THE GOLD BRICK
THE GOLD BRICK
_By_
BRAND WHITLOCK
_Author of_
THE THIRTEENTH DISTRICT
HER INFINITE VARIETY THE HAPPY AVERAGE
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1910
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE GOLD BRICK 1
II THE HAS-BEEN 35
III WHAT WILL BECOME OF ANNIE? 65
IV THE VINDICATION OF HENDERSON OF GREENE 89
V SENATE BILL 578 119
VI MACOCHEE’S FIRST CAMPAIGN FUND 139
VII A SECRET OF STATE 165
VIII THE COLONEL’S LAST CAMPAIGN 201
IX REFORM IN THE FIRST 232
X MALACHI NOLAN 262
XI THE PARDON OF THOMAS WHALEN 302
XII THAT BOY 333
The stories in this book were originally published in _The Saturday
Evening Post_, _The American Magazine_ and _Ainslee’s Magazine_, and to
these publications acknowledgments are due for their courtesy in giving
permission for republication.
THE GOLD BRICK
THE GOLD BRICK
Ten thousand dollars a year! Neil Kittrell left the office of the
_Morning Telegraph_ in a daze. He was insensible of the raw February
air, heedless of sloppy pavements; the gray day had suddenly turned
gold. He could not realize it all at once; ten thousand a year--for him
and Edith! His heart swelled with love of Edith; she had sacrificed so
much to become the wife of a man who had tried to make an artist of
himself, and of whom fate, or economic determinism, or something, had
made a cartoonist. What a surprise for her! He must hurry home.
In this swelling of his heart he felt a love not only of Edith but of
the whole world. The people he met seemed dear to him; he felt friendly
with every one, and beamed on perfect strangers with broad, cheerful
smiles. He stopped to buy some flowers for Edith--daffodils, or
tulips, which promised spring, and he took the daffodils, because the
girl said:
“I think yellow is such a spirituelle color, don’t you?” and inclined
her head in a most artistic manner.
But daffodils, after all, which would have been much the day before,
seemed insufficient in the light of new prosperity, and Kittrell bought
a large azalea, beautiful in its graceful spread of pink blooms.
“Where shall I send it?” asked the girl, whose cheeks were as pink as
azaleas themselves.
“I think I’ll call a cab and take it to her myself,” said Kittrell.
And she sighed over the romance of this rich young gentleman and the
girl of the azalea, who, no doubt, was as beautiful as the young woman
who was playing _Lottie, the Poor Saleslady_ at the Lyceum that very
week.
Kittrell and the azalea bowled along Claybourne Avenue; he leaned back
on the cushions, and adopted the expression of ennui appropriate to
that thoroughfare. Would Edith now prefer Claybourne Avenue? With ten
thousand a year they could, perhaps--and yet, at first it would be best
not to put on airs, but to go right on as they were, in the flat. Then
the thought came to him that now, as the cartoonist on the _Telegraph_,
his name would become as well known in Claybourne Avenue as it had been
in the homes of the poor and humble during his years on the _Post_. And
his thoughts flew to those homes where tired men at evening looked for
his cartoons and children laughed at his funny pictures. It gave him a
pang; he had felt a subtle bond between himself and all those thousands
who read the _Post_. It was hard to leave them. The _Post_ might be
yellow, but, as the girl had said, yellow was a spiritual color, and
the _Post_ brought something into their lives--lives that were scorned
by the _Telegraph_ and by these people on the avenue. Could he make new
friends here, where the cartoons he drew and the _Post_ that printed
them had been contemned, if not despised? His mind flew back to the
dingy office of the _Post_; to the boys there, the whole good-natured,
happy-go-lucky gang; and to Hardy--ah, Hardy!--who had been so good to
him, and given him his big chance, had taken such pains and interest,
helping him with ideas and suggestions, criticism and sympathy. To
tell Hardy that he was going to leave him, here on the eve of the
campaign--and Clayton, the mayor, he would have to tell him, too--oh,
the devil! Why must he think of these things now?
After all, when he had reached home, and had run up-stairs with the
news and the azalea, Edith did not seem delighted.
“But, dearie, business is business,” he argued, “and we need the money!”
“Yes, I know; doubtless you’re right. Only please don’t say ‘business
is business;’ it isn’t like you, and--”
“But think what it will mean--ten thousand a year!”
“Oh, Neil, I’ve lived on ten thousand a year before, and I never had
half the fun that I had when we were getting along on twelve hundred.”
“Yes, but then we were always dreaming of the day when I’d make a lot;
we lived on that hope, didn’t we?”
Edith laughed. “You used to say we lived on love.”
“You’re not serious.” He turned to gaze moodily out of the window. And
then she left the azalea, and perched on the flat arm of his chair.
“Dearest,” she said, “I am serious. I know all this means to you. We’re
human, and we don’t like to ‘chip at crusts like Hindus,’ even for the
sake of youth and art. I never had illusions about love in a cottage
and all that. Only, dear, I have been happy, so very happy, with you,
because--well, because I was living in an atmosphere of honest purpose,
honest ambition, and honest desire to do some good thing in the world.
I had never known such an atmosphere before. At home, you know, father
and Uncle James and the boys--well, it was all money, money, money with
them, and they couldn’t understand why I--”
“Could marry a poor newspaper artist! That’s just the point.”
She put her hand to his lips.
