Some of the crowd turned to listen, and the old fellow, hopelessly

puzzled, stroked his beard with a trembling hand, and then, muttering,

“Well, young man, I expect you better excuse me,” hurried away and

left the place. The next morning he found the following item tacked to

the tail of the “Legislative Gossip” column of the _Constellation_:

“UNCLE BILLY ROLLINSON HORRIFIED

“Yesterday a curious and amusing story was current among the solons at

the Nagmore Hotel. It seems that the wife of a country member of the

last legislature had been spending the day at the hotel and the wife

of a present member from the country complained to her of the greatly

increased expenditure appertaining to the cost of living in the

Capital City. 'Indeed,' replied the wife of the former member, 'that

is curious. But I suppose my husband is much more economical than

yours, for he brought home $1.500, that he'd saved out of his salary.'

As the salary is only $456, and the gentleman in question did not play

poker, much hilarity was indulged in, and there were conjectures that

the economy referred to concerned his vote upon a certain bill before

the last session, anent which the lobby pushing it were far from

economical. Uncle Billy Rollinson, the Gentleman from Wixinockee,

heard the story, as it passed from mouth to mouth, but he had no

laughter to greet it. Uncle Billy, as every one who comes in contact

with him knows, is as honest as the day is long, and the story grieved

and shocked him. He expressed the utmost horror and consternation, and

requested to be excused from speaking further upon a subject so

repugnant to his feelings. If there were more men of this stamp in

politics, who find corruption revolting instead of amusing, our

legislatures would enjoy a better fame.”

Uncle Billy had always been agitated by the sight of his name in

print. Even in the Wixinockee County _Clarion_, it dumbfounded

him and gave him a strange feeling that it must mean somebody else,

but this sudden blaze of metropolitan fame made him almost giddy. He

folded the paper quickly and placed it under his coat, feeling vaguely

that it would not do to be seen reading it. He murmured feeble answers

during the day, when some of his colleagues referred to it; but when

he reached his own little room that evening, he spread it out under

his oil-smelling lamp and read it again. Perhaps he read it twenty

times over before the supper bell rang. Perhaps the fact that he was

still intent upon it accounted for his not hearing the bell, so that

his landlady had to call him.

What he liked was the phrase: “Honest as the day is long.” He did not

go to the hotel that night. He went back to his room and read the

_Constellation_. He liked the _Constellation_. Newspapers

were very kind, he thought. Now and then, he would pick up his pile of

legislative bills and try to spell through the ponderous sentences,

but he always gave it up and went back to the _Constellation_. He

wondered if Hurlbut had read it. Hurlbut had. The leader had even

told the author of the item that he was glad somebody could appreciate

the kind of a man Uncle Billy was, and his value to the body politic.

“Honest as the day is long,” Uncle Billy repeated to himself, in the

little room, nodding his head gravely. Then he thought for a long

while about the member who had, according to the story, gone home with

$1,500. He sat up, that evening, until almost ten o'clock. Even after

he had gone to bed, he lay awake with his eyes wide open in the

darkness, thinking of the colossal sum. If anybody should come to

_him_ and offer him all that money to vote a certain way upon a

bill, he believed he would not take it, for that would be bribery;

though Henry would be glad to have the money. Henry always needed

money; sometimes the need was imperative--once, indeed, so imperative

that the small, unfertile farm had been mortgaged beyond its value,

otherwise very serious things must have happened to Henry. Uncle Billy

wondered how offers of money to members were refused without hurting

the intending donor's feelings. And what a great deal could be done

with $1,500, if a member could get it and still be as honest as the

day is long!

About the second month of the session the floor of the House began

steadily to grow more and more tumultuous. To an unpolitical onlooker,

leaning over the gallery rail, it was often an incomprehensible

Bedlam, or perhaps one might have been reminded of an ant-heap by the

hurry-and-scurry and life-and-death haste in a hundred directions at

once, quite without any distinguishable purpose. Twenty men might be

rampaging up and down the aisles, all shouting, some of them

furiously, others with a determination that was deadly, all with arms

waving at the Speaker, some of the hands clenched, some of them

fluttering documents, while pages ran everywhere in mad haste,

stumbling and falling in the aisles. In the midst of this, other

members, seated, wrote studiously; others mildly read newspapers;

others lounged, half-standing against their desks, unlighted cigars in

their mouths, laughing; all the while the patient Speaker tapped with

his gavel on a small square of marble. Suddenly perfect calm would

come and the voice of the reading clerk drone for half an hour or

more, like a single bee in a country garden on Sunday morning.

Of all this Uncle Billy was as much a layman spectator as any tramp

who crept into the gallery for a few hours out of the cold. The hurry

and seethe of the racing sea touched him not at all, except to

bewilderment, while he was carried with it, unknowing, toward the

breakers. The shout of those breakers was already in the ears of many,

for the crisis of the session was coming. This was the fight that was

to be made on Hurlbut's “Railroad Bill,” which was, indeed, but in

another sense, known as the “Breaker.”

Uncle Billy had heard of the “Breaker.” He couldn't have helped

that. He had heard a dozen say: “Then's when it's going to be warm

times, when that 'Breaker' comes up!” or, “Look out for that

'Breaker.' We're going to have big trouble.” He knew, too, that

Hurlbut was interested in the “Breaker,” but upon which side he was

for a long time ignorant.

* * * * *

Hurlbut always nodded to the old man, now, as he came down the aisle

to his own desk. He had begun that, the day after the _Constellation_

item. Uncle Billy never failed to be in his seat early in the

morning, waiting for the nod. He answered it with his usual “Howdy-do,

sir,” then stroked his beard and gazed profoundly at the row of fat

volumes in front of him, swallowing painfully once or twice.

This was all that really happened for Uncle Billy during the turmoil

and scramble that went on about him all the day long. He had not been

forced to discover a way to meet an offer of $1,500, without hurting

the putative giver's feelings. No lobbyist had the faintest idea of

“approaching” the old man in that way. The members and the hordes of

camp-followers and all the lobby had settled into a belief that

Representative Rollinson was a sea-green Incorruptible, that of all

honest members he was the most honest. He had become typical of

honesty: sayings were current--“You might as well try to bribe Uncle

Billy Rollinson!” “As honest as old Uncle Billy Rollinson.” Hurlbut

often used such phrases in private.

The “Breaker” was Hurlbut's own bill; he had planned it and written

it, though it came over to the House from the Senate under a Senator's

name. It was one of those “anti-monopolistic” measures which Democrats

put their whole hearts into, sometimes, and believe in and fight for

magnificently; an idea conceived in honesty and for a beneficent

purpose, in the belief that a legislature by the wave of a hand can

conjure the millennium to appear; and born out of an utter

misconception of man and railroads. The bill needs no farther

description than this: if it passed and became an enforced law, the

dividends of every rail road entering the State would be reduced by

two-fifths. There is one thing that will fight harder than a

Democrat--that is a railroad.

The “Breaker” had been kept very dark until Hurlbut felt that he was

ready; then it was swept through the Senate before the railroad lobby,

previously lulled into unsuspicion, could collect itself and block

it. This was as Hurlbut had planned: that the fight should be in his

own House. It was the bill of his heart and he set his reputation upon

it. He needed fifty-one votes to pass it, and he had them, and one to

spare; for he took his followers, who formed the majority, into caucus

upon it. It was in the caucus Uncle Billy learned that Hurlbut was

“for” the bill. He watched the leader with humble, wavering eyes,

thinking how strong and clear his voice was, and wondering if he never

lit the cigar he always carried in his hand, or if he ever got into

trouble, like Henry, being a young man. If he did, Uncle Billy would

have liked the chance to help him out.

He had plenty of such chances with Henry; indeed, the opportunity may

be said to have become unintermittent, and Uncle Billy was never free

from a dim fear of the day when his son would get in so deeply that he

could not get him out. Verily, the day seemed near at hand: Henry's

letters were growing desperate and the old man walked the floor of his

little room at night, more and more hopeless. Once or twice, even as

he sat at his desk in the House, his eyes became so watery that he

forced himself into long spells of coughing, to account for it, in

case any one might be noticing him.

The caucus was uneventful and quiet, for it had all been talked over,

and was no more than a matter of form.

The Republicans did not caucus upon the bill (they had reasons), but

they were solidly against it. Naturally it follows that the assault of

the railroad lobby had to be made upon the virtue of the Democrats

_as_ Democrats. That is, whether a member upon the majority side

cared about the bill for its own sake of not, right or wrong, he felt

it his duty as a Democrat to vote for it. If he had a conscience

higher than a political conscience, and believed the bill was bad, his

duty was to “bolt the caucus”; but all of the Democratic side believed

in the righteousness of the bill, except two. One had already been

bought and the other was Uncle Billy, who knew nothing about it,

except that Hurlbut was “for” it and it seemed to be making a “big

stir.”

The man who had been bought sat not far from Uncle Billy. He was a

furtive, untidy slouch of a man, formerly a Republican; he had a great

capacity for “handling the coloured vote” and his name was

Pixley. Hurlbut mistrusted him; the young man had that instinct, which

good leaders need, for feeling the weak places in his following; and

he had the leader's way, too, of ever bracing up the weakness and

fortifying it; so he stopped, four or five times a day, at Pixley's

desk, urging the necessity of standing fast for the “Breaker,” and

expressing convictions as to the political future of a Democrat who

should fail to vote for it; to which Pixley assented in his husky,

tough-ward voice.

All day long now, Hurlbut and his lieutenants, disregarding the

routine of bills, went up and down the lines, fending off the

lobbyists and such Republicans as were working openly for the bill.

They encouraged and threatened and never let themselves be too

confident of their seeming strength. Some of those who were known, or

guessed, to be of the “weaker brethren” were not left to themselves

for half an hour at a time, from their breakfasts until they went to

bed. There was always at elbow the “_Hold fast_!” whisper of

Hurlbut and his lieutenants. None of them ever thought of speaking to

Uncle Billy.

Hurlbut's “work was cut out for him,” as they said. What work it is to

keep every one of fifty men honest under great temptation for three

weeks (which time it took for the hampered and filibustered bill to

come up for its passage or defeat), is known to those who have tried

to do it. The railroads were outraged and incensed by the measure;

they sincerely believed it to be monstrous and thievish. “Let the

legislature try to confiscate two-fifths of the lawyers', or the

bakers', or the ironmoulders', just earnings,” said they, “and see

what will happen!”

