"Good night, Jinny dear," he said in a softer voice than she had ever
heard from him. "I'm feeling very comfortable now, and sleepy. If
anything should happen, don't forget what I said about not temptin'
your brother by trustin' him too fur. Look after your own affairs.
Take Mr. Haswell's advice. He's stupid, but he's honest and careful
and safe. You might talk to Dr. Charlton about things, too. He's
straight, and knows what's what. He's one of them people that gives
everybody good advice but themselves. If anything should happen----"
"But nothing's going to happen, popsy."
"It might. I don't seem to care as much as I did. I'm so tarnation
tired. I reckon the goin' ain't as bad as I always calculated. I
didn't know how tired they felt and anxious to rest."
"I'll turn down the light. The nurse is right in there."
"Yes--turn the light. If anything should happen, there's an envelope
in the top drawer in my desk for Dr. Charlton. But don't tell him till
I'm gone. I don't trust nobody, and if he knowed there was something
waiting, why, there's no telling----"
The old man had drowsed off. Jane lowered the light and went down to
join Charlton on the front veranda, where he was smoking a cigarette.
She said:
"He's asleep."
"He's all right for the next few days," said Charlton. "After that--I
don't know. I'm very doubtful."
Jane was depressed, but not so depressed as she would have been had not
her father so long looked like death and so often been near dying.
"Stay at home until I see how this is going to turn out. Telephone your
sister to be within easy call. But don't let her come here. She's not
fit to be about an ill person. The sight of her pulling a long, sad
face might carry him off in a fit of rage."
Jane observed him with curiosity in the light streaming from the front
hall. "You're a very practical person aren't you?" she said.
"No romance, no idealism, you mean?"
"Yes."
He laughed in his plain, healthy way. "Not a frill," said he. "I'm
interested only in facts. They keep me busy enough."
"You're not married, are you?"
"Not yet. But I shall be as soon as I find a woman I want."
"IF you can get her."
"I'll get her, all right," replied he. "No trouble about that. The
woman I want'll want me."
"I'm eager to see her," said Jane. "She'll be a queer one."
"Not necessarily," said he. "But I'll make her a queer one before I
get through with her--queer, in my sense, meaning sensible and useful."
"You remind me so often of Victor Dorn, yet you're not at all like him."
"We're in the same business--trying to make the human race fit to
associate with. He looks after the minds; I look after the bodies.
Mine's the humbler branch of the business, perhaps--but it's equally
necessary, and it comes first. The chief thing that's wrong with human
nature is bad health. I'm getting the world ready for Victor."
"You like him?"
"I worship him," said Charlton in his most matter-of-fact way.
"Yet he's just the opposite of you. He's an idealist."
"Who told you that?" laughed Charlton. "He's the most practical,
sensible man in this town. You people think he's a crank because he
isn't crazy about money or about stepping round on the necks of his
fellow beings. The truth is, he's got a sense of proportion--and a
sense of humor--and an idea of a rational happy life. You're still
barbarians, while he's a civilized man. Ever seen an ignorant yap jeer
when a neat, clean, well-dressed person passed by? Well, you people
jeering at Victor Dorn are like that yap."
"I agree with you," said Jane hastily and earnestly.
"No, you don't," replied Charlton, tossing away the end of his
cigarette. "And so much the worse for you. Good-night, lady."
And away he strode into the darkness, leaving her amused, yet with a
peculiar sense of her own insignificance.
Charlton was back again early the next morning and spent that day--and
a large part of many days there-after--in working at the wreck, Martin
Hastings, inspecting known weak spots, searching for unknown ones,
patching here and there, trying all the schemes teeming in his
ingenious and supremely sensible mind in the hope of setting the wreck
afloat again. He could not comprehend why the old man remained alive.
He had seen many a human being go who was in health, in comparison with
this conglomerate of diseases and frailties; yet life there was, and a
most tenacious life. He worked and watched, and from day to day put
off suggesting that they telegraph for the son. The coming of his son
might shake Martin's conviction that he would get well; it seemed to
Charlton that that conviction was the one thread holding his patient
from the abyss where darkness and silence reign supreme.
Jane could not leave the grounds. If she had she would have seen
Victor Dorn either not at all or at a distance. For the campaign was
now approaching its climax.
The public man is always two wholly different personalities. There is
the man the public sees--and fancies it knows. There is the man known
only to his intimates, known imperfectly to them, perhaps an unknown
quantity even to himself until the necessity for decisive action
reveals him to himself and to those in a position to see what he really
did. Unfortunately, it is not the man the public sees but the hidden
man who is elected to the office. Nothing could be falser than the old
saw that sooner or later a man stands revealed. Sometimes, as we well
know, history has not found out a man after a thousand years of
studying him. And the most familiar, the most constantly observed men
in public life often round out a long career without ever having
aroused in the public more than a faint and formless suspicion as to
the truth about them.
The chief reason for this is that, in studying a character, no one is
content with the plain and easy way of reaching an understanding of
it--the way of looking only at its ACTS. We all love to dabble in the
metaphysical, to examine and weigh motives and intentions, to compare
ourselves and make wildly erroneous judgment inevitable by listening to
the man's WORDS--his professions, always more or less dishonest, though
perhaps not always deliberately so.
In that Remsen City campaign the one party that could profit by the
full and clear truth, and therefore was eager for the truth as to
everything and everybody, was the Workingmen's League. The Kelly
crowd, the House gang, the Citizens' Alliance, all had their ugly
secrets, their secret intentions different from their public
professions. All these were seeking office and power with a view to
increasing or perpetuating or protecting various abuses, however
ardently they might attack, might perhaps honestly intend to end,
certain other and much smaller abuses. The Workingmen's League said
that it would end every abuse existing law did not securely protect,
and it meant what it said.
Its campaign fund was the dues paid in by its members and the profits
from the New Day. Its financial books were open for free inspection.
Not so the others--and that in itself was proof enough of sinister
intentions.
Under Victor Dorn's shrewd direction, the League candidates published,
each man in a sworn statement, a complete description of all the
property owned by himself and by his wife. "The character of a man's
property," said the New Day, "is an indication of how that man will act
in public affairs. Therefore, every candidate for public trust owes it
to the people to tell them just what his property interests are. The
League candidates do this--and an effective answer the schedules make
to the charge that the League's candidates are men who have 'no stake
in the community.' Now, let Mr. Sawyer, Mr. Hull, Mr. Galland and the
rest of the League's opponents do likewise. Let us read how many
shares of water and ice stock Mr. Sawyer owns. Let us hear from Mr.
Hull about his traction holdings--those of the Hull estate from which
he draws his entire income. As for Mr. Galland, it would be easier for
him to give the list of public and semi-public corporations in which he
is not largely interested. But let him be specific, since he asks the
people to trust him as judge between them and those corporations of
which he is almost as large an owner as is his father-in-law."
This line of attack--and the publication of the largest contributors to
the Republican and Democratic-Reform campaign fund--caused a great deal
of public and private discussion. Large crowds cheered Hull when he,
without doing the charges the honor of repeating them, denounced the
"undignified and demagogic methods of our desperate opponents." The
smaller Sawyer crowds applauded Sawyer when he waxed indignant over the
attempts of those "socialists and anarchists, haters of this free
country and spitters upon its glorious flag, to set poor against rich,
to destroy our splendid American tradition of a free field and no
favors, and let the best man win!"
Sawyer, and Davy, all the candidates of the machines and the reformers
for that matter, made excellent public appearances. They discoursed
eloquently about popular rights and wrongs. They denounced corruption;
they stood strongly for the right and renounced and denounced the devil
and all his works. They promised to do far more for the people than
did the Leaguers; for Victor Dorn had trained his men to tell the exact
truth--the difficulty of doing anything for the people at any near time
or in any brief period because at a single election but a small part of
the effective offices could be changed, and sweeping changes must be
made before there could be sweeping benefits. "We'll do all we can,"
was their promise. "Their county government and their state government
and their courts won't let us do much. But a beginning has to be made.
Let's make it!"
David Hull's public appearance was especially good. Not so effective
as it has now become, because he was only a novice at campaigning in
that year. But he looked, well--handsome, yet not too handsome, upper
class, but not arrogant, serious, frank and kindly. And he talked in a
plain, honest way--you felt that no interest, however greedy, desperate
and powerful, would dare approach that man with an improper
proposal--and you quite forgot in real affairs the crude improper
proposal is never the method of approach. When Davy, with grave
emotion, referred to the "pitiful efforts to smirch the personal
character of candidates," you could not but burn with scorn of the
Victor Dorn tactics. What if Hull did own gas and water and ice and
traction and railway stocks? Mustn't a rich man invest his money
somehow? And how could he more creditably invest it than in local
enterprises and in enterprises that opened up the country and gave
employment to labor? What if the dividends were improperly, even
criminally, earned? Must he therefore throw the dividends paid him
into the street? As for a man of such associations and financial
interests being unfit fairly to administer public affairs, what
balderdash! Who could be more fit than this educated, high minded man,
of large private means, willing to devote himself to the public service
instead of drinking himself to death or doing nothing at all. You
would have felt, as you looked at Davy and listened to him, that it was
little short of marvelous that a man could be so self-sacrificing as to
consent to run the gauntlet of low mudslingers for no reward but an
office with a salary of three thousand a year. And you would have been
afraid that, if something was not done to stop these mudslingers, such
men as David Hull would abandon their patriotic efforts to save their
country--and then WHAT would become of the country?
But Victor and his associates--on the platform, in the paper, in
posters and dodgers and leaflets--continued to press home the ugly
questions--and continued to call attention to the fact that, while
there had been ample opportunity, none of the candidates had answered
any of the questions. And presently--keeping up this line of
attack--Victor opened out in another. He had Falconer, the League
candidate for judge, draw up a careful statement of exactly what each
public officer could do under existing law to end or to check the most
flagrant of the abuses from which the people of Remsen City were
suffering. With this statement as a basis, he formulated a series of
questions--"Yes or no? If you are elected, will you or will you not?"
The League candidates promptly gave the specific pledges. Sawyer
dodged. David Hull was more adroit. He held up a copy of the list of
questions at a big meeting in Odd Fellows' Hall.
"Our opponents have resorted to a familiar trick--the question and the
pledge." (Applause. Sensation. Fear lest "our candidate" was about
to "put his foot in it.") "We need resort to no tricks. I promptly
and frankly, for our whole ticket, answer their questions. I say, 'We
will lay hold of ANY and EVERY abuse, as soon as it presents itself,
and WILL SMASH IT."
Applause, cheers, whistlings--a demonstration lasting nearly five
minutes by a watch held by Gamaliel Tooker, who had a mania for
gathering records of all kinds and who had voted for every Republican
candidate for President since the party was founded. Davy did not again
refer to Victor Dorn's questions. But Victor continued to press them
and to ask whether a public officer ought not to go and present himself
to abuses, instead of waiting for them to hunt him out and present
themselves to him.
Such was the campaign as the public saw it. And such was in reality
the campaign of the Leaguers. But the real campaign--the one conducted
by Kelly and House--was entirely different. They were not talking;
they were working.
They were working on a plan based somewhat after this fashion:
In former and happier days, when people left politics to politicians
and minded their own business, about ninety-five per cent. of the
voters voted their straight party tickets like good soldiers. Then
politics was a high-class business, and politicians devoted themselves
to getting out the full party vote and to buying or cajoling to one
side or the other the doubtful ten per cent that held the balance of
power. That golden age, however, had passed. People had gotten into
the habit of fancying that, because certain men had grown very, very
rich through their own genius for money-making, supplemented perhaps by
accidental favors from law and public officials, therefore politics in
some way might possibly concern the private citizen, might account for
the curious discrepancy between his labor and its reward. The
impression was growing that, while the energy of the citizen determined
the PRODUCTION of wealth, it was politics that determined the
distribution of wealth. And under the influence of this impression,
the percentage of sober, steady, reliable voters who "stood by the
grand old party" had shrunk to about seventy, while the percentage of
voters who had to be worried about had grown to about thirty.
The Kelly-House problem was, what shall we do as to that annoying
thirty per cent?
Kelly--for he was THE brain of the bi-partisan machine, proposed to
throw the election to the House-Reform "combine." His henchmen and
House's made a careful poll, and he sat up all night growing haggard
and puffy-eyed over the result. According to this poll, not only was
the League's entire ticket to be elected, but also Galland, despite his
having the Republican, the Democratic and the Reform nominations, was
to be beaten by the League's Falconer. He couldn't understand it. The
Sawyer meetings were quite up to his expectations and indicated that
the Republican rank and file was preparing to swallow the Sawyer dose
without blinking. The Alliance and the Democratic meetings were
equally satisfactory. Hull was "making a hit." Everywhere he had big
crowds and enthusiasm. The League meetings were only slightly better
attended than during the last campaign; no indication there of the
League "landslide."
Yet Kelly could not, dared not, doubt that poll. It was his only safe
guide. And it assured him that the long-dreaded disaster was at hand.
In vain was the clever trick of nominating a popular, "clean" young
reformer and opposing him with an unpopular regular of the most
offensive type--more offensive even than a professional politician of
unsavory record. At last victory was to reward the tactics of Victor
Dorn, the slow, patient building which for several years now had been
rasping the nerves of Boss Kelly.
What should he do?
It was clear to him that the doom of the old system was settled. The
plutocrats, the upper-class crowd--the "silk stockings," as they had
been called from the days when men wore knee-breeches--they fancied
that this nation-wide movement was sporadic, would work out in a few
years, and that the people would return to their allegiance. Kelly had
no such delusions. Issuing from the depths of the people, he
understood. They were learning a little something at last. They were
discovering that the ever higher prices for everything and stationary
or falling wages and salaries had some intimate relation with politics;
that at the national capitol, at the state capitol, in the county
courthouse, in the city hall their share of the nation's vast annual
production of wealth was being determined--and that the persons doing
the dividing, though elected by them, were in the employ of the
plutocracy. Kelly, seeing and comprehending, felt that it behooved him
to get for his masters--and for himself--all that could be got in the
brief remaining time. Not that he was thinking of giving up the game;
nothing so foolish as that. It would be many a year before the
plutocracy could be routed out, before the people would have the
intelligence and the persistence to claim and to hold their own. In
the meantime, they could be fooled and robbed by a hundred tricks. He
was not a constitutional lawyer, but he had practical good sense, and
could enjoy the joke upon the people in their entanglement in the toils
of their own making. Through fear of governmental tyranny they had
divided authority among legislators, executives and judges, national,
state, local. And, behold, outside of the government, out where they
had never dreamed of looking, had grown up a tyranny that was
perpetuating itself by dodging from one of these divided authorities to
another, eluding capture, wearing out the not too strong perseverance
of popular pursuit.
But, thanks to Victor Dorn, the local graft was about to be taken away
from the politicians and the plutocracy. How put off that unpleasant
event? Obviously, in the only way left unclosed. The election must be
stolen.
It is a very human state of mind to feel that what one wants somehow
has already become in a sense one's property. It is even more
profoundly human to feel that what one has had, however wrongfully,
cannot justly be taken away. So Mr. Kelly did not regard himself as a
thief, taking what did not belong to him; no, he was holding on to and
defending his own.
Victor Dorn had not been in politics since early boyhood without
learning how the political game is conducted in all its branches.
Because there had never been the remotest chance of victory, Victor had
never made preelection polls of his party. So the first hint that he
got of there being a real foundation for the belief of some of his
associates in an impending victory was when he found out that Kelly and
House were "colonizing" voters, and were selecting election officers
with an eye to "dirty work." These preparations, he knew, could not be
making for the same reason as in the years before the "gentlemen's
agreement" between the Republican and the Democratic machines. Kelly,
he knew, wanted House and the Alliance to win. Therefore, the
colonizations in the slums and the appointing of notorious buckos to
positions where they would control the ballot boxes could be directed
only against the Workingmen's League. Kelly must have accurate
information that the League was likely, or at least not unlikely, to
win.
Victor had thought he had so schooled himself that victory and defeat
were mere words to him. He soon realized how he had overestimated the
power of philosophy over human nature. During that campaign he had
been imagining that he was putting all his ability, all his energy, all
his resourcefulness into the fight. He now discovered his mistake.
Hope--definite hope--of victory had hardly entered his mind before he
was organizing and leading on such a campaign as Remsen City had never
known in all its history--and Remsen City was in a state where politics
is the chief distraction of the people. Sleep left him; he had no need
of sleep. Day and night his brain worked, pouring out a steady stream
of ideas. He became like a gigantic electric storage battery to which
a hundred, a thousand small batteries come for renewal. He charged his
associates afresh each day. And they in turn became amazingly more
powerful forces for acting upon the minds of the people.
In the last week of the campaign it became common talk throughout the
city that the "Dorn crowd" would probably carry the election. Kelly
was the only one of the opposition leaders who could maintain a calm
front. Kelly was too seasoned a gambler even to show his feelings in
his countenance, but, had he been showing them, his following would not
have been depressed, for he had made preparations to meet and overcome
any majority short of unanimity which the people might roll up against
him. The discouragement in the House-Alliance camps became so apparent
that Kelly sent his chief lieutenant, Wellman, successor to the
fugitive Rivers, to House and to David Hull with a message. It was
delivered to Hull in this form:
"The old man says he wants you to stop going round with your chin
knocking against your knees. He says everybody is saying you have
given up the fight."
"Our meetings these last few days are very discouraging," said Davy
gloomily.
"What's meetin's?" retorted Wellman. "You fellows that shoot off your
mouths think you're doing the campaigning. But the real stuff is being
doped up by us fellows who ain't seen or heard. The old man says you
are going to win. That's straight. He knows. It's only a question of
the size of your majority. So pull yourself together, Mr. Hull, and
put the ginger back into your speeches, and stir up that there gang of
dudes. What a gang of Johnnies and quitters they are!"
Hull was looking directly and keenly at the secret messenger. Upon his
lips was a question he dared not ask. Seeing the impudent, disdainful
smile in Wellman's eyes, he hastily shifted his glance. It was most
uncomfortable, this suspicion of the hidden meaning of the Kelly
message--a suspicion ALMOST confirmed by that mocking smile of the
messenger. Hull said with embarrassment:
"Tell Mr. Kelly I'm much obliged."
"And you'll begin to make a fight again?"
"Certainly," said Davy impatiently.
When he was alone he became once more involved in one of those internal
struggles to prevent himself from seeing--and smelling--a hideous and
malodorous truth. These struggles were painfully frequent. The only
consolation the young reformer found was that they were increasingly
less difficult to end in the way such struggles must be ended if a
high-minded young man is to make a career in "practical" life.
On election day after he had voted he went for a long walk in the woods
to the south of the town, leaving word at his headquarters what
direction he had taken. After walking two hours he sat down on a log
in the shade near where the highroad crossed Foaming Creek. He became
so absorbed in his thoughts that he sprang to his feet with a wild look
when Selma's voice said, close by:
"May I interrupt a moment, Mr. Hull?"
He recovered slowly. His cheeks were pale and his voice uncertain as
he replied:
"You? I beg your pardon. This campaign has played smash with my
nerves."
He now noted that she was regarding him with a glance so intense that
it seemed to concentrate all the passion and energy in that slim,
nervous body of hers. He said uncomfortably:
"You wished to see me?"
"I wonder what you were thinking about," she said in her impetuous,
direct way. "It makes me almost afraid to ask what I came to ask."
"Won't you sit?" said he.
"No, thanks," replied she.
"Then you'll compel me to stand. And I'm horribly tired."
She seated herself upon the log. He made himself comfortable at its
other end.
"I've just come from Victor Dorn's house," said she. "There was a
consultation among the leaders of our party. We have learned that your
people--Kelly and House--are going to steal the election on the count
this evening. They are committing wholesale frauds now--sending round
gangs of repeaters, intimidating our voters, openly buying votes at the
polling places--paying men as much not to vote as they usually pay for
votes."
Davy, though latterly he had grown so much older and graver that no one
now thought of him as Davy, contrived to muster a smile of amusement.
"You oughtn't to let them deceive you with that silly talk, Miss
Gordon. The losers always indulge in it. Your good sense must tell
you how foolish it is. The police are on guard, and the courts of
justice are open."
"Yes--the police are on guard--to protect fraud and to drive us away
from the polls. And the courts are open--but not for us."
David was gentle with her. "I know how sincere you are, Selma," said
he. "No doubt you believe those things. Perhaps Dorn believes them,
also--from repeating them so often. But all the same I'm sorry to hear
you say them."
He tried to look at her. He found that his eyes were more comfortable
when his glance was elsewhere.
"This has been a sad campaign to me," he went on. "I did not
appreciate before what demagogery meant--how dangerous it is--how
wicked, how criminally wicked it is for men to stir up the lower
classes against the educated leadership of the community."
Selma laughed contemptuously. "What nonsense, David Hull--and from
YOU!" she cried. "By educated leadership do you mean the traction and
gas and water and coal and iron and produce thieves? Or do you mean the
officials and the judges who protect them and license them to rob?"
Her eyes flashed. "At this very moment, in our town, those thieves and
their agents, the police and the courts, are committing the most
frightful crime known to a free people. Yet the masses are submitting
peaceably. How long the upper class has to indulge in violence, and
how savagely cruel it has to be, before the people even murmur. But I
didn't come here to remind you of what you already know. I came to ask
you, as a man whom I have respected, to assert his manhood--if there is
any of it left after this campaign of falsehood and shifting."
"Selma!" he protested energetically, but still avoiding her eyes.
"Those wretches are stealing that election for you, David Hull. Are you
going to stand for it? Or, will you go into town and force Kelly to
stop?"
"If anything wrong is being done by Kelly," said David, "it must be for
Sawyer."
Selma rose. "At our consultation," said she quietly and even with no
suggestion of repressed emotion, "they debated coming to you and laying
the facts before you. They decided against it. They were right; I was
wrong. I pity you, David Hull. Good-by."
She walked away. He hesitated, observing her. His eyes lighted up
with the passion he believed his good sense had conquered. "Selma,
don't misjudge me!" he cried, following her. "I am not the scoundrel
they're making you believe me. I love you!"
She wheeled upon him so fiercely that he started back. "How dare you!"
she said, her voice choking with anger. "You miserable fraud! You
bellwether for the plutocracy, to lead reform movements off on a false
scent, off into the marshes where they'll be suffocated." She looked
at him from head to foot with a withering glance. "No doubt, you'll
have what's called a successful career. You'll be their traitor leader
for the radicals they want to bring to confusion. When the people cry
for a reform you'll shout louder than anybody else--and you'll be made
leader--and you'll lead--into the marshes. Your followers will perish,
but you'll come back, ready for the next treachery for which the
plutocracy needs you. And you'll look honest and respectable--and
you'll talk virtue and reform and justice. But you'll know what you
are yourself. David Hull, I despise you as much as you despise
yourself."
He did not follow as she walked away. He returned to the log, and
slowly reseated himself. He was glad of the violent headache that made
thought impossible.
Remsen City, boss-ridden since the Civil War, had experienced many a
turbulent election day and night. The rivalries of the two bosses,
contending for the spoils where the electorate was evenly divided, had
made the polling places in the poorer quarters dangerous all day and
scenes of rioting at night. But latterly there had been a notable
improvement. People who entertained the pleasant and widespread
delusion that statute laws offset the habits and customs of men,
restrain the strong and protect the weak, attributed the improvement to
sundry vigorously worded enactments of the legislature on the subject
of election frauds. In fact, the real bottom cause of the change was
the "gentlemen's agreement" between the two party machines whereunder
both entered the service of the same master, the plutocracy.
Never in Remsen City history had there been grosser frauds than those
of this famous election day, and never had the frauds been so open. A
day of scandal was followed by an evening of shame; for to overcome the
League the henchmen of Kelly and House had to do a great deal of
counting out and counting in, of mutilating ballots, of destroying
boxes with their contents. Yet never had Remsen City seen so peaceful
an election. Representatives of the League were at every polling
place. They protested; they took names of principals and witnesses in
each case of real or suspected fraud. They appealed to the courts from
time to time and got rulings--always against them, even where the
letter of the decision was in their favor. They did all this in the
quietest manner conceivable, without so much as an expression of
indignation. And when the results were announced--a sweeping victory
for Hull and the fusion ticket, Hugo Galland elected by five hundred
over Falconer--the Leaguers made no counter demonstration as the
drunken gangs of machine heelers paraded in the streets with bands and
torches.
Kelly observed and was uneasy. What could be the meaning of this meek
acceptance of a theft so flagrant that the whole town was talking about
it? What was Victor Dorn's "game"?
He discovered the next day. The executive committee of the League
worked all night; the League's printers and presses worked from six
o'clock in the morning until ten. At half-past ten Remsen City was
flooded with a special edition of the New Day, given away by Leaguers
and their wives and sons and daughters--a monster special edition paid
for with the last money in the League's small campaign chest. This
special was a full account of the frauds that had been committed. No
indictment could have been more complete, could have carried within
itself more convincing proofs of the truth of its charges. The New Day
declared that the frauds were far more extensive than it was able to
prove; but it insisted upon, and took into account, only those frauds
that could be proved in a "court of justice--if Remsen City had a court
of justice, which the treatment of the League's protectors at the
Courthouse yesterday shows that it has not." The results of the
League's investigations were tabulated. The New Day showed:
First, that while Harbinger, the League candidate for Mayor, had
actually polled 5,280 votes at least, and David Hull had polled less
than 3,950, the election had been so manipulated that in the official
count 4,827 votes were given to Hull and 3,980 votes to Harbinger.
Second, that in the actual vote Falconer had beaten Hugo Galland by
1,230 at least; that in the official count Galland was declared elected
by a majority of 672.
Third, that these results were brought about by wholesale fraudulent
voting, one gang of twenty-two repeaters casting upwards of a thousand
votes at the various polling places; also by false counting, the number
of votes reported exceeding the number cast by between two and three
thousand.
As a piece of workmanship the document was an amazing illustration of
the genius of Victor Dorn. Instead of violence against violence,
instead of vague accusation, here was a calm, orderly proof of the
League's case, of the outrage that had been done the city and its
citizens. Before night fell the day after the election there was no
one in Remsen City who did not know the truth.
The three daily newspapers ignored the special. They continued to
congratulate Remsen City upon the "vindication of the city's fame for
sound political sense," as if there had been no protest against the
official version of the election returns. Nor did the press of the
state or the country contain any reference to the happenings at Remsen
City. But Remsen City knew, and that was the main point sought by
Victor Dorn.
A committee of the League with copies of the special edition and
transcripts of the proofs in the possession of the League went in
search of David Hull and Hugo Galland. Both were out of town, "resting
in retirement from the fatigue of the campaign." The prosecuting
attorney of the county was seen, took the documents, said he would look
into the matter, bowed the committee out--and did as Kelly counted on
his doing. The grand jury heard, but could not see its way clear to
returning indictments; no one was upon a grand jury in that county
unless he had been passed by Kelly or House. Judge Freilig and Judge
Lansing referred the committee to the grand jury and to the county
prosecutor.
When the League had tried the last avenue to official justice and had
found the way barred, House meeting Kelly in the Palace Hotel cafe',
said:
"Well, Richard, I guess it's all over." Kelly nodded. "You've got away
with the goods."
"I'm surprised at Dorn's taking it so quietly," said House. "I rather
expected he'd make trouble."
Kelly vented a short, grunting laugh. "Trouble--hell!" ejaculated he.
"If he'd 'a' kicked up a fight we'd 'a' had him. But he was too 'cute
for that, damn him. So next time he wins."
"Oh, folks ain't got no memories--especially for politics," said House
easily.
"You'll see," retorted Kelly. "The next mayor of this town'll be a
Leaguer, and by a majority that can't be trifled with. So make hay
while the sun shines, Joe. After this administration there'll be a
long stretch of bad weather for haying."
"I'm trying to get hold of Hull," said House, and it was not difficult
to read his train of thought. "I was a LEETLE afraid he was going to
be scared by that document of Dorn's--and was going to do something
crazy."
Again Kelly emitted his queer grunting laugh. "I guess he was a LEETLE
afraid he would, too, and ran away and hid to get back his nerve."
"Oh, he's all right. He's a pushing, level-headed fellow, and won't
make no trouble. Don't you think so?"
"Trouble? I should say not. How can he--if he takes the job?"
To which obvious logic no assent was necessary.
Davy's abrupt departure was for the exact reason Mr. Kelly ascribed.