“Now, dear! If they couldn’t understand, so much the worse for them. If
they thought it meant sacrifice to me, they were mistaken. I have been
happy in this little flat; only--” she leaned back and inclined her
head with her eyes asquint--“only the paper in this room is atrocious;
it’s a typical landlord’s selection--McGaw picked it out. You see what
it means to be merely rich.”
She was so pretty thus that he kissed her, and then she went on:
“And so, dear, if I didn’t seem to be as impressed and delighted as you
hoped to find me, it is because I was thinking of Mr. Hardy and the
poor, dear, common little _Post_, and then--of Mr. Clayton. Did you
think of him?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to--to cartoon him?”
“I suppose so.”
The fact he had not allowed himself to face was close to both of them,
and the subject was dropped until, just as he was going down-town--this
time to break the news to Hardy--he went into the room he sarcastically
said he might begin to call his studio, now that he was getting ten
thousand a year, to look for a sketch he had promised Nolan for the
sporting page. And there on his drawing-board was an unfinished
cartoon, a drawing of the strong face of John Clayton. He had begun it
a few days before to use on the occasion of Clayton’s renomination.
It had been a labor of love, and Kittrell suddenly realized how good
it was. He had put into it all of his belief in Clayton, all of his
devotion to the cause for which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and
in the simple lines he experienced the artist’s ineffable felicity;
he had shown how good, how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at
once he realized the sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would
delight and hearten Clayton’s followers, how it would please Hardy,
and how it would touch Clayton. It would be a tribute to the man and
the friendship, but now a tribute broken, unfinished. Kittrell gazed a
moment longer, and in that moment Edith came.
“The dear, beautiful soul!” she exclaimed softly. “Neil, it is
wonderful. It is not a cartoon; it is a portrait. It shows what you
might do with a brush.”
Kittrell could not speak, and he turned the drawing-board to the wall.
When he had gone, Edith sat and thought--of Neil, of the new position,
of Clayton. He had loved Neil, and been so proud of his work; he had
shown a frank, naïve pleasure in the cartoons Neil had made of him.
That last time he was there, thought Edith, he had said that without
Neil the “good old cause,” as he called it, using Whitman’s phrase,
could never have triumphed in that town. And now, would he come again?
Would he ever stand in that room and, with his big, hearty laugh,
clasp an arm around Neil’s shoulder, or speak of her in his good,
friendly way as “the little woman?” Would he come now, in the terrible
days of the approaching campaign, for rest and sympathy--come as he
used to come in other campaigns, worn and weary from all the brutal
opposition, the vilification and abuse and mud-slinging? She closed her
eyes. She could not think that far.
Kittrell found the task of telling Hardy just as difficult as he
expected it to be, but by some mercy it did not last long. Explanation
had not been necessary; he had only to make the first hesitating
approaches, and Hardy understood. Hardy was, in a way, hurt; Kittrell
saw that, and rushed to his own defense:
“I hate to go, old man. I don’t like it a little bit--but, you know,
business is business, and we need the money.”
He even tried to laugh as he advanced this last conclusive reason, and
Hardy, for all he showed in voice or phrase, may have agreed with him.
“It’s all right, Kit,” he said. “I’m sorry; I wish we could pay you
more, but--well, good luck.”
That was all. Kittrell gathered up the few articles he had at the
office, gave Nolan his sketch, bade the boys good-by--bade them good-by
as if he were going on a long journey, never to see them more--and then
he went.
After he had made the break it did not seem so bad as he had
anticipated. At first things went on smoothly enough. The campaign
had not opened, and he was free to exercise his talents outside the
political field. He drew cartoons dealing with banal subjects, touching
with the gentle satire of his humorous pencil foibles which all the
world agreed about, and let vital questions alone. And he and Edith
enjoyed themselves: indulged oftener in things they loved; went more
frequently to the theater; appeared at recitals; dined now and then
down-town. They began to realize certain luxuries they had not known
for a long time--some he himself had never known, some that Edith had
not known since she left her father’s home to become his bride. In
more subtle ways, too, Kittrell felt the change: there was a sense
of larger leisure; the future beamed with a broader and brighter
light; he formed plans, among which the old dream of going ere long
to Paris for serious study took its dignified place. And then there
was the sensation his change had created in the newspaper world; that
the cartoons signed “Kit,” which formerly appeared in the _Post_,
should now adorn the broad page of the _Telegraph_ was a thing to talk
about at the press club; the fact of his large salary got abroad in
that little world as well, and, after the way of that world, managed
to exaggerate itself, as most facts did. He began to be sensible of
attentions from men of prominence--small things, mere nods in the
street, perhaps, or smiles in the theater foyer, but enough to show
that they recognized him. What those children of the people, those
working-men and women who used to be his unknown and admiring friends
in the old days on the _Post_, thought of him--whether they missed him,
whether they deplored his change as an apostasy or applauded it as a
promotion--he did not know. He did not like to think about it.
But March came, and the politicians began to bluster like the season.
Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the
first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing
editor of the _Telegraph_, had conceived it, and Kittrell had worked
on it that day in sickness of heart. Every lying line of this new
presentation of Clayton had cut him like some biting acid; but he had
worked on, trying to reassure himself with the argument that he was a
mere agent, devoid of personal responsibility. But it had been hard,
and when Edith, after her custom, had asked to see it, he had said:
“Oh, you don’t want to see it; it’s no good.”