When such a bill as this comes to the floor for the third time the

fight is already over, oratory is futile; and Cicero could not budge a

vote. The railroads were forced to fight as best they could; this was

the old way that they have learned is most effective in such a

case. Votes could not be had to “oblige a friend” on the “Breaker”

bill; nor could they be procured by arguments to prove the bill

unjust. In brief: the railroad lobby had no need to buy Republican

votes (with the exception of the one or two who charged out of habit

whenever legislation concerned corporations), for the Republicans were

against the bill, but they did mortally need to buy two Democratic

votes, and were willing to pay handsomely for them. Nevertheless,

Mr. Pixley's price was not exorbitant, considering the situation; nor

need he have congratulated himself so heartily as he did (in moments

of retirement from public life) upon his prospective $2,000 (when the

goods should be delivered) since his vote was assisting the railroads

to save many million dollars a year.

Of course the lobby attacked the bill noisily; there were big guns

going all day long; but those in charge knew perfectly well that the

noise accomplished nothing in itself. It was used to cover the

whispering. Still, Hurlbut held his line firm and the bill passed its

second reading with fifty-two votes, Mr. Pixley being directed by his

owners to vote for it on that occasion.

As time went on the lobby began to grow desperate; even Pixley had

been consulted upon his opinion by Barrett, the young lawyer through

whom negotiations in his case had been conducted. Pixley suggested

the name of Rollinson and Barrett dismissed this counsel with as much

disgust for Pixley's stupidity as he had for the man's person. (One

likes a _dog_ when he buys him.)

“But why not?” Pixley had whined as he reached the door. “Uncle Billy

ain't so much! You listen to me. He wouldn't take it out-an'-out--I

don't say as he would. But you needn't work that way. Everybody thinks

it's no use to tackle him--but nobody never _tried_! What's he

_done_ to make you scared of him? _Nothing_! Jest set there

and _looked_!”

After he had gone the fellow's words came back to Barrett: “Nobody

never tried!” And then, to satisfy his conscience that he was leaving

no stone unturned, yet laughing at the uselessness of it, he wrote a

letter to a confidant of his, formerly a colleague in the lobby, who

lived in the county-seat near which Uncle Billy's mortgaged acres

lay. The answer came the night after the second vote on the “Breaker.”

“Dear Barrett:

“I agree with your grafter. I don't believe Rollinson would be hard to

approach if it were done with tact--of course you don't want to tackle

him the way you would a swine like Pixley. A good many people around

here always thought the old man simple-minded. He was given the

nomination almost in joke--nobody else wanted it, because they all

thought the Republicans had a sure thing of it; but Rollinson slid in

on the general Democratic landslide in this district. He's got one

son, a worthless pup, Henry, a sort of yokel Don Juan, always half

drunk when his father has any money to give him, and just smart enough

to keep the old man mesmerized. Lately Henry's been in a mighty

serious peck of trouble. Last fall he got married to a girl here in

town. Three weeks ago a family named Johnson, the most shiftless in

the county, the real low-down white trash sort, living on a truck

patch out Rollinson's way, heard that Henry was on a toot in town,

spending money freely, and they went after him. A client of mine rents

their ground to them and told me all about it. It seems they claim

that one of the daughters in the Johnson family was Henry's common-law

wife before he married the other girl, and it's more than likely they

can prove it. They are hollering for $600, and if Henry doesn't raise

it mighty quick they swear they'll get him sent over the road for

bigamy. I think the old man would sell his soul to keep his boy out of

the penitentiary and he's at his wits' ends; he hasn't anything to

raise the money on and he's up against it. He'll do any thing on earth

for Henry. Hope this'll be of some service to you, and if there's

anything more I can do about it you better call me up on the long

distance.

“Yours faithfully,

“J. P. WATSON.

“P.S.--You might mention to our old boss that I don't want anything if

services are needed; but a pass for self and family to New York and

return would come in handy.”

Barrett telegraphed an answer at once: “If it goes you can have annual

for yourself and family. Will call you up at two sharp to-morrow.”

* * * * *

It was late the following night when the lobbyist concluded his

interview with Representative Rollinson, in the latter's little room,

half lighted by the oil-smelling lamp.

“I knew you would understand, Mr. Rollinson,” said Barrett as he rose

to go. His eyes danced and his jaws set with the thought that had been

jubilant within him for the last half-hour: “We've got 'em! We've got

'em! We've got 'em!” The railroads had defended their own again.

“Of course,” he went on, “we wouldn't have dreamed of coming to you

and asking you to vote against this outrageous bill if we thought for

a minute that you had any real belief in it or considered it a good

bill. But you say, yourself, your only feeling about it was to oblige

Mr. Hurlbut, and you admit, too, that you've voted his way on every

other bill of the session. Surely, as I've already said so many times,

you don't think he'd be so unreasonable as to be angry with you for

differing with him on the merits of only one! No, no, Hurlbut's a very

sensible fellow about such matters. You don't need to worry about

_that_! After all I've said, surely you won't give it another

thought, will you?”

Uncle Billy sat in the shadow, bent far over, slowly twisting his

thin, corded hands, the fingers tightly interlocked. It was a long

time before he spoke, and his interlocutor had to urge him again

before he answered, in his gentle, quavering voice.

“No, I reckon not, if you say so.”

“Certainly not,” said Barrett briskly. “Why of course, we'd never have

thought of making you a money offer to vote either for or against your

principles. Not much! We don't do business that way! We simply want to

do something for you. We've wanted to, all during the session, but the

opportunity hadn't offered until I happened to hear your son was in

trouble.”

Out of the shadow came a long, tremulous sigh. There was a moment's

pause; then Uncle Billy's head sank slowly lower and rested on his

hands.

“You see,” the other continued cheerfully, “we make no conditions,

none in the world. We feel friendly to you and want to oblige you, but

of course we do think you ought to show a little good-will towards

_us_. I believe it's all understood: to-morrow night Mr. Watson

will drive out in his buggy to this Johnson place, and he's empowered

by us to settle the whole business and obtain a written statement from

the family that they have no claim on your son. How he will settle it

is neither your affair nor mine; nor whether it costs money or

not. But he _will_ settle it. We do that out of good-will to you,

as long as we feel as friendly to you as we do now, and all we ask is

that you show your good-will to us.”

It was plain, even to Uncle Billy, that if he voted against

Mr. Barrett's friends in the afternoon those friends might not feel so

much good-will toward him in the evening as they did now: and

Mr. Watson might not go to the trouble of hitching up his buggy to

drive out to the Johnsons'.

“You see, it's all out of friendship,” said Barrett, his hand on the

door knob. “And we can count on your's to-morrow, can't

we--absolutely?”

The grey head sank a little lower, and then after a moment the

quavering voice answered:

“Yes, sir--I'll be friendly.”

Before morning, Hurlbut lost another vote. One of his best men left

on a night train for the bedside of his dying wife. This meant that

the “Breaker” needed every one of the fifty-one remaining Democratic

votes in order to pass. Hurlbut more than distrusted Pixley, yet he

felt sure of the other fifty, and if, upon the reading of the bill,

Pixley proved false, the bill would not be lost, since there would be

a majority of votes in its favour, though not the constitutional

majority of fifty-one required for its passage, and it could be

brought up again and carried when the absent man returned. Thus, on

the chance that Pixley had withstood tampering, Hurlbut made no effort

to prevent the bill from coming to the floor in its regular order in

the afternoon, feeling that it could not possibly be killed by a

majority against it, for he trusted his fifty, now, as strongly as he

distrusted Pixley.

And so the roll-call on the “Breaker” began, rather quietly, though

there was no man's face in the hall that was not set to show the

tensity of high-strung nerves. The great crowd that had gathered and

choked the galleries and the floor beyond the bar, and the Senators

who had left their own chamber to watch the bill in the House, all

began to feel disappointed; for nothing happened until Pixley's name

was called.

Pixley voted “No!”

Uncle Billy, sitting far down in his leather chair on the small of his

back, heard the outburst of shouting that followed; but he could not

see Pixley, for the traitor was instantly surrounded by a ring of men,

and all that was visible from where he sat was their backs and

upraised, gesticulating hands. Uncle Billy began to tremble violently;

he had not calculated on this; but surely such things would not happen

to _him_!

The Speaker's gavel clicked through the uproar and the roll-call

proceeded.

The clerk reached the name of Rollinson. Uncle Billy swallowed, threw

a pale look about him and wrapped his damp hands in the skirts of his

shiny old coat, as if to warm them. For a moment he could not

answer. People turned to look at him.

“Rollinson!” shouted the clerk again.

“No,” said Uncle Billy.

Immediately he saw above him and all about him a blur of men's faces

and figures risen to their feet, he heard a hundred voices say

breathlessly: “_What_!” and one that said: “My God, that kills

the bill!”

Then a horrible and incredible storm burst upon him, and he who had

sat all the session shrinking unnoticed in his quiet, back seat,

unnerved when a colleague asked the simplest question, found himself

the centre and point of attack in the wildest mêlée that legislature

ever saw. A dozen men, red, frantic, with upraised arms, came at him,

Hurlbut the first of them. But the lobby was there, too; for it was

not part of its calculations that the old man should be frightened

into changing his vote.

There need have been no fear of that. Uncle Billy was beyond the power

of speech. The lobby's agents swarmed on the floor, and, with

half-a-dozen hysterically laughing Republicans, met the onset of

Hurlbut and his men. It became a riot immediately. Sane men were swept

up in it to be as mad as the rest, while the galleries screamed and

shouted. All round the old man the fury was greatest; his head sank

over his desk and rested on his hands as it had the night before; for

he dared not lift it to see the avalanche he had loosed upon

himself. He would have liked to stop his ears to shut out the

egregious clamour of cursing and yelling that beset him, as his bent

head kept the glazed eyes from seeing the impossible vision of the

attack that strove to reach him. He remembered awful dreams that were

like this; and now, as then, he shuddered in a cold sweat, being as

one who would draw the covers over his head to shelter him from

horrors in great darkness. As Uncle Billy felt, so might a naked soul

feel at the judgment day, tossed alone into the pit with all the

myriads of eyes in the universe fastened on its sins.

He was pressed and jostled by his defenders; once a man's shoulders

were bent back down over his own and he was crushed against the desk

until his ribs ached; voices thundered and wailed at him, threatening,

imploring, cursing, cajoling, raving.

Smaller groups were struggling and shouting in every part of the room,

the distracted sergeants-at-arms roaring and wrestling with the

rest. On the high dais the Speaker, white but imperturbable, having

broken his gavel, beat steadily with the handle of an umbrella upon

the square of marble on his desk. Fifteen or twenty members, raging

dementedly, were beneath him, about the clerk's desk and on the steps

leading up to his chair, each howling hoarsely:

“A point of _order_! A point of _or-der_!”

When the semblance of order came at last, the roll was finished,

“reconsidered,” the “Breaker” was beaten, 50 to 49, was dead; and

Uncle Billy Rollinson was creeping down the outer steps of the

Statehouse in the cold February slush and rain.

He was glad to be out of the nightmare, though it seemed still upon

him, the horrible clamours, all gonging and blaring at _him_; the

red, maddened faces, the clenched fists, the open mouths, all raging

at _him_--all the ruck and uproar swam about the dazed old man as

he made his slow, unseeing way through the wet streets.

He was too late for dinner at his dingy boarding house, having

wandered far, and he found himself in his room without knowing very

well how he had come there, indeed, scarcely more than half-conscious

that he _was_ there. He sat, for a long time, in the dark. After

a while he mechanically lit the lamp, sat again to stare at it, then,

finding his eyes watering, he turned from it with an incoherent

whimper, as if it had been a person from whom he would conceal the

fact that he was weeping. He leaned his arm, against the window sill

and dried his eyes on the shiny sleeve.

An hour later, there came a hard, imperative knock on the door. Uncle

Billy raised his head and said gently:

“Come in.”

He rose to his feet uncertain, aghast, when he saw who his visitor

was. It was Hurlbut.

The young man confronted him darkly, for a moment, in silence. He was

dripping with rain; his hat, unremoved, shaded lank black locks over a

white face; his nostrils were wide with wrath; the “dry cigar” wagged

between gritting teeth.

“Will ye take a chair?” faltered Uncle Billy.

The room rang to the loud answer of the other: “I'd see you in Hell

before I'd sit in a chair of yours!”

He raised an arm, straight as a rod, to point at the old

man. “Rollinson,” he said, “I've come here to tell you what I think of

you! I've never done that in my life before, because I never thought

any man worth it. I do it because I need the luxury of it--because I'm

sick of myself not to have had gumption enough to see what you were

all the time and have you watched!”

Uncle Billy was stung to a moment's life. “Look here,” he quavered,

“you hadn't ought to talk that way to me. There ain't a cent of money

passed my fingers--”

Hurlbut's bitter laugh cut him short. “_No?_ Don't you suppose

_I know_ how it was done? Do you suppose there's a man in the

whole Assembly doesn't know how you were sold? I had it by the long

distance an hour ago, from your own home. Do you suppose _we_

have no friends there, or that it was hard to find out about the whole

dirty business? Your son's not going to stand trial for bigamy; that

was the price you charged for killing the bill. You and Pixley are the

only men whom they could buy with all their millions! Oh, I know a

dozen men who could be bought on other issues, but not on _this_!

You and Pixley stand alone. Well, you've broken the caucus and you've

betrayed the Democratic party. I've come to tell you that the party

doesn't want you any more. You are out of it, do you hear? We don't

want even to use you!”

The old man had sunk back into his chair, stricken white, his hands

fluttering helplessly. “I didn't go to hurt your feelings,

Mr. Hurlbut,” he said. “I never knowed how it would be, but I don't

think you ought to say I done anything dishonest. I just felt kind of

friendly to the railroads--”

The leader's laugh cut him off again. “Friendly! Yes, that's what you

were! Well, you can go back to your friends; you'll need them!--Mother

in Heaven! How you fooled us! We thought you were the straightest man

and the staunchest Democrat--”

“I b'en a Democrat all my life, Mr. Hurlbut. I voted fer--”

“Well, you're a Democrat no longer. You're done for, do you

understand? And we're done with you!”

“You mean,” the old man's voice shook almost beyond control; “you mean

you're tryin' to read me out of the party?”

“Trying to!” Hurlbut turned to the door. “You're out! It's done. You

can thank God that your 'friends' did their work so well that we can't

prove what we know. On my soul, you dog, if we could I believe some of

the boys would send you over the road.”

An hour after he had gone, Uncle Billy roused himself from his stupor,

and the astonished landlady heard his shuffling step on the stair. She

followed him softly and curiously to the front door, and watched

him. He was bare-headed but had not far to go. The night-flare of the

cheap, all-night saloon across the sodden street silhouetted the

stooping figure for a moment and then the swinging doors shut the old

man from her view. She returned to her parlour and sat waiting for his

return until she fell asleep in her chair. She awoke at two o'clock,

went to his room, and was aghast to find it still vacant.

“The Lord have mercy on us all!” she cried aloud. “To think that old

rascal'd go out on a spree! He'd better of stayed in the country where

he belonged.”

It was the next morning that the House received a shock which loosed

another riot, but one of a kind different from that which greeted

Representative Rollinson's vote on the “Breaker.” The reading-clerk

had sung his way through an inconsequent bill; most of the members

were buried in newspapers, gossiping, idling, or smoking in the

lobbies, when a loud, cracked voice was heard shrilly demanding

recognition.

“Mr. Speaker!” Every one turned with a start. There was Uncle Billy,

on his feet, violently waving his hands at the Speaker. “Mr. Speaker,

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker!” His dress was disordered and muddy; his

eyes shone with a fierce, absurd, liquorish light; and with each

syllable that he uttered his beard wagged to an unspeakable effect of

comedy. He offered the most grotesque spectacle ever seen in that

hall--a notable distinction.

For a moment the House sat in paralytic astonishment. Then came an

awed whisper from a Republican: “Has the old fool really found his

voice?”

“No, he's drunk,” said a neighbour. “I guess he can afford it, after

his vote yesterday!”

“Mister Speaker! _Mister_ Speaker!”

The cracked voice startled the lobbies. The hangers-on, the

typewriters, the janitors, the smoking members came pouring into the

chamber and stood, transfixed and open-mouthed.

“_Mister Speaker_!”

Then the place rocked with the gust of laughter and ironical cheering

that swept over the Assembly, Members climbed upon their chairs and on

desks, waving handkerchiefs, sheets of foolscap, and waste-baskets.

“Hear 'im! _He-ear_ 'im!” rang the derisive cry.

The Speaker yielded in the same spirit and said:

“The Gentleman from Wixinockee.”

A semi-quiet followed and the cracked voice rose defiantly:

“That's who I am! I'm the Gentleman from Wixinockee an' I stan' here

to defen' the principles of the Democratic party!”

The Democrats responded with violent hootings, supplemented by cheers

of approval from the Republicans. The high voice out-shrieked them

all: “Once a Democrat, always a Democrat! I voted Dem'cratic tick't

forty year, born a Democrat an' die a Democrat. Fellow sizzens, I want

to say to you right here an' now that principles of Dem'cratic party

saved this country a hun'erd times from Republican mal-'diministration

an' degerdation! Lemme tell you this: you kin take my life away but

you can't say I don' stan' by Dem'cratic party, mos' glorious party of

Douglas an' Tilden, Hen'ricks, Henry Clay, an' George Washin'ton. I

say to you they _hain't_ no other party an' I'm member of it till

death an' Hell an' f'rever after, so help me _God_!”

He smote the desk beside him with the back of his hand, using all his

strength, skinning his knuckles so that the blood dripped from them,

unnoticed. He waved both arms continually, bending his body almost

double and straightening up again, in crucial efforts for

emphasis. All the old jingo platitudes that he had learned from

campaign speakers throughout his life, the nonsense and brag and blat,

the cheap phrases, all the empty balderdash of the platform, rushed to

his incoherent lips.

The lord of misrule reigned at the end of each sentence, as the

members sprang again upon the chairs and desks, roaring, waving,

purple with laughter. The Speaker leaned back exhausted in his chair

and let the gavel rest. Spectators, pages, galleries whooped and

howled with the members. Finally the climax came.

“I want to say to you just this _here_,” shrilled the cracked

voice, “an' you can tell the Republican party that I said so, tell 'em

straight from _me_, an' I hain't goin' back on it; I reckon they

know who I am, too; I'm a man that's honest--I'm as honest as the day

is long, I am--as honest as the day is long--”

He was interrupted by a loud voice. “_Yes_,” it cried, “_when

that day is the twenty-first of December!_”

That let pandemonium loose again, wilder, madder than before. A member

threw a pamphlet at Uncle Billy. In a moment the air was thick with a

Brobdingnagian snow-storm: pamphlets, huge wads of foolscap, bills,

books, newspapers, waste-baskets went flying at the grotesque target

from every quarter of the room. Members “rushed” the old man, hooting,

cheering; he was tossed about, half thrown down, bruised, but,

clamorous over all other clamours, jumping up and down to shriek over

the heads of those who hustled him, his hands waving frantically in

the air, his long beard wagging absurdly, still desperately

vociferating his Democracy and his honesty.

That was only the beginning. He had, indeed, “found his voice”; for he

seldom went now to the boarding-house for his meals, but patronized

the free-lunch counter and other allurements of the establishment

across the way. Every day he rose in the House to speak, never failing

to reach the assertion that he was “as honest as the day is long,”

which was always greeted in the same way.

For a time he was one of the jokes that lightened the tedious business

of law-making, and the members looked forward to his “_Mis-ter

Speaker_” as schoolboys look forward to recess. But, after a week,

the novelty was gone.

The old man became a bore. The Speaker refused to recognize him, and

grew weary of the persistent shrilling. The day came when Uncle Billy

was forcibly put into his seat by a disgusted sergeant-at-arms. He was

half drunk (as he had come to be most of the time), but this

humiliation seemed to pierce the alcoholic vapours that surrounded his

always feeble intelligence. He put his hands up to his face and cried

like a whimpering child. Then he shuffled out and went back to the

saloon. He soon acquired the habit of leaving his seat in the House

vacant; he was no longer allowed to make speeches there; he made them

in the saloon, to the amusement of the loafers and roughs who infested

it. They badgered him, but they let him harangue them, and applauded

his rhodomontades.

Hurlbut, passing the place one night at the end of the session, heard

the quavering, drunken voice, and paused in the darkness to listen.

“I tell you, fellow-countrymen, I've voted Dem'cratic tick't forty

year, live a Dem'crat, die a Dem'crat! An' I'm's honest as day is

long!”

* * * * *

It was five years after that session, when Hurlbut, now in the

national Congress, was called to the district in which Wixinockee

lies, to assist his hard-pressed brethren in a campaign. He was

driving, one afternoon, to a political meeting in the country, when a

recollection came to him and he turned to the committee chairman, who

accompanied him, and said:

“Didn't Uncle Billy Rollinson live somewhere near here?”

