"Why, he was nominated this morning!"

She felt a pang at these tidings of her husband's tardiness, but she

put that away in the habit she had acquired, and said:

"Oh, I know--but these telegraph companies are so slow!"

She was happy all that evening, though she denied that her own relief

as to their position had aught to do with that happiness.

"He will be much more useful this term than he was before," she told

her father at supper. "Jerome always said, you know, that it took one

term for a congressman to learn the ropes at Washington."

Garwood reached home Sunday morning, and when he saw Emily waiting in

the doorway something like pity for her smote him, and out of the flush

of his new success he yearned toward her, so that, there in the old

darkened hallway where the tender scene had been enacted so many times

in other days, he folded her in his arms, and kissed her lips and her

brow and her hair, and called her once more "Sweetheart." And the happy

little woman purred in his embrace, and as she hid her face against his

breast, she said:

"My Jerome--my big Jerome!"

And it was all as it had been two years before. Only now, lifting her

eyes to his, her face reddened with a blush as she said:

"You must come up and tell baby--he is dying to hear all about it."

Emily vowed to Garwood that now the convention was over he must take

a rest, and he was content for days to loll at home. He slept late in

the morning and she bore his breakfast to him with his mail, or he

stretched himself on the divan in the parlor in the afternoon while she

read the newspapers to him until he would sink into slumber with the

assurance that the room would be darkened and the house hushed until he

chose to wake.

Pusey had nailed the party banner to his masthead as it were, and

Emily read to Garwood with a laugh that could not conceal her pride the

big types at the head of his editorial page:

"For Congress, Jerome B. Garwood."

There day after day it remained, and she read it over and over, finding

a certain joy in it. Pusey had printed a long editorial announcing his

determination to support Garwood, and explaining with the conviction

of the editorial page--where the argument is all one way, with no

chance for rejoinder--his own action in voting for the candidate he had

originally opposed.

"He isn't really consistent, is he, Jerome?" Emily said after she had

read the editorial aloud to her husband.

"Oh, well," he laughed, knocking the ashes from the cigarette he was

smoking, in a security he could find nowhere else in Grand Prairie, for

he did not wish the town to know that he smoked cigarettes, "you know

what Emerson says: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little

minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'"

"Yes, I remember," the wife replied. "We used to read Emerson, didn't

we?" Her words breathed regret. "We never read any more. We seem to

have no time for anything but newspapers." And she looked askance at

the disordered pile of them on the floor, and out of a sense of guilt

reduced them to smaller compass.

"I wonder how Mr. Rankin did it?" she mused a moment after.

"Did what?"

"Why, induced Mr. Pusey to vote for you."

"Rankin?" said Garwood.

"Why, yes. He did, didn't he? I thought he did everything for you."

Garwood sneered.

"Rankin did nothing!" he said, "Rankin's what the boys in Chicago call

a selling plater."

"Why, I thought he did everything!" Emily repeated. "Who did then?"

"I reckon I had as much as anybody to do with it."

"You?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"But how?"

"Oh--I took him for a walk one night--the night it stormed. Did it

storm here?"

"Oh, fearfully; in the early morning--awfully! But tell me--how did

_you_ do it?"

Garwood laughed.

"Oh, I just talked to him."

"Did you persuade him--convince him?"

"Evidently."

Emily was silent for a moment, and her brows were knit.

"I hope--" she began, but checked herself. "I've often thought," she

said, beginning over, "that we ought to have Mr. Rankin and his poor

little wife here to dinner. I feel guilty about them. You--we--will be

good to them, won't we?"

Garwood laughed again.

"You needn't worry about Jim Rankin," he said, "though I don't know

that I owe him much after his letting the delegation here in Polk get

away from me. I had a hard time licking it back into line."

It was several days after that Cowley published an article in the

Chicago _Courier_ which told of the tremendous promises that had been

made at Pekin in exchange for votes. He said that Garwood had shown

himself a clever politician, for he had not only been able to hold

up most of the appointments in his district until after his second

nomination, but he had had the help of the administration's influence

at Pekin. Cowley then proceeded to schedule the distribution of

patronage that would be made; Hale for the post-office at Pekin, Bailey

for Speaker of the House, and Rankin, of course, for the post-office at

Grand Prairie. He could not dispose of Pusey as definitely, but it was

not to be supposed that Pusey had gone to Garwood and saved him from

political oblivion for nothing at all.

Emily read the article aloud to Jerome. He knew by her silence when she

had finished that questions were forming in her mind. She set her lips

and began shaking her head, until she produced a low "No, I don't like

that."

"That New England conscience of yours troubling you again?" asked

Garwood.

"I wish we had more New England conscience in our politics!" she

replied with a wife's severity.

"We've got enough of New England in our politics now!" Garwood said,

with a flare of the western animosity to New England's long domination

of public affairs.

"Well," she persisted, and he saw that her lips were growing rigid, "I

think we need conscience in our politics, whether it's New England or

not."

Garwood laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. "I'm afraid it wouldn't

win. A conscience, Emily, is about as great an impediment to a

practical politician in these days as it is to a successful lawyer."

"Don't be cynical, Jerome," she pleaded. And she thought again.

"Did you promise Hale the post-office for getting you those Tazewell

County votes?"

"Of course I did," said Garwood, "what of it?"

"I don't like it," said Emily.

"You don't?"

"No, dear, I don't."

"What would you have me do? Give it to some fellow over there who was

against me?"

"N-n-n-no," she said, "but--"

"But what?" he went on. "You liked it when I told you I was going

to--take care of Rankin, didn't you?"

"That's different," she said.

"Oh, a woman's logic!" he laughed.

"You don't believe in buying votes, do you, Jerome?" she asked, with

her lips still tense so that they showed a little line of white at the

edges of their red.

"No."

"But you do believe in buying them with offices. What's the post-office

at Pekin worth?"

"Oh, eighteen hundred, I reckon."

"Eighteen hundred--for four years; let's see--four eights--thirty-two;

hum-m-m, four ones--three--seven; seven--thousand, isn't it?"

"Well, you're not very good at figures, but you've nearly hit

it--within two hundred."

"I never could multiply in my mind," Emily confessed. "But you wouldn't

think it right to give a man seven thousand dollars in money for a

delegation from the county, would you?"

"No," Garwood answered, "that's too high. You're getting into

senatorial figures now." He laughed again.

"Do be serious, Jerome. I don't see the difference myself."

"No, a woman couldn't--women never could understand politics, anyhow."

"Well, I understand this--that I have learned a good deal about

politics, and my ideas have been changed. I used to think that in this

country the people arose and elected their best man to represent them,

but it seems that the representative elects himself, and then the

people--"

"Don't you think the people out here elected their best man when I went

in?" Garwood asked, with an honest laugh in his eyes.

She bent over impulsively and kissed him.

"Yes, I do," she said, "but I'm speaking generally now."

"No, you're not," Garwood insisted, "women can't speak generally. It's

always a personal, concrete question with them."

"Well, you know, Jerome, I've had my ideals--in politics, too, since

you interested me in politics."

"You weren't interested in politics, you were interested in one

politician, and that politician was--me."

"Well, you--you were my ideal, and I thought of you as I thought of

Patrick Henry, in the old Virginia House of Burgesses, and--"

"Oh, you haven't thought deeply enough, my dear. Patrick had his own

troubles, believe me, though they didn't get into history. Did you

ever stop to inquire how Patrick got to the House of Burgesses? It was

easy enough to make speeches after he was there--that was the easiest

part of it--but the getting there, it wasn't all plain sailing then.

First he had the devil's own time getting on the delegation himself,

then after he'd made himself solid, by supporting other men awhile,

he had another time rounding up delegations that would support _him_,

and there was many a man in Virginia that day, whose name is lost in

darkness, who was ag'in him, and many another who went out and saw the

boys and set up the pins and got the right ones on the delegation, who

was thinking of some fat job in that same House of Burgesses. And take

any other of the white statuesque figures of those heroic times--"

"Oh, no, Jerome, don't--you're too much of an iconoclast. Leave me my

ideals. There's the baby!"

She arose at the premonitory whimper that a mother's ear detected.

