youngster, and I’ve been out of politics a long time. But I might have
a little talk with him. I can’t promise, though--an old Has-been like
me, you know.” He laughed a small bitter laugh.
“Oh, you!” said Bemis striking him softly on the shoulder. “You a
Has-been! Why, Jim, you’re the slickest man in southern Illinois--when
you want to be!”
* * * * *
Holman found McCray in the Leland bar-room. The young man was plainly
in some mental stress, his hair matted to his brow, his face moist with
perspiration, and drawn, and in his eyes an utter weariness.
“Just the man I was looking for,” said Holman. “I came to see you about
a little matter down in Jasper; some interests I represent--constits of
yours--and I’ve got to hurry back. So, just give me a minute; I’ll not
keep you long.”
McCray looked at his watch. “I”--he hesitated--“I must get over to the
house; I’m late, anyway. I was detained--”
“Yes, I know,” said Holman, “but I’ve got to see you. It’s something
you’re interested in, anyway. If you’ll just walk along a little way
with me.”
Once outside, Holman kept on out Sixth Street, and McCray, wondering
somewhat, did not demur.
“McCray, you don’t know me well,” Holman began; “I’m an old-timer--a
Has-been, as I overheard a man say this morning. You’re a young man;
you come from my district--or, perhaps, I’d better say I come from
yours. I came here one session, just as you have done, from old Jasper,
and I served, in all, four sessions. During that time I saw a lot of
life and of men; I learned a lot, too, and then I gave it up--and quit.
This morning I came back for a little holiday, and I strolled over to
the house to see how the old place looked once more, just as all the
Has-beens do; they always manage to get back, some way or another,
every session; it’s a habit, a fever, a disease--get it once, a fellow
never gets over it. Well, this morning, as I stood there looking around
I saw you; and that and one thing and another reminded me of something.
I saw you sitting there--young, ambitious, bright, with the world
before you,--and, well, my boy, I took a kind of liking for you all of
a sudden; but that’s neither here nor there. What I was reminded of,
curiously enough, was another young fellow I used to know years ago--a
fellow that didn’t look so much like you, perhaps, and yet who was like
you in many ways.
“It must have been, let’s see, back in the--well, no matter, I don’t
exactly recall just now, and it isn’t material. But this young fellow
came up from down our way to take his seat for the first time in the
legislature. He was a young lawyer, smart, good-looking, a fellow every
one liked. He had the gift of the gab; he could make a rattling speech,
was strong on the stump and good before a jury. Everybody wanted to see
him succeed. He was ambitious--ambitious as Lincoln, ambitious as the
devil. His ambitions were not selfish--that is, not so damned selfish.
He was no reformer, nothing like that; but he really wanted to help his
people, wanted to do something to make life a little easier, a little
better for the average fellow--like those he knew back home. He didn’t
have, perhaps, any very clear idea how he was going to do this, but he
wanted to do it somehow, and, vaguely enough, I reckon, he felt that
the chance would turn up. Back home, too, there was a girl--you got a
girl, McCray?”
The young man, startled by the abrupt question, turned up to Holman,
who shambled along a head taller than he, a face that went red; a smile
came to it, then, suddenly, it went gray and he turned away.
“Beg your pardon,” said Holman, “that’s none of my business, of course.
But this fellow of mine, he had a girl back there. I knew about it; we
were young members, first term, and he used to tell me things. And he
wanted to marry this girl and make her happy. He thought, you see, that
by being something, doing something in the world, he could do _that_.”
They were by this time far out Sixth Street, at the edge of town; a
little farther on lay the open country. They came to a pasture with a
broken fence and a tree.
“Let’s sit down here,” Holman said, “and rest, and I’ll get on with my
story.”
They sat side by side on the bank at the roots of the elm, and Holman,
having finished his cigar and being a man who seemed to require tobacco
in some form every moment of the day, drew out a long plug and a knife
and cut a piece and put it comfortably into his mouth.
“Chew?” he said, proffering tobacco and knife. McCray shook his head,
but lighted a cigarette. And the old and the new generation sat there
side by side on the bank.
“Interested?” asked Holman.
“Yes; go on.”
“Well, this young fellow I’m telling you of--the legislature was just a
stepping-stone to him; that’s what he thought and that’s what everybody
thought; beyond that were congress, governor, senator, everything. He
went right ahead, was popular and influential, got good committees,
and when he got up to speak the house grew quiet--you’ve seen it that
way yourself--and he worked and studied, and back home there was the
girl--and they wanted to get married. But he was poor--mighty poor.”
