grandly as ever "Childe Roland to the dark tower came"--to use Hedrick's
language. "No one ever has been able to find out what Roland was up to
when he went to the dark tower, but," continued Hedrick, "with Ab and
his child-wonder it will be different. She isn't taking all that special
scenery along in her trunks for nothing. Ab has stumbled on to this
great truth--that clothes may not make the man, but they make the
crook!"
Handy drew a dark brow when he became a Senator, and made a point of
trying to look ominous. He carried his chin tilted up at an angle of
forty-five degrees, and spoke of the most obvious things with an air of
mystery. He never admitted anything; his closest approach to committing
himself on even so apparent a proposition as the sunrise, was that it
had risen "ostensibly"; he became known to the reporters as "Old
Ostensible."
It was his habit to tiptoe around the Senate chamber whispering to other
Senators, and then having sat down to rise suddenly as though some great
impulse had come to him and hurry into the cloakroom. He inherited the
chairmanship of the railroad committee, and all employees came to him
for their railroad passes; so he was the god of the blue-bottle flies of
politics that feed on legislatures, and buzz pompously about the capitol
doing nothing, at three dollars a day. In that session Handy was for the
"peepul." He patronised the State Shippers' Association, and told their
committee that he would give them a better railroad bill than they were
asking. His practice was to commit to memory a bill that he was about to
introduce and then go into his committee-room, when it was full of
loafers, and pretend to dictate it offhand to the stenographer, section
by section without pausing. It was an impressive performance, and gained
Handy the reputation of being brainy. But we at home who knew Handy
were not impressed; and, in our office, we knew that he was the same Ab
Handy who once did business with a marked deck; who cheated widows and
orphans; who sold bogus bonds; who got on two sides of lawsuits, and
whose note was never good at any bank unless backed by blackmail.
When the session closed Abner Handy came home, a statesman with views on
the tariff, and ostentatiously displayed his thousand-dollar bills. The
Handys spent the summer in Atlantic City, and Abner came home wearing
New York clothes of an exaggerated type, and though he never showed it
in our town, they used to say that he put on a high hat when the train
whistled for Topeka. Also we heard that the first time Mrs. Handy
appeared at the political hotel in her New York regalia, adorned with
spangles and beads and cords and tassels, the "ladies of the hotel" said
that she was "fixed up like a Christmas tree"--a remark that we in the
office coupled with Colonel Morrison's reflection when he spoke of Ab's
"illustrated vests." At the meeting of the State Federation of Woman's
Clubs, Mrs. Handy first flourished her lorgnette, and came home with
her wedding ring made over on a pattern after the prevailing style.
About this time she made her famous remark to "Aