HOW RICHARD WAS TAUGHT MANY THINGS
Richard went every day at eleven for a brief conference with Senator
Hanway. The latter was no wise backward in his use of the columns of the
_Daily Tory_. There are so many things concerning both men and measures
that statesmen want said, and which, because of their modesty, they
themselves hesitate to say, that Senator Hanway, when now through
Richard he might tell this story of politics or declare that proposal of
state, and still keep his own name under cover, discovered in the _Daily
Tory_ a source of relief. So much, in truth, did Senator Hanway, by way
of Richard and the _Daily Tory_, contribute to the gayety of the times,
that the editor-in-chief was duly scandalized. He aroused himself on the
third evening, killed Richard's dispatch, and rebuked that earnest
journalist with the following:
"Send news; nothing but news. No one wants your notion of the motives of
representatives in fight over Speakership."
This led to a word or two between Richard and Mr. Gwynn, the upcome
being a wire from Mr. Gwynn to the editor desiring him on all occasions
and without alteration or addition to print Richard's dispatches. The
editor in retort reminded Mr. Gwynn that the _Daily Tory_ had a
reputation and a policy: also there were laws of libel. Mr. Gwynn
declined to be moved by these high considerations, and reiterated his
first command. After that Richard in each issue gave way to an unchecked
column letter, which was run sullenly by the editor and never a word
displaced.
This daily letter, signed "R. S.," brought Richard mighty comfort; he
read it fresh and new each morning with mounting satisfaction. Richard,
like other authors, found no literature so good to his palate as his
own; and while his stories looked well enough when he wrote them, the
types never failed in uncovering charms that had escaped his ken. These
were complacent days for Richard the defective; ones to nourish his
self-love.
Being his first work, and performed under his own tolerant mastery,
with none to molest him or make him editorially afraid, it stood
scant wonder that he went about the subject of his own sleepless
self-congratulations. What Richard needed--and never knew it--was
dismissal in rapid succession from at least four newspapers; such a
course of journalistic sprouts would have set his feet in proper paths.
Under the circumstances, however, this improving experience was
impossible; missing the benefits thereof, Richard must struggle on as
best he might without a bridle.
It was fortunate, when one remembers his blinded ignorance, a condition
aggravated by his own acute approval of himself, that Richard had a no
more radical guide than was the cautious Senator Hanway. While that
designing gentleman--the _Daily Tory_ turning the stone--grinded many a
personal ax--_note bene_, never once without exciting the sophisticated
wrath of the editor-in-chief--he was no such headlong temper of a man as
to invite the paper into foolish extravagancies, whether of statement or
of style. As the bug under the chip of the _Daily Tory's_ Washington
correspondence, Senator Hanway was neither a vindictive nor yet a
reckless bug; and the paper, while it became the organ of his ambitions,
made some reputational profit by the very melody of those guarded tunes
he ground.
Richard, you are not to suppose, went unaware of those employments to
which Senator Hanway put him in the vineyard of his policies. He
realized the situation and walked therein with wide and willing eyes. It
served his tender purpose; it would take him to the Harley house and
throw him, perchance, into the society of Dorothy without that dulcet
privilege being identified as the true purpose of his call.
One cannot but marvel that Richard should be at the trouble of so much
difficult chicane. It is strange that he should so entangle what might
have been the simplest of love stories; for you may as well know here as
further on that, had Richard laid bare the truth of himself, Mrs.