“Is it of--him?” she had asked.
And when he nodded she had gone away without another word. Now, as he
hurried through the crowded streets, he was conscious that it was no
good, indeed; and he was divided between the artist’s regret and the
friend’s joy in the fact. But it made him tremble. Was his hand to
forget its cunning? And then, suddenly, he heard a familiar voice, and
there beside him, with his hand on his shoulder, stood the mayor.
“Why, Neil, my boy, how are you?” he said, and he took Kittrell’s
hand as warmly as ever. For a moment Kittrell was relieved, and then
his heart sank; for he had a quick realization that it was the coward
within him that felt the relief, and the man the sickness. If Clayton
had reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but
Clayton did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn
to the subject himself.
“You heard of my--new job?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Clayton, “I heard.”
“Well--” Kittrell began.
“I’m sorry,” Clayton said.
“So was I,” Kittrell hastened to say. “But I felt it--well, a duty,
some way--to Edith. You know--we--need the money.” And he gave the
cynical laugh that went with the argument.
“What does _she_ think? Does she feel that way about it?”
Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with
embarrassment, for Clayton’s blue eyes were on him, those eyes that
could look into men and understand them so.
“Of course you know,” Kittrell went on nervously, “there is nothing
personal in this. We newspaper fellows simply do what we are told;
we obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the
paper we have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a
red-hot free-trader and used to write free-trade editorials for the
_Times_--he went over to the _Telegraph_, you remember, and writes all
those protection arguments.”
The mayor did not seem to be interested in Dick Jennings, or in the
ethics of his profession.
“Of course, you know I’m for you, Mr. Clayton, just exactly as I’ve
always been. I’m going to vote for you.”
This did not seem to interest the mayor, either.
“And, maybe, you know--I thought, perhaps,” he snatched at this bright
new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time, “that I might
help you by my cartoons in the _Telegraph_; that is, I might keep them
from being as bad as they might--”
“But that wouldn’t be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil,”
the mayor said.
Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable
business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner.
“Well, good-by, my boy,” said the mayor, as they parted. “Remember me
to the little woman.”
Kittrell watched him as he went on down the avenue, swinging along in
his free way, the broad felt hat he wore riding above all the other
hats in the throng that filled the sidewalk; and Kittrell sighed in
deep depression.
When he turned in his cartoon, Benson scanned it a moment, cocked his
head this side and that, puffed his brier pipe, and finally said:
“I’m afraid this is hardly up to you. This figure of Clayton, here--it
hasn’t got the stuff in it. You want to show him as he _is_. We want
the people to know what a four-flushing, hypocritical, demagogical
blatherskite he is--with all his rot about the people and their damned
rights!”
Benson was all unconscious of the inconsistency of having concern for
a people he so despised, and Kittrell did not observe it, either. He
was on the point of defending Clayton, but he restrained himself and
listened to Benson’s suggestions. He remained at the office for two
hours, trying to change the cartoon to Benson’s satisfaction, with a
growing hatred of the work and a disgust with himself that now and
then almost drove him to mad destruction. He felt like splashing the
piece with India ink, or ripping it with his knife. But he worked on,
and submitted it again. He had failed, of course; failed to express in
it that hatred of a class which Benson unconsciously disguised as a
hatred of Clayton, a hatred which Kittrell could not express because he
did not feel it; and he failed because art deserts her devotees when
they are false to truth.
“Well, it’ll have to do,” said Benson, as he looked it over; “but let’s
have a little more to the next one. Damn it! I wish I could draw. I’d
cartoon the crook!”
In default of which ability, Benson set himself to write one of those
savage editorials in which he poured out on Clayton that venom of which
he seemed to have such an inexhaustible supply.
But on one point Benson was right: Kittrell was not up to himself. As
the campaign opened, as the city was swept with the excitement of it,
with meetings at noon-day and at night, office-seekers flying about
in automobiles, walls covered with pictures of candidates, hand-bills
scattered in the streets to swirl in the wild March winds, and men
quarreling over whether Clayton or Ellsworth should be mayor, Kittrell
had to draw a political cartoon each day; and as he struggled with his
work, less and less the old joy came to cheer and spur him on. To read
the ridicule, the abuse, which the _Telegraph_ heaped on Clayton, the
distortion of facts concerning his candidature, the unfair reports
of his meetings, sickened him, and more than all, he was filled with
disgust as he tried to match in caricature these libels of the man he
so loved and honored. It was bad enough to have to flatter Clayton’s
opponent, to picture him as a noble, disinterested character, ready to
sacrifice himself for the public weal. Into his pictures of this man,
attired in the long black coat of conventional respectability, with the
smug face of pharisaism, he could get nothing but cant and hypocrisy;
but in his caricatures of Clayton there was that which pained him
worse--disloyalty, untruth, and now and then, to the discerning few
who knew the tragedy of Kittrell’s soul, there was pity. And thus his
work declined in value; lacking all sincerity, all faith in itself or
its purpose, it became false, uncertain, full of jarring notes, and,
in short, never once rang true. As for Edith, she never discussed his
work now; she spoke of the campaign little, and yet he knew she was
deeply concerned, and she grew hot with resentment at the methods of
the _Telegraph_. Her only consolation was derived from the Post, which,
of course, supported Clayton; and the final drop of bitterness in
Kittrell’s cup came one evening when he realized that she was following
with sympathetic interest the cartoons in that paper.
For the _Post_ had a new cartoonist, Banks, a boy whom Hardy had
picked up somewhere and was training to the work Kittrell had laid
down. To Kittrell there was a cruel fascination in the progress Banks
was making; he watched it with a critical, professional eye, at first
with amusement, then with surprise, and now at last, in the discovery
of Edith’s interest, with a keen jealousy of which he was ashamed.
The boy was crude and untrained; his work was not to be compared with
Kittrell’s, master of line that he was, but Kittrell saw that it had
the thing his work now lacked, the vital, primal thing--sincerity,
belief, love. The spark was there, and Kittrell knew how Hardy would
nurse that spark and fan it, and keep it alive and burning until
it should eventually blaze up in a fine white flame. And Kittrell
realized, as the days went by, that Banks’ work was telling, and that
his own was failing. He had, from the first, missed the atmosphere of
the _Post_, missed the _camaraderie_ of the congenial spirits there,
animated by a common purpose, inspired and led by Hardy, whom they
all loved--loved as he himself once loved him, loved as he loved him
still--and dare not look him in the face when they met!
He found the atmosphere of the _Telegraph_ alien and distasteful.
There all was different; the men had little joy in their work, little
interest in it, save perhaps the newspaper man’s inborn love of a good
story or a beat. They were all cynical, without loyalty or faith; they
secretly made fun of the _Telegraph_, of its editors and owners; they
had no belief in its cause; and its pretensions to respectability,
its parade of virtue, excited only their derision. And slowly it
began to dawn on Kittrell that the great moral law worked always and
everywhere, even on newspapers, and that there was reflected inevitably
and logically in the work of the men on that staff the hatred, the lack
of principle, the bigotry and intolerance of its proprietors; and this
same lack of principle tainted and made meretricious his own work,
and enervated the editorials so that the _Telegraph_, no matter how
carefully edited or how dignified in typographical appearance, was,
nevertheless, without real influence in the community.
Meanwhile Clayton was gaining ground. It was less than two weeks
before election. The campaign waxed more and more bitter, and as the
forces opposed to him foresaw defeat, they became ugly in spirit, and
desperate. The _Telegraph_ took on a tone more menacing and brutal,
and Kittrell knew that the crisis had come. The might of the powers
massed against Clayton appalled Kittrell; they thundered at him through
many brazen mouths, but Clayton held on his high way unperturbed. He
was speaking by day and night to thousands. Such meetings he had never
had before. Kittrell had visions of him before those immense audiences
in halls, in tents, in the raw open air of that rude March weather,
making his appeals to the heart of the great mass. A fine, splendid,
romantic figure he was, striking to the imagination, this champion of
the people’s cause, and Kittrell longed for the lost chance. Oh, for
one day on the _Post_ now!
One morning at breakfast, as Edith read the _Telegraph_, Kittrell saw
the tears well slowly in her brown eyes.
“Oh,” she said, “it is shameful!” She clenched her little fists. “Oh,
if I were only a man I’d--” She could not in her impotent feminine rage
say what she would do; she could only grind her teeth. Kittrell bent
his head over his plate; his coffee choked him.
“Dearest,” she said presently, in another tone, “tell me, how is he? Do
you--ever see him? Will he win?”
“No, I never see him. But he’ll win; I wouldn’t worry.”
“He used to come here,” she went on, “to rest a moment, to escape from
all this hateful confusion and strife. He is killing himself! And
they aren’t worth it--those ignorant people--they aren’t worth such
sacrifices.”
He got up from the table and turned away, and then, realizing quickly,
she flew to his side and put her arms about his neck and said:
“Forgive me, dearest, I didn’t mean--only--”
“Oh, Edith,” he said, “this is killing me. I feel like a dog.”
“Don’t dear; he is big enough, and good enough; he will understand.”
“Yes; that only makes it harder, only makes it hurt the more.”
That afternoon, in the car, he heard no talk but of the election; and
down-town, in a cigar store where he stopped for cigarettes, he heard
some men talking mysteriously, in the hollow voice of rumor, of some
sensation, some scandal. It alarmed him, and as he went into the office
he met Manning, the _Telegraph’s_ political man.
“Tell me, Manning,” Kittrell said, “how does it look?”
“Damn bad for us.”
“For us?”
“Well, for our mob of burglars and second story workers here--the gang
we represent.” He took a cigarette from the box Kittrell was opening.
“And will he win?”
“Will he win?” said Manning, exhaling the words on the thin level
stream of smoke that came from his lungs. “Will he win? In a walk, I
tell you. He’s got ’em beat to a standstill right now. That’s the dope.”
“But what about this story of--”
“Aw, that’s all a pipe-dream of Burns’. I’m running it in the morning,
but it’s nothing; it’s a shine. They’re big fools to print it at all.
But it’s their last card; they’re desperate. They won’t stop at
anything, or at any crime, except those requiring courage. Burns is in
there with Benson now; so is Salton, and old man Glenn, and the rest of
the bunco family. They’re framing it up. When I saw old Glenn go in,
with his white side whiskers, I knew the widow and the orphan were in
danger again, and that he was going bravely to the front for ’em. Say,
that young Banks is comin’, isn’t he? That’s a peach, that cartoon of
his to-night.”
Kittrell went on down the hall to the art-room to wait until Benson
should be free. But it was not long until he was sent for, and as
he entered the managing editor’s room he was instantly sensible of
the somber atmosphere of a grave and solemn council of war. Benson
introduced him to Glenn, the banker, to Salton, the party boss, and to
Burns, the president of the street-car company; and as Kittrell sat
down he looked about him, and could scarcely repress a smile as he
recalled Manning’s estimate of Glenn. The old man sat there, as solemn
and unctuous as ever he had in his pew at church. Benson, red of face,
was more plainly perturbed, but Salton was as reserved, as immobile,
as inscrutable as ever, his narrow, pointed face, with its vulpine
expression, being perhaps paler than usual. Benson had on his desk
before him the cartoon Kittrell had finished that day.
“Mr. Kittrell,” Benson began, “we’ve been talking over the political
situation, and I was showing these gentlemen this cartoon. It isn’t, I
fear, in your best style; it lacks the force, the argument, we’d like
just at this time. That isn’t the _Telegraph_ Clayton, Mr. Kittrell.”
He pointed with the amber stem of his pipe. “Not at all. Clayton is
a strong, smart, unscrupulous, dangerous man! We’ve reached a crisis
in this campaign; if we can’t turn things in the next three days,
we’re lost, that’s all; we might as well face it. To-morrow we make an
important revelation concerning the character of Clayton, and we want
to follow it up the morning after by a cartoon that will be a stunner,
a clencher. We have discussed it here among ourselves, and this is our
idea.”
Benson drew a crude, bald outline, indicating the cartoon they wished
Kittrell to draw. The idea was so coarse, so brutal, so revolting,
that Kittrell stood aghast, and, as he stood, he was aware of Salton’s
little eyes fixed on him. Benson waited; they all waited.
“Well,” said Benson, “what do you think of it?”
Kittrell paused an instant, and then said:
“I won’t draw it; that’s what I think of it.”
Benson flushed angrily and looked up at him.
“We are paying you a very large salary, Mr. Kittrell, and your work, if
you will pardon me, has not been up to what we were led to expect.”
“You are quite right, Mr. Benson, but I can’t draw that cartoon.”
“Well, great God!” yelled Burns, “what have we got here--a gold brick?”
He rose with a vivid sneer on his red face, plunged his hands in
his pockets, and took two or three nervous strides across the room.
Kittrell looked at him, and slowly his eyes blazed out of a face that
had gone white on the instant.
“What did you say, sir?” he demanded.
Burns thrust his red face, with its prognathic jaw, menacingly toward
Kittrell.
“I said that in you we’d got a gold brick.”
“You?” said Kittrell. “What have you to do with it? I don’t work for
you.”
“You don’t? Well, I guess it’s us that puts up--”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” said Glenn, waving a white, pacificatory hand.
“Yes, let me deal with this, if you please,” said Benson, looking hard
at Burns. The street-car man sneered again, then, in ostentatious
contempt, looked out the window. And in the stillness Benson continued:
“Mr. Kittrell, think a minute. Is your decision final?”
“It is final, Mr. Benson,” said Kittrell. “And as for you, Burns,” he
glared angrily at the man, “I wouldn’t draw that cartoon for all the
dirty money that all the bribing street-car companies in the world
could put into Mr. Glenn’s bank here. Good evening, gentlemen.”
It was not until he stood again in his own home that Kittrell felt
the physical effects which the spiritual squalor of such a scene was
certain to produce in a nature like his.
“Neil! What is the matter?” Edith fluttered toward him in alarm.
He sank into a chair, and for a moment he looked as if he would faint,
but he looked wanly up at her and said:
“Nothing; I’m all right; just a little weak. I’ve gone through a
sickening, horrible scene--”
“Dearest!”
“And I’m off the _Telegraph_--and a man once more!”
He bent over, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and
when Edith put her calm, caressing hand on his brow, she found that it
was moist from nervousness. Presently he was able to tell her the whole
story.
“It was, after all, Edith, a fitting conclusion to my experience on
the _Telegraph_. I suppose, though, that to people who are used to ten
thousand a year such scenes are nothing at all.” She saw in this trace
of his old humor that he was himself again, and she hugged his head to
her bosom.
“Oh, dearest,” she said, “I’m proud of you--and happy again.”
They were, indeed, both happy, happier than they had been in weeks.
The next morning after breakfast, she saw by his manner, by the
humorous, almost comical expression about his eyes, that he had an
idea. In this mood of satisfaction--this mood that comes too seldom
in the artist’s life--she knew it was wise to let him alone. And he
lighted his pipe and went to work. She heard him now and then, singing
or whistling or humming; she scented his pipe, then cigarettes; then,
at last, after two hours, he called in a loud, triumphant tone:
“Oh, Edith!”
She was at the door in an instant, and, waving his hand grandly at his
drawing-board, he turned to her with that expression which connotes
the greatest joy gods or mortals can know--the joy of beholding one’s
own work and finding it good. He had, as she saw, returned to the
cartoon of Clayton he had laid aside when the tempter came; and now it
was finished. Its simple lines revealed Clayton’s character, as the
sufficient answer to all the charges the _Telegraph_ might make against
him. Edith leaned against the door and looked long and critically.
“It was fine before,” she said presently; “it’s better now. Before it
was a portrait of the man; this shows his soul.”
“Well, it’s how he looks to me,” said Neil, “after a month in which to
appreciate him.”