Holman leaned over, stretched out his long, thin arm--McCray noted
the frayed cuffbands--and plucked a spear of young grass, pulled the
thin, transparent, whitish-green blade out of its delicate sheath
and, squinting his eyes, examined it minutely, as if it were the most
engrossing object of study in the world.
“A legislature, McCray,” he went on, “is the damnedest thing in the
world, the rottenest, most demoralizing, hell-fire sort of institution
there is. All politics is that way, no matter where you find it.
Sometimes I think you can’t get within forty rows o’ apple trees of it
without being polluted. A man, to go to a legislature and stay there
any time and come out whole and safe and sound, has to be made of pure
gold. Now, this young friend of mine, he was, as I’ve said, all right
at heart, and pretty strong, too, most ways; good family, good blood
and all that; and back home there, in safe surroundings, he’d ’ave
got along all right till the end. But in the legislature a fellow’s
away from home, away from all his customary moorings, and most of the
members get it into their heads that at the capital all the rules are
suspended, and I reckon they are--that’s about what government, as we
administer it, amounts to.
“No one from home ever shows up there. The only ones that come around
come to get something for themselves, and it’s always something they
have no right to and oughtn’t to have. They come with all kinds
of plausible reasons and lies and temptations--damned sneaking,
hypocritical, white-washed sepulchers! Eminent and respectable
citizens, best people and all that! And unless a fellow has his eyes
wide open all the time, has his principles clear and fixed and knows
enough to apply ’em every minute, knows what a bunco game it all is,
and is of pure gold besides--as I said--why, he gets all tangled up
and lost--yes, lost. It pretty much all comes from the cities. We poor
jays from the country districts don’t know anything about the cities;
we take what they tell us, or did in my time. We think if we just pass
a few laws to make our fellow-citizens in the cities good, regulate
their beer for ’em and all that, that nothing else is required of us;
so these fellows come down from the city and get us to do their dirty
work for them. In those days there was a fellow here, a lobbyist, a
good-looking man, about the size and favor of--well, Baldwin back
there--saw him talking to you this morning--same kind of a man exactly,
smooth, genial, polished, well-dressed, polite, good fellow, and all
that.
“Now, Baldwin--I mean the fellow--well, damn it!” Holman suddenly
exploded in his exasperation, “it _was_ Baldwin! He had a bill he was
trying to pass, a crooked bill, of course, one of those bills like
this street-car bill I heard of to-day, to take something that by
rights belonged to the people of the city, a street, or the ground
under a street, or the air over a street, or the room in the middle of
a street, and give it to half a dozen eminently respectable and pious
citizens to use for themselves and exploit and get rich on. Baldwin
was trying to pass that bill, and the session was nearly done, and he
needed just one vote. And he looked around and he settled on this young
friend of mine; he knew his hopes, his wants, his necessities--knew all
about him, for that’s Baldwin’s business and his way. I needn’t go into
the details; he worked with him a whole day and nearly a whole night;
explained that it was really a good thing for the city, that this young
fellow’s constits were not interested in the city, anyway, didn’t know
anything about it, nor care anything about it. ‘It can’t hurt you,’
Baldwin would say. ‘Your people won’t know or care; of course, if
it was something they were interested in it might be different’--and
all that. And then, finally, ’way in the night, when the young fellow
was worn down in will, and tired and weak and dazed anyway, Baldwin
began to count the money down on the table, among the stinking whisky
glasses and cigar butts, thousand-dollar bills, green as that grass
there, one--two--three--like that.” McCray, with a kind of fascination,
watched Holman as with slow gesture of his long hands he turned over,
as it were, and laid down one after another those thousand-dollar
bills. “And the young man fell,” said Holman at last. And then he was
silent, his gaze fixed afar on some light across the fields.
