the colonel would have remained out of politics, but the boy, after a
week of dreaming, dramatized himself as making a speech in the state
senate chamber at Springfield. The colonel, as a man’s duty is, advised
him to keep out of politics, and yet within an hour after Carroll shyly
confessed his ambition, the fever awoke in the old fellow’s bones, his
eyes flamed with the old fire, and he admitted that the experience
might help a boy who was struggling in a pitiless city for a law
practice.
Within a week the colonel had introduced Carroll to Superintendent of
Street and Alley Cleaning Patrick F. Gibbons, who promised to be with
him, and had taken him to the city hall for an audience with the mayor.
After that the newspapers said that John D. Carroll had been slated for
the senatorial nomination in the First District.
When Warren learned of the colonel’s new interest in the campaign, he
cunningly decided to utilize it by throwing his strength to Carroll
in the First, provided the colonel would withdraw his opposition. He
prided himself on being a man who harbored no resentments. So he sent
Dan Ford, his private secretary, to open negotiations for peace.
The colonel had recognized the coming of the heat by donning his suit
of linen, with a red tie at his throat to give the touch of color
he always loved, and he had got out his broad-leaved Panama hat for
its fifteenth season. Ford found him seated in the leather chair,
swinging one thin leg over the other, his white hose wrinkling over
his low shoes, telling Carroll how Grant came to Springfield from
Galena seeking a commission in the army. Ford diplomatically broached
the subject of a conference between the colonel and the senator.
The colonel heard him to the end, but said nothing. His mustache
simply lifted a little with the curl of his lip. Ford was evidently
disappointed.
“Have you any reply?” he asked, “or any message?”
“Yes,” said the colonel, and his gray eyes flashed under their shaggy
brows. “Present my compliments to Senator Warren, and tell him that if
he ever presumes to speak to me again in all his life, I’ll slap his
face, and if he resents it, I’ll kill him.”
Ford tried to bow, and the colonel, turning to Carroll, said:
“As I was saying, General Palmer happened to go into the
adjutant-general’s office and saw Grant smoking a corn-cob pipe and
working away on muster rolls at a broken table propped up in one corner
of the room. The old forage cap he had worn in the Mexican War was
lying on the table. It was the only hat he had in those days.”
The next morning an interview with Warren appeared in all the papers.
“I would prefer,” the senator was reported as saying, “to retire to
private life and resume my interrupted law practice, if I were not
compelled to seek vindication by the bushwhacking of this doting old
ingrate, who, disappointed in his attempts to monopolize patronage that
belongs to patriotic party workers, now skulks behind the sympathy his
years and infirmities excite, to wage a guerrilla warfare.”
The colonel read the interview at breakfast. He sat at the table with
one paper propped up before him and four others beside his plate, his
eye-glasses on his nose, and ate his oatmeal and his beefsteak and his
boiled eggs just as he did on every morning of the year. Then he drank
the half cup of coffee that he always reserved, with its cream slowly
coagulating at the surface, for the end of his meal, because it was
cooler then, laid his napkin down and shuffled slowly out.
Half an hour later a man stopped by his chair in the lobby and said
something to the colonel that made him drop his paper, and look up over
his eye-glasses with a scowl. The man was known as Birdy Quinn, and he
had lost his job in the water office the week before, because Warren
wished to make room for a fellow who could deliver more votes at the
coming primaries than Birdy could.
“Are you sure?” the colonel asked.
“Sure! Isn’t it all over the ward this morning?”
“You’re sure that Pat Gibbons consented to run as Warren’s candidate
for state senator in the First District against Carroll--after
promising me--_me_?” He bent his brows angrily and pointed with a long
forefinger at his own breast.
“Well, hell’s bells!” said Quinn. “Wasn’t Baldwin working with him half
the night?”
The colonel took his glasses from his nose and swinging them by their
heavy cord, blinked with his old eyes at the square of sunlight blazing
in the Clark Street entrance, across which, as on a vividly illuminated
screen, the crowds on the sidewalk flitted like trembling figures in
a kinetoscope. Presently he lifted himself heavily from his chair and
gathered up his newspapers and his stick.
“Well, Birdy,” he said wearily, “I guess I’ve got one more fight left
in me.”
* * * * *
Most men thought it was Warren’s interview that caused the colonel to
consent at last to lead the opposition against him, though some said it
was but the fascination of politics, which is like the fascination of
the sea, so that a man who follows it once must follow it till he dies.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d be glad to find the
old man’s chair empty,” said Eph Harkness, of Macoupin, that afternoon.
He had come up from Carlinville in response to a telegram from the
colonel, and having registered, and given his bag and linen duster to
a bell-boy, was removing his big felt hat to mop his wet brow.
“I’m afraid he won’t be able to stand the strain of a campaign,” said
Carroll.
“Stand the strain! Him?” exclaimed Harkness. “Why, he’ll be alive and
drawing pay when they’re referring to Si Warren as ex-senator!”
“I hate to have them say such mean things about him,” Carroll
persisted, thinking of the interview.
“If they think they kin say any meaner things ’bout him than he kin
’bout them, jes’ let ’em lam in,” chuckled Mosely, of Alexander.
“Yes,” mused Harkness, “it’ll be the greatest fight we’ve had in
Illinois since Logan’s time. We’ve got a leader now.”
There was an echo of the old days in his voice, which, with its gentle
hint of regret, was lost on Carroll, who had not known the colonel in
the old days.
They found the colonel in his room, sitting by an open window, his
Panama hat on his head, his cigar in his teeth, and his walking-stick
twirling in his long fingers. The room did not present that orderly
and cool appearance it had on the few occasions when Carroll had been
in it before. The shades were high at the window, admitting flames of
heat, wads of crumpled paper bestrewed the floor, a huge table had been
brought in and it was already littered with newspapers and telegraph
blanks. The bureau had been moved, the tall white door it had hidden
so long had been unlocked, and Carroll heard the incessant clicking
of a typewriter in the adjoining room. Two or three men sat idly
about, gossiping, as men will, about political battles of the past.
There seemed to be none of the industry of politics apparent, though
political headquarters seldom do display that, perhaps because a good
part of the industry of politics consists in talking and smoking and
drinking, and partly, perhaps, because of the necessity of concealment
that always exists. These men were gathered to organize the defeat of a
crafty and unscrupulous man who had a national, state and city machine
at his command, with money to heart’s desire, and yet they sat and
smoked, stirring only when a telegram came from down the state, or some
long-forgotten politician came in to offer himself as a recruit.
For a month the colonel did not go out of the hotel. He was up early
and at work, his cigar in his mouth, dictating letters, sending
telegrams, receiving callers. When he slept, no one knew. He never had
his hat off. He ate his meals from a tray in his room, after the food
had grown cold. His headquarters recalled pathetically the old days
when his power and supremacy were unquestioned. They were crowded day
and night with the back-numbers and the soreheads Baldwin had talked
about, who came with their grievances, their impossible schemes, their
paltry ambitions. Of such stuff the colonel had to make his machine,
flattering, threatening, wheedling, soothing jealousies, reconciling
discordant factions, healing old animosities, inflaming new hatreds,
keeping up spirit in faint hearts, leaving not a wire unpulled. He
appointed a steering committee, on which were Mosely, of Alexander;
Garwood, of Kankakee; Harkness, of Macoupin, and Malachi Nolan; he
wrote personal letters to old friends in every school district in the
state, and thus, slowly, patiently, laboriously welded his organization
together. What he most needed was funds, and a candidate to provide
funds; lacking them, he insisted that this was not a movement for
the profit of any one man, but for the good of the party alone, and
so invested it with the enthusiasm of what passes for patriotism in a
nation where party is set above country. He told the landlord of the
Grand that he would be responsible for the rent of the two rooms he had
engaged next his own. He already owed the landlord.
The night before the primaries a crowd, foul with the reek of tobacco,
alcohol and perspiration, was shuffling about in the hall and anterooms
of the colonel’s headquarters. The crowd was noisy, profane and
confident. But inside, the steering committee was assembled, and it was
very sober. Garwood, at the littered table, had been scratching his
head over political equations.
Conventions had been held in all the thirty-six outside districts, and
sixty-nine candidates had been nominated, fifty-five representatives
and fourteen senators. Of these they could depend upon twenty-nine.
It requires fifty-two to control a legislative caucus, when the party
has a bare majority on joint ballot, so they would have to nominate at
least twenty-three of their candidates in Cook County to get a caucus
majority, assuming the ultimate election of them all. Fifty-seven
candidates were to be selected in Cook County on the morrow. Of them,
they should name at least thirty-five to be entirely safe. In other
words, they must carry Cook County.