XVII

Rankin returned to Grand Prairie, from the convention, in a state of

mental numbness. The thing he had gone to Pekin to do had been done,

and yet he did not know how it had been done. Every one greeted him

as the author of Garwood's fortunes; his latest with the rest, and he

was forced to accept congratulations to which he did not feel himself

entitled. As the days went by and he saw Garwood's name at the head of

Pusey's editorial column, and read Pusey's articles favoring Garwood's

election, he was more than ever at a loss to account for the anomalous

situation in which he found himself. Sometimes he had his doubts, for

he was old enough in political ways to have acquired the politician's

distrust, and what with the whisperings of friends and the articles he

had read in other newspapers he suffered a torment of suspicions which

were the more agonizing because of the wrong he subconsciously felt

they did Garwood. At last he went to him.

With the small energy the morning could revive in him, Rankin mounted

the stairs to Garwood's office. Garwood was opening a congressman's

mail, always large, and he looked up from his pile of letters and

greeted Rankin with a--

"Well, Jim?"

Rankin, as he sat down, was sensible of the change that had come over

their relations, and he grieved for the old days when he had been able

to enter this office with so much more assurance. But he was not the

man to dally long in sentimentalities, and he said, when he had settled

into the chair and mopped his brow:

"Jerry, I've come to have it out."

Garwood unfolded the letter he had just taken from its envelope. His

face reddened as he bent over to read it, and he did not turn around.

"Have what out, Jim?" he asked, quietly.

"Why," Rankin went on, "this misunderstanding."

"What misunderstanding? I don't know what you mean. Explain yourself."

Garwood kept on tearing open his letters.

"Oh, well," Rankin continued, "you know it hain't all like it used to

be, that's all. I don't know how to say it--I just feel it, but it's

there, an', damn it, I don't like it."

Rankin paused, and then when Garwood did not reply, he went on:

"I reckon it's 'cause o' my fallin' down in the county convention here

't home, an' that's all right; I don't blame you fer feelin' sore.

Course, it come out all right over at Pekin--I don't know how it was

done, an' I don't know as I want to know--I know I didn't have nothin'

to do 'ith it, an' I don't claim none o' the credit, ner want it. I

'as glad you won out, glad as you was. I'd 'a' give my right arm clean

up to the shoulder to've brought it 'bout fer you myself. I didn't

do nothin', I know. I felt kind o' paralyzed all the time over there,

after losin' the delegation here, an' I seemed to myself jus' to be

standin' roun' like any other dub that 'as on the outside. I didn't

feel _in_ it, somehow, an' I don't feel in it now, that's what's the

matter. I've al'ays been with you, Jerry, an' you know it, an' I'm with

you now, but they're tellin' strange stories 'roun', an' I don't like

'em, an'--I jus' want to know where I stand 'ith you, that's all."

Garwood wheeled about in his swivel chair. He looked at Rankin a moment

and then he smiled. And when he had smiled, he leaned comfortably back

in his chair and placed the tips of his fingers together over his white

waistcoat, and then he spoke at last, in his softest voice:

"What is it, Jim, that worries you--the post-office?"

Rankin looked him straight in the eyes.

"No, Jerry," he said, "it ain't so much that. I want it, o' course, you

know how I need it, an' I want it more'n ever jus' now, but I ain't

worried so much about that. I've got your word, an' I know you never

went back on it yet, to a friend, though you know, Jerry, that if it

'uld help you any, you could have your promise back, an' give the

post-office where it 'uld do the mos' good. You know all you'd have to

do 'uld be to say the word, don't you?"

Garwood smiled again and leaned forward in his chair and laid one of

his white hands on Rankin's fat knee.

"Why, my boy," he said, "you've been giving yourself a great deal of

unnecessary trouble. You know me, don't you?"

"Why, sure," assented Rankin.

"Well, you ought to," added Garwood, still smiling blandly, and a

slight reproach was in his tone. "You should have known, Jim, that I

realized you had done all in your power. I never for an instant blamed

you; believe me when I say that. It only occurred to me that I could

handle the little affair over at Pekin better than you could. I knew

that you could never come at Pusey; I knew that you two never could

agree in a thousand years, so I just took hold of it myself--not with

very much hope, I confess, but I thought it worth trying. And luckily

it came about all right in the end."

"It's all right, it's all right, Jerry," Rankin protested, waving his

hand assuringly toward Garwood. "I only wanted to know that you felt

all right about it, that's all." His great red face smiled on Garwood

like a forgiven boy's. But suddenly it hardened again into the face of

a man.

"You were right--I couldn't 'a' done nothin' 'ith Pusey, damn him.

My way's different from yourn. Maybe yourn's right. You believe in

conciliatin' 'em; I believe in killin' 'em off. An' your way won,

that's all. What 'id you have to promise him?"

Garwood was leaning back again, and had pressed the tips of his fingers

together.

"Jim," he said, beginning slowly, "I've learned a good deal about

politics. I learned a good deal from you, and I picked up a good deal

down at Washington during the session, and the chief thing I've

learned is to go slow on promises. I told him, of course, that I'd take

care of him. I told him that there was no use in our being enemies,

none whatever; that we could just as well work together for the

party's good, and accomplish more that way than by keeping up a bitter

factional war here in the county, because the first thing we knew we'd

wake up some cold morning in November to find that the other fellows

were all in and we were all out."

Rankin's gaze was fixed afar. His brows had knitted themselves into a

scowl.

"You had to tell him that, did you?"

"I did tell him that, yes. Why?"

"Well--I don't jus' like this thing o' gettin' thick 'ith him, so

sudden, that's all. Who's goin' to run the campaign fer you this time?"

"Why, who would run it but you?"

"Me?" said Rankin, smiling again all over. "You want me? An' what's

Pusey goin' to have to do?"

"Oh, we'll let him print editorials," laughed Garwood.

"That's all right," said Rankin, "jus' so's I don't have to see him,

that's all."

Garwood scrutinized Rankin closely an instant, and once more he leaned

over in his persuasive way and laid his hand on Rankin's knee.

"Look here, Jim," he said, "I want you and Pusey to be friends."

Rankin shrank from the thought.

"Yes, you must--now listen to me--I demand it. I want no mistakes

made. I want you all to work harmoniously this fall, and a little

ill-feeling right here in our camp may beat us. We've got a fight on

our hands; I'm half afraid of those Sprague fellows. They'll have their

knives out, and we've got to hold together; above all we've got to keep

Pusey in line, for the Sprague fellows here don't feel any too good

about his having come over to me, and Pusey has a following. More than

that, he's got a newspaper, and he can make it tell. We've got to keep

in with him, and I want you to patch up a truce with him. You must, do

you hear?" Garwood gave Rankin's knee a shake. "Do you hear?"

"Well, if you say so, Jerry," he consented presently, "it'll have to

be. Whatever you say goes, o' course, but the truce'll be a damned

sight more out'ard than in'ard 'ith me, I tell you that."

"No, you mustn't feel that way, Jim; you mustn't."

"Well, my God, Jerry!" Rankin exclaimed, "it 'as fer your sake that I

got to hatin' him like I do, though I never did like the little whelp.

Gosh! It did gall me to have to sit in a convention beside him an' hear

him announce the vote fer Polk County! I never thought I'd live to

see the day when little Free Pusey could get on a Polk delegation, I

didn't!"

And he shook his head as one who bewails the evil times on which he has

fallen.

"Well, for my sake, then, make up with him. I don't cherish any

ill-will towards him, Jim." Garwood said this with a swelling air of

magnanimity as if he had attained to heights of charity known only to

the early Christian martyrs.

"You never was a good hater, Jerry," said Rankin, as though it were a

virtue to be as consistent and steadfast in hatreds as in friendships.

XVIII

The August sun was ripening the corn, and in some of the more fertile

fields the slender stalks already nodded their young plumes in the

mid-summer heat that quivered over the prairies. It was too much to

expect of politicians that they work in such weather, and they were

loath to begin the campaign, yet it was necessary to make the first

lazy preparations for the heavy work that would be upon them when the

frost should begin to hint of coming fall.

Garwood was understood to be resting at home, and it was rumored that

he would go away for a while and recuperate in the East, where, as it

appears to men in the West, there is rest for the weary. He had in

reality the natural reluctance to beginning a long contemplated and

difficult task that the lesser politicians felt, though he had so much

more at stake than they. Yet he would not have liked the boys to be as

apathetic as he, and in a dim recognition of this fact he bestirred

himself one day and went down to see Pusey. Thereupon Pusey began

to write in his paper of the dangers of apathy and over-confidence,

rallying the party by sternly telling it that the mere fact of its

dominance in the Thirteenth District did not justify its lay members in

staying at home and trusting to others to pull it through. This effort

satisfied Garwood for a time, and he loafed on through August and then

said to Rankin:

"Oh, wait till the middle of September, and then give them six weeks of

a rattling fire all along the line."

"Yes," said Rankin, "we don't want to tap our enthusi'sm too soon, an'

have it give out on us the way ol' Bromley's bar'l did. Gosh! Didn't he

freeze up them last two weeks, though!"

They laughed at the pleasing memories of it.

"Damned if I didn't like that campaign," Rankin went on. "Never enjoyed

one more'n my life, though I've had some hot ones in my time. That

story, now, that Pusey printed 'bout you--'member how skeered we was?

An' you 'member them things o' Bromley's--what was they?--kind o'

night shirts, now--heh?--oh, yes! Well, sir, you'd ought to heerd the

kids I'd planted in the gallery that night when Bromley come on to the

stage." And Rankin reared back, and roared and slapped his thigh. "By

the way, what's come o' Bromley? I never hear o' him any more, do you?"

"Oh, yes," said Garwood, with his large air of a knowledge of affairs,

and then, too, with the pride of a man who doesn't wish his opponent

belittled, especially after he has defeated that opponent. "I hear of

him frequently. He's general counsel for his road now, and lives in

Chicago."

"Oh, yes, believe I did hear somethin' o' that," said Rankin, nodding

his head. "He went up there same's all the rest o' the judges from the

country does. They get elected to the County Court down here, which

gives them the title o' judge, then when they come off, an' have to go

to work again, they go up to Chicago an' practise on the title. After

they've been there 'bout two years people begin to b'lieve they 'as

judges o' the _Supreme_ Court." Rankin paused in his philosophizing,

and then resumed, quite seriously: "Don't know but what Bromley give

you a better run at that than this here young Wetherby 'ill do."

"Do you know him?"

"Oh, I've seen him onct or twict over't Sullivan. He's just a young

lawyer, an' he knows 'at if the' 'as any chanct o' his winnin' he'd

never been nominated."

September came, but the weather remained as hot as ever. Rankin

declared that the mere prospect of cool weather held out by the almanac

made him feel better, though he believed that the almanac ought to be

revised, for he was certain the seasons were changing in Illinois. As

a boy he had always gone skating on Thanksgiving, he said, but now the

cold weather never came until after New Year's. And he remembered, too,

that the girls always wore white dresses and gave a May-pole dance on

the first day of May. "But nowadays," he explained, "they'll have to

hop roun' in Galway overcoats if they wanted to celebrate that day, an'

as fer summer--well, it keeps hotter'n the hinges o' hell right up to

November, But politics is politics, an' I must be gettin' a move on me."

Rankin roused at last, and called a meeting of the congressional

committee. The members, newly chosen at the Pekin convention, came to

Grand Prairie and met in the office of the county treasurer, and there,

under the blazing gas jets and with the blinds closed, they began to

organize Garwood's campaign.

Rankin and Pusey had long ago shaken hands, Garwood standing by with

the beatific glow of the peacemaker, though all the while the look in

Rankin's eyes was hard as ever, and Pusey's smirk was unchanged. Pusey

attended the meeting of the congressional committee, even if he was not

a member, and the others were pleasantly stimulated by the prospect

of a disagreement between him and Rankin. But the editor maintained a

perfect silence the whole evening, never vouchsafing one suggestion,

but acquiescing in all that was done, if not by voting, which would

have been impertinent, at least by respectfully nodding his head.

And if, later, when the county central committee, of which Pusey was

now the chairman, met, Rankin did not return his call, as it were,

by reciprocally attending the meeting, he at least found business

that took him out of town, over to Mason County, and thereby deprived

the alert editor of the _Advertiser_ of the ground work of a story

that would have served him for every dull hour of an unusually dull

campaign. It was perhaps well for Garwood, considering the strained

relations between his two chief supporters, that this was a dull

campaign. He found it much less trying than the first. There was not

so much for him to do, and what there was he could enjoy in a more

leisurely manner. It was the off year, in which the people, unable

to work themselves up to the pitch of excitement required of them in

presidential years, leave politics to the politicians even more than

they ordinarily do. The stripling from Moultrie County who was running

against Garwood seemed far beneath his notice, except when he chose in

his speeches to patronize him. His own acquaintance had grown wider,

there were many to welcome him everywhere he went, and they liked the

distinction of knowing their congressman and of calling him "Jerry."

Garwood loved to bask in their smiles, to revel in the sensation of

personal popularity, and it became more and more easy to convince

himself that he was a genuine man of the people. There was another

new feature in this campaign that he enjoyed. He was enabled in his

speeches to speak familiarly of Washington, of things that were done

and said in the House, and to relate personal anecdotes of noted men,

to whom it was apparent he could talk in a free colloquial way, that

were almost as delightful to his auditors as to himself.

"I suppose, now that it is all over," he would say, "that I betray no

confidence in telling you that one afternoon when I had gone over to

the White House and was waiting there in the ante-chamber to see our

great president, that he spied me among the others--Senator Ames was

there with me--and, coming over to where we stood, said: 'Jerry, you're

just the fellow I wanted to see--'"

It was not necessary that year for him to defend his own record. He

could submerge his political individuality into that of the responsible

administration and make his speeches, like all the other speeches

delivered that fall, or any fall, by men striving to retain seats in

Congress, mere efforts to explain why Congress had not done what the

platform of two years before promised it would do.

As a congressman, too, he could enjoy the importance of giving his time

to the state committee, and of delivering speeches in other districts

in Illinois, and once he even went beyond the borders of his own state,

and journeyed over into Ohio, where he spoke in the Dayton District for

his friend Whiteside, who sat beside him in the House. This experience

he relished more than all the others, for the Dayton people, not sure

of his exact position among public men, determined to make no mistake,

and so accorded him all the honors a prophet may expect away from his

own country.

On election night he found that he had been reëlected, though the

returns from Moultrie County showed a falling off in his majority,

as did those from his own county. But then, as Rankin said in

congratulating Emily, after they had sat up until midnight in

Harkness's parlors receiving the returns:

"A reduced majority draws the salary just as well as any."

XIX

Garwood led the way through the smoke and clangor of the B. & O.

station, followed by his little family, Emily hurrying anxiously along,

holding her skirts in one hand, her bag and umbrella in the other,

and the nurse bearing the sleeping John Ethan in the rear. A fog was

rolling up from the Potomac and settling thick over the city. The air,

heavy as it was, was grateful to Emily, after her long night's nausea

from the sickening curves, and she was glad that it was moist, for

the dampness bathed her face and cooled her brow. Like all comers to

Washington, she had no sooner set her foot to the pavement than she

lifted her eyes to behold the Capitol, which symbols the might and

majesty of the Republic to the stranger, who, when he once beholds it,

ceases to be a stranger, and feels at home, for this city belongs to

the nation and each citizen in it has an immediate revelation of his

citizenship and of his common ownership in the things that make it

interesting and great. Emily remembered the Capitol as she had seen it

first, on the most memorable morning of their wedding trip, lifting

its dome into the blue of an autumn sky, and in the gladness of those

nuptial days, she had pleased her own fancy and delighted Jerome by

fashioning an analogy between its coved apex and the life they were

destined to lead under its shadow--rounded, symmetrical and complete.

But on this December morning, the fog obscured the Capitol, and though

Emily's eye ranged everywhere, she could not find it. Jerome had

nodded to one of the hackmen who thrust their whips at him in menacing

invitation, and as he turned to assist Emily, he knew what she was

looking for. So with the pleased superiority of one who has grown

familiar with noted sights, Garwood pierced the gloom, and then, like a

sailor sighting land, he pointed and said:

"There; there it is. See it?"

His little wife bent her head and her brows, while the cabman

waited with a sneer, and at last she smiled and sighed an "Ah!"

of recognition. For she had descried the massive dome, floating

majestically in the gray mists as if it had detached itself from its

base and had become a ghost of the fog, of a color and of an immensity

with it. As she tried to trace its vague colossal proportions, it

seemed to mount higher and higher on the heavy clouds, and there it

hung and brooded over the capital of the nation, over the nation

itself, and over its destiny. It soared far above the passions and

partisanship of the little men who swarmed through its great porticos

and in its huge rotunda, and it lifted her soul to lofty conceptions,

so that she forgot all else and stood there with her foot on the

step of the carriage, while the others, the misanthropic coachman,

the hungry and accustomed husband, the heavy-eyed nurse, and the

slumbering babe, waited.

"Well!" said Garwood at last, and she caught her breath and recalled

herself to the earth with a sigh.