And he had taken Hugo with him because he feared that he would say or
do something to keep the scandal from dying the quick death of all
scandals. There was the less difficulty in dissuading him from staying
to sun himself in the glories of his new rank and title because his
wife had cast him adrift for the time and was stopping at the house of
her father, whose death was hourly expected.
Old Hastings had been in a stupor for several weeks. He astonished
everybody, except Dr. Charlton, by rousing on election night and asking
how the battle had gone.
"And he seemed to understand what I told him," said Jane.
"Certainly he understood," replied Charlton. "The only part of him
that's in any sort of condition is his mind, because it's the only part
of him that's been properly exercised. Most people die at the top
first because they've never in all their lives used their minds when
they could possibly avoid it."
In the week following the election he came out of his stupor again. He
said to the nurse:
"It's about supper time, ain't it?"
"Yes," answered she. "They're all down at din--supper. Shall I call
them?"
"No," said he. "I want to go down to her room."
"To Miss Jane's room?" asked the puzzled nurse.
"To my wife's room," said Hastings crossly.
The nurse, a stranger, thought his mind was wandering. "Certainly,"
said she soothingly. "In a few minutes--as soon as you've rested a
while."
"You're a fool!" mumbled Hastings. "Call Jinny."
The nurse obeyed. When he repeated his request to Jane, she hesitated.
The tears rolled down his cheeks. "I know what I'm about," he pleaded.
"Send for Charlton. He'll tell you to let me have my way."
Jane decided that it was best to yield. The shrunken figure, weighing
so little that it was terrifying to lift it, was wrapped warmly, and
put in an invalid chair. With much difficulty the chair was got out
into the hall and down the stairs. Then they wheeled it into the room
where he was in the habit of sitting after supper. When he was
opposite the atrocious crayon enlargement of his wife an expression of
supreme content settled upon his features. Said he:
"Go back to your supper, Jinny. Take the nurse woman with you. I want
to be by myself."
The nurse glanced stealthily in from time to time during the next hour.
She saw that his eyes were open, were fixed upon the picture. When
Jane came she ventured to enter. She said:
"Do you mind my sitting with you, father?"
He did not answer. She went to him, touched him. He was dead.
As a rule death is not without mitigations, consolations even. Where it
is preceded by a long and troublesome illness, disrupting the routine
of the family and keeping everybody from doing the things he or she
wishes, it comes as a relief. In this particular case not only was the
death a relief, but also the estate of the dead man provided all the
chief mourners with instant and absorbing occupation. If he had left a
will, the acrimony of the heirs would have been caused by
dissatisfaction with his way of distributing the property. Leaving no
will, he plunged the three heirs--or, rather, the five heirs, for the
husband of Martha and the wife of the son were most important
factors--he plunged the five heirs into a ferment of furious dispute as
to who was to have what. Martha and her husband and the
daughter-in-law were people of exceedingly small mind. Trifles,
therefore, agitated them to the exclusion of larger matters. The three
fell to quarreling violently over the division of silverware, jewelry
and furniture. Jane was so enraged by the "disgusting spectacle" that
she proceeded to take part in it and to demand everything which she
thought it would irritate Martha Galland or Irene Hastings to have to
give up.
The three women and Hugo--for Hugo loved petty wrangling--spent day
after day in the bitterest quarrels. Each morning Jane, ashamed
overnight, would issue from her room resolved to have no part in the
vulgar rowdyism. Before an hour had passed she would be the angriest
of the disputants. Except her own unquestioned belongings there wasn't
a thing in the house or stables about which she cared in the least.
But there was a principle at stake--and for principle she would fight
in the last ditch.
None of them wished to call in arbitrators or executors; why go to that
expense? So, the bickering and wrangling, the insults and tears and
sneers went on from day to day. At last they settled the whole matter
by lot--and by a series of easily arranged exchanges where the results
of the drawings were unsatisfactory. Peace was restored, but not
liking. Each of the three groups--Hugo and Martha, Will and Irene,
Jane in a group by herself--detested the other two. They felt that
they had found each other out. As Martha said to Hugo, "It takes a
thing of this kind to show people up in their true colors." Or, as
Jane said to Doctor Charlton, "What beasts human beings are!"