“But what,” she said, stooping and peering at the edge of the drawing,
where, despite much knife-scraping, vague figures appeared, “what’s
that?”
“Oh, I’m ashamed to tell you,” he said. “I’ll have to paste over that
before it’s electrotyped. You see, I had a notion of putting in the
gang, and I drew four little figures--Benson, Burns, Salton and Glenn;
they were plotting--oh, it was foolish and unworthy. I decided I didn’t
want anything of hatred in it--just as he wouldn’t want anything of
hatred in it; so I rubbed them out.”
“Well, I’m glad. It is beautiful; it makes up for everything; it’s an
appreciation--worthy of the man.”
When Kittrell entered the office of the _Post_, the boys greeted
him with delight, and his presence made a sensation, for there had
been rumors of the break which the absence of a “Kit” cartoon in the
_Telegraph_ that morning had confirmed. But, if Hardy was surprised,
his surprise was swallowed up in his joy, and Kittrell was grateful to
him for the delicacy with which he touched the subject that consumed
the newspaper and political world with curiosity.
“I’m glad, Kit,” was all that he said. “You know that.”
Then he forgot everything in the cartoon, and he showed his instant
recognition of its significance by snatching out his watch, pushing
a button, and saying to Garland, who came to the door in his
shirt-sleeves:
“Tell Nic to hold the first edition for a five-column first-page
cartoon. And send this up right away.”
They had a last look at it before it went, and after gazing a moment in
silence Hardy said:
“It’s the greatest thing you ever did, Kit, and it comes at the
psychological moment. It’ll elect him.”
“Oh, he was elected anyhow.”
Hardy shook his head, and in the movement Kittrell saw how the strain
of the campaign had told on him. “No, he wasn’t; the way they’ve been
hammering him is something fierce; and the _Telegraph_--well, your
cartoons and all, you know.”
“But my cartoons in the _Telegraph_ were rotten. Any work that is not
sincere, not intellectually honest--”
Hardy interrupted him:
“Yes; but, Kit, you’re so good that your rotten is better than ’most
anybody’s best.” He smiled, and Kittrell blushed and looked away.
Hardy was right. The “Kit” cartoon, back in the _Post_, created its
sensation, and after it appeared the political reporters said it had
started a landslide to Clayton; that the betting was 4 to 1 and no
takers, and that it was all over but the shouting.
That night, as they were at dinner, the telephone rang, and in a minute
Neil knew by Edith’s excited and delighted reiteration of “yes,” “yes,”
who had called up. And then he heard her say:
“Indeed I will; I’ll come every night and sit in the front seat.”
When Kittrell displaced Edith at the telephone, he heard the voice of
John Clayton, lower in register and somewhat husky after four weeks’
speaking, but more musical than ever in Kittrell’s ears when it said:
“I just told the little woman, Neil, that I didn’t know how to say it,
so I wanted her to thank you for me. It was beautiful in you, and I
wish I were worthy of it; it was simply your own good soul expressing
itself.”
And it was the last delight to Kittrell to hear that voice and to know
that all was well.
But one question remained unsettled. Kittrell had been on the
_Telegraph_ a month, and his contract differed from that ordinarily
made by the members of a newspaper staff in that he was paid by the
year, though in monthly instalments. Kittrell knew that he had broken
his contract on grounds which the sordid law would not see or recognize
and the average court think absurd, and that the _Telegraph_ might
legally refuse to pay him at all. He hoped the _Telegraph_ would do
this! But it did not; on the contrary, he received the next day a check
for his month’s work. He held it up for Edith’s inspection.
“Of course, I’ll have to send it back,” he said.
“Certainly.”
“Do you think me quixotic?”
“Well, we’re poor enough as it is--let’s have some luxuries; let’s be
quixotic until after election, at least.”
“Sure,” said Neil; “just what I was thinking. I’m going to do a cartoon
every day for the _Post_ until election day, and I’m not going to take
a cent. I don’t want to crowd Banks out, you know, and I want to do my
part for Clayton and the cause, and do it, just once, for the pure love
of the thing.”
Those last days of the campaign were, indeed, luxuries to Kittrell and
to Edith, days of work and fun and excitement. All day Kittrell worked
on his cartoons, and in the evening they went to Clayton’s meetings.
The experience was a revelation to them both--the crowds, the waiting
for the singing of the automobile’s siren, the wild cheers that greeted
Clayton, and then his speech, his appeals to the best there was in
men. He had never made such speeches, and long afterward Edith could
hear those cheers and see the faces of those working-men aglow with
the hope, the passion, the fervent religion of democracy. And those
days came to their glad climax that night when they met at the office
of the _Post_ to receive the returns, in an atmosphere quivering with
excitement, with messenger boys and reporters coming and going, and
in the street outside an immense crowd, swaying and rocking between
the walls on either side, with screams and shouts and mad huzzas, and
the wild blowing of horns--all the hideous, happy noise an American
election-night crowd can make.
Late in the evening Clayton had made his way, somehow unnoticed,
through the crowd, and entered the office. He was happy in the great
triumph he would not accept as personal, claiming it always for the
cause; but as he dropped into the chair Hardy pushed toward him, they
all saw how weary he was.
Just at that moment the roar in the street below swelled to a mighty
crescendo, and Hardy cried:
“Look!”
They ran to the window. The boys up-stairs who were manipulating the
stereopticon, had thrown on the screen an enormous picture of Clayton,
the portrait Kittrell had drawn for his cartoon.
