its editors and owners; they had no belief in its cause; and its pretensions to respectability, its parade of virtue, excited only their derision. And slowly it began to dawn on Kittrell that the great moral law worked always and everywhere, even on newspapers, and that there was reflected inevitably and logically in the work of the men on that staff the hatred, the lack of principle, the bigotry and intolerance of its proprietors; and this same lack of principle tainted and made meretricious his own work, and enervated the editorials so that the Telegraph, no matter how carefully edited or how dignified in typographical appearance, was, nevertheless, without real influence in the community.

Meanwhile Clayton was gaining ground. It was less than two weeks before election. The campaign waxed more and more bitter, and as the forces opposed to him foresaw defeat, they became ugly in spirit, and desperate. The Telegraph took on a tone more menacing and brutal, and Kittrell knew that the crisis had come. The might of the powers massed against Clayton appalled Kittrell; they thundered at him through many brazen mouths, but Clayton held on his high way unperturbed. He was speaking by day and night to thousands. Such meetings he had never had before. Kittrell had visions of him before those immense audiences in halls, in tents, in the raw open air of that rude March weather, making his appeals to the heart of the great mass. A fine, splendid, romantic figure he was, striking to the imagination, this champion of the people’s cause, and Kittrell longed for the lost chance. Oh, for one day on the Post now!

One morning at breakfast, as Edith read the Telegraph, Kittrell saw the tears well slowly in her brown eyes.

“Oh,” she said, “it is shameful!” She clenched her little fists. “Oh, if I were only a man I’d—” She could not in her impotent feminine rage say what she would do; she could only grind her teeth. Kittrell bent his head over his plate; his coffee choked him.

“Dearest,” she said presently, in another tone, “tell me, how is he? Do you—ever see him? Will he win?”

“No, I never see him. But he’ll win; I wouldn’t worry.”

“He used to come here,” she went on, “to rest a moment, to escape from all this hateful confusion and strife. He is killing himself! And they aren’t worth it—those ignorant people—they aren’t worth such sacrifices.”

He got up from the table and turned away, and then, realizing quickly, she flew to his side and put her arms about his neck and said:

“Forgive me, dearest, I didn’t mean—only—”

“Oh, Edith,” he said, “this is killing me. I feel like a dog.”

“Don’t dear; he is big enough, and good enough; he will understand.”

“Yes; that only makes it harder, only makes it hurt the more.”

That afternoon, in the car, he heard no talk but of the election; and down-town, in a cigar store where he stopped for cigarettes, he heard some men talking mysteriously, in the hollow voice of rumor, of some sensation, some scandal. It alarmed him, and as he went into the office he met Manning, the Telegraph’s political man.

“Tell me, Manning,” Kittrell said, “how does it look?”

“Damn bad for us.”

“For us?”

“Well, for our mob of burglars and second story workers here—the gang we represent.” He took a cigarette from the box Kittrell was opening.

“And will he win?”

“Will he win?” said Manning, exhaling the words on the thin level stream of smoke that came from his lungs. “Will he win? In a walk, I tell you. He’s got ’em beat to a standstill right now. That’s the dope.”

“But what about this story of—”

“Aw, that’s all a pipe-dream of Burns’. I’m running it in the morning, but it’s nothing; it’s a shine. They’re big fools to print it at all. But it’s their last card; they’re desperate. They won’t stop at anything, or at any crime, except those requiring courage. Burns is in there with Benson now; so is Salton, and old man Glenn, and the rest of the bunco family. They’re framing it up. When I saw old Glenn go in, with his white side whiskers, I knew the widow and the orphan were in danger again, and that he was going bravely to the front for ’em. Say, that young Banks is comin’, isn’t he? That’s a peach, that cartoon of his to-night.”

Kittrell went on down the hall to the art-room to wait until Benson should be free. But it was not long until he was sent for, and as he entered the managing editor’s room he was instantly sensible of the somber atmosphere of a grave and solemn council of war. Benson introduced him to Glenn, the banker, to Salton, the party boss, and to Burns, the president of the street-car company; and as Kittrell sat down he looked about him, and could scarcely repress a smile as he recalled Manning’s estimate of Glenn. The old man sat there, as solemn and unctuous as ever he had in his pew at church. Benson, red of face, was more plainly perturbed, but Salton was as reserved, as immobile, as inscrutable as ever, his narrow, pointed face, with its vulpine expression, being perhaps paler than usual. Benson had on his desk before him the cartoon Kittrell had finished that day.