Hanway-Harley, far from fencing her daughter against him and his
addresses, would have taken the door off its hinges to let him in. But
Richard, as was heretofore suggested, had been most ignorantly brought
up, or rather had been granted no bringing up at all. Moreover, in the
sensitive cynicism of his nature, which made a laugh its armor and was
harsh for fear of being hurt, our young Democritus had long ago bound
himself with vows that he would accept no friendship, win no love, that
did not come to him upon his mere and unsupported merits as a man. In
his own fashion, so far from being the philosopher he thought, Richard
was a knight errant--one as mad and as romantic as the most
feather-headed Amadis that ever came out of Gaul; and so he is to make
himself a deal of trouble and have himself much laughed at before ever
he succeeds in slipping through the fingers of this history to seek
obscurity with Dorothy by his side. For all that, it is Richard's due to
say that his "R. S." letters attracted polite as well as political
attention, and got him much respected and condemned. Also they lodged
him high in the esteem of Senator Hanway, who discovered daily new
excellencies in him; and this came somewhat to the rescue of Richard one
day.
Senator Hanway had a room in a wing of the Harley house which Mrs.
Hanway-Harley called his study. It was a sumptuous apartment, furnished
in mahogany and leather, and a bookcase, filled with Congressional
Records which nobody ever looked at, stood against the wall. Here it was
that Senator Hanway held his conferences; it was here he laid his plans
and brooded them. When Senator Hanway desired to meet a gentleman and
preferred to keep the meeting dark, this study was the scene of that
secrecy. In such event, the blinds were drawn to baffle what prying or
casual eye might come marching up the street; for in Washington, to see
two men conversing, is to know nine times in ten precisely what the
conversation is about. Commonly, however, the blinds were thrown wide,
as though the study's pure proprietor courted a world's scrutiny.
It was in this study that Richard was received by Senator Hanway. There
was an outside door; a caller might be admitted from the veranda without
troubling the main portals of the Harley house. To save the patience of
that journalist, Senator Hanway called Richard's attention to the
veranda door, and commissioned him to make use of it. Senator Hanway
said that he did not wish to subject one whom he valued so highly, and
who was on such near terms with his good friend, Mr. Gwynn, to the slow
ceremony which attended a regular invasion of the premises.
Richard thanked Senator Hanway, although he could have liked it better
had he been less thoughtfully polite. Richard would have preferred the
main floor, with whatever delay and formal clatter such entrance made
imperative. The more delay and the more clatter, the more chance of
seeing Dorothy. It struck him with a dubious chill when Senator Hanway
suddenly distinguished him with the freedom of that veranda door--a
franchise upon which your statesman laid flattering emphasis, saying
that not ten others had been granted it.
This episode of the veranda door befell upon the earliest visit which
Richard made in his quality of correspondent of the _Daily Tory_. On
that day, being admitted by way of the Harley front door, Richard had
the felicity of coming in with the before-mentioned daily sheaf of
roses. Richard and the blossom-bearing colored youth entered together,
the door making the one opening to admit both; and by this fortunate
chance--which Richard the wily had waited around the corner to
secure--he was given the joy of seeing and hearing the beautiful Dorothy
gurgle over the flowers.
"And to think," cried Dorothy, her nose in the bosom of a rose, "no one
knows from whom they come! Mamma thinks Count Storri sends them. It's so
good of him, if he does!"
Dorothy's head was bowed over the flowers. As she spoke, however, her
blue eye, full of mischief, watched Richard through a silken lock of
hair that had fallen forward.
"But you don't think it's Storri?" cried Richard dolorously.
"Oh, no!" returned Dorothy, shaking her head with wise decision, "I
don't think it's Count Storri. But of course I wouldn't tell mamma so;
she doesn't like to be contradicted. Still," and here Dorothy looked
quite wistful, "I wish I knew who did send them."
Before Richard could take up the delicate question of the roses and
their origin, there arrived the word of Senator Hanway that he be shown
into the study.
"Now that I'm a working journalist, Miss Harley," said Richard, "I shall
be obliged to see your uncle every day."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Dorothy, with a fine sympathy; "how hard they
drive you poor newspaper people!"
"Still, we go not without our rewards," returned Richard.