“Is that countin’ hold-over senators?” asked Mosely, when Garwood was
done.
“Yes, counting the hold-overs--Warren claims fourteen out of the
seventeen.”
“Josh Badger never’ll vote for him,” said Mosely.
“He gives us Josh,” Garwood replied. “Bates and Halliday are uncertain.”
“Not so damned uncertain,” said Mosely. “They’re only waitin’ to be
seen.”
“Warren’ll get them easy enough,” said Harkness.
“Yes, they’re cheap,” Mosely assented, spitting across the room at an
iron cuspidor. “’Bout eight dollars apiece, I’d guess ’em off at,” he
added, with a poor man’s contempt for low prices.
“Well, that only makes it worse,” replied Garwood. “But leave them out
entirely. With sixty-two votes Warren can control the caucus--”
“Providin’ al’ays, however,” suggested Mosely, in statutory language.
“Oh, course,” assented Garwood, petulant from the heat and the
situation, “they won’t all be elected. That’s why he’ll work like hell
to carry Cook. He lies when he says he doesn’t give a damn how she goes
to-morrow.”
“He always does that,” said the colonel, from his bed.
Carroll, to whom political calculations savored always of the mystery
of higher mathematics, said:
“Seems to me you could figure it better than that.”
“Well, you try it,” said Garwood, dropping his pencil and tilting back
in his chair.
There was not much hope, and the soberness deepened. After a while
there was a knock on the door, and a shaven head was thrust in.
“Them lit’ry guys is out here,” said the shaven head. “Any figur’s to
give out?”
“Figur’s?” cried Mosely. “We’ve got th’ official vote!”
And Garwood, taking his papers from the table, went out and said to the
reporters:
“Conventions have been held in all the senatorial districts down the
state, and sixty-nine candidates are already nominated. Of these
sixty-nine, we have beyond any question”--he consulted his paper, as
if to make sure of the number--“we have fifty-three, and that doesn’t
include the nine hold-over senators who are with us. We can lose ten of
them at the polls and still have enough to control the caucus. In Cook
County, to-morrow, we’ll carry the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth,
Eleventh, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-third and the
country towns--the Seventh--giving us thirty-five more candidates, or
ninety-seven in all. This is a conservative estimate, and gives the
doubtful districts to Warren. We can lose Cook to-morrow and still have
a fighting chance to win out. I regard the battle as ours. Senator
Warren is defeated.”
“Over at the Richelieu,” said Cowley, of the _News-Despatch_, “Baldwin
claims they have you whipped to a standstill.”
“They’re welcome over there to any comfort they can get out of the
situation,” said Garwood in a superior way.
It rained on the day of the primaries. All morning politicians, big
and little, stamped into Senator Warren’s hotel on Michigan Avenue, or
stamped into the Grand, tracking with greasy mud the muslin that had
been stretched over the carpet in Colonel Talbott’s headquarters. The
polls were to open at one o’clock. The colonel had risen early, after
three hours’ sleep, and snatched his breakfast from a tray, talking
to Carroll between bites. All morning he was buttonholed by men who
scuffled for a word, complaining that Warren’s fellows would have money
to burn, and he fought with them, bill by bill, for the few dollars he
had in his pocket. He was only liberal, to the extent that his slender
campaign funds permitted liberality, with those who were to work in
Carroll’s district. As the day wore on and he received reports and
despatched orders, like a general fighting a battle, the colonel’s
spirits rose, and the politicians, when he ordered them sharply about,
paused at the door to look back at him, pleased by the thought that
this was the Colonel Talbott of the good old days.
It was a wicked battle they fought out at the polls that day. The
Warren men had control of the party organization and named the judges
and clerks. Inmates of lodging houses, and Lake Front hoboes, their
rags steaming in the warm rain, were hauled from poll to poll in
big moving vans, and voted wherever Warren needed votes and as often
as he pleased. The city hall took a hand and furnished policemen
in larger numbers than the primary election law intended, so that
whenever an anti-Warren challenger challenged a vote he was hustled
by officers, and if he resisted, bundled off to the Harrison Street
police station and locked up on a charge of disturbance. Late in the
afternoon reports coming from Halsted Street that the Fifth Ward was
in danger, the colonel escaped from his headquarters and went into the
trenches himself. Carroll never forgot the old man as he splashed from
poll to poll that waning summer day, or stood in the drenching rain
before a voting booth, waving back policemen, ordering men up to vote,
threatening judges and clerks. He had never heard the old man swear
before.