“Mr. Kittrell,” Benson began, “we’ve been talking over the political situation, and I was showing these gentlemen this cartoon. It isn’t, I fear, in your best style; it lacks the force, the argument, we’d like just at this time. That isn’t the Telegraph Clayton, Mr. Kittrell.” He pointed with the amber stem of his pipe. “Not at all. Clayton is a strong, smart, unscrupulous, dangerous man! We’ve reached a crisis in this campaign; if we can’t turn things in the next three days, we’re lost, that’s all; we might as well face it. To-morrow we make an important revelation concerning the character of Clayton, and we want to follow it up the morning after by a cartoon that will be a stunner, a clencher. We have discussed it here among ourselves, and this is our idea.”

Benson drew a crude, bald outline, indicating the cartoon they wished Kittrell to draw. The idea was so coarse, so brutal, so revolting, that Kittrell stood aghast, and, as he stood, he was aware of Salton’s little eyes fixed on him. Benson waited; they all waited.

“Well,” said Benson, “what do you think of it?”

Kittrell paused an instant, and then said:

“I won’t draw it; that’s what I think of it.”

Benson flushed angrily and looked up at him.

“We are paying you a very large salary, Mr. Kittrell, and your work, if you will pardon me, has not been up to what we were led to expect.”

“You are quite right, Mr. Benson, but I can’t draw that cartoon.”

“Well, great God!” yelled Burns, “what have we got here—a gold brick?” He rose with a vivid sneer on his red face, plunged his hands in his pockets, and took two or three nervous strides across the room. Kittrell looked at him, and slowly his eyes blazed out of a face that had gone white on the instant.

“What did you say, sir?” he demanded.

Burns thrust his red face, with its prognathic jaw, menacingly toward Kittrell.

“I said that in you we’d got a gold brick.”

“You?” said Kittrell. “What have you to do with it? I don’t work for you.”

“You don’t? Well, I guess it’s us that puts up—”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” said Glenn, waving a white, pacificatory hand.

“Yes, let me deal with this, if you please,” said Benson, looking hard at Burns. The street-car man sneered again, then, in ostentatious contempt, looked out the window. And in the stillness Benson continued:

“Mr. Kittrell, think a minute. Is your decision final?”

“It is final, Mr. Benson,” said Kittrell. “And as for you, Burns,” he glared angrily at the man, “I wouldn’t draw that cartoon for all the dirty money that all the bribing street-car companies in the world could put into Mr. Glenn’s bank here. Good evening, gentlemen.”

It was not until he stood again in his own home that Kittrell felt the physical effects which the spiritual squalor of such a scene was certain to produce in a nature like his.

“Neil! What is the matter?” Edith fluttered toward him in alarm.

He sank into a chair, and for a moment he looked as if he would faint, but he looked wanly up at her and said:

“Nothing; I’m all right; just a little weak. I’ve gone through a sickening, horrible scene—”

“Dearest!”

“And I’m off the Telegraph—and a man once more!”

He bent over, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and when Edith put her calm, caressing hand on his brow, she found that it was moist from nervousness. Presently he was able to tell her the whole story.

“It was, after all, Edith, a fitting conclusion to my experience on the Telegraph. I suppose, though, that to people who are used to ten thousand a year such scenes are nothing at all.” She saw in this trace of his old humor that he was himself again, and she hugged his head to her bosom.

“Oh, dearest,” she said, “I’m proud of you—and happy again.”

They were, indeed, both happy, happier than they had been in weeks.

The next morning after breakfast, she saw by his manner, by the humorous, almost comical expression about his eyes, that he had an idea. In this mood of satisfaction—this mood that comes too seldom in the artist’s life—she knew it was wise to let him alone. And he lighted his pipe and went to work. She heard him now and then, singing or whistling or humming; she scented his pipe, then cigarettes; then, at last, after two hours, he called in a loud, triumphant tone:

“Oh, Edith!”

She was at the door in an instant, and, waving his hand grandly at his drawing-board, he turned to her with that expression which connotes the greatest joy gods or mortals can know—the joy of beholding one’s own work and finding it good. He had, as she saw, returned to the cartoon of Clayton he had laid aside when the tempter came; and now it was finished. Its simple lines revealed Clayton’s character, as the sufficient answer to all the charges the Telegraph might make against him. Edith leaned against the door and looked long and critically.