“Well,” Holman resumed, “Baldwin was right in one way, at any rate; the
people, the young fellow’s people down home, didn’t care. They never do
care; they don’t take the trouble. They never knew, anyway, and they
elected him again and re-elected him. And he got married and things
seemed to go along all right with him; you would have said he was to
be envied. But, while nothing seemed to change outside, something did
change inside the young man; and the worst of it was, it was a change
that he didn’t know or realize. It was like some disease, working away,
working away there inside of him, without any pain or any symptoms
even; he had no idea of it. But there it was, working away, working
away. He found, at first, that it was easy enough to get money, and
he got it and he spent it and it never did him any good, never a bit,
neither him nor his family. Easy money, they call it; but there’s
no such thing. All money, even easy money, is hard; you got to pay
somehow, you got to pay!
“He changed by slow degrees; first he got careless and slovenly in his
thoughts, and, after a while, didn’t think much anyway, and couldn’t;
he just talked and talked and talked and made loud speeches--became a
windbag, a blatherskite, a bore and a nuisance in the land, to himself
and everybody. There’s a lot of them in this land; all they need to
make a speech is room enough to work their jaws in. His old wishes and
longings to be of some use in the world died out of him; he had no
aims, no mark to head for, no place to go. He became ineffectual; after
while all there was to him was that one vote of his in the house, and
by and by that wasn’t worth much; it kept declining in value, he got
cheaper and cheaper, and finally--just naturally petered out.
“Then, when he was slouchy in morals and mind and character, he got
slouchy in person; his habits weren’t bad, perhaps; he was no drunkard
or anything like that, but just--oh, sloppy, every way. And his wife,
his little wife--she was a fine, pretty girl, McCray, when he married
her--she, of course, had to pay, too, along with him; he dragged her
down. She was patient and kind and always hopeful, but they were poor,
and under the stress of their necessities he would get peevish and
cross, and sometimes when, say, a Saturday night would come and there
wasn’t anything in the house to eat--well, he’d look at the children
and get mad--mad at himself, primarily, though he didn’t say so or
admit it even to himself--and he’d take it out in nasty, mean ways with
her and the children. Finally, she gave up; she didn’t know why, she
never knew what had happened, or, if she did, she never even hinted
it--and the whole family was just going down to hell and the devil.
There wasn’t any outward tragedy to make it striking or dramatic or
even interesting.
“And then, after everybody half knew or half guessed, and had ceased
to respect him, he came back here to Springfield once, as we all do,
and happened to see Baldwin, and found him the same, scarcely a day
older, though he himself was gray and withered. It hadn’t hurt Baldwin;
he was well-dressed, respectable, popular, received everywhere--clubs,
society, church and all, just as the men were whose dirty money Baldwin
handled. And Baldwin’s wife, she wasn’t old and sad and hopeless; she
was going out in society, president of a big woman’s club, talked
about safe little reforms, charities and philanthropies. And Baldwin’s
daughters were over in Europe getting the last finish on their
education.”
Holman had a feeling that McCray was no longer listening and, glancing
aside, saw that McCray’s face was buried in his hands. And with pity in
his long, gray face he looked at him a little while, then laid a hand
on McCray’s shoulder.
“Do you know,” he said, “why I told you this story? You see, I didn’t
want to make you feel bad; I only wanted to show you. Because there’s a
lot in you--a big, beautiful future.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” cried McCray. “All but that last--all but that
last.”
“Why not that?”
“Because it’s too late. Oh, Holman, it’s too late--too late! If it were
only yesterday! But now--it’s too late!”
And McCray bent forward, bowed in pain, and wept.
Holman waited until the boy’s grief subsided, and then, by degrees,
he got the story. To McCray it was an irreclaimable and tragic wreck
of life. But to Holman, in the broader vision his own sins had made
possible, and in some of his judgments of men, perhaps too broad--if,
indeed, that may be--the case was not at all hopeless. He had not, it
is true, been prepared for a revelation so complete and damaging, but
it presented to him no irrevocable aspect. McCray, with the proclivity
of youth to fixed and fated facts, saw the thing consummated and
complete, the contract wholly executed; but Holman did not regard it
as even executory, and he cited for McCray the old adage about the bad
bargain.
“We’ll just give the stuff back to Baldwin.”
“Before?”
“No,” said Holman stoutly, “afterward. After the vote; we’ll have that
satisfaction. Keep him on the hooks.”
“Well,” said McCray. “But here, you take it. It--burns--” He gave to
Holman a roll of bills, and sighed in relief. “You have saved me,” he
said; “you have saved my soul.”