As they rolled over the asphalt streets, she pressed her face to the

rattling panes of the carriage window, but she could find the great

dome no more; it had floated away and vanished like a vision out of

sight.

Emily saw the Capitol at other times. She saw it close at hand, on her

way with Garwood across the park that spread its plots between the

Capitol and the rising walls of the new congressional library, as she

paused to rest a moment near the statue of Washington boxed up for the

winter, and looked up, up, up the pillared front of the building to

the dome shining in the afternoon sun. She saw it on dark nights, when

its rows of little windows blinked out of the black wall of night; she

saw it rising calm, pale and majestic in the luminous light of the

moon; but it was not in any of these moods that she could remember it

thereafter, nor as she had seen it for the first time on her wedding

journey, but forevermore it appeared as she had seen it that morning,

when her eyes pierced through the mists and caught that one glimpse of

its mighty image, a gray specter of the life she once had pictured to

herself.

They drove to the hotel where Garwood had lived during his first

session, and where he still owed a bill, and took the rooms he had

arranged for.

In the flush of his reëlection he had insisted upon his wife's going to

Washington with him for the short session, and without much difficulty

she had induced her father to consent to her departure. He had said he

could get along without her during the three months the session would

last, though the lengthened tone in which he drawled out the names of

the three months, December, January and February, told of a prospect

before him as long and dark as the winter itself. She had silenced the

qualms she had felt by wringing from him half a promise to come on to

Washington himself in February; he might, she insisted, anticipate

the spring that way. And when her duty to her father seemed drawing

her away from her resolution, she dwelt inwardly on her duty to her

husband. She had thought through the long hours of wakeful nights of

her separations from him; she had counted with a gasp of sudden fright

the days into which those separations lengthened, and she had resolved

that nevermore in the future would she let him be so long away without

her. She had buttressed her soul in that regard on certain sage words

of her Mother Garwood, who had shaken her head and said:

"It ain't good, it ain't good, Em'ly, fer young husban's to be away

too much from their wives. It never was intended; no, it never was

intended," she repeated, shaking her head with the satisfaction she

found in her knowledge of the will of God in His personal dealings

with His creatures on this earth, and her words had impressed Emily as

if they were indeed a revelation.

During their first few days in Washington, it rained continually,

and she stayed indoors, save for a trip down the street as far as

the Treasury building, around which she walked in a little spirit of

adventure, taking her eyes from its portico long enough to gaze down

the wide sweep of Pennsylvania Avenue, with the Capitol rising at its

end. And then she hurried back to the baby.

Garwood was too much occupied with what he called duties connected with

the opening of Congress to be much with her. On the day the Congress

convened he took her with him and left her in the gallery to look

down on the assembling members, and she found her keenest interest

in following him about as he moved to his seat, and in watching the

members pause to shake his hand and to smile, and to join their laugh

with his, so that she knew they were congratulating each other upon

reëlection.

Garwood otherwise was most of the time out of her sight. She had

observed in him a new interest in life the moment his feet touched the

stones of Washington. He went about with a quick, elastic step, he was

full of enthusiasm and laughter, and if he kept her waiting for him

long at meal time, he returned to her with ample apologies and in a

state of excitement that made him solicitously merry during the meal.

At dinner he usually called for a bottle of wine, and, as his eyes

fastened themselves upon the glass into which the wine bubbled as the

negro tilted the bottle he had bound in a napkin, he said to her:

"Ah! This is life once more!"

And as she looked at him inquiringly, he said:

"After all, it's worth all a fellow has to go through out in that

beastly mud hole to be back here where one can really live."

It was in one of these moods that he consented to make the trip over

to Arlington, and Emily, who had already matured a feminine plot of

reviving, thereby, some of the emotions of their wedding journey, felt

a new resilience in her spirits that verified at last all the hopes

she had held out to her heart for this sojourn in the Capital with her

husband.

It was a warm afternoon, and the sun shone down with a cruel suggestion

of spring--cruel, because one must instantly remember that it was only

December, and that the winter lay all before. They took their luncheon

that day in the Senate restaurant and Emily assured Jerome that she had

never enjoyed any luncheon so much in her life. She was tempted in the

spirit of holiday that was upon them, to drink some of the wine Jerome

said they must have to make the repast perfect, but her conscience,

or her sense of responsibility as the keeper of Jerome's conscience,

would not let her. As they sat there over their oysters, Emily was

happier than she had been for months, and she looked proudly across

the table at Jerome and compared him to the distinguished men he was

constantly pointing out--senators with whose names she had long been

familiar, whose faces she had so often seen in the newspapers. There

was a species of reassurance in her immediate observation that they

were, after all, very human men, who, despite the partisan bitterness

they could not conceal behind the euphemisms senatorial courtesy moved

them to employ in their contributions to the _Congressional Record_,

nevertheless foregathered companionably, Republicans and Democrats,

and even Populists, and joked and laughed like common brotherly men.

The little bell that was always jingling them away to roll-calls up in

the Senate chamber, snatching them, as it were, from their lobsters

and salads, or, in the cases of the older and hence more dyspeptic

statesmen, their bread and milk, just as they were being served,

filled that little room in the basement with a fine excitement, which

reflected its warmth in her glowing cheeks, and sent its exhilaration

coursing through her veins as happily as if she had consented to drink

the wine Jerome still urged upon her.

As she looked at all those great men, and looked at Jerome, thinking

how much more handsome he was than they, she projected her thought to

the time when he would be a senator from Illinois and they would appear

together in the Senate restaurant, in their turn to be pointed out.

The pleasing sense of distinction was already with her, because of

the company they were in, though Emily had speedily learned that most

congressmen in Washington go about unnoticed, and that not all of the

senators are known by sight.

"Not until the cartoonists take them up," Jerome had explained to her.

"You'll go splendidly in a cartoon!" she said, enthusiastically.

"Would I?" he rejoined. "Well, that's hardly a compliment. You know,

the cartoons are all hateful, outrageously hateful--at least, the good

ones. Those that praise are always absurd and flat."

As they were finishing their luncheon, three men came in and took a

table across the room. When Garwood saw them he bowed, and some signal

evidently passed between them, for Garwood excused himself for an

instant from his wife, and went over to join them, leaning over their

table to whisper for a moment. When he came back he said:

"Em, I'm awfully sorry, but I find I shall be detained here at the

Capitol for about half an hour. We have a meeting of a subcommittee I'm

on. I'm awfully sorry," he added as he saw her face fall, "but if you

can go back to the hotel--I'll put you on the car--I'll join you there

at two."

He led her down the hall past the Senate post-office, then out to New

Jersey Avenue, where he put her on the car that took her back to the

lonesome little hotel.

It was long past midnight when he rejoined her there.

XX

Emily sat at her window, across which the rain slanted dismally into

the street below. Jerome lay in bed sleeping still, though it was now

nearly noon. He slept hard after his labors on the subcommittee, and

she had sent the nurse with the baby to patrol the long hallway, in

order that the child might not awaken his father, and she had gone

about herself noiselessly, to the same end. She had tried to read, but

could not. She had fancied a long letter to Dade Emerson, describing

her Washington trip, but the enthusiasm she had imagined for this

letter, the first in a long while in which she had anything to relate

that would compare with the letters Dade was able to write, colored as

they were with the picturesqueness of Old World travel, could not that

morning ring true.

She had thought the day before, when they were in such gala mood, that

the old lover-like intimacy was growing upon them again, and she had

told herself that a winter thus together in Washington would once more

intertwine their lives into one harmonious and beautiful fabric; that

all their dreams would come true. She had carefully scanned all the

senators and public men she had seen, intent upon knowing them, at

least by sight, and she had resolved, too, that she would study the

details of public questions more deeply that she might be of real help

to her husband, as he grew in statecraft.

But--she had felt her heart turn cold and dead within her as she

recognized, in her curiously intricate train of morbid thought that

these very resolves proved the existence of conditions she had refused

to acknowledge, and now she sat before the window, her little chin on

her hand, looking vacantly out. Over the way a Catholic church, built

of stone, held one of its oaken doors ajar. She saw a woman, evidently

a poor woman, for she wore a shawl over her head, enter the church.

Somehow the sight added to her despondency.

She was roused by a knock on the door. A bell-boy stood there with

a tray. She took the cards, and read the names of Joseph Hale, and

Freeman H. Pusey. Hale had written his name upon the blank card

supplied by the hotel; Pusey's was a sample of his own job work and

proclaimed him as editor and proprietor of the Grand Prairie _Citizen_,

Daily and Weekly. She thrilled a little at the thought that she was in

the presence of the reality of a delegation of constituents calling

upon their congressman; and then a great flood of homesickness rolled

over her, a homesickness that was the more acute because these men were

not known to her, and could only suggest home, not realize it for her

here so far away from that home.