“It was fine before,” she said presently; “it’s better now. Before it was a portrait of the man; this shows his soul.”

“Well, it’s how he looks to me,” said Neil, “after a month in which to appreciate him.”

“But what,” she said, stooping and peering at the edge of the drawing, where, despite much knife-scraping, vague figures appeared, “what’s that?”

“Oh, I’m ashamed to tell you,” he said. “I’ll have to paste over that before it’s electrotyped. You see, I had a notion of putting in the gang, and I drew four little figures—Benson, Burns, Salton and Glenn; they were plotting—oh, it was foolish and unworthy. I decided I didn’t want anything of hatred in it—just as he wouldn’t want anything of hatred in it; so I rubbed them out.”

“Well, I’m glad. It is beautiful; it makes up for everything; it’s an appreciation—worthy of the man.”

When Kittrell entered the office of the Post, the boys greeted him with delight, and his presence made a sensation, for there had been rumors of the break which the absence of a “Kit” cartoon in the Telegraph that morning had confirmed. But, if Hardy was surprised, his surprise was swallowed up in his joy, and Kittrell was grateful to him for the delicacy with which he touched the subject that consumed the newspaper and political world with curiosity.

“I’m glad, Kit,” was all that he said. “You know that.”

Then he forgot everything in the cartoon, and he showed his instant recognition of its significance by snatching out his watch, pushing a button, and saying to Garland, who came to the door in his shirt-sleeves:

“Tell Nic to hold the first edition for a five-column first-page cartoon. And send this up right away.”

They had a last look at it before it went, and after gazing a moment in silence Hardy said:

“It’s the greatest thing you ever did, Kit, and it comes at the psychological moment. It’ll elect him.”

“Oh, he was elected anyhow.”

Hardy shook his head, and in the movement Kittrell saw how the strain of the campaign had told on him. “No, he wasn’t; the way they’ve been hammering him is something fierce; and the Telegraph—well, your cartoons and all, you know.”

“But my cartoons in the Telegraph were rotten. Any work that is not sincere, not intellectually honest—”

Hardy interrupted him:

“Yes; but, Kit, you’re so good that your rotten is better than ’most anybody’s best.” He smiled, and Kittrell blushed and looked away.

Hardy was right. The “Kit” cartoon, back in the Post, created its sensation, and after it appeared the political reporters said it had started a landslide to Clayton; that the betting was 4 to 1 and no takers, and that it was all over but the shouting.

That night, as they were at dinner, the telephone rang, and in a minute Neil knew by Edith’s excited and delighted reiteration of “yes,” “yes,” who had called up. And then he heard her say:

“Indeed I will; I’ll come every night and sit in the front seat.”

When Kittrell displaced Edith at the telephone, he heard the voice of John Clayton, lower in register and somewhat husky after four weeks’ speaking, but more musical than ever in Kittrell’s ears when it said:

“I just told the little woman, Neil, that I didn’t know how to say it, so I wanted her to thank you for me. It was beautiful in you, and I wish I were worthy of it; it was simply your own good soul expressing itself.”

And it was the last delight to Kittrell to hear that voice and to know that all was well.

But one question remained unsettled. Kittrell had been on the Telegraph a month, and his contract differed from that ordinarily made by the members of a newspaper staff in that he was paid by the year, though in monthly instalments. Kittrell knew that he had broken his contract on grounds which the sordid law would not see or recognize and the average court think absurd, and that the Telegraph might legally refuse to pay him at all. He hoped the Telegraph would do this! But it did not; on the contrary, he received the next day a check for his month’s work. He held it up for Edith’s inspection.

“Of course, I’ll have to send it back,” he said.

“Certainly.”

“Do you think me quixotic?”

“Well, we’re poor enough as it is—let’s have some luxuries; let’s be quixotic until after election, at least.”

“Sure,” said Neil; “just what I was thinking. I’m going to do a cartoon every day for the Post until election day, and I’m not going to take a cent. I don’t want to crowd Banks out, you know, and I want to do my part for Clayton and the cause, and do it, just once, for the pure love of the thing.”