Then observing that Senator Hanway's messenger--who had not those
reasons for loitering which made slow the feet of Richard--was already
halfway down the hall, Richard took Dorothy's small hand in his, and,
before she knew her peril or might make an effort to avoid it,
rapturously kissed the fingers, not once, not twice, but five times. The
very fingers themselves burned with the scandal of it! Following this
deed of rapine, Richard went his vandal way; Dorothy's face turned a
twin red with the roses.
Dorothy said nothing in rebuke of Richard, and it is to be assumed that,
so flagrant an outrage left her without breath to voice her
condemnation. That she was disturbed to the heart is sure, for she went
instantly to her friend, the sibyl of the golden locks, for conference,
confidence, and consolation.
"Wasn't he wretchedly bold, Bess?" said Dorothy in an awe-stricken
whisper.
"Absolutely abandoned!" said Bess.
Then the two sat in silence for ten impressive seconds.
"Bess," remarked Dorothy tentatively, "suppose mamma were to forbid me
loving one whom I loved----" Here she broke down, aghast.
"My dear Dorothy," cried the other, surprised into deepest concern,
"your mother didn't see him kissing your fingers, did she?"
"Oh, no, Bess," said Dorothy hurriedly, "we were quite alone."
"You foolish girl," returned Bess. "You alarmed me!"
"But really, Bess," persisted Dorothy, "to put it this way: if your
mamma insisted, would you give way and marry a man you didn't love?"
"You mean Count Storri," replied Bess. "Now, Dorothy, listen to me. In
the first place, you are an arrant hypocrite. You pretend to be soft and
powerless and yielding, and to appeal to me for counsel. And all the
time you are twice as obstinate as I am, and much less likely to accept
a man you don't love, or give up one whom you love."
"Well, Bess," said Dorothy defensively, a bit stricken of these truths,
"really, I want your opinions on marriage."
"Oh, that is it! Then snap your fingers in the teeth of command, and
marry no man whom you do not love!"
"But the man you love might not want you!" sighed Dorothy.
"The man you love will always want you," declared Bess with firmness.
"How sweet you are!"
"And as for parents making matches for their daughters," continued Bess,
unmoved of the tribute, and speaking as one who for long had made a
study of the world's domestic affairs, "it is sure to lead to trouble
and divorce."
"Is it?" asked Dorothy, appalled.
"It is!" returned Bess with a sepulchral air, as though pronouncing
doom. Then, mocking Dorothy's serious face with a little tumult of
laughter, she went on: "There; it's all decided now the way you wished.
You are to refuse Count Storri and marry Mr. Storms without bestowing
either care or thought on what Mamma Harley or Papa Harley or Uncle Pat
may say or do about it."
"Really, Bess, how much better you have made me feel. After all, there's
nobody like a wise, dear, true friend!"
"The value of such a friend is beyond conjecture," returned the mocking
Bess, reassuming her tones of the oracle.
The memory of Richard's kisses on her fingers never left Dorothy all
that day and all that night. Those fortunate little fingers seemed
translated into something rosily better and apart from herself. And brow
and ears and eyes and cheeks and lips went envying those lucky fingers;
and in the end the lips crept upon them and kissed them for having been
kissed; perhaps with vague thoughts of robbing them of some portion of
the blissful wealth wherewith they had been invested. Richard, being
male, for his part thought the less about it, and went simply meditating
future sweet aggressions. And that shows the difference between a man
and a maid.