At seven o’clock the polls closed. Warren carried some of the
districts, the opposition others. Both claimed the victory. It was left
for the convention to decide.
* * * * *
The colonel, for some reason, preferred not to get up the next
morning, but opened his mail, read his papers, ate his breakfast, and
finally held his morning levee, the last of the campaign, in bed. The
politicians who had been waiting outside for an hour, grumbled at such
indolence, and, when they were finally admitted to their leader’s
presence, suspected him of imitating the undemocratic luxuriousness of
Senator Warren, who received his callers in bed every morning. But by
nine o’clock they had received their final instructions and scattered
to the conventions, and when Mosely and Garwood sauntered in from the
breakfast-room, they found only a few stragglers, who lingered on in
the hope of beer money, at least, for their imaginary services on this
decisive day. Malachi Nolan, in black garments and white cravat, came
presently, his big diamond flashing, his face shining and red from his
dull razor, and then Carroll, at the sound of whose young step and
fresh laugh the colonel succeeded in evoking a wan, tired smile.
“Just lazy, that’s all,” he declared reassuringly, seeing Carroll halt
in surprise. He reared himself on his elbow, and as he raised his head,
its white hair all tangled, Carroll saw how haggard he was. He never
had seen him look so old, so white, so worn, before.
“I was waiting for you,” said the colonel, indicating Nolan with a
finger that was like a claw. “I’ve fixed everything but the First
District.” He paused for breath. “The First Ward’s solid, isn’t it?
Well, all right. But watch Donahue. I’m sorry we ever let him get
on the delegation. And then, let’s see”--he pressed his brow in a
troubled effort to steady his senses--“oh, yes. See McGlynn and have
him lay down on Hardy, and tell Reinhold that if he wants that job from
the South Park board he’d better get in line, and as to Wright--his
brother’s a conductor on the Cottage Grove line, and you can get at him
through Harlow. Tell him I sent you. That’ll give you thirty-five votes
on the first ballot, and--”
Carroll, who had turned to reply to some jest of Mosely’s, heard a
groan. Instantly he looked back at the colonel. The old politician,
his face livid, was struggling as if he wished to get out of bed. He
writhed a moment, then his head nodded, his chin dropped to his breast,
and he collapsed in a heap, among the tumbled bedclothes. Carroll paled
with a sudden sickness.
“He’s fainted,” said Garwood, fumbling at the throat of the colonel’s
shirt. Malachi Nolan brought a cup of water, Mosely hunted impatiently
for a flask of whisky, and when they had straightened him out upon his
pillows, Carroll ran for the hotel physician. The colonel recovered
consciousness before the physician came and glanced around with an
expression of embarrassment.
“Damn such a heart, anyway,” he said. Then young Doctor Lambert
came with his new stethoscope. When the doctor had finished his
auscultation, the colonel said:
“Malachi, vote your delegation solid every time--don’t give
complimentary votes--it’s dangerous. And remember--I don’t care what
happens so long as Carroll’s nominated, trade anything, everything for
that, and send me word--”
But they hushed him.
At noon Doctor Foerder, the specialist, arrived.
“Ah, Lambert,” he said, scowling about him as he put down his
tremendous leather valise, big with the mysterious contrivances of
modern surgery, pulled off his gloves, and with his quick, professional
tread, stepped to the bedside. He exposed the colonel’s big chest,
and began a delicate percussion with his white fingers. When he had
done tapping, he laid his ear over the colonel’s heart, and listened
silently a long time to the cardiac murmurs, he rolled under his
fingers the superficial vessels of the temples, the forearms, the
wrists, the knees, he counted the pulse; and he looked long at the old
man’s finger-nails. When he paused, the colonel said:
“Well?”
Doctor Foerder had retreated from the bedside and was writing his
directions precisely, logically, as an official draws up a report,
beginning each paragraph with a Roman numeral. He did not answer the
colonel.
Foerder briefly consulted with Lambert, that is, repeated the
directions he had already written out, and began to buckle his big
valise.