Those last days of the campaign were, indeed, luxuries to Kittrell and to Edith, days of work and fun and excitement. All day Kittrell worked on his cartoons, and in the evening they went to Clayton’s meetings. The experience was a revelation to them both—the crowds, the waiting for the singing of the automobile’s siren, the wild cheers that greeted Clayton, and then his speech, his appeals to the best there was in men. He had never made such speeches, and long afterward Edith could hear those cheers and see the faces of those working-men aglow with the hope, the passion, the fervent religion of democracy. And those days came to their glad climax that night when they met at the office of the Post to receive the returns, in an atmosphere quivering with excitement, with messenger boys and reporters coming and going, and in the street outside an immense crowd, swaying and rocking between the walls on either side, with screams and shouts and mad huzzas, and the wild blowing of horns—all the hideous, happy noise an American election-night crowd can make.

Late in the evening Clayton had made his way, somehow unnoticed, through the crowd, and entered the office. He was happy in the great triumph he would not accept as personal, claiming it always for the cause; but as he dropped into the chair Hardy pushed toward him, they all saw how weary he was.

Just at that moment the roar in the street below swelled to a mighty crescendo, and Hardy cried:

“Look!”

They ran to the window. The boys up-stairs who were manipulating the stereopticon, had thrown on the screen an enormous picture of Clayton, the portrait Kittrell had drawn for his cartoon.

“Will you say now there isn’t the personal note in it?” Edith asked.

Clayton glanced out the window, across the dark, surging street, at the picture.

“Oh, it’s not me they’re cheering for,” he said; “it’s for Kit, here.”

“Well, perhaps some of it’s for him,” Edith admitted loyally.

They were silent, seized irresistibly by the emotion that mastered the mighty crowd in the dark streets below. Edith was strangely moved. Presently she could speak:

“Is there anything sweeter in life than to know that you have done a good thing—and done it well?”

“Yes,” said Clayton, “just one: to have a few friends who understand.”

“You are right,” said Edith. “It is so with art, and it must be so with life; it makes an art of life.”

It was dark enough there by the window for her to slip her hand into that of Neil, who had been musing silently on the crowd.

“I can never say again,” she said softly, “that those people are not worth sacrifice. They are worth all; they are everything; they are the hope of the world; and their longings and their needs, and the possibility of bringing them to pass, are all that give significance to life.”

“That’s what America is for,” said Clayton, “and it’s worth while to be allowed to help even in a little way to make, as old Walt says, ‘a nation of friends, of equals.’”

THE HAS-BEEN

AS HOLMAN loitered along the pavement that June morning, glad once more to be back in Springfield after so many years, he recalled with a sigh another morning, far gone, when first he had come up to the capital of his state. “A morning just like this,” he was thinking, “all green and sunny and hopeful and—pure. My God!” But he put aside regret; it was enough just then to be back after so many years of absence—years of dingy poverty which had kept him down in stupid Jasper, never once able to get back during the session, if only for a day to see the boys!—even as a man of fifty, with gray hair straggling beneath his broad, slouch hat, with his long, dusty coat, and worn, old shoes, that fell softly on the hot sidewalk, far other than the young representative who had come up to the capital so long before. In Capitol Avenue he had the state house in full view, the gray, swelling dome still patiently brooding over the stupidities and trivialities which the bickering human beings, running about like insects below, were proudly and solemnly achieving. The little flags were at their staffs on either wing. Once, at the sight he might have hurried, knowing his presence to be required beneath that flag on the house wing. No need now to hasten any more; he was not needed there, nor anywhere in the world.

The sidewalk was filled with men striding like the statesmen they felt themselves to be, and none among them now to remember him; but he walked with them under the railroad’s ugly trestle, past the old white house on the little hill, still with its lightning-rod to keep alive one of the best of Lincoln stories, and up the broad walk to the state house. Inside, the cool shades of the big pile were grateful as they used to be. Through the open doors of offices he could see clerks at work, or at least at desks, somehow coming off victorious, it seemed, in their desperate business of holding on to their slippery, eel-like, political jobs; then the crowded elevator—and the inevitable old soldier to operate it. All as it used to be; and he, like some risen ghost long since laid in its political grave, stalking among earthly presences that had forgotten him.

The doorkeepers at the house regarded him with the official misanthropy and distrust, but Holman quelled their glance, pronounced the word “Ex-member,” and so passed in to the one barren prerogative left him out of the years of former power and prestige.