Richard, feeding his love with thoughts of Dorothy and his vanity with
ink, and thereby gaining two mighty reasons for living, began to keep
earlier hours. He turned out at nine o'clock instead of eleven and
twelve, hours which had formerly matched his languid fancy. These
energetic doings bred alarm in both Matzai and Mr. Pickwick, evoking
snappish protests from the latter, who, being of a nocturnal turn, held
that the day was meant for sleep. On the morning after he had been
honored with the privilege of the veranda door, Richard was borne upon
by something akin to gloom. This feeling went with him from bed to bath,
and from bath to breakfast, and finally walked with him all the way to
the Harley house. He was willing to sacrifice the _Daily Tory_ and yoke
himself personally to the mills of Senator Hanway's designs; but he must
see Dorothy. That brightness was the bribe, unspoken and unknown to all
save himself, that had brought him into Washington and these sundry and
divers plots and counterplots of state. And now to be cheated through
the polite blunderings of a gentleman who was so engaged in considering
himself that he had neither time nor eyes for any other! Richard swore
roundly in mental fashion at his contrary fate. And yet he saw no way to
better the situation; and perforce, for this morning at least, he was
driven to push the bell of the veranda door. He might have gone about
the ceremony with more cheer had he known how he was to gain an ally in
his troubles; one, moreover, whose aid was sure to prove effective.
As Senator Hanway's black messenger ushered Richard into that
statesman's study, the radiant Dorothy, perched at the end of Senator
Hanway's table, was the picture that greeted his eyes. Our radiant one
sought to stifle her effulgence beneath a look severe and practical.
This expression of practical severity was a failure, and served to
render her more dazzling.
"I have made up my mind," quoth Dorothy, the moment Richard was inside
the door, and speaking in the loud, dead-level monotone which she
conceived to be the voice for business conversations as against the
giggling, gurgling ups and downs of conversations purely social, "I have
made up my mind to come in every morning and help Uncle Pat. I'm tired
of being a useless encumbrance."
Delivering which, Dorothy wore the resolved manner of a new Joan of Arc
who had come seeking fields of politics rather than those of war.
"And I have been of use to you, haven't I, Uncle Pat?" demanded Dorothy.
"Of measureless use, dear," said Senator Hanway. Then, turning to his
secretary, who had taken a score of letters shorthand and was about to
seek his own quarters and run them off upon the typewriter: "Have those
copied by three o'clock and bring them here for signature."
Senator Hanway had no more than given Richard good-morning when Senator
Loot was announced.
"He won't stay long," said Senator Hanway; "but while he's here, dear,
won't you take Mr. Storms into the library?" This request was preferred
to Dorothy.
"Yes," began Dorothy, when she and Richard found themselves in the
library, and nothing to interrupt them but the distant slumbrous rumble
of Senator Loot. "Yes, I'm going to help Uncle Pat. And I'm going to
learn how to be a newspaper woman, too. I think every girl should be
capable of earning her own living. Not that I expect to be obliged to do
so; but it is best to be prepared." Dorothy's face was funereal, as
though disasters, clawed and fanged, were roaming the thickets of the
future to spring upon her. "So I shall learn the newspaper trade; go in
and be a writer as you are--only not so brilliant--and then, if it were
necessary, I could earn my own way."
Now Richard knew these industrious resolutions to be the veriest webs of
subterfuge. Their duplicity was apparent, and they were spun for him.
Dorothy owned no thought of missing his morning calls, and had met
Senator Hanway's courtesies of the veranda door with a move in flank.
The news cocked up the spirits of Richard excessively, and gave to his
Farnese shoulders an insolent swing as he strutted up and down the
library. He had expected Dorothy to reproach him for the soft violence
done her fingers; but she made no mention of it. Whereupon--in such
manner do unchecked iniquities multiply upon themselves--Richard turned
towards her with a purpose of again outraging those little fingers with
the burden of a fresh caress. The little fingers, grown wary, however,
were in discreet retirement behind Dorothy, as, with her back to the
window, she stood facing him. Defeated in his campaign against the
fingers before it had begun, Richard was driven to discuss Dorothy's
work-a-day resolves.
"Newspaper work? Do society, I suppose?"
Richard had gotten hold of the idioms of the craft, and spoke of "doing
society" as though reared among the types.
"No, not society," and Dorothy shook her head. "I'd pick 'em to pieces,
the minxes; and the papers don't want that. No, I'm going to learn about
politics with Uncle Pat. I shall write politics. You must teach me."