She told the boy to show the gentlemen to the parlor, and to say that

Mr. Garwood would be down presently.

When she awakened her husband, as she thought the importance of the

visit justified her in doing, he roused and writhed his big arms over

his curly head.

"Who are they?" he yawned.

She read the names.

"Oh, let 'em wait," he said, then he rolled heavily over, stretched,

and went to sleep again. She went down to the parlor herself to meet

the two men.

"I'm Mrs. Garwood," she said, "and I'm glad to see any one from home.

Mr. Garwood was detained very late last night by an important committee

meeting and is still sleeping. Can you come back later, or will you

wait? I do not like to rouse him just now--he is quite worn out," she

added, selecting for them the alternative she preferred. They adopted

her selection and said they could come back in the afternoon.

"We can go out and see the town a little," said Hale. "We've never been

in Washington before, ma'am. Great place, ain't it? Do you think we

could see the president? I'd like to see how he looks in his place. I

helped put him there."

Hale spoke with the glow of personal pride, and with the sense of

personal ownership the American feels in the ruler he has helped to

raise to power, and is just as ready to pull down if he doesn't do all

things to suit him.

Pusey and Hale were back again before Garwood had finished the coffee

and roll which he had ordered sent to his room.

"Sit down, boys," he said, speaking with his mouth full of the roll,

"I'll be at your service presently. What have you been doing to kill

the time? Seeing the sights?"

"Well, we went up to look at the president," said Hale, for Pusey was

looking out of the window with his usual lack of interest, until a

belated fly crawled torpidly over the cold pane, and then he tapped at

it with his little stick.

"See him?" asked Garwood.

"No, couldn't get near him. Guess he's got the swelled head, hain't he?"

Garwood laughed.

"Oh, well, you know he's busy. Possibly he was at a cabinet meeting.

Let's see, is this Friday? I'll fix it for you though. I'll take you

over to see him before you go back. When'd you get in?"

"Just got here this morning," said Hale. "I come to talk over with you

that little matter about--" He looked all around the room as if spies

were concealed somewhere, "about the post-office at Pekin--you know."

"Oh, yes!" said Garwood, with unusual cheerfulness for a congressman

when a post-office is mentioned, "I'll take care of that, Joe."

Garwood got up, with a wrench of pain.

"God," he exclaimed, "I feel old this morning."

"Ain't you well?" asked Hale, solicitously.

"Oh, just a touch of rheumatism, I reckon--head aches, too, like the

devil. Wait till I kiss the baby good by and I'll be with you."

He went into the adjoining room.

"Fond of his family, ain't he?" said Hale, approvingly.

"I believe I've heard as much intimated," answered Pusey.

Garwood returned with his overcoat and hat and gloves, and they went

out. He spent the day with them, tramping about through the rain, and

at night took them to the theater, one of the sacrifices a congressman

must make when his constituents come to Washington.

When he returned to the hotel at midnight, and went up to his rooms, he

found his wife sitting before a fire she had had laid in the grate. She

was dressed and her little traveling-bag stood on the marble-top center

table, with her hat and veil and rolled-up gloves beside it.

"Why!" he said, in surprise, "what's the matter?"

She turned and lifted to him a face that was stained with tears. Then

she rose, holding out her arms towards him.

"Oh, Jerome!" she said. "I'm--going home!"

"Why--Em--dearie! What's the matter! Tell me, what's the matter?"

He had gone close to her and taken her in his arms, and he made his

question the demand of a man who does not like to deal with tears:

"What's the matter, I say, tell me!"

A tone of terror had got into his voice.

"Look!" She drew a telegram from the bosom of her dress, and held it

toward him. When he took it, she hid her face on his breast and shook

with great sobs.

He took the telegram with his free hand, flirted it open and read:

"Your father ill. You had better come home at once. Dr. G. S. Larkin."

"Doctor G. S. Larkin!" Garwood said, repeating the signature, "that's

like him, to sign it Doctor."

"Oh, but Jerome," his wife cried, "that's of no importance--how he

signs it--now." And she wept afresh, as if he had added an affront to

her misery.

"Well, there, dear, don't cry. It's all right. Must you go, think?" He

released her and she sank into the chair again.

"Oh, yes," she moaned, drooping toward the fire, "I must go at once.

Oh, you were so long in coming! I needed you so, and wanted you so! I

ought to have gone on that train to-night." She shook her head slowly

from side to side. "Poor, lonely old man!"

The words half enraged Garwood, but he kept silent. He did not know

what else to do--only to wait.

"Where's baby?" he asked presently.

"He's sleeping," she said, "in there." She waved her hand wearily

toward the door. "He's all ready--we're _all_ all ready. When can we

go?"

"Well, you can't leave now until to-morrow," he said, trying to be

tender with her. "Hadn't you better get to bed and get some rest?"

"Oh--no--no," she moaned. "I couldn't sleep."

"But, dear, you'll need your strength, you must try; think of baby."

"Poor little fellow!" she said, as though he had been deserted. She

clasped her knee in her hands and rocked back and forth. Garwood was

silent, looking at her helplessly.

She grew calmer after awhile, and said:

"My poor little visit was doomed from the first; I knew it, Jerome."

"Oh, now, don't look at it that way," said Garwood, in a big round

voice. "You'll soon be back, father'll be better; he's all right.

You can bring him back with you, and we'll have a good time here all

together."

She shook her head hopelessly.

"You go telegraph, Jerome; tell them when I'm coming."

Garwood was glad to escape to the office and the bar.

XXI

Rankin had been at home all day, helping his wife with the washing.

The larder was growing lean in the Rankin home, though Rankin himself

laughed with his usual optimism, and said that it would be all right

again in a few days. The evening had come and he had gone out into the

yard to do his chores. Though the air was cold he was in his shirt

sleeves, and he went about his work singing loudly the staves of an old

hymn:

"'There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign;

In-fi-nite day--'"

"Jim!" his wife's voice called from the back door.

"Yeoup!" he shouted back, and then sang on:

"'--excludes the night,

An' pleasures banish pain.

"'There everlastin' spring abides,'"

"Oh, Jim!"

"Yeoup!" he shouted, as the call came the second time. "Whatch y' want?"

"Come here!"

"All right--

"'An' never-with'rin' flowers;

Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heavenly land from ours.'"

Rankin stooped in the anguish of a fat man, and gathered up an armful

of the kindlings he had been splitting, and started toward the house.

As he stamped up the steps into the kitchen, he sang on:

"'Sweet fields beyond the--'

"Hello, kid," he suddenly said, interrupting his own song, "where'd you

come from?"

He stretched out his right arm and covering his little son's head with

his big palm he rolled it round and round on the boy's shoulders as he

passed. And then suddenly Rankin felt a strange unnatural chill in the

atmosphere of his home. There was the supper table laid, the baby was

already sitting up to it, pounding his tin waiter hungrily with his

spoon, while his little sister tried to distract his attention from his

own hunger by cutting antics on the dining-room floor.

The pleasant odor of fried potatoes filled the kitchen, the coffee

steamed in the pot, its fragrant aroma had reached him even in the

woodshed. It was the hour of all others in the day that he liked; he

would take the tin pan presently out to the cistern pump and blow like

a porpoise as he washed his face, then he would swing the pan at arm's

length, scattering the water afar, and come groping into the kitchen

toward the long towel that hung in an endless belt on a roller behind

the door. And then they would have supper, and he could joke his

little wife and his little boy, and give the baby prohibited tid-bits

from his plate.

He felt the change in the atmosphere again as he sat down to the supper

table, and yet he did not reason about such things, or probe their

causes deeply. He thought it was their poverty that was worrying his

wife. That cloud sometimes darkened the home for them of late.

"Well, cheer up," he said, as he sat down to the table, his coat still

off; "we're poor but honest parents. Remember, Mollie, what the good

Book says: 'I have never seen the righteous forsaken, ner his seed

beggin' bread.' I can't qualify under the first clause, but I can under

the second. There never was a better man than your Grampa Rankin,

Willie. How'd ye get along at school to-day?" he asked presently, still

addressing the boy. "You want to get a hump on yourself; I'm goin' to

put you in Jerry Garwood's office one o' these days, an' make a lawyer

of you, ye know."

But try as he would to rally them he failed, and he looked curiously at

last from his son to his wife, and back again. Then it dawned upon him.

"Look'e here," he said, placing his fists on the table, his knife

sticking up from one, his fork from the other, "you two's got some

pleasant surprise fer papa; I can see it in your faces. Le's see, is

this my birthday? What kind of a game're you an' mama puttin' up on the

old man, anyhow?" He looked at his son.

"Jim," said his wife, and her tone almost froze him. He looked at her

motionless, his mouth and eyes open. "Jim," she said, in a low voice,

"the postmaster's been appointed."

He dropped his knife and fork, a sudden gleam came to his eyes, then

the grin broke out all over his big face. He stretched out his hand to

wool his boy's head again, when his wife looked across the table at him

and cried:

"Oh, Jim, no--don't--you don't understand. It's not you--it's Pusey."

He stared at her in utter silence for a minute, his wife looking at him

with tears in her eyes, and her son trying hard to swallow the lump

that came into his throat when mother cried. The little girl looked up

with big eyes; even the baby was still. At last Rankin spoke.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Willie heard it, down town, on his way home from school."

"I don't believe it," he said doggedly.

"Oh, hones', papa," the boy protested, as if his veracity had been

impugned, "cross my heart it's true! It's hangin' up down town in

front of the telegrapht office, an' it's in the paper, too. I heard

_ever'body_ talkin' 'bout it, hope to die I did."

Rankin stared at his son an instant, and then slowly turned his gaze on

his wife. A look had come into his face which it grieved her to see, a

look of utter, despairing anguish.

"Jim, you know you mistrusted something, you know you did. You'd never

own up to it, but you know you did."

Rankin's lip quivered, and then, suddenly, he bent his elbows, put his

arms on the table before him, and bowing his curly head upon their

enormous muscles he burst into tears. His huge back heaved with his

sobs, and his wife, hastening around to him, put her arms about his

shoulders, laid her thin cheek to his curly hair, and then as her own

tears rained fast, she said at last:

"Don't, Jimmy, don't; you'll break my heart. I wouldn't mind it--you

can get somethin' else."

"Oh, 'tain't that," came his voice, "but I thought he was my friend, I

thought he was my friend. I made that boy, an' I was so proud of him.

An' now--an' now--he's thrown me down, he's thrown me down!"

He ceased his sobbing and was still. His wife stood by him, patting him

now on the back, now running her fingers through his curls. At last he

raised himself, rubbed the tears from his eyes, and, pulling out his

handkerchief, blew his nose with a mighty blast.

"Your supper'll get cold. The old man's a fool, hain't he, Fannie?" He

looked at his little daughter, and then in turn at them all, saw their

tear-stained faces, and then he said:

"Well, I'm makin' a pleasant home an' fireside campaign fer ye here,

hain't I? But I don't b'lieve it, that's all, I don't b'lieve Jerry

Garwood 'uld throw me down, without some good reason. I won't believe

it yet. There's some explanation."

"Jim," his wife smiled proudly at him, "they say you're a hardened

old politician, but you've got too soft a heart. Didn't I tell you

that somethin' 'as up last summer when you got back from Pekin? Didn't

I tell you somethin' 'as up when you told me Pusey had gone down to

Washington? Didn't I tell you you'll better go or you'd get left?"

"Well, now, Mollie," he began apologetically, "you know I didn't have

the price in the first place, an' secon'ly, Jerry told me, _told_ me,

with his own lips, right down there in that old office o' his'n, that

it was--all--right, that I needn't worry, that he'd promised it, an'

I'd get it. An' what 'uld I want to run down to Washin'ton botherin'

him 'bout it any more fer? You know congressmen don't want the'r

constits trailin' 'round after 'em down there." He leaned back in his

chair and spread his hands wide, as if to exculpate himself entirely.

"Well, you've been in politics long enough to know--" began his wife

with a faint little sneer.

"Oh, course," Rankin interrupted her, "if it 'ad been anybody else, I

mightn't 'a' been so easy. I'd a camped on his trail till he done it,

but Jerry--Jerry--I never thought it o' him." He shook his head sadly.

"Now, Jim, just look here a minute," his wife returned. "You told

me yourself that you noticed a change in him when he come home from

Washington las' summer. Now, didn't you?"

"Well, maybe there was a little, but that 'as all right. I expected

that, I expected that as he growed bigger an' greater, an' got in

'ith all them heavy timbers down to Washin'ton he'd naturally grow

away from us some. I knowed he couldn't al'ays have a big dub like me

trailin' along, but I thought he'd al'ays be my friend. I thought he'd

keep his word." His eyes widened as he lapsed into abstraction.

But presently he roused himself with a mighty shake, and reached across

the table with his coffee-cup in his hand.

"Another cup, Mollie," he said, "I don't believe it," he insisted,

setting his jaw, "I won't believe it. I'll go down town to-night an'

find out about it."

His wife shook her head with a little smile that told what an amiable

hopelessness there was about him.

"And when you find out it's true, what'll you do then?" she asked, as

she gave him back his cup.

"Well," he said, sucking in his mustache, "I'll live on here in Polk

County, an' we'll continue to have three square meals _per_. But

Jerry'll have some explanation, you'll see."

"Yes, I don't doubt that," said Mrs. Rankin dryly.

* * * * *

The news of the illness of old Ethan Harkness--men had begun to call

him old when he ceased to work--had been of interest to Grand Prairie,

and the return of his daughter from Washington had added a zest to the

interest, but it was all forgotten in the announcement that Pusey had

been appointed postmaster.

It had been so generally recognized that Rankin was to have the

appointment, that Grand Prairie had been denied its quadrennial

sensation of a post-office fight, and the only feeling that the boys

had been able to display was one of impatience to have Rankin, as a

deserving and efficient party worker, displace the old postmaster the

instant the new president was inaugurated. Garwood had explained time

and again that the president was determined to permit all present

office-holders to fill out their terms before appointing new ones, and

he had strengthened his explanation by reminding them that the civil

service rules were so strict that there was no prospect of dislodging

the present incumbents of post-office places and putting new men in

their stead.

Garwood of course sympathized with the boys; he didn't believe in civil

service reform himself; but preferred, he said, the good old Jacksonian

doctrine of "to the victors belong the spoils," but they must all see

how powerless he was. Interest in the post-office situation accordingly

had declined, and the subject was scarcely ever mentioned, except to

illustrate, in curbstone arguments, the absurdities of civil service

reform. But when the appointment was made public, and the boys realized

that after all Rankin's preëmption had not held valid, and that the

field had been open all the time, they felt they had been the victims

of a conspiracy, and had been cheated of one of the rights vested

inalienably in the politician, if not in the people.

Pusey announced his own appointment in the _Citizen_, simply enough and

modestly enough, and in the same issue he referred to the appointment

of Joseph Hale as postmaster at Pekin. In another column there was

a long leaded article headed "Special Washington Correspondence,"

and signed with the editor's initials, and it told of his trip to

Washington, of his meeting with the great president, and of the

excellent public services their own congressman, the Hon. Jerome B.

Garwood, was performing. And then it went on with grave and learned

dissertations on political subjects, uttered with as much authority as

the Washington correspondents of the New York and Chicago newspapers

assume when they sit down to write their daily misrepresentation of

political life at Washington.

Pusey received his congratulations without a change of expression. He

went tapping along the sidewalk with his little stick, plucking at the

vagrant hairs on his chin and chewing the stogy he was smoking, as if

nothing of moment had happened. If the fact that he had risen in Grand

Prairie to a place of power and influence impressed Freeman H. Pusey,

his wizened face never displayed it.

XXII

When Emily got out of the frowzy day coach in which she had made the

last stage of her long journey from Washington and glanced along the

station platform, a sense of her loneliness, made more acute because

the ugly scene was otherwise homelike and familiar, rolled over her.

She had wired Doctor Larkin from Olney, where she had left the St.

Louis sleeper, but no one was there to meet her, not even old Jasper.

She gasped at this last of all the evil portents of the twenty-four

hours that had dragged by like so many weeks since she bade Jerome good

by in Washington--her father must be worse, they could not leave him.

The night was cold, with a dampness that pierced her marrow, after

the foul atmosphere of the overheated car. It had been snowing; some

of the heavy saturated flakes lay in patches, but now a fine mist was

falling, and the greasy boards of the station platform shone in all the

reflected lights of the tired and panting train. With the weary nurse

and the healthy baby that slept through all these trials in which it

was not as yet his lot to share, she clambered into the old hack that

always stood there, and there was something of a welcome in the face of

the driver as he held the door a moment to inquire:

"To Mr. Harkness's, ma'am?"