“Will you say now there isn’t the personal note in it?” Edith asked.
Clayton glanced out the window, across the dark, surging street, at the
picture.
“Oh, it’s not me they’re cheering for,” he said; “it’s for Kit, here.”
“Well, perhaps some of it’s for him,” Edith admitted loyally.
They were silent, seized irresistibly by the emotion that mastered the
mighty crowd in the dark streets below. Edith was strangely moved.
Presently she could speak:
“Is there anything sweeter in life than to know that you have done a
good thing--and done it well?”
“Yes,” said Clayton, “just one: to have a few friends who understand.”
“You are right,” said Edith. “It is so with art, and it must be so with
life; it makes an art of life.”
It was dark enough there by the window for her to slip her hand into
that of Neil, who had been musing silently on the crowd.
“I can never say again,” she said softly, “that those people are not
worth sacrifice. They are worth all; they are everything; they are
the hope of the world; and their longings and their needs, and the
possibility of bringing them to pass, are all that give significance to
life.”
“That’s what America is for,” said Clayton, “and it’s worth while to
be allowed to help even in a little way to make, as old Walt says, ‘a
nation of friends, of equals.’”
THE HAS-BEEN
As Holman loitered along the pavement that June morning, glad once
more to be back in Springfield after so many years, he recalled with
a sigh another morning, far gone, when first he had come up to the
capital of his state. “A morning just like this,” he was thinking,
“all green and sunny and hopeful and--pure. My God!” But he put aside
regret; it was enough just then to be back after so many years of
absence--years of dingy poverty which had kept him down in stupid
Jasper, never once able to get back during the session, if only for a
day to see the boys!--even as a man of fifty, with gray hair straggling
beneath his broad, slouch hat, with his long, dusty coat, and worn,
old shoes, that fell softly on the hot sidewalk, far other than the
young representative who had come up to the capital so long before. In
Capitol Avenue he had the state house in full view, the gray, swelling
dome still patiently brooding over the stupidities and trivialities
which the bickering human beings, running about like insects below,
were proudly and solemnly achieving. The little flags were at their
staffs on either wing. Once, at the sight he might have hurried,
knowing his presence to be required beneath that flag on the house
wing. No need now to hasten any more; he was not needed there, nor
anywhere in the world.
The sidewalk was filled with men striding like the statesmen they felt
themselves to be, and none among them now to remember him; but he
walked with them under the railroad’s ugly trestle, past the old white
house on the little hill, still with its lightning-rod to keep alive
one of the best of Lincoln stories, and up the broad walk to the state
house. Inside, the cool shades of the big pile were grateful as they
used to be. Through the open doors of offices he could see clerks at
work, or at least at desks, somehow coming off victorious, it seemed,
in their desperate business of holding on to their slippery, eel-like,
political jobs; then the crowded elevator--and the inevitable old
soldier to operate it. All as it used to be; and he, like some risen
ghost long since laid in its political grave, stalking among earthly
presences that had forgotten him.
The doorkeepers at the house regarded him with the official misanthropy
and distrust, but Holman quelled their glance, pronounced the word
“Ex-member,” and so passed in to the one barren prerogative left him
out of the years of former power and prestige.
The house, on the order of senate bills on first reading, was
inattentive; members lolled in their seats, read newspapers, talked,
gossiped, wrote letters, now and then threw paper wads at one
another--incipiencies of that horseplay which would mark the session’s
close. The clerk mumbled the said senate bills on first reading, the
speaker turned in his chair to talk with some one on the divan behind
him, swinging about now and then to say, “First reading of the bill!”
and to tap the sounding-board with his gavel. And, of them all, not one
he knew, not one to recognize him! But, yes, there was one, after all;
just one. Down the center aisle, reclining in his chair nonchalantly,
was a young fellow, almost a boy to Holman’s disadvantage point of
years, whose head, turned at that instant, showed a profile which,
when age and authority should visit it, would cause one to remark it;
a fair brow, strong nose and good-humored lips parting now in a smile
at some remark a member across the aisle had made. As Holman looked at
young McCray his mind went back to another morning in another June,
when the air came in through the tall, open windows with the breath
of young summer in Illinois, the very odor of the prairie flowers
themselves, the morning that Baldwin had come to him. And now McCray
sat there, representing his old district, with all the opportunities,
dreams, ambitions, illusions he himself had had--and lost.
But Holman was not much given to introspection--his eye was not long
turned inward; and now, turned outward, it lighted on a white head far
down toward the front of the house.
“Why, if there isn’t, after all, one o’ the old-timers! Say, young
fellow,” he said, speaking to an assistant sergeant-at-arms who had
been standing near and, unable to identify Holman as a representative
of any railroad or other interest entitled to respect on that floor,
had been eying him with some suspicion. “Say,” said Holman, pointing
with a long forefinger, “ain’t that old Ike Bemis down there--Bemis, of
Tazewell? Yes? Well, now, just call a page boy, won’t you? And have him
tell Bemis an old friend wants to see him.”
Bemis was, in his way, a phenomenon unparalleled in politics; he had
been in the house before Holman and had held on, minority member
from his district, the Republican and Democratic machines working
harmoniously together, for a quarter of a century. And as he came up
the aisle in response to Holman’s message he seemed to Holman to have
changed little; only his hair from iron gray had grown white, and his
face was not so clear or ruddy or healthy as he had known it. He was
dressed as he used to be in the gray clothes that made him look so like
a prosperous farmer, and the hand he held out to Holman was, by some
mystery, rough and horny, as if it had worked indeed.