Richard said he would.
"Only you should know," said he, "that I need a deal of teaching
myself."
"But you can write!" cried Dorothy, her hands emerging from their
retreat to clasp each other in a glow of admiration. "I've read your
letters. They remind me of Carlyle's 'French Revolution.'"
This staggered Richard; was his idol laughing at him? A glance into her
eyes showed only a darkened enthusiasm; whereat Richard puffed and
swelled. Perhaps his _Daily Tory_ letters did have the rhetorical tread
of the Scotchman's masterpiece. In any event it was pleasant to have
Dorothy think so. Before he could frame his modesty to fit reply, the
cumbrous retreat of Senator Loot was overheard.
"Now we must go back," said Dorothy.
"May I have a rose?" asked Richard, pointing to his blushing consignment
of that day, where they luxuriated in a giant vase.
"Don't touch my hands!" cried Dorothy fiercely, whipping them behind
her.
Richard gave his humble parole that he would not touch her hands. Being
reassured, Dorothy pinned a bud in his lapel. The little fingers were so
fondly confident of safety that they made no haste in these labors of
the bud. Their confidence went unabused; Richard adhered to his parole
and never touched them.
"I'm glad you can keep your promise!" said Dorothy, pouting from pure
delight.
Later, the pair made love to one another with their eyes across the
dignified desk of Senator Hanway, while that statesman told Richard
matters to the detriment of Mr. Hawke's canvass for a Speakership and
Governor Obstinate's claims upon a Presidency, of which, through the
medium of the _Daily Tory_, he believed the public should be informed.
"My dear Dorothy," observed the sibyl of the golden locks, when the
other related how faithfully Richard had kept his compact concerning her
fingers, "you ought never to make a man promise the thing you do not
want. They are such dullards; besides, they have a passion for keeping
their word."
The President and General Attorney and thirty-two underling attorneys of
the Anaconda Airline, in accord with Mr. Gwynn's request, descended upon
Washington. The thirty-two underling attorneys, coming to town by twos
and threes, were amazed when they found a gathering of the Anaconda
Airline clans. They collected in groups and clots at the Shorcham, the
Arlington, and Willard's to discuss their amazement.
The President and General Attorney, if they were smitten of wonder,
concealed it, and within the hour after their arrival rang the doorbell
of Mr. Gwynn. They were ushered into a room the tamed splendors of which
told the thorough taste that had conceived it. Then their cards went up
to Mr. Gwynn.
Word came back that Mr. Gwynn was deeply engaged. Would the President
and the General Attorney of the Anaconda Airline call again in an hour?
The President and General Attorney had for long harbored a theory that
Mr. Gwynn was the greatest man on earth. Now they knew it; the fact was
displayed beyond dispute by his failure to instantly see them. The
President and General Attorney withdrew, silent in their awe, and Mr.
Gwynn dispatched Matzai to find Richard.
On the hour's even stroke, the President and General Attorney were again
at Mr. Gwynn's. That personage was still unable to meet them; however,
he sent Richard with written excuses for his absence and the suggestion
that Richard, speaking in his place, would put them in possession of his
wishes.
"Mr. Gwynn desired to say," observed Richard, "that Anaconda Airline
interests deeply depend upon Mr. Frost for Speaker."
"What we've said from the beginning!" remarked the President to the
General Attorney.
"Precisely what we've said!" observed the General Attorney.
They had said nothing on that point; but they were too well drilled in
their own interests to fail of complete coincidence with a gentleman who
could call a special shareholders' meeting, elect a new directory, and
revise the entire official family of the Anaconda Airline within any
given thirty days.
"Mr. Gwynn asks you, then," said Richard, "since you and he agree on the
propriety of Mr. Frost for Speaker, to consult with Senator Hanway."