The house, on the order of senate bills on first reading, was inattentive; members lolled in their seats, read newspapers, talked, gossiped, wrote letters, now and then threw paper wads at one another—incipiencies of that horseplay which would mark the session’s close. The clerk mumbled the said senate bills on first reading, the speaker turned in his chair to talk with some one on the divan behind him, swinging about now and then to say, “First reading of the bill!” and to tap the sounding-board with his gavel. And, of them all, not one he knew, not one to recognize him! But, yes, there was one, after all; just one. Down the center aisle, reclining in his chair nonchalantly, was a young fellow, almost a boy to Holman’s disadvantage point of years, whose head, turned at that instant, showed a profile which, when age and authority should visit it, would cause one to remark it; a fair brow, strong nose and good-humored lips parting now in a smile at some remark a member across the aisle had made. As Holman looked at young McCray his mind went back to another morning in another June, when the air came in through the tall, open windows with the breath of young summer in Illinois, the very odor of the prairie flowers themselves, the morning that Baldwin had come to him. And now McCray sat there, representing his old district, with all the opportunities, dreams, ambitions, illusions he himself had had—and lost.

But Holman was not much given to introspection—his eye was not long turned inward; and now, turned outward, it lighted on a white head far down toward the front of the house.

“Why, if there isn’t, after all, one o’ the old-timers! Say, young fellow,” he said, speaking to an assistant sergeant-at-arms who had been standing near and, unable to identify Holman as a representative of any railroad or other interest entitled to respect on that floor, had been eying him with some suspicion. “Say,” said Holman, pointing with a long forefinger, “ain’t that old Ike Bemis down there—Bemis, of Tazewell? Yes? Well, now, just call a page boy, won’t you? And have him tell Bemis an old friend wants to see him.”

Bemis was, in his way, a phenomenon unparalleled in politics; he had been in the house before Holman and had held on, minority member from his district, the Republican and Democratic machines working harmoniously together, for a quarter of a century. And as he came up the aisle in response to Holman’s message he seemed to Holman to have changed little; only his hair from iron gray had grown white, and his face was not so clear or ruddy or healthy as he had known it. He was dressed as he used to be in the gray clothes that made him look so like a prosperous farmer, and the hand he held out to Holman was, by some mystery, rough and horny, as if it had worked indeed.

“Why, bless the Lord!” he cried, “if it ain’t Jim Holman!”

He shook Holman’s hand with genuine pleasure and, putting his arm across Holman’s shoulders, led him away to a divan under the gallery.

They sat down there and for half an hour chatted and gossiped, recalled old friends and associates of legislatures that were gone, discussed them, accounted for them, pursued their subsequent histories in politics or out of politics, their triumphs, their failures and their fates—in short, they reconstructed their own little world and caught up with the times.

“’Tain’t what it used to be, Jim,” said Bemis with an old man’s deploration of change. “You did right to get out of it. I don’t want any more of it. When this session closes I’m through; I won’t run again.”

Holman was not greatly impressed; politicians, he knew, were always making their last campaign, as sailors were always making their last voyage.

“Sine die adjournment next week, and then good-by to politics for me,” Bemis went on. “I’ll be glad to be shut of it all. Nothing in it, nothing in it.” He wagged his sage head sadly.

“Anything—ah—doing this session?” asked Holman, glancing sidewise at his old colleague.

“No, nothing except this Chicago street-car bill. We passed it, you know, and the governor vetoed it. The reformers raised an awful howl. Comes up—let’s see—to-night, I reckon. Going to try to pass it over the governor’s veto.”

“Will they make it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Looks dubious. The senate’s all right, of course; it’s all fixed there, but the house ain’t certain. A two-thirds vote’s hard to get these days. Baldwin’s been working day and night—but I don’t know; you can’t tell yet.”

Then the house broke into new confusion. Holman knew the signs well; a roll-call was on. Bemis pricked his ears and hurried back to his seat.

Holman was glad just then to have him go, for almost at the mention of the name of Baldwin he had happened to glance toward the speaker’s chair; the speaker had risen, his gavel poised, and in that instant Holman saw the man on the speaker’s lounge, lolling back to await the passing of the interruption, and recognized Baldwin, George R. Baldwin, carefully dressed as of old, suave, elegant, dignified, all unchanged save that his hair had grown a bit more gray, though only, it seemed, to lend to his aspect new dignity, new authority, almost refinement. Baldwin, the same as ever! It had not changed him, evidently; he was still correct, irreproachable, respected, received everywhere—while he, Holman, had come to this. Sarah, back there at home, amid the dingy poverty and drudgery of her life; and Baldwin’s wife, doubtless, welcome in all society and reigning there! Holman, sick of the scene, got up, plunged his hands into his pockets and started out. Near the door he turned to have another glance. Baldwin had slid to the end of the lounge and was talking to some young fellow—to McCray.