He slammed the door and they rattled away. She was glad that he had

spoken of her father as one still alive, and all the way home, as they

went lurching and splashing through the December mud that mired the

streets, she built her hopes upon this little omen.

The old house was dark, and the trees in the yard stirred mournfully

in the winds that were creeping up from the west. One dim light shone

normally in the hall, but another, unusual and sinister, shone in the

room above--her father's room. The window was closed--she was glad of

that. Both of the lights were so dim that they seemed only to point the

gloom that had settled stilly on the whole place.

The doctor, coming forward with the soft tread and monitory finger of

the sick room, met her in the hall. She rushed to him, and seized his

hand.

"He's alive?"

The doctor smiled with professional reassurance.

"Yes, he's better this evening. I've told him you were coming."

Tears came into her eyes and moistened the veil she hurriedly unwound.

She tore off her wraps, and laid her hat on the hall tree. She rubbed

her palms briskly together, pressed her fingers to her hair and her

temples, and then:

"I'll go to him at once."

She started for the stairs, but paused there, leaning wearily on the

baluster.

"What is it, Doctor, tell me?"

"Well," the medical man said, "a general collapse. He was out

Wednesday, and it rained, and he caught cold. Thursday he developed a

bad attack of the grippe--and his heart action is weak, you know. He

would not give up."

"No, that was like him," said Emily, as people always say of their

loved ones at such a time, in the effort to recognize their strong

qualities ere it be too late.

"He would not give up until Friday, but I made him go to bed then. The

next day I feared his lungs were involved--he did not wish me to send

for you."

Emily was blinking back her tears.

"But I thought it best. He will improve now, I am confident, and if we

can control the pulmonary difficulty, I am sure of it."

She had turned and hastily gathering her skirts, ran up the stairs. She

hesitated a moment in the doorway of his room, and by the dim light

of the tiny star of gas saw the outlines of the form under the white

counterpane. She fluttered across to the bed, and sank softly beside

him. She laid her hand on his hot dry brow.

"Father--I've come."

The old man stirred and tried to turn his head.

"I'm glad," he said. "It was a long ways."

"I'm going to nurse you, and make you well," she said with a cheer in

her voice of which her heart was void.

The doctor pleaded for a trained nurse, but Emily, with the

old-fashioned prejudice of women, indignantly refused, as though the

mere idea involved some reflection upon her own powers, and her own

constancy. For a week she watched by his side, and waited on him,

taking his temperature hourly, and keeping a clinical chart like those

she had seen in the hospitals, in the old days of her charities,

determined that the lack of a trained nurse should not be felt. And

then the congestion in his lungs passed, he breathed easily once more,

his fever broke, and he lay, weak and faint, but smiling at her.

XXIII

Harkness gained steadily for a week, and then he began to grow restless

and intractable. His whims and exactions exhausted Emily's strength,

and when he could think of nothing else for her to do, he at last

demanded that she read to him, and she had to settle to this labor,

though her spirits wholly lacked that sense of leisure and repose so

necessary to the enjoyment of such a task. He chose his old favorite,

Scott, and for hours each afternoon, until the early twilight gathered

in the room, she read to him from the novels he had loved so long. It

was a test of her devotion, for she had long since outgrown Scott, as

she had been fond of declaring, but he would not hear to Howells, nor

Meredith, nor Hardy, nor any of the moderns.

One afternoon the doctor entered the room in the midst of the reading.

He heard Emily's low, placid voice as he noiselessly approached the

room upstairs where his patient lay:

"'At length the Norman received a blow which, though its force was

partly parried by his shield, for otherwise nevermore would De Bracy

have again moved limb, descended yet with such violence on his crest

that he measured his length on the paved floor.'"

Emily closed the book upon her finger as he entered and stood just

inside the door with the smell of the cold air and his own cigar upon

him, but her father reared himself on his elbow, and, shaking his

tousled gray head, said:

"We're just storming a castle, Doc. You sit down and wait, and then

I'll attend to you."

The doctor smiled.

"I guess you're getting along all right without me any more," he said.

And Emily took up her tale:

"'"Yield thee, De Bracy," said the Black Champion, stooping over him,

and holding against the bars of his helmet the fatal poniard--'"

He was bolstered up in a big chair by the time Christmas drew on, and

Emily was bustling happily about the house hanging wreaths of holly

in the windows, and striving to draw out of all the uncertainties of

the time a spirit of holiday warmth and cheer. She wrote Jerome all

the details of the little celebration she was planning, and warned him

to be home in time to hang up the baby's stocking for Christmas. By

way of further inducement she said she had many things to tell him,

though they could hardly have piqued his curiosity, for she straightway

proceeded to relate them. She had had, for instance, a long letter from

Dade, announcing dramatically that she and her mother were coming home.

They were tired of Europe, and her engagement with the German baron was

broken. She felt, after all, so she wrote, that she would rather marry

an American--as if marriage were the whole duty of woman.

The ugly stories about Pusey's appointment as postmaster, and of the

dire results to follow, had reached Emily, penetrating even to that

shaded sick room, but of these she did not write. She had too many

perplexities already, and with a power she could command in certain

mental crises she put this subject aside, awaiting Jerome's coming and

his explanation, and resolutely setting her heart toward the happier

aspect of things she was always seeing in the future.

Congress adjourned for the holidays on Wednesday, but it was not

until the following Monday that Garwood reached Grand Prairie. Emily

had expected him Friday; the Chicago congressmen, as she had read in

the newspapers of that city, had reached home on that day, been duly

interviewed, and allowed to lapse into their customary obscurity, but

Jerome delayed and no word came. When he did drive up to the house

Monday evening, tired and worn with traveling, he explained that a

conference had detained him. Emily did not display her usual interest

in politics by pressing for details of the conference. There were

things, she was slowly learning, that it were better to let pass.

She had kept his supper warm for him, and as soon as he had cleansed

himself of the stains of travel, and had a look at the baby sleeping

rosily in his crib, she had it laid in the dining-room. She sat across

the table from him with the coffee urn before her.

"How's father?" he asked.

"He's better--but weak. He must not go out this winter. His heart's

affected," she whispered, turning about with the soft-voiced mystery

of a secret. "He mustn't know it. He's in low spirits, and the doctor

says I'll have to stay more closely with him and watch him." Her voice

fell as she repeated this judgment.

"Hm-m-m," Garwood mused. He stirred the sugar into his coffee, and

then, as if seeking livelier topics, he said:

"So Dade's coming home, is she?"

"Yes; isn't it too bad about her engagement?"

"No, I think not--those foreigners are mostly a bad lot."

"She says she'll have to marry an American."

"Does she have to get married?"

Emily smiled faintly.

"She seems to think so."

"Mother well?" Garwood asked.

"Yes--you must go right over and see her."

"I'm pretty tired to-night."

"Yes, I know, Jerome, but it wouldn't do. You must go right away when

you have done your supper."

Having thus disposed of all the necessary topics, Garwood rather

hesitatingly approached the subject that lay on the hearts of both.

"How does the post-office appointment seem to strike them?"

He kept his eyes downward on the cigarette he was pinching.

"I don't hear much about it," Emily answered. And she colored. "You

read the papers, of course."

"Of course," he answered, "but you can't tell anything from them. What

did you think of it?"

"I was surprised."

"Surprised?"

"Yes."

"What at?"

"At you."

"Me?"

"Yes."

A heavy silence fell, and Emily sat there, her eyes on the silver sugar

bowl she slowly fitted to a design in the tablecloth. Her lips, though,

were set, and Garwood, stealing a glance at them, moved uneasily. Here

was the first of his constituents he must reckon with.

"Well, Pusey'll make a good postmaster," he ventured at last, seeing

that she was not likely to speak.

"Doubtless," she replied. "I hardly thought, though, that political

appointments were a question of fitness nowadays."

"I thought you were a civil service reformer," Garwood answered, trying

to laugh. But her lips remained obdurately tight, and he saw what her

conscience would hold him to.

"I had supposed Mr. Rankin was to be appointed postmaster."

Garwood did not reply at once.

"Rankin seems to have become quite a protégé of yours," he ventured at

last.

"I used to feel," she promptly replied, "that we were in some sort

protégés of _his_."

Garwood could not contain himself longer.

"Well, I'm getting tired of having people talk as if Jim Rankin owned

me! I'll show 'em!" he ended stubbornly.