“Why, yes. You knew him in the legislature, didn't you?”

“A little. Where is he now?”

“Just up ahead here. I'll show you.”

They reached the gate of a small, unkempt, weedy graveyard and

stopped.

“The inscription on the head-board is more or less amusing,” said the

chairman, as he got out of the buggy, “considering that he was thought

to be pretty crooked, and I seem to remember that he was 'read out of

the party,' too. But he wrote the inscription himself, on his

death-bed, and his son put it there.”

There was a sparse crop of brown grass growing on the grave to which

he led his companion. A cracked wooden head-board, already tilting

rakishly, marked Henry's devotion. It had been white-washed and the

inscription done in black letters, now partly washed away by the rain,

but still legible:

HERE LIES THE MORTAL REMAINS OF WILLIAM ROLLINSON A LIFE-LONG DEMOCRAT

AND A MAN AS HONEST AS THE DAY IS LONG

The chairman laughed. “Don't that beat thunder? You knew his record in

the legislature didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“He _was_ as crooked as they say he was, wasn't he?”

Hurlbut had grown much older in five years, and he was in Congress. He

was climbing the ladder, and, to hold the position he had gained, and

to insure his continued climbing, he had made some sacrifices within

himself by obliging his friends--sacrifices which he did not name.

“I could hardly say,” he answered gently, his down-bent eyes fastened

on the sparse, brown grass. “It's not for us to judge too much. I

believe, maybe, that if he could hear me now, I'd ask his pardon for

some things I said to him once.”

HECTOR

It isn't the party manager, you understand, that gets the fame; it's

the candidate. The manager tries to keep his candidate in what the

newspapers call a “blaze of publicity”; that is, to keep certain spots

of him in the blaze, while sometimes it is the fact that a candidate

does not know much of what is really going on; he gets all the red

fire and sky-rockets, and, in the general dazzle and nervousness, is

unconscious of the forces which are to elect or defeat him. Strange

as it is, the more glare and conspicuousness he has, the more he

usually wants. But the more a working political manager gets, the less

he wants. You see, it's a great advantage to keep out of the high

lights.

For my part, not even being known or important enough to be named

“Dictator,” now and then, in the papers, I've had my fun in the game

very quietly. Yet I did come pretty near being a famous man once, a

good while ago, for about a week. That was just after Hector J. Ransom

made his great speech on the “Patriotism of the Pasture” which set the

country to talking about him and, in time, brought him all he desired.

You remember what a big stir that speech made, of course--everybody

remembers it. The people in his State went just wild with pride, and

all over the country the papers had a sort of catch head-line:

“Another Daniel Webster Come to Judgment!” When the reporters in my

own town found out that Ransom was a second cousin of mine, I was put

into a scare-head for the only time in my life. For a week I was a

public character and important to other people besides the boys that

do the work at primaries. I was interviewed every few minutes; and a

reporter got me up one night at half-past twelve to ask for some

anecdotes of Hector's “Boyhood Days and Rise to Fame.”

I didn't oblige that young man, but I knew enough. I was always fond

of my first cousin, Mary Ransom, Hector's mother; and in the old days

I never passed through Greenville, the little town where they lived,

without stopping over, a train or two, to visit with her, and I saw

plenty of Hector! I never knew a boy that left the other boys to come

into the parlour (when there was company) quicker than Hector, and I

certainly never saw a boy that “showed off” more. His mother was

wrapped up in him; you could see in a minute that she fairly

worshipped him; but I don't know, if it hadn't been for Mary, that I'd

have praised his recitations and elocution so much, myself.

Mary and I wouldn't any more than get to tell each other how long

since we'd heard from Aunt Sue, before Hector would grow uneasy and

switch around on the sofa and say: “Ma, I'd rather you wouldn't tell

cousin Ben about what happened at the G. A. R. reunion. I don't want

to go through all that stuff again.”

At that, Mary's eyes would light up and she'd say: “You must, Hector,

you must! I want him to hear you do it; he mustn't go away without

that!” Then she'd go on to tell me how Hector had recited Lincoln's

Gettysburg speech at a meeting of the local post of the G. A. R. and

how he was applauded, and that many of the veterans had told him if he

kept on he'd be Governor of his State some day, and how proud she was

of him and how he was so different from ordinary boys that she was

often anxious about him. Then she would urge him to let me have

it--and he always would, especially if I said: “Oh, don't _make_

the boy do it, Mary!”

He would stand out in the middle of the floor and thrust his chin out,

knitting his brow and widening his nostrils, and shout “Of the people,

By the people, and For the people” at the top of his lungs in that

little parlour. He always had a great talent for mimicry, a talent of

which I think he was absolutely unconscious. He would give his

speeches in exactly the boy-orator style; that is, he imitated

speakers who imitated others who had heard Daniel Webster. Mary and

he, however, had no idea that he imitated anybody; they thought it was

creative genius.

When he had finished Lincoln, he would say: “Well, I've got another

that's a good deal better, but I don't want to go through that today;

it's too much trouble,” with the result that in a few minutes Patrick

Henry would take a turn or two in his grave. Hector always placed

himself by a table for “Liberty or Death,” and barked his knuckles on

it for emphasis. Little he cared, so long as he thought he'd got his

effect! You could see, in spite of the intensity of his expression,

that he was perfectly happy.

When he'd worked us through that, and perhaps “Horatius at the Bridge”

and the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius and was pretty well

emptied, he'd hang about and interrupt in a way that made me

restless. Neither Mary nor I could get out two sentences before the

boy would cut in with something like: “Don't tell cousin Ben about

that day I recited in school; I'm tired of all that guff!”

Then Mary would answer: “It isn't guff, precious. I never was prouder

of you in my life.” And she'd go on to tell me about another of his

triumphs, and how he made up speeches of his own sometimes, and would

stand on a box and deliver them to his boy friends, though she didn't

say how the boys received them. All the while, Hector would stare at

me like a neighbour's cat on your front steps, to see what impression

it made on me; and I was conscious that he was sure that I knew he was

a wonderful boy. I think he felt that everybody knew it. Hector kind

of palled on me.

When he was about sixteen, Mary wrote me that she was in great

distress about him because he had decided to go on the stage; that he

had written to John McCullough, offering to take the place of leading

man in his company to begin with. Mary was sure, she said, that the

life of an actor was a hard one; Hector had always been very delicate

(I had known him to eat a whole mince pie without apparent distress

afterward) and she wanted me to write and urge him to change his

mind. She felt sure Mr. McCullough would send for him at once, because

Hector had written him that he already knew all the principal

Shakespearian roles, could play Brutus, Cassius, or Mark Antony as

desired; and he had added a letter of recommendation from the Mayor of

their city, declaring that Hector was a finer elocutionist and

tragedian than any actor he had ever seen.

The dear woman's anxiety was needless, for she wrote me, with as much

surprise as pleasure, two months later, that for some reason

Mr. McCullough had not answered the letter, and that she was very

happy; she had persuaded Hector to go to college.

How she kept him there, the first two years, I don't know, for her

husband had only left her about four hundred dollars a year. Of

course, living in Greenville isn't expensive, but it does cost

something, and I honestly believe Mary came near to living on

nothing. It was a small college that she'd sent the boy to, but it was

a mother's point with her that Hector should be as comfortable as

anyone there.

I stopped off at Greenville, one day, toward the end of his second

year, but before he'd come home, and I saw how it was. Mary seemed as

glad as ever to see me--it was the same old bright greeting that she'd

always given me. She saw me from the dining-room window where she was

eating her supper, and she came out, running down to the gate to meet

me, like a girl; but she looked thin and pale.

I said I'd go right in and have some supper with her, and at that the

roses came back quickly to her cheeks. “No,” she said, “I wasn't

really at supper; only having a bite beforehand; I'm going up-town now

to get the things for supper. You smoke a cigar out on the porch till

I get back, and--”

I took her by the arm. “Not much, Mary,” I said. “I'm going to have

the same supper you had for yourself.”

So I went straight out to the dining-room; and all I found on the

table was some dry bread toasted and a baked apple without cream or

sugar. It gave me a pretty good idea of what the general run of her

meals must have been.

I had a long talk with her that night, and I wormed it out of her that

Hector's college expenses were about twenty-five dollars a month,

which left her six to live on. The truth is, she didn't have enough to

eat, and you could see how happy it made her. She read me a good many

of Hector's letters, her voice often trembling with happiness over his

triumphs. The letters were long, I'll say that for Hector, which may

have been to his credit as a son, or it may have been because he had

such an interesting subject. There was no doubt that he had worked

hard; he had taken all the chief prizes for oratory and essay writing

and so forth that were open to him; he also allowed it to be seen that

he was the chief person in the consideration of his class and the

fraternity he had joined. Mary had a sort of humbleness about being

the mother of such a son.

But I settled one thing with her that night, though I had to hurt her

feelings to do it. I owned a couple of small notes which had just

fallen due, and I could spare the money. I put it as a loan to Hector

himself; he was to pay me back when he got started, and so it was

arranged that he could finish his course without his mother's living

on apples and toast.

I went over to his Commencement with Mary and we hadn't been in the

town an hour before we saw that Hector was the king of the place. He

had _all_ the honours; first in his class, first in oratory,

first in everything; professors and students all kow-towed and sounded

the hew-gag before him. Most of Mary's time was put in crying with

happiness. As for Hector himself, he had changed in just one way: he

no longer looked at people to see his effect on them; he was too

confident of it.

His face had grown to be the most determined I have ever seen. There

was no obstinacy in it--he wasn't a bull-dog--only set determination.

No one could have failed to read in it an immensely powerful will. In

a curious way he seemed “on edge” all the time. His nostrils were

always distended, the muscles of his lean jaw were never lax, but

continually at tension, thrusting the chin forward with his teeth hard

together. His eyebrows were contracted, I think, even in his sleep,

and he looked at everything with a sort of quick, fierce, appearance

of scrutiny, though at that time I imagined that he saw very little.

He had a loud, rich voice, his pronunciation was clipped to a deadly

distinctness; he was so straight and his head so high in the air that

he seemed almost to tilt back. With his tall figure and black hair, he

was a boy who would have attracted attention, as they say, in any

crowd, so that he might have been taken for a young actor. His best

friend, a kind of Man Friday to him, was another young fellow from

Greenville, whose name was Joe Lane. I liked Joe. I'd known him? since

he was a boy. He was lazy and pleasant-looking, with reddish hair and

a drawling, low voice. He had a humorous, sensible expression, though

he was dissipated, I'd heard, but very gentle in his manners. I had a

talk with him under the trees of the college campus in the moonlight,

Commencement night. I can see the boy lying there now, sprawling on

the grass with a cigar in his mouth.