Holman went to the cigar stand, lighted a cigar, sauntered out into the rotunda and leaned against the brass rail. He blew out streams of smoke and through squinting little eyes watched them float away; he smoked and squinted and thought, and what he saw was Baldwin, the lobbyist, and young McCray.

Two men passed on their way over to the senate chamber, and he heard one of them pronounce his name.

“——leaning on the rail there, smoking.

“Oh—I forgot; his face was familiar, too. The old Has-been has come back for a day!”

It was Baldwin who spoke; his companion was young McCray.

“Ah, yes! An old Has-been,” thought Holman. Baldwin said that, and McCray! They said that even down in Jasper. But Baldwin, he was no Has-been; it had not affected him at all.

When Holman entered the house that afternoon he was sensible of a change in the atmosphere. The new element was one he recognized—skilled as of old in legislative aëroscepsy—one that strangely excited him, both by what it recalled and by what it portended; there were tension, alertness, irritability and suspense, the knowledge of an evil, sinister Presence, known, silent, unrevealed, but apprehended—a Presence expected, even desired, yet dreaded; in short, the psychic condition that exists in a legislative chamber when something is about to come off. Holman, standing well back by the cloak-room, examining the house with expert eye, knew that the thing was imminent, though not immediate. There were certain signs wanting. The speaker sat calm, but he was twirling his gavel nervously; the leaders were restless and furtive, but they had not as yet got every man in his seat. McCray, for instance, was absent.

Holman sauntered carelessly around to the side on which Bemis sat, caught the old man’s eye and beckoned.

“I thought they’d get that bill up,” said Holman, “and I’d see a little fun; but there seems to be no chance of that. Reckon I’ll go.”

“There’s been a hitch,” said Bemis in a low tone.

“Has, heh?”

“Yes,” said Bemis; “the boys thought they had it fixed, but Wimbleton switched; told O’Leary so at noon. Either the governor got around him or he got scared.”

“Need only one vote?” surmised Holman. Then Bemis, as if a thought had struck him, drew close and put his lips to Holman’s ear:

“You know that young McCray from your district?”

“Sure.”

“Well, now, Jim, if you could fix him—you might get in on this thing. He won’t do business with any of us. I don’t know exactly, but I should think there’d be for you and him at least—” He put his lips quite into Holman’s ear, and Holman bent lower; and Bemis whispered again. Holman did not move a muscle. Bemis withdrew a little and looked at him.

“I don’t know McCray very well,” said Holman presently. “He’s a youngster, and I’ve been out of politics a long time. But I might have a little talk with him. I can’t promise, though—an old Has-been like me, you know.” He laughed a small bitter laugh.

“Oh, you!” said Bemis striking him softly on the shoulder. “You a Has-been! Why, Jim, you’re the slickest man in southern Illinois—when you want to be!”

Holman found McCray in the Leland bar-room. The young man was plainly in some mental stress, his hair matted to his brow, his face moist with perspiration, and drawn, and in his eyes an utter weariness.

“Just the man I was looking for,” said Holman. “I came to see you about a little matter down in Jasper; some interests I represent—constits of yours—and I’ve got to hurry back. So, just give me a minute; I’ll not keep you long.”

McCray looked at his watch. “I”—he hesitated—“I must get over to the house; I’m late, anyway. I was detained—”

“Yes, I know,” said Holman, “but I’ve got to see you. It’s something you’re interested in, anyway. If you’ll just walk along a little way with me.”

Once outside, Holman kept on out Sixth Street, and McCray, wondering somewhat, did not demur.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Interested?” asked Holman.

“Yes; go on.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not that?”

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

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

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

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

“Before?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Lyendorf!”

“Aye.”

“Lynn, of Sangamon!”

“No.”

“Lynn, of Vermilion!”

“No.”

“McBroom!”

“No.”

“McCoy!”

“Aye.”

“McCray!”

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

“No!”

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

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

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

But Holman had no attention for Baldwin then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lost out, didn’t you, George?”

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

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

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

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

“Here—here’s your—money.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT WILL BECOME OF ANNIE?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What will become of Annie?”

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

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

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