And now the Anaconda Airline was in the war for the House gavel. Under
the supervision of Senator Hanway, it brought its whole smothering
weight to bear upon the Hawke twenty of those twenty-three whose
districts it dominated. The Hawke twenty wriggled and writhed, but in
the end gave way--all save a rock-ribbed quartette. They must stay by
the standards of Mr. Hawke.
"Our constituents will destroy us if we don't," said they.
"The Anaconda will destroy you if you do," was the blunt retort of the
General Attorney.
The four stood firm, and were blacklisted for slaughter at the polls a
year away, at which time they were faithfully knocked on the head.
Sixteen of the twenty went over to Mr. Frost; the President of the
Anaconda Airline came out in an interview in the _Daily Tory_ and said
that the shift of the excellent sixteen was a popular victory.
It was two days before the caucus. The line-up of forces, Frost against
Hawke, Hanway against Obstinate, under able captains went vigorously
forward. It pleased Senator Hanway to hear that the Frost fortunes were
being unexpectedly served by the volcanic Mr. Hawke himself. That
gentleman had fallen into a state of indignant eruption; his best
friends could not approach him because of the smoke and flame and lava
which his rage cast up.
"The most scoundrel thing I ever saw in Washington is that I am made to
fight for the Speakership!" cried the eruptive Mr. Hawke; and this
fashion of outburst does not help any man's cause.
To steal a simile from a dead gentleman who stole from others in his
day, Mr. Hawke went into the final battle of the caucus much after the
manner wherewith a horse approaches a drum, that is, with a deal of
prance and but little progress, and, for the most part, wrong end
foremost. Even then the count of Senator Hanway--a cold-blooded
computation--gave that gavel to the violent Mr. Hawke. So much for being
a House leader, a tariff monger, and a friend of Governor Obstinate.
On the afternoon before the caucus, Senator Hanway took a last look at
the array. Besides Mr. Hawke and Mr. Frost, there were two other
candidates, Mr. Patch and Mr. Swinger. These latter had been sent into
the lists by the diplomacy of Senator Hanway to hold the delegations
from their States, a majority whereof, if released, would fly to Mr.
Hawke. With all four names before the caucus, Mr. Frost would lead Mr.
Hawke by two, without having a majority. Eliminate Mr. Patch and Mr.
Swinger, however, and Mr. Hawke would be chosen by a majority of seven.
And, while the battle might be made to stagger on through forty ballots,
in the end Mr. Patch and Mr. Swinger must perforce withdraw. They could
give no excuse for holding on forever in a fight shown to be hopeless.
Some method must be devised to break the Hawke alignment or in a last
solution of the situation Mr. Frost would lose.
Senator Hanway made ready to play his last card--a card to which nothing
short of the desperate turn of events would have caused him to resort.
He made a list of eighteen of Mr. Hawke's supporters; he picked them out
because they were nervous, hysterical souls whom one might hope to
stampede. Senator Hanway then got the names, with the home addresses, of
a score of the principal constituents of each of these aspen, hysterical
gentlemen.
A telegraph operator, one close-mouthed and of a virtuous taciturnity,
sat up all night with Senator Hanway in his study--the night before the
caucus. There was none present but Senator Hanway and the wordless
telegraphic one; the former, deeming the occasion one proper for that
cautious rite, drew the blinds closely.
At Senator Hanway's dictation, the taciturn one who had been so
forethoughtful as to bring with him envelopes and blanks, wrote
messages to each of the hysterical eighteen, about twenty to a man,
signing them with the names of those influential constituents. The
messages were letter-perfect; in each instance, the message for
signature bore the name of one upon whom the member who would receive it
leaned in his destinies of politics. No two were worded alike, albeit
each commanded and demanded the Speakership for Mr. Frost. When they
were done, nearly four hundred of them, the taciturn one endowed them
with those quirleyques and symbols and hieroglyphics which belong with
genuine messages, and finished by sealing each in an envelope properly
numbered and addressed. Then the taciturn one made a delivery book to
match the messages.