“Hector's done well,” I said.

“Oh, Lord, yes!” Joe answered. “He always will. He's going 'way up in

the world.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because he's so sure of it. It only needs a little luck to make him a

great man. In fact, he already is a great man.”

“You mean you think he has a great mind?”

“Why, no, sir; but I think he has a purpose so big and so set, that it

might be called great, and it will make him great.”

“What purpose?”

Joe answered quietly but very slowly, pulling at his cigar after each

syllable: “Hec--tor--J. Ran--som!”

“I declare,” I put in, “I thought you were his friend!”

“So I am,” the young fellow returned. “Friend, admirer, and

doer-in-ordinary to Hector J. Ransom, that's my quality. I've done

errands and odd jobs for him all my life. Most people who meet him do;

though it might be hard to say why. I haven't hitched my wagon to a

star; nobody'll get to do that, because this star isn't going to take

anything to the zenith but itself.”

“Going to the zenith, is he?”

“Surely.”

“You mean,” said I, “that he's going to make a fine lawyer?”

“Oh, no, I think not. He might have been called one in the last

generation, but, as I understand it, nowadays a lawyer has to work out

business propositions more than oratory.”

“And you think Hector has only his oratory?”

“I think that's his vehicle; it's his racing sulky and he'll drive it

pretty hard. We're good friends, but if you want me to be frank, I

should say that he'd drive on over my dead body if it lay in the road

to where he was going.” Lane rolled over in the grass with a little

chuckle. “Of course,” he went on, “I talk about him this way because

I know what you've done for him and I'd like to help you to be sure

that he's going to be a success. He'll do you credit!”

“What are you going to do, yourself, Joe?” I asked.

“Me?” He sat up, looking surprised. “Why, didn't you know? I didn't

get my degree. They threw me out at the eleventh hour for getting too

publicly tight--celebrating Hector's winning the works of Lord Byron,

the prize in the senior debate! I'll never be a credit to anybody; and

as for what I'm going to do--go back to Greenville and loaf in Tim's

pool-room, I suppose, and watch Hector's balloon.”

However, Hector's balloon seemed uninclined to soar, at the

set-off--though Hector didn't. The next summer began a presidential

campaign, and Hector, knowing that I was chairman of my county

committee, and strangely overestimating my importance, came up to see

me: he asked me to use my influence with the National Committee to

have him sent to make speeches in one of the doubtful States; he

thought he could carry it for us. I explained that I had no wires

leading up so far as the National Committee. There were other things

I might have explained, but it didn't seem much use. Hector would have

thought I wanted to “keep him down.”

He thought so anyway, because, after a crestfallen moment, he began to

look at me in his fierce eye-to-eye way with what seemed to me a dark

suspicion. He came and struck my desk with his clinched fist (he was

always strong on that), and exclaimed:

“Then by the eternal gods, if my own flesh and blood won't help me,

I'll go to Chicago myself, lay my credentials before the committee,

unaided, and wring from them--”

“Hold on, Hector,” I said. “Why didn't you say you had credentials?

What are they?”

“What are they?” he answered in a rising voice. “You ask me what are

my credentials? The credentials of my patriotism, my poverty, and my

pride! You ask me for my credentials? The credentials of youth!” (He

hit the desk every few words.) “The credentials of enthusiasm! The

credentials of strength! You ask for my credentials? The credentials

of red blood, of red corpuscles, of young manhood, ripest in the

glorious young West! The credentials of vitality! Of virile--”

“Hold on,” I said again, but I couldn't stop him. He went on for

probably fifteen minutes, pacing the room and gesticulating and

thundering at me, though we two were all alone. I felt mighty

ridiculous, but, of course, I'd been through much the same thing with

one or two candidates and orators before. I thought then that he was

practising on me, but I came afterward to see that I was partly

wrong. “Oratory” was his only way of expressing himself; he couldn't

just _talk_, to save his life. All you could do, when he began,

was to sit and take it till he got through, which consumed some

valuable time for me that afternoon. I suppose I was profane inside,

for having given him that cue with “credentials.” Finally I got in a

question:

“Why not begin a little more mildly, Hector? Why don't you make some

speeches in your own county first?”

“I have consented to make the Fourth of July oration at Greenville,”

he answered.

Before he could go on, I got up and slapped him on the back. “That's

right!” I said. “That's right! Go back and show the home folks what

you can do, and I'll come down to hear it!”

And so I did. Mary was, if possible, more flustered and upset than at

Hector's Commencement. She and Joe Lane and I had a bench close up to

the stand, and on the other side of Mary sat a girl I'd never seen

before. Mary introduced me to her in a way that made me risk a guess

that Hector liked her more than common. Her name was Laura Rainey, and

she'd come to Greenville, a year before, to teach in the high-school.

She was young, not quite twenty, I reckoned, and as pretty and dainty

a girl as ever I saw; thin and delicate-looking, though not in the

sense of poor health; and she struck me as being very sweet and

thoughtful. Joe Lane told me, with his little chuckle, that she'd had

a good deal of trouble in the school on account of all the older boys

falling in love with her.

Something in the way he spoke made me watch Joe, and I was sure if

he'd been one of her pupils he wouldn't have lightened her worries

much in that direction. He had it himself. I saw it, or, I should say,

I felt it, in spite of his never seeming to look at her. She looked at

him, however, and pretty often, too; and there was a good deal of

interest in her eyes, only it was a sad kind, which I understood, I

thought, when I found that Joe had been on a long spree and had just

sobered up the day before.

Hector sat above us on the platform, with the Mayor and the County

Judge, and when the latter introduced him, and the same old white

pitcher and glass of water on a pine table, the boy came forward with

slow and impressive steps, and, setting his left fist on his hip,

allowed his right arm to hang straight by his side till his hand

rested on the table, like a statesman of the day standing for a

photograph. His brow contained a commanding frown, and he stood for

some moments in that position, while, to my astonishment, the crowd

cheered itself hoarse.

There was no mistaking the genuine enthusiasm that he evoked, though I

didn't feel it myself. I suppose the only explanation is that he had

a great deal of what is called “magnetism.” What made it I don't

know. He was good-looking enough, with his dark eyes and hair, and

white, intense face and black clothes; but there was more in the

cheering than appreciation of that. I could not doubt that he produced

on the crowd, by his quiet attitude, an apparition of greatness. There

was some kind of hypnotism in it, I suppose.

The speech was about what I was looking for: bombastic platitudes

delivered with such earnestness and velocity that “every point scored”

and the cheering came whenever he wanted it.

For instance: he would retire a few steps toward the rear, and,

pointing to the sky, adjure it in a solemn voice which made every one

lean forward in a dead hush:

“Tell me, ye silent stars, that seem to slumber 'neath the auroral

coverlet of day, tell me, down what laurelled pathways among ye walk

our dead, the heroes whose blood was our benison, bequeathing to us

the heritage of this flower-strewn land; they who have passed to that

bourne whence no traveller returns? Answer me: Are not _theirs_

the loftiest names inscribed on your marble catalogues of the

nations?” He let his voice out startlingly and shouted: “CREEPS there

a creature of the earth with spirit so sordid as to doubt it, to doubt

_who_ heads those gilded rolls! If there be, then _I_ say to

him, 'Beware!' For the names I see written above me to-day on the

immemorial canopy of heaven begin with that of the spotless knight,

the unsceptred and uncrowned king, the godlike and immaculate”--(here

he turned suddenly, ran to the front of the stage, and, with

outstretched fist shaking violently over our heads, thundered at the

full power of his lungs): “GEORGE WASHINGTON!”

He did the same for Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, and four or

five governors and senators of the State; and at every name the crowd

went wild, worked up to it by Hector in the same way. But what

surprised me was his daring to conclude his list with a votive

offering laid at the feet of Passley Trimmer. Trimmer was the

congressional representative of that district and one of the meanest

men and smartest politicians in the world. He was always creeping out

of tight places and money-scandals by the skin of his teeth; and yet,

by building up the finest personal machine in the State, he stuck to

his seat in Congress term after term, in spite of the fact that most

of the intelligent and honest men in his district despised him. It was

a proof of the power Hector held over his audience that, by his

tribute to Trimmer, he was able to evoke the noisiest enthusiasm of

the afternoon.

Nevertheless, what really tickled me most was the boy's peroration. It

gave me a pretty clear insight into his “innard workings.” He led up

to it in his favourite way: stepping backward a pace or two and

sinking his voice to a kind of Edwin Booth quiet; gradually growing a

little louder; then suddenly turning on the thunder and running

forward.

“You ask _me_ for our credentials?” he roared. (Nobody had, this

time.) “In the Lexicon of the Peoples, you ask _me_ for my

country's credentials? The credentials of our pastures, our

population and our pride! You ask me for my country's credentials? I

reply: 'The credentials of our youth and our enthusiasm! Of red

corpuscles! Of red blood! The credentials of the virility and of the

magnificent manhood of the Columbian Continent!' You ask for my

country's credentials and I answer: 'The credentials of Glory! By

right of the eternal and Almighty God!'”

Of course there was a great deal more, but that's enough to show how

he had polished it.

* * * * *

I walked back to Mary's with Joe Lane, while Hector followed, making a

kind of Royal Progress through the crowds, with his mother and Miss

Rainey.

“You see it now, yourself, don't you?” Joe said to me.

“You mean about his doing well?”

“What else? He's just shown what he can do with people. The day will

come when you'll have to take him at his own valuation.”

I couldn't help laughing. “Well, Joe,” I said, “that sounds as if

_you_, at least, already took Hector at his own valuation.”

“In some things,” he answered, “I think I do. Don't you take him for

an ass, sir. Sometimes I believe he's guided by a really superior

intelligence--”

“Must be a sub-consciousness, then, Joe!”

“Exactly,” he said seriously. “He doesn't make a single mistake. He's

trained his manner so that, while a very few people laugh at him, he

does things that the town would resent in any one else. He doesn't go

round with the boys, and they look up to him for it. He isn't pompous,

but he's acquired a kind of stateliness of manner that's made

Greenville call him 'Mister Ransom' instead of 'Hec.' You probably

think that his request to the National Committee only shows he's got

all the nerve in the world; but I believe, on my soul, that if it had

been granted he could have made good.”