“Oh, to hell with your soul!” Holman said, with more orthodoxy than he
was accustomed to evince. He was not sufficiently accustomed to the
highly moral to relish its too bald expression; perhaps his experience
had been of one other as yet unrecognized benefit--it had made him
wholesomely afraid of cant, and whatever good his spiritual adventure
of that day had done, or was to do him, he was in little danger of
becoming a Pharisee.
* * * * *
Greggerson, the clerk of the house, in shirt-sleeves, a handkerchief
stuffed into his collar, had himself taken the reading-desk that night.
Above him the speaker, bent forward, watched the proceedings like some
bird of prey, smiting his desk sharply with his gavel now and then, or
pointing it fiercely at some one. Above the speaker, in placid folds,
was the flag, and from their large canvases on either side of the
house, Lincoln and Douglas surveyed the scene from the calm altitude of
their secure place in American statesmanship.
When the bill had come over from the senate half an hour before, the
crowd had rushed over with it, burst into the house and pushed down the
aisle, choking the passage. Holman saw several senators come over to
see the end; he saw the governor’s private secretary, and old Benson,
the governor’s political manager, and--Baldwin, suave and bland as
usual, yet, as Holman could see on a second closer look, intensely
anxious and concerned. He was paler than Holman had ever seen him.
The air of the chamber was hot and fetid; there was a low, ominous
grumbling. Dalby was on his feet on the Republican side, Quinn on the
Democratic--the program under Baldwin’s eye and the speaker’s would
be hurried through. In the curious way in which secrets cease to be
secrets and permeate the mind of the mass, it was generally known how
every man would vote, and it was understood that the climax, somehow,
would come with the calling of the name of McCray, of Jasper. The
roll-call moved slowly on down the alphabet; Greggerson’s voice
resounded; its boom could have been heard through open windows three
blocks away:
“Lyendorf!”
“Aye.”
“Lynn, of Sangamon!”
“No.”
“Lynn, of Vermilion!”
“No.”
“McBroom!”
“No.”
“McCoy!”
“Aye.”
“McCray!”
Holman strained forward with the crowd. McCray hesitated, looked up,
then shouted:
“No!”
There was a sharp volley of applause, a clapping of hands which had in
it perhaps, a certain too self-righteous quality; and there were human
groans and hoots, and at his elbow Holman heard an oath and turned to
face Baldwin. The face of the lobbyist was white with rage and moist
with fine globules of perspiration, and there were revealed to Holman
in the brilliant, new illuminations of that moment certain lines that
once had not been there, lines not drawn by age, and Holman saw them
with a fierce, vindictive joy.
But McCray was coming, battling his way down the aisle, escaping the
congratulations, curses, praises, objurgations of the men who crowded
about him. He got away from them and came back, and, as he took
Holman’s hand, his tired, drawn face was touched with a smile. Baldwin,
there beside them, saw it, stared at Holman incredulously and said:
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
But Holman had no attention for Baldwin then.
“Let’s get out of this,” he said to McCray.
And when, out of that weltering chaos, they found themselves in the
rotunda, in the mysterious semi-gloom that filled its great, inverted
bowl, the gloom which all the electric lights could not wholly
dissipate, Holman quickly drew his hand from his pocket, pressed it
into McCray’s, and said:
“Here, this belongs to--” Holman hesitated, as at a new point in ethics.
“To Baldwin,” said McCray. “Yes,” he went on wearily, “I’ll give it
back to him.”
“To think of an old Has-been like me,” said Holman, “that hasn’t seen
so much easy money in a coon’s age--and to go toting it around all day
in his pocket! McCray, I’m afraid I’m getting too damned civic! I’ll be
a reformer next, and back in politics!” He laughed again. “We’ll wait
here a little. Baldwin’ll be along, and I’ll stay and see you safely
through it.”
Baldwin was coming even then, and in a moment espied them there by the
rail. He had recovered himself; the mask of years could not be lowered
long; he came on leisurely, even pausing to light a cigarette. Holman
hailed him:
“Lost out, didn’t you, George?”
“So it seems,” Baldwin replied. “When you do business on honor you must
expect to be betrayed once in a while. It’s all in the game. But where
do you come in, Jim--an old back number like you?”
“Does seem funny, doesn’t it? An old Has-been like me! Well, I saw a
good thing coming off and I declared myself in. But McCray has a little
business with you, and when you’re through with him, maybe I can make
it plain to you.”
“Oh, I have no further business with Mr. McCray. I’m quite through
with _him_.” And he turned his back deliberately on the young man.