"But, Jerome," she said, raising her eyes at last, and fixing them on

his, "you promised him--didn't you?"

He wadded his napkin and flung it petulantly on the table.

"There it goes!" he said, as he scraped back his chair. "I supposed

some such story would get out."

"But, didn't you?" she persisted.

Under her insistence he arose from the table irascibly. He stood

looking at her while a hard smile rose to his lips.

"You're deeply concerned for Rankin, aren't you?"

"Jerome," she said quietly, looking at him with wide, unwinking eyes,

"it is not Mr. Rankin I am concerned for--not for him half so much as

for you."

He was led into sarcasm for a moment.

"You are quite solicitous--" he began, and then evidently thinking

better of it, he tried to laugh her out of her seriousness.

"It's no use, Em," he said patronizingly, as he lighted his cigarette,

"you women can never understand politics."

"We understand honor, though," she said, "although men, in their

personal way of allotting the attributes to the sexes, say we don't."

He gave her a reproachful look, and left.

When he had gone, she went to her own room. Her heart was beating

wildly. "I never spoke so to him before," she wailed in her heart. "I

never spoke so to him before!" And then she flung herself full length

across her bed, and burst into the tears that had long been flooding

her heart to the very brim.

XXIV

Garwood came out the little door in the oaken partition that walled

the private office of the postmaster at Grand Prairie, buttoned his

long overcoat carefully about him, and drew on his gloves. He had been

basking for half an hour in the loyal gratitude of the newly successful

office-seeker, fur he had just left Pusey sitting rather uncomfortably

at the well-ordered desk to which he had succeeded, whereon there were

as yet no dirty paste pot, no enormous scissors, and no cockroaches

fleeing from the wrath to come.

What qualms Emily had raised in Garwood's breast the night before had

been wholly soothed by the adroit little editor who now was become the

artful little postmaster, and in the outlining of Pusey's convincing

plans for a strong and resistless machine, not only in Polk County, but

in the entire district, Garwood felt the sweetness of a new security

steal over him. He passed down by the long rows of lock-boxes, their

little red numbers showing smartly on their little brass doors, and

turned toward the wall to avoid the crowd that pressed up to the stamp

window to have their Christmas packages weighed and mailed. Suddenly he

saw Rankin.

The big fellow was coming on breathing heavily, with his overcoat

flapping wide and his hands thrust deep in its outer pockets. His

slouch hat was back on his brow, which was beaded with perspiration,

and the drizzle of the holiday rain clung to his ruddy mustache.

Garwood's heart leaped into his throat when he saw him and he felt his

lips draw tense with nervousness, but he made one mighty effort, and

had himself under control before Rankin raised his eyes to recognize

him. In an instant they were face to face. Garwood smiled and held out

his hand.

"Jim, my boy," he cried cheerily, "how are you? I'm glad to--"

Rankin halted, his hands still plunged deep in the pockets of his

overcoat. His face grew redder, if possible, while Garwood's became

very white. Rankin looked Garwood all over, from his carefully dented

hat to his boots, still showing the shine he had had put on them at the

Cassell House, though their soles were now caked with the rich Illinois

mud the farmers had dragged into town on their wagon wheels. He looked

him all over carefully, and then, with a contemptuous little laugh:

"Well--I'll--be--damned!" he said slowly.

Garwood withdrew the hand he had outstretched and held there so

awkwardly, but he fancied there might be hope for him in Rankin's

words, which would have served him as well to express his abundant good

nature in other exigencies, as they did to show his anger and surprise

in this.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he repeated, "I didn't s'pose you'd have the

nerve!"

Garwood flushed. The shuffle of feet on the tiled floor had died into

an attentive stillness. He knew that the throng was looking on absorbed

in this most interesting meeting that all the possibilities of chance

could have brought about in Grand Prairie that day. Garwood flushed and

longed to escape.

"Come on," he began, in a confidential tone, "over to my office. I was

just going to hunt you up. I wanted to have a talk with you."

"No, you wasn't, either," Rankin exploded, "you damned liar you, you

wasn't goin' to hunt me up; you know it, an' I know it. You 'as afraid

to see me, you big stiff, an' you haven't got an'thin' to say to me

either. I've had enough o' your _talk_ now, an' I don't want no more of

it. What talkin' 's done hereafter, _I'll_ do myself, an' I'll begin it

right now, an' right here--this place's good as any."

Garwood had drawn himself erect, and was struggling with his

congressional dignity.

"Let me pass, sir!" he said, as sternly as he could.

Rankin drew a hand from his coat pocket, and stretched it toward

Garwood. The congressman threw up his forearm as if to ward a blow, but

Rankin caught him by the collar of his coat. He smiled pityingly.

"Oh, don't git skeered," he said, "I hain't goin' to hurt you."

"Remove your hand from me instantly, sir!" said Garwood, white with

rage.

But Rankin held him fast in his big grip, and slowly backed him to the

wall, and held him there, his head against the colored lithograph

of soldiers decked in gala dress uniforms, hung there to lure honest

country lads to the recruiting office over at Springfield and so into

the regular army.

"Now, you listen at _me_!" said Rankin. "You're a liar an' you're a

coward; you're a low-down, contemptible houn', you're a damned sight

worser'n Pusey settin' in there; I just tell you this to let you know

what I think o' you. An' now I want to serve notice on you, here'n now,

publicly, that Jim Rankin's goin' to go right on livin' in this man's

town, that he's goin' to figur' some in politics, that he's ag'in you,

an' that you'd best get all you can out o' this term in Congress, fer

I give you fair warnin' that you're servin' your last term. I'm ag'in

you, an' I'm agoin' to camp down on your trail from this on, an' if you

have the gall to show your face fer renomination ag'in, I'll make it my

business to git you--an' I'll _git_ you!"

Rankin was breathing hard.

"Now, you can go, damn you," he said, and he released his hold on

Garwood.

The congressman stood, his eyes glaring impotent rage out of a blank

white face. They stood thus for a full minute, and then Garwood,

readjusting his overcoat with a shrug of his shoulders, turned to walk

away. The throng that had pressed closely about them silently parted

to make a way for him, and he passed out of their midst. Rankin stood

and gazed after him. He stood and gazed, and the people standing by in

painful silence watched with him the figure of Garwood, rapidly making

for the door, held as erectly and as dignifiedly as he could, for the

man had need of all his dignity then. Rankin watched him out of sight.

Then he turned. The crowd had found tongue, and a hum of voices arose.

Several tried to speak to him.

"Served him just right," some one began, sympathetically.

"You go to hell," said Rankin, brushing the startled man aside. And

then he went away, forgetting to post the Christmas letter his wife had

intrusted to him.

Out in the drizzling holiday streets, Garwood hurried along, sick with

the humiliation of the scene, but as he thought of it, his old habit

of self-pity reasserted itself, and with this ruse he tried to lure

back some of his old self-respect. So well did he succeed that when

he reached home he was red with wrath and muttering. Emily, from her

window, saw him coming, and hastened to meet him at the door.

"Why, Jerome, what is the matter?" she cried, when she saw his face.

He flung off his overcoat and hurled his hat at the rack.

"Well, I've seen your friend, Jim Rankin."

"Jim Rankin?" she exclaimed. "What in the world has happened?"

"I never was so mortified in my life! I never endured such insolence,

such ignominy, such abuse!"

"Why--tell me--dear, where was it?"

"In the post-office, in the most public place in town, before a crowd

of people--Ach!" He shook his head in disgust and wrath.

"Why, what did he say--tell me!" Emily almost screamed.

"I met him accidentally, I greeted him, I told him I wished to see him,

to talk to him. I was going to take care of him--I had it all arranged

to fix the whole damned business--"

"Jerome!"

He had never sworn in her presence before.

"But he wouldn't listen," he rushed on. "He poured out upon me a

perfect torrent of profanity and obscenity; it was disgusting,

humiliating; I should have struck him down!"

"But you didn't?" she asked, and her tone made her question half a

plea. She bent toward him and laid her hands on his shoulders.

"No--I walked away."

"That was right," she smiled, "that was the dignified way."

She looked at him in her sympathy. She had all the morning regretted

her words of the evening before, though they had not recurred to them

at all in the time intervening. And she was glad of some excuse for

ridding her breast of the conviction out of which those words had been

spoken.

"I haven't any sympathy for him at all!" she exclaimed. "I did

think--but this shows me how wrong I was, how I misjudged you. Can you

forgive me, dear?"

She held her face close to his, and he stooped and kissed her.