"There!" exclaimed Senator Hanway, when at four in the morning the
taciturn one tossed the last forged message upon the pile and said that
all were done; "that's finished. Now at two o'clock put on a messenger's
uniform and come to the Capitol. It's 4 a. m. now, and this is Saturday;
the caucus convenes at two o'clock sharp. It will be held in the House
chamber. There will be ten ballots; I have arranged for that, and Patch
and Swinger will not withdraw before. The ten ballots will consume two
hours and a half--fifteen minutes to a roll call. After they have gone
through four roll calls, begin to send in these messages; the caucus
officer on the door will sign for them. Send first one to each member;
then two; then four; then five; then all you have. Give about fifteen
minutes between consignments. Have you got my plan?"
The taciturn one nodded.
"Here is a one-hundred-dollar bill," observed Senator Hanway, "for your
night's work. Four more wait for you when Mr. Frost is declared the
caucus nominee."
Saturday afternoon; and the caucus met behind locked doors. It was a
mighty struggle; now and then some waifword reached the outside world of
what Titan deeds were being done. There were speeches, and roll calls;
men lost their heads and then their reputations. The sixteen threatened
of the Anaconda Airline, with the fear of political death upon them,
voted for Mr. Frost. Messrs. Patch and Swinger held fast through ballot
after ballot, keeping their delegations together, while the Hawke
captains pleaded and begged and promised and threatened in their efforts
to make them withdraw and release their followings to the main battle.
Through roll call after roll call the tally never varied. With two
hundred and ten members voting, the count stood: Frost, ninety-two;
Hawke, ninety; Swinger, fifteen; Patch, thirteen. Of the twenty-eight
who voted for Messrs. Patch and Swinger, it was understood that Mr.
Hawke would take three-fourths upon a breakaway. For this reason the
Hawke captains labored and moiled with Messrs. Patch and Swinger to
withdraw and cast those twenty-eight votes into the general caldron.
[Illustration: At the Door of the Caucus Room]
On the touch of three, and while the fourth roll-call was in progress,
the first of Senator Hanway's prepared messages were received and signed
for at the caucus door. Ten minutes later, and something like forty more
were given entrance. During the sixth roll-call sixty messages came in,
and a rickety little representative, with a beard like a goat and terror
tugging at his heart, arose and changed his vote to Mr. Frost. The
rickety little man had been for Mr. Hawke, and this sudden turning of
his coat provoked a tempest of cheers from the Frosts and maledictions
from the Hawkes. A dozen men of both factions crowded about the little
rickety man, some to hold him for Mr. Frost and others to drag him back
to Mr. Hawke. The rickety little man was well-nigh torn in two. Kingdoms
and thrones were being gambled for and the players were in earnest.
In the height of the uproar over the rickety little man, two more of the
flock of Hawke arose, and with faltering lip stated that, by the demands
of constituents whom they were there to represent and whose wishes they
dared not disregard, they would also change their votes to Mr. Frost.
The cheers of the Frosts and the curses of the Hawkes were redoubled;
but the Frosts drowned the Hawkes, since it is one of the admirable
arrangements of Providence that men can cheer louder than they can
curse.
And now a bevy of full one hundred of the Hanway messages came through
the door. The stampede which started with the rickety, goat-bearded
little man, to include the duo chronicled, upon a seventh roll call
swept five more Hawkes from their perches and gave them over to Mr.
Frost. More messages, more changes; and all to finish in a pandemonium
in which Messrs. Patch and Swinger were withdrawn, and Mr. Frost was
landed Speaker by the meager fringe of three. Speaker Frost it was; and
everyone conceded that a staggering blow had been dealt the Presidential
hopes of Governor Obstinate. Senator Hanway, waiting at the Senate end
for news, sighed victoriously when word was brought him. It would be
Speaker Frost; and now, with House and Senate his, he for the first time
felt himself within sure and striking distance of a White House.