McCray bit his lip, then remembered and became humble, and, putting
forth his hand, said:
“Here--here’s your--money.”
Baldwin turned, took the money, thrust it carelessly into his pocket,
and said:
“I can’t count it here, of course. I _presume_ it’s all there.”
“Yes,” said Holman, “it’s all there. Such work is done on honor, you
know.”
“Thank you.” Baldwin delicately drew on his cigarette, blew the smoke
upward. “But--that question, Jim, that one unanswered question. Where
do you come in? What is there in this for you?”
Holman looked at him from top to toe with a long, cold, steady gaze.
“Well, George,” he began slowly, “for me there’s nothing in it, in the
way you think--in the only terms you can think in, I mean. There is,
however, in another way, a lot in it; a lot I haven’t dreamed of for
years. All day, while arranging and planning this--the idea came to
me suddenly this morning--I’ve been looking forward to this moment,
thinking of what I’d say and what satisfaction I’d have in saying it.
I thought that that satisfaction would pay me for all you’ve done--for
all you’ve tried to do to this boy here--for all--no, damn it! not for
all!--all hell and eternity couldn’t pay you for _all_ you’ve done--to
other boys like him. But now, as I look at your face and study it, I
see that you just couldn’t understand, that’s all; you have lost the
ability to understand--and--well, George, that mere fact will pay you,
so I won’t try to say it. I’ll say only good-by, and when you get
home to that wife and those daughters of yours--just remember that
Jim Holman asked you how you could look them in the eyes. Do that and
maybe--you’ll understand.”
Baldwin stared at him; the mask shifted an instant, then, instantly
restored, he turned away.
“He looks old, after all,” said Holman. “It has changed him, too....”
He drew out his watch. “I can catch that midnight train on the Alton.
I’m going to get out of here now; I’m going home to old Jasper. There’s
a little woman there I want to see, a little woman and some children,
and I’m going home--now, at last, to look them in the eyes.”
WHAT WILL BECOME OF ANNIE?
Spring had come back to Leadam Street. The moist cobblestones had
steamed in the new sun all the afternoon; sparrows were sweeping up to
the eaves, trailing strings and long straws after them; from the back
porches of the flats were loud, awaking, tinny sounds, breaking the
long silence. The clank of the cable-cars was borne over the roofs,
clearly now in the damp, heavy atmosphere; from somewhere came the
jingle of a street piano. Floating down the mild afternoon, came the
deep, mellow note of some big propeller, loosing her winter moorings
at last and rousing to greet the tug that would tow her out of the
narrow river. Kelley, the policeman, strolled along the sidewalk, with
his hands locked behind him, his nose in the air, sniffing eagerly and
pleasurably. He had left off his skirted overcoat, and changed his
clumsy cap for his helmet.
Annie had sat at her window all the afternoon, but, as the spring day
wore toward its close, she began to realize that only the melancholy,
and none of the promise of this first spring day had touched her. She
had thrown open the window, to test the quality of the air. Now and
then a warm breath came wandering in off the prairies, though when it
met the cold, persistent wind from the lake, it hesitated, and timidly
turned back. But Annie would not let herself doubt that the spring had
come. She knew that in time the prairie wind would woo its way until it
would be playing with the waves of the lake itself, the little waves
that danced all day, blue and white, in the sunshine. And then the
summer would come, and on Sunday afternoons Jimmy would take her out to
Lincoln Park, and they would have their supper at Fisher’s Garden.
Leadam Street was dull enough on week days; on Sundays it was wholly
mournful.
Once Annie saw a woman, with a shawl over her head and a tin bucket
in her hand, go into Englehardt’s place, down the street. The woman
went in furtively, and brushed hastily through the “Family Entrance,”
though why could not be told. She went there nearly every hour of
every day. Then Annie was left alone. She did not turn inward to the
flat; that was too still and lonesome, and it was growing dark now, as
the shadows gathered. She heard the strenuous gongs of the cable-cars
over in State Street, and she could imagine the crowds, gay from their
Sunday holiday, that filled them, clinging even to the running-boards.
She might have gone out and been with them, as every one else in the
street seemed to have done, but she would not for worlds have been away
from home when Jimmy came. She heard the jingle of the street piano,
too; she wished it would come down that way. She would gladly have
emptied her purse for the Dago.