“What did he want to run Passley Trimmer into his Pantheon for,

to-day?” I asked.

Joe's honest face looked a little dark at this. “It's only another

proof of the shrewdness that directs him, though it was, maybe, a

little bit sickening. He talks gold and stars and eternal gods, about

sweetness and light and pure politics and reform, but he wants Passley

Trimmer's machine to take him up. Passley Trimmer and his brother,

Link, are a good-sized curse to this district, I expect you know, but

Hector's courting them. Link is the dirtiest we've ever had here, and

he holds all the rottenest in this county solid for Passley. He's

overbearing; ugly, too; shot a nigger in the hip a year ago, and

crippled him for life on account of a little back-talk, and got off

scot-free. I had a row with him in a saloon last week; I was tight, I

suppose, though there's always been bad blood between us, anyway,

drunk or sober, and I didn't know much what happened, except that I

refused to drink in his company and he cursed me out and I blacked an

eye for him before they separated us. Well, sir, next day, here was

Hector demanding that I go and apologize to Link. I said I'd as soon

apologize to a rattlesnake, and Hector upbraided me in his rhetoric,

but with a whole lot of real feeling, too. He was even pathetic about

it: put it on the ground that I owed it to morality, by which he meant

Hector. I was known to be his most intimate friend; I had done him an

irrecoverable injury with the Trimmers, who would extend their

retaliation and let _him_ have a share of it, as my friend. He

ended by declaring that he should withhold the light of his

countenance from me until I had repaired the wrong done to his cause,

and had apologized to Link!”

“Did you do it?”

The good fellow answered with his little chuckle: “Of course! Don't

you see that he gets everybody to do what he wants? It's almost sheer

will, and he's a true cloud-compeller.”

I wanted to understand something else, and I didn't know how much Mary

could tell me; that is, I was sure that she would think that Miss

Rainey was in love with Hector. Mary wouldn't be able to see how any

girl could help it.

“Joe,” I said, “does Hector seem much taken with this Miss Rainey?”

We had come to the gate, and Lane stopped to relight a cigar before he

answered. He kept the match at the stub until it burned out, half

hiding his face from me with his hands, shielding the flame from a

breeze that wasn't blowing.

“Yes,” he said finally, “as much as he could be with anybody--at least

he wants her to be taken with him.”

“Do you think she is?”

He swung the gate open, and stood to let me pass in first. “She could

be of great help to him. We've all got to help Hector.”

I was going on: “You believe she will--”

“Did you ever hear,” he interrupted, “of Jane Welsh Carlyle?”

I thought about that answer of Joe's most of the evening, and it

struck me he was right. It was one of those things you couldn't

possibly explain to save your life, but you knew it: everybody had

_got_ to help Hector. Everybody had to get behind him and

push. Hector took it for granted in a way that passed the love of

woman!

And yet, as we sat at Mary's supper-table, that evening, I don't know

that I ever felt less real liking for any of my kin than I felt for

Hector, though, perhaps, that was because he seemed to keep rubbing it

in on me in indirect ways that I had done him an injury by not helping

him with the National Committee, and that I ought to know it, after

his triumph of the afternoon. I could see that Mary agreed with him,

though in her gentle way.

Young Lane and Miss Rainey stayed for supper, too, and were very

quiet. Miss Rainey struck me as a quiet girl generally, and Joe never

talked, anyway, when in Hector's company. For that matter, nobody else

did; there was mighty little chance. The truth is, Hector had an

impediment of speech: he couldn't listen.

Of course he talked only about himself. That followed, because it was

all there was in him. Not that it always _seemed_ to be about

himself. For instance, I remember one of his ways of rubbing it into

me, that evening. He had been delivering himself of some opinions on

the nature of Genius, fragments (like his “credentials”--I had a

sneaking idea) of some undeveloped oration or other. “Look at

Napoleon!” he bade us, while Mary was cutting the pie. “Could Barras

with all his jealous and malevolent opposition, could Barras with all

his craft, all his machinations, with all the machinery of the State,

could Barras oppose the upward flight of that mighty spirit? No!

Barras, who should have been the faithful friend, the helper, the

disciple and believer, Barras, I say, set himself to destroy the youth

whose genius he denied, and Barras was himself destroyed! He fell, for

he had dared to oppose the path of one of the eternal stars!”

That was a sample, and I don't exaggerate it. I couldn't exaggerate

Hector; it's beyond me; he always exaggerated himself beyond anybody

else's power to do it. But I loved to hear Joe Lane's chuckle and I

got one out of him when I offered him a cigar as we went out on the

porch.

“Take one,” I said. “It's one of Barras's best.”

“Better get in line,” was all he added to the chuckle.

* * * * *

A good many visitors dropped in, during the evening, Greenville's

greatest come to congratulate Hector on the speech. Everybody in the

county was talking about him that night, they said. Hector received

these people in his old-fashioned-statesman manner, though I noticed

that already he shook hands like a candidate. He would grasp the

caller's hand quickly and decidedly, instead of letting the other do

the gripping. And I could see that all those who came in, even

hard-headed men twice his age, treated him deferentially, with the air

of intimate respect that he somehow managed to exact from people.

Perhaps I don't do him justice: he was a “mighty myster'us” boy!

I sat and smoked, lounging in one of Mary's comfortable

porch-chairs. I managed without trouble to be in the background and I

couldn't help putting in most of my time studying Joe Lane and Miss

Rainey. Those two were sitting, on the side-steps of the porch, a

little apart from the rest of us--and a little apart from each other,

too. Lord knows how you get such strong impressions, but I was very

soon perfectly sure that these two young people were in love with each

other and that they both knew it, but that they had given each other

up. I was sure, too, that they were both under Hector's spell, and

preposterous as it may seem, that they were under his _will_, and

that Hector's plans included Miss Rainey for himself.

It was a mighty pretty evening; full of flower-smells and breezes from

the woods, which began just across the village street. Joe sat in a

sort of doubled-up fashion he had, his thin hands clasped like a strap

round his knees. She sat straight and trim, both of them looking out

toward where the twilight was fading. As the darkness came on I could

barely make them out, a couple of quiet shadows, seemingly as far away

from the group about the lamp-lit doorway where Hector sat, as if they

were alone on big Jupiter who was setting up to be the whole thing,

far out yonder in the lonely sky.

By and by, the moon oozed round from behind the house and leaked

through the trees and I could see them plainer, two silhouettes

against the foliage of some bright lilac-bushes. Joe hadn't budged,

but the back of Miss Rainey's head wasn't toward me as it had been

before; it was her profile. She was leaning back a little, against a

post, and looking at Joe--just looking at him. Neither of them spoke a

word the whole time, and somehow I felt they didn't need to, and that

what they had to say to each other had never been spoken and never

would be. It was mighty pretty--and sad, too.

I felt so sorry for them, but it made me more or less impatient with

Hector, and with Joe--especially with Joe, I think. It seemed to me he

needn't have taken his temperament so hopelessly. But what's the use

of judging? When a man has a temperament like that, people who haven't

can't tell what he's got to contend with.

That Fourth of July speech gave Hector his chance. His district

managers and the Trimmer faction saw they could use him; and they sent

him round stumping the district. Two campaigns later the State

Committee was using him, and parts of his speeches were being printed

in all the party papers over the State. Locally, I suppose you might

say, he had become a famous man; at least he acted like one--not that

there was any essential change in him. His style had undergone a large

improvement, however; his language was less mixed-up, and he seemed

clear-headed enough on “questions of the day,” showing himself to be

well-informed and of a fine judgment.

In these things I thought I saw the hand of Laura Rainey. The teacher

was helping him. The seriousness of his face had increased, he had

always entirely lacked humour; yet the spell he managed to cast over

his audiences was greater. He never once failed to “get them going,”

as they say. At twenty-nine he was no longer called “a rising young

orator”; no, he was usually introduced as the “Hon. Hector J. Ransom,

the Silver-tongued Lochinvar of the West.”

Things hadn't changed much at Greenville. Mary had always been so

proud of Hector that she hadn't inflated any more on account of his

wider successes. She couldn't, because she hadn't any room left for

it.

Joe Lane still went on his periodical sprees quite regularly, about

one week every three months, and he was the least offensive tippler I

ever knew. He came up to the city during one of his lapses, and called

at my office. He was dressed with unusual care (he was always a good

deal of a dandy), and he did not stagger nor slush his syllables;

indeed, the only way I could have told what was the matter with him,

at first, was by the solemn preoccupation of his expression. A little

black pickaninny followed him, grinning and carrying a big bundle,

covered with a new lace window-curtain.

“I am but a bearer of votive flowers,” Joe said, bowing. Then turning

to the little darky, he waved his hand loftily. “Unveil the offering!”

The pickaninny did so, removing the lace curtain to reveal a shiny new

coal-bucket in which was a lump of ice, whereon reposed a pair of

white kid gloves and a large wreath of artificial daisies.

“With love,” said Joe. “From Hector.” And he stalked majestically out.

There was a card on the wreath, which Joe had inscribed: “To announce

the betrothal. No regrets.”

Sure enough, the next morning I had a letter from Mary, telling me

that Hector and Miss Rainey were engaged, that they had been so

without announcing it, for several years, and she feared the

engagement must last much longer before they could be married. So did

I, for all of Hector's glittering had brought him very little

money. While he had some law practice, of course it was small, in

Greenville, and what he had he neglected. Nor was he a good lawyer. I

knew him to be heavily in debt to Lane, whose father had died lately,

leaving Joe fairly well off; and I knew also that this debt sat very

lightly on Hector. I judged so, because in the matter of the advances

I had made for his education, I never heard him refer to

them. Probably he forgot all about it, having so many more important

things to think of.

Mary was right: it was a very long engagement. It had lasted seven

years in all, when Passley Trimmer declared himself a candidate for

the nomination for Governor and gave Hector the great chance he had

been waiting for. Hector “came out” for Trimmer, and came out strong.

He worked for him day and night, and he was one of the best cards in

Trimmer's hand.

It was easy enough to understand: Trimmer's nomination would leave his

seat in Congress vacant and the Trimmer crowd would throw it to

Hector.