“Why, bless the Lord!” he cried, “if it ain’t Jim Holman!”
He shook Holman’s hand with genuine pleasure and, putting his arm
across Holman’s shoulders, led him away to a divan under the gallery.
They sat down there and for half an hour chatted and gossiped, recalled
old friends and associates of legislatures that were gone, discussed
them, accounted for them, pursued their subsequent histories in
politics or out of politics, their triumphs, their failures and their
fates--in short, they reconstructed their own little world and caught
up with the times.
“’Tain’t what it used to be, Jim,” said Bemis with an old man’s
deploration of change. “You did right to get out of it. I don’t want
any more of it. When this session closes I’m through; I won’t run
again.”
Holman was not greatly impressed; politicians, he knew, were always
making their last campaign, as sailors were always making their last
voyage.
“_Sine die_ adjournment next week, and then good-by to politics for
me,” Bemis went on. “I’ll be glad to be shut of it all. Nothing in it,
nothing in it.” He wagged his sage head sadly.
“Anything--ah--doing this session?” asked Holman, glancing sidewise at
his old colleague.
“No, nothing except this Chicago street-car bill. We passed it, you
know, and the governor vetoed it. The reformers raised an awful howl.
Comes up--let’s see--to-night, I reckon. Going to try to pass it over
the governor’s veto.”
“Will they make it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Looks dubious. The senate’s all right, of course;
it’s all fixed there, but the house ain’t certain. A two-thirds vote’s
hard to get these days. Baldwin’s been working day and night--but I
don’t know; you can’t tell yet.”
Then the house broke into new confusion. Holman knew the signs well; a
roll-call was on. Bemis pricked his ears and hurried back to his seat.
Holman was glad just then to have him go, for almost at the mention
of the name of Baldwin he had happened to glance toward the speaker’s
chair; the speaker had risen, his gavel poised, and in that instant
Holman saw the man on the speaker’s lounge, lolling back to await the
passing of the interruption, and recognized Baldwin, George R. Baldwin,
carefully dressed as of old, suave, elegant, dignified, all unchanged
save that his hair had grown a bit more gray, though only, it seemed,
to lend to his aspect new dignity, new authority, almost refinement.
Baldwin, the same as ever! It had not changed him, evidently; he was
still correct, irreproachable, respected, received everywhere--while
he, Holman, had come to this. Sarah, back there at home, amid the
dingy poverty and drudgery of her life; and Baldwin’s wife, doubtless,
welcome in all society and reigning there! Holman, sick of the scene,
got up, plunged his hands into his pockets and started out. Near the
door he turned to have another glance. Baldwin had slid to the end of
the lounge and was talking to some young fellow--to McCray.
Holman went to the cigar stand, lighted a cigar, sauntered out into the
rotunda and leaned against the brass rail. He blew out streams of smoke
and through squinting little eyes watched them float away; he smoked
and squinted and thought, and what he saw was Baldwin, the lobbyist,
and young McCray.
Two men passed on their way over to the senate chamber, and he heard
one of them pronounce his name.
“----leaning on the rail there, smoking.
“Oh--I forgot; his face was familiar, too. The old Has-been has come
back for a day!”
It was Baldwin who spoke; his companion was young McCray.
“Ah, yes! An old Has-been,” thought Holman. Baldwin said that, and
McCray! They said that even down in Jasper. But Baldwin, he was no
Has-been; it had not affected him at all.
* * * * *
When Holman entered the house that afternoon he was sensible
of a change in the atmosphere. The new element was one he
recognized--skilled as of old in legislative aëroscepsy--one that
strangely excited him, both by what it recalled and by what it
portended; there were tension, alertness, irritability and suspense,
the knowledge of an evil, sinister Presence, known, silent, unrevealed,
but apprehended--a Presence expected, even desired, yet dreaded; in
short, the psychic condition that exists in a legislative chamber when
something is about to come off. Holman, standing well back by the
cloak-room, examining the house with expert eye, knew that the thing
was imminent, though not immediate. There were certain signs wanting.
The speaker sat calm, but he was twirling his gavel nervously; the
leaders were restless and furtive, but they had not as yet got every
man in his seat. McCray, for instance, was absent.
Holman sauntered carelessly around to the side on which Bemis sat,
caught the old man’s eye and beckoned.
“I thought they’d get that bill up,” said Holman, “and I’d see a little
fun; but there seems to be no chance of that. Reckon I’ll go.”
“There’s been a hitch,” said Bemis in a low tone.
“Has, heh?”
“Yes,” said Bemis; “the boys thought they had it fixed, but Wimbleton
switched; told O’Leary so at noon. Either the governor got around him
or he got scared.”
“Need only one vote?” surmised Holman. Then Bemis, as if a thought had
struck him, drew close and put his lips to Holman’s ear:
“You know that young McCray from your district?”
“Sure.”
“Well, now, Jim, if you could fix him--you might get in on this thing.
He won’t do business with any of us. I don’t know exactly, but I should
think there’d be for you and him at least--” He put his lips quite into
Holman’s ear, and Holman bent lower; and Bemis whispered again. Holman
did not move a muscle. Bemis withdrew a little and looked at him.