“And as to a nurse?” asked Doctor Lambert.
“I’ll send one of my own,” said Foerder, hastily lighting a Russian
cigarette. He could not remain long in one place. He had patients to
see and a lecture to deliver over at Rush Medical College and his man
was waiting with his high-hooded phaeton down in Jackson Boulevard.
The nurse, diffusing a faint odor of antiseptics, came from Doctor
Foerder’s private hospital, laid aside her bonnet and veil and pausing
an instant to give a woman’s touch to her hair, quietly and deftly set
the room in order.
All that afternoon the colonel lay in his darkened bedroom, fighting
the battle of his life. He lay so still that the nurse almost fancied
him asleep, so regular was his breathing. Once he broke the silence by
asking the time.
“Twenty minutes after three,” the nurse responded, glancing at her
little watch.
“Some of the conventions, then,” the colonel said, “are over. I wonder
why they don’t send me word.”
The nurse did not notice his speech, and he added:
“Pardon me, you doubtless are not interested in politics.”
The talking brought on a spasm of dyspnœa, and the colonel struggled so
painfully for his breath that the nurse had to prop him up with pillows
in a sitting posture, as those who are afflicted with asthma pass their
nights, finding it easier thus to breathe. The colonel begged the
nurse’s pardon, as if he had committed some indelicacy.
About this time news was brought from the Fifth District convention in
Arlington Hall and from the Sixth in Jung’s Hall, that the Warren men
had carried both districts. The colonel, hearing the hoarse whispering
between the messengers and Mosely in the room outside, demanded
information, and Doctor Lambert had to tell him. The colonel wished
to see Mosely, he had some new plan for the West Side to offset their
loss; and he saw Mosely and the plan was put in execution. Then the
colonel seemed once more to sleep. When he opened his eyes he asked if
he could not have a cigar--“seegar,” he pronounced it--assuring the
nurse that he felt much better, but she said, as one might say to the
whim of a child to whom explanations are not vouchsafed:
“Not just now.”
And there was silence again, and the ticking of the nurse’s little
watch.
By four o’clock the colonel became restless once more, and asked if
there were any news. When the nurse said no, he insisted that there
must be some message, some letter, some telegram. He did not know that
his followers, vindicating all history, were now standing afar off. He
worried and grew incoherent. He seemed to confuse Carroll with the boy
who was sleeping under the stars far away in Arizona.
Doctor Foerder returned at four o’clock. He had not been expected
before evening, but he was interested in the case. He had mentioned it
in his lecture that day. He had commented on the wonderful display of
vitality on the patient’s part, and spoken of the value in such cases
of moral treatment, of encouraging words and a confident manner. He
read the nurse’s chart, counted the colonel’s pulse for fifteen seconds
and calculated the rate by multiplication, drew down the old man’s
eyelids, noting the senile arc that was whitening the periphery of the
cornea, and he examined the finger-nails; then the percussion and the
auscultation. When he raised his black head, the colonel said:
“Any news?”
“You’re doing well.”
“Aw!” said the colonel impatiently, “I don’t mean that--any news from
the conventions?”
Foerder hesitated, as if half reluctant to display interest in anything
so human, but said:
“Yes.”
“What?” said the colonel eagerly, his eyes brightening with a light
that alarmed the doctor.
“They say you’ve carried some districts on the North Side.”
“Which ones?” asked the colonel.
“Don’t remember.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, they say Warner has carried some North Side districts, too--and
some West Side districts.”
“Warner?”
“Well, whatever his name is.”
Then Foerder was silent, and the colonel lay a long time thinking.
“Did you learn how it’s going in the Ninth, or the Second, or the
Seventeenth?”
“They say it’s about an even break everywhere.”
“And how’s the First?” The colonel put this question in a whisper, as
if he feared the answer. The doctor did not know. Then the silence
again, and the colonel’s labored breathing, and the ticking of the
nurse’s little gold watch.
“What district do you live in, Doctor?” the colonel asked later.
“I?” replied the medical man in some surprise.
“Yes.”
“I--why, I don’t know,” he said.
The colonel faintly smiled. “Where do you live, then?”
“In Drexel Boulevard.”
“That’s the Fifth,” the colonel said. “Warren carried that.”
“Did he?” The doctor looked as if he were ashamed. “We mustn’t talk any
more just now.”