You could see that the “young Lochinvar” was really a power, and I

think they counted on him almost as much as on the personal machine

Trimmer had built up. Most of all, they counted on Hector's speech,

nominating Trimmer, to stampede the convention. If it was to be done,

Hector was the man to do it. There's no doubt in the world of the

extraordinary capacity he had for whirling a crowd along into a kind

of insane enthusiasm. He could make his audience enthusiastic about

_anything_; he could have brought them to their feet waving and

cheering for Ben Butler himself, if he had set out to do it. I believe

that most of us who were against Trimmer were more afraid of Hector's

stampeding the convention than of Trimmer's machine and all the money

he was spending.

I was working all I knew for another man, Henderson, of my county, and

our delegation would go into the convention sixty-three solid for

Henderson, first, last, and all the time. On that account I had to

play Barras again to the young Napoleon. He came to see me, and made

one of his orations, imploring me to swing half of our delegation for

Trimmer on the first ballot, and all of it on the second.

“But they count on me!” he declaimed. “They count on me to turn you!

Is a man to be denied by his own flesh and blood? Are the ties of

relationship nothing? Can't you see that my whole future is put in

jeopardy by your refusal? Here is my opportunity at last and you

endanger it. My marriage and my fortune depend on it; the cup is at

my lips. My long years of toil and preparation, the bitter, bitter

waiting--are these things to go for nothing? I tell you that if you

refuse me you may blast the most sacred hopes that ever dwelt in a

human breast!”

I only smoked on, and so he did “the jury pathetic,” and he was

sincere in it, too.

“Have you no heart?” he inquired, his voice shaking. “Can you think

calmly of my mother? Remember the years she has waited to see this

recognition come to her son! Am I to go back to her and tell her that

your answer was 'No'? I ask you to think of her, I ask you to put

self out of your thoughts, to forget your own interests for once, and

to think of my mother, waiting in the old home in the quiet village

street where you knew her in her bright girlhood. Remember that she

awaits your answer; forget _me_ if you will, but remember what it

means to _her_, I say, and _then_ if there is a stone in

your breast, instead of a human heart, speak the word 'No'!”

I spoke it, and, as he had to catch his train, he departed more in

anger than in sorrow, leaving me to my conscience, he told me. At the

door he turned.

“I warn you,” he said, “that this faction of yours shall go down to

defeat! Trimmer will win this fight, and I shall take his seat in

Congress! That is my first stepping-stone, and I _will_ take it!

I have worked too hard and waited too long, for such as you to

successfully oppose me. I tell you that we shall meet in the

convention, and you and your machine will be broken! The rewards,

then, to us, the victors!”

“Why, of course,” I said, “if you win.”

The Trimmer people were strong with the State Executive Committee,

and, in spite of us, worked things a good deal their own way. They

took the convention away from the State Capital to Greenville, which

was, of course, a great advantage for Trimmer. The fact is, that most

of the best people in that district didn't like him, but you know how

we all are: he _was_ one _of_ them, and as soon as it seemed

he had a chance to beat men from other parts of the State, they began

to shout themselves black in the face for their own. When I went down

there, the day before the convention, the place was one mass of

Trimmer flags, banners, badges, transparencies, buttons, and brass

bands.

I went around to see Mary right away, and while she wasn't exactly

cold to me--the dear woman never could be that to anybody--she was

different; her eyes met mine sadly and her old, sweet voice was a

little tremulous, as if she were sorry that I had done something

wrong.

I didn't stay long. I started back to the Henderson headquarters in

the hotel, but on my way I passed a big store-room on a corner of the

Square, which Trimmer had fitted up as his own headquarters. There was

quite a crowd of the boys going in and out, looking cheerful, fresh

cigars in their mouths, and a drink or two inside, band coming down

the street, everything the way an old-timer likes to see it.

Passley Trimmer himself came out as I was going by, and with him were

his brother, Link, and two or three other men, among them a

weasel-faced little fellow named Hugo Siffles, who kept a drug-store

on the next corner. Hugo wasn't anybody; nobody ever paid any

attention to him at all; but he was one of those empty-headed village

talkers who are always trying to look as if they were behind the

scenes, always trying to walk with important people. Everybody knows

them. They whisper to the undertaker at funerals; and during campaigns

they have something confidential to communicate to United States

Senators. They meddle and intrude and waste as much time for you as

they can.

When Trimmer saw me, he held out his hand. “Hello, Ben! I hear you're

not _for_ me!” he said cordially.

“How are you running?” I came back at him, laughing.

“Oh, we're going to beat you,” he answered, in the same way.

“Well, you'll see a good run, first, I expect!”

He walked along with me, Link and the others following a little way

behind; but Hugo Siffles, of course, walking with us, partly to listen

and tell at the drug-store later, and partly to look like state

secrets.

“Sorry you couldn't see your way to join us,” Trimmer said. “But we'll

win out all right, anyway. I shouldn't think that would be much of a

disappointment to you, though. It will be a great thing for one of

your family.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “Hector.”

Trimmer took on a little of his benevolent statesman's manner, which

they nearly all get in time. “I have the greatest confidence in that

young man's future,” he said. “He may go to the very top. All he needs

is money. I speak to you as a relative: he ought to drop that

school-teacher and marry a girl with money. He could, easily enough.”

That made me a little ugly. “Oh, no,” I said. “He can make plenty in

Congress outside of his salary, can't he? I understand some of them

do.”

Of course Trimmer didn't lose his temper; instead, he laughed out

loud, and then put his hand on my shoulder.

“Look here,” he said. “I'm his friend and you're his cousin. He's one

of my own crowd and I have his best interests at heart. That isn't the

girl for him. He tells me that, for a long while, she used to advise

him against having too much to do with _me_, until he showed her

that winning my influence in his favour was his only chance to

rise. Now, if _you_ have his best interests at heart, as I have,

you'll help persuade him to let her go. Why shouldn't he marry

better? She's not so young any longer, and she's pretty much lost her

looks. And then, you know people will talk--”

“Talk about what?” I said.

“Well, if he goes to Congress, and, with his prospects, throws himself

away on a skinny little old-maid school-teacher in the backwoods, one

that he's been making love to for years, they might say almost

anything. Why can't he hand her over to Joe Lane? I'm sure--”

“That'll do,” I interrupted roughly. “I suppose you've been talking

that way to Hector?”

“Why, certainly. I have his best interests at--”

“Good-day, _sir_!” I said, and turned in at the hotel and left

him, with Hugo Siffles's little bright pig's eyes peeking at me round

Trimmer's shoulder.

Sore enough I was, and cursing Trimmer and Hector in my heart, so that

when some one knocked on my door, while I was washing up for supper, I

said “Come in!” as if I were telling a dog to get out.

It was Joe Lane and he was pretty drunk. He walked over to the bed and

caught himself unsteadily once or twice. I'd never seen him stagger

before. He didn't speak until he had sat down on the coverlet; then he

shaded his eyes with his hand and stared at me as if he wanted to make

sure that it _was_ I.

“I've just been down to Hugo Siffles's drugstore,” he said, speaking

very slowly and carefully, “and Hugo was telling a crowd about a

conver--conversation between you and Passley Trimmer. He said Trimmer

said Hector Ransom ought to drop Miss Rainey--and 'hand her over to

Joe Lane,' Is that true?”

“Yes,” I answered. “The beast said that.”

“There was more,” Joe said heavily. “More that im--implied--might be

taken to imply scandal, which I believe Trimmer did not seriously

intend--but thought--thought might be used as an argument with Hector

to persuade him to jilt her?”

“Yes.”

“What was said ex---actly? It is being repeated about town in various

forms. I want to know.”

Like a fool I told him the whole thing. I didn't think, didn't dream,

of course, what was in that poor, drunken, devoted head, and I wanted

to blow off my own steam, I was so hot.

He sat very quietly until I had finished; then he took his head in

both hands and rocked himself gently to and fro upon the bed, and I

saw tears trickling down his cheeks. It was a wretched spectacle in a

way, he being drunk and crying like a child, but I don't think I

despised him.

“And she so true,” he sobbed, “so good, so faithful to him! She's

given him her youth, her whole sweet youth--all of it for him!” He got

to his feet and went to the door.

“Hold on, Joe,” I said, “where are you going?”

“'Nother drink!” he said, and closed the door behind him.

After supper I went to work with Henderson and three or four others in

a little back-room in our headquarters; and we were hard at it when

one of the boys held up his hand and said: “Listen!”

The sounds of a big disturbance came in through the open windows:

shouting and yelling, and crowds running in the streets below. The

town had been so noisy all evening that I thought nothing of it. “It's

only some delegation getting in,” I said. “Go on with the lists.”

But I'd no more than got the words out of my mouth than the noise

rolled into the outer rooms of our headquarters like a wave, and there

was a violent hammering on the door of our room, some one calling my

name in a loud frightened voice. I threw open the door and Hugo

Siffles fell in, his pig's eyes starting out of his pale, foolish

face.

“Come with me!” he shouted, all in one breath, and laying hold of me

by the lapel of my coat, tried to drag me after him. “There's hell to

pay! Joe Lane came into Trimmer's headquarters, drunk, twenty minutes

ago, and slapped Passley Trimmer's face for what he said to us this

afternoon. Link Trimmer came in, a minute later, drunk too, and heard

what had happened. He followed Joe to Hodge's saloon and shot

him. They've carried him to the drug-store and he's asked to speak to

you.”

I had the satisfaction of kicking that little cuss through the door

ahead of me, though I knew it was myself I ought to have kicked.

It was true that Joe had asked to speak to me, but when I reached the

drug-store the doctor wouldn't let me come into the back-room where he

lay, so I sat on a stool in the store. They'd turned all the people

out, except four or five friends of Joe's; and the glass doors and the

windows were solid with flattened faces, some of them coloured by the

blue and green lights so that it sickened me, and all staring

horribly. After about four years the doctor's assistant came out to

get something from a shelf and I jumped at him, getting mighty little

satisfaction, you can be sure.

“It seems to be very serious indeed,” was all he would say. I knew

that for myself, because one of the men in the store had told me that

it was in the left side.

Half-an-hour after this--by the clock--the young man came out again

and called us in to carry Joe home. It was not more than a hundred

yards to the old Lane place, and six of us, walking very slowly,

carried him on a cot through the crowd. He was conscious, for he

thanked us in a weakish whisper, when we lifted him carefully into his

own bed. Then the doctor sent us all out except the assistant, and we

went to the front porch and waited, hating the crowd that had lined up

against the fence and about the gate. They looked like a lot of

buzzards; I couldn't bear the sight of them, so I went back into the

little hall and sat down near Joe's door.

After a while the assistant opened the door, holding a glass pitcher

in his hand.

“Here,” he said, when he saw me, “will you fill this with cold water

from the well?”

I took it and hurried out to the kitchen, where four or five people

were sitting and glumly whispering around an old coloured woman, Joe's

cook, who was crying and rocking herself in a chair. I hushed her up

and told her to show me the pump. It was in an orchard behind the

house, and was one of those old-fashioned things that sound like a

siren whistle with the hiccups.

It took me about five minutes to get the water up, and when I got back

to Joe's room, a woman was there with the doctors. It was Miss Rainey.

She had her hat off, her sleeves were rolled up and, though her face

was the whitest I ever saw, she was cool and steady. It was she who

took the water from me at the door.

I heard low voices in the parlour, where a lamp was lit, and I went in

there. Mary was sitting on a sofa, with a handkerchief hard against

her eyes, and Hector was standing in the middle of the room, saying

over and over, “My God!” and shaking. I went to the sofa and sat by

Mary with my hand on her shoulder.

“To think of it!” Hector moaned. “To think of its coming at such a

time! To think of what it means to me!”

His mother spoke to him from behind her handkerchief: “You mustn't do

it; you _can't_ Hector--oh, you can't, you _can't._”

For answer he struck himself desperately across the forehead with the

palm of his hand.

“What is it,” I asked, “that your mother wants you not to do?”

“She wants me to give up Trimmer--to refuse to make the nominating

speech for him to-morrow.”

“You've _got_ to give him up!” cried his mother; and then went on

with reiterations as passionate as they were weak and broken in

utterance. “You can't make the speech, you can't do it, you

_can't--“_

“Then I'm done for!” he said. “Don't you see what a frightful blow

this pitiful, drunken folly of poor Joe's has dealt Trimmer's

candidaoy? Don't you see that they rely on me more than ever,

_now_? Are you so blind you don't see that I am the only man who

can save Trimmer the nomination? If I go back on him now, he's done

for and I'm done for with him! It's my only chance!”

“No, no,” she sobbed, “you'll have other chances; you'll have plenty

of chances, dear; you're young--”

“My only chance,” he went on rapidly, ignoring her, “and if I can

carry it through, it will mean everything to me. The tide's running

strong against Trimmer to-night, and I am the only man in the world

who can turn it the other way. If I go into the convention for him,

faithful to him, and, out of the highest sense of justice, explain

that, even though Lane has been my closest friend, he was in the wrong

and that--”

Mary rose to her feet and went to her son and clung to him. “No, no!”

she cried; “no, _no_!”

“I've got to!” he said.

“What is that you must do, Hector?” It was Miss Rainey's voice, and

came from just behind me. She was standing in the doorway that led

from the hall, and her eyes were glowing with a brilliant, warm

light. We all started as she spoke, and I sprang up and turned toward

her.

“He's going to get well,” she said, understanding me. “They say it is

surely so!”

At that Mary ran and threw her arms about her and kissed her--and I

came near it! Hector gave a sort of shout of relief and sank into a

chair.

“What is that you must do, Hector?” Miss Rainey said again in her

steady voice.

“Stick to Trimmer!” he explained. “Don't you see that I must? He needs

me now more than ever, and it's my only chance.”

Miss Rainey looked at him over Mary's shoulder. She looked at him a

long while before she spoke. “You know why Mr. Lane struck that blow?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” he answered uneasily. “At least Siffles--”

“Yes,” she said. “You know. What are you going to do?”

“The right thing!” Hector rose and walked toward her. “I put right

before all. I shall be loyal and I shall be just. It might have been a

terribly hard thing to carry through, but, since dear old Joe will

recover, I know I can do it.”

The girl's eyes widened suddenly, while the warm glow in them flashed

into a fiery and profound scrutiny.

“You are going to make the nominating speech,” she said. It was not a

question but a declaration, in the tone of one to whom he stood wholly

revealed.

“Yes,” he answered eagerly. “I knew you would see: it's my chance, my

whole career--”

But his mother, turning swiftly, put her hand over his mouth, though

it was to Miss Rainey that she cried:

“Oh, don't let him say it--he can't; you mustn't let him!”

The girl drew her gently away and put an arm about her, saying: “Do

you think _I_ could stop him?”

“But do you wish to stop me?” asked Hector sadly, as he stepped toward

her. “Do you set yourself not only in the way of my great chance, but

against justice and truth? Don't you see that I must do it?”

“It is your chance--yes. I see the truth, Hector.” Her eyes had

fallen and she looked at him no more, but, with a little movement away

from him, offered her hand to him at arm's length. It was done in a

curious way, and he looked perplexed for a second, and then

frightened. He dropped her hand, and his lips twitched.

“Laura,” he said, and could not go on.

“You must go now,” she said to all three of us. “The house should be

very quiet. I shall be his nurse, and the doctor will stay all

night. Isn't it beautiful that Joe is going to get well!”

She went out quickly, before Hector could detain her, back to the room

where Lane was.

* * * * *

There's no need my telling you the details of that convention:

Henderson was beaten from the start, and Hector's speech was all that

happened. If he hadn't made it, there might have been a consolidation

on a dark horse, for feeling was high against Trimmer. It isn't an

easy thing to go into a convention with a brother locked up in jail on

a charge of attempted murder!

I'll never forget Hector's rising to make that speech. There wasn't

any cheering, there was a dead, cold hush. This wasn't because his

magnetism had deserted him; indeed, I don't think it had ever before

been felt so strongly. He was white as white paper, and his face had a

look of suffering; altogether I believe I couldn't give a better

notion of him than saying that he somehow made me think of Hamlet.

He began in a very low but very penetrating voice, and I don't think

anybody in the farthest corner missed a single clear-cut syllable from

the first. As I may have indicated, I had never been a warm admirer of

his, but with all my prejudice, I think I admired him when he stood up

to his task that day. For the effect he intended, his speech was a

masterpiece, no less. I saw it before he had finished three

sentences. And he delivered it, knowing that even while he did so he

was losing the woman he loved; for Hector did love Laura Rainey, next

to himself, and she had been part of his life and necessary to

him. But though the heavens fell, he stuck to what he had set out to

do, and did it masterfully.

Not that what he said could bear the analysis of a cool mind: nothing

that Hector ever did or said has been able to do that. But for the

purpose, it was perfect. For once he began at the beginning, without

rhetoric, and he made it all the more effective by beginning with

himself.

“Doubtless there are many among you who think it strange to see me

rise to fulfil the charge with which you know me to be intrusted. My

oldest and most intimate friend lies wounded on a bed of suffering,

stricken down by the hand of another friend whose heart is in the

cause for which I have risen. Therefore, you might well question me;

you might well say: 'To whom is your loyalty?' Well might I ask myself

that same question. And I will give you my answer: 'There are things

beyond the personal friendship of man and man, things greater than

individual differences and individual tragedies, things as far higher

and greater than these as the skies of God are higher than the roof of

a child's doll-house. These higher things are the good of the State

and the Law of Justice!'”

That brought the first applause; and Trimmer's people, seeing the

crowd had taken Hector's point, sprang to their feet and began to

cheer. At a tense moment, such as this, cheering is often hypnotic,

and good managers know how to make use of it on the floor. The noise

grew thunderous, and when it subsided Hector was master of the

convention. Then, for the first time, I saw how far he would go--and

why. I had laughed at him all my life, but now I believed there was

“something in him,” as they say. The Lord knows what, but it was

there; and as I looked at him and listened it seemed to me that the

world was at his feet.

He was infinitely daring, yet he skirted the cause of the quarrel with

perfect tact: “The misinterpretation of a few careless and kindly

words, said in passing, and repeated, with garbling additions, to a

man who was not himself.... The brooding of a mind most unhappily

beset with alcohol.... A blow resented by a too devoted but too

violent kinsman....”

Then, with the greatest skill, and rather quietly, he passed to a

eulogium of Trimmer's public career, gradually increasing the warmth

of his praise but controlling it as perfectly as he controlled the

enthusiasm and excitement which followed each of his points. For

myself, I only looked away from him once, and caught a glimpse of

Henderson looking sick.

Hector finished with a great stroke. He went back to the original

theme. “You ask me where my duty lies!” His great voice rose and rang

through the hall magnificently: “I reply--'first to my State and her

needs'! Is that answer enough? If it be necessary that I should answer

for my personal loyalty to one man or another then I ask _you_:

Shall it go to the friend who, without cause, struck the first blow?

Shall it go to that other friend who went out hot-headed and struck

back to avenge a brother's wrongs? Is it only between these that

I--and many of you--are to choose to-day? Is there not a

_third_?' I tell you that I have chosen, and that my loyalty and

all my strength are devoted to that other, to that man who has

suffered most of all, to him who received a blow and did not avenge

it, because in his greatness he knew that his assailant knew not what

he did!”

That carried them off their feet. Hector had turned Trimmer's greatest

danger into the means of victory. The Trimmer people led one of those

extraordinary hysterical processions round the aisles that you see

sometimes in a convention (a thing I never get used to), and it was

all Trimmer, or rather, it was all Hector. Trimmer was nominated on

the first ballot.

There was a recess, and I hurried out, meaning to slip round to Joe

Lane's for a moment to find out how he was. I'd seen the doctor in the

morning and he said his patient had passed a good night and that Miss

Rainey was still there. “I think she's going to stay,” he added, and

smiled and shook hands with me.

Joe's old darkey cook let me in, and, after a moment, came to say I

might go into Mr. Lane's room; Mr. Lane wanted to see me.

Joe was lying very flat on his back, but with his face turned toward

the door, and beside him sat Laura Rainey, their thin hands clasped

together. I stopped on the threshold with the door half opened.

“Come in,” said Joe weakly. “Hector made it, I'm sure.”

“Yes,” I answered, and in earnest. “He's a great man.”

Joe's face quivered with a pain that did not come from his hurt. “Oh,

it's knowing that, that makes me feel like such a scoundrel,” he

said. “I suppose you've come to congratulate me.”

“Yes,” I said, “the doctor says it's a wonderful case, and that you're

one of the lucky ones with a charmed life, thank God!”

Joe smiled sadly at Miss Rainey. “He hasn't heard,” he said. Then she

gave me her left hand, aot relinquishing Joe's with her right.

“We were married this morning,” she said, “just after the convention

began.”

The tears came into Joe's eyes as she spoke. “It's a shame, isn't

it?” he said to me. “You must see it so. And I the kind of man I am,

the town drunkard--”

Then his wife leaned over and kissed his forehead.

“Even so it was right--and so beautiful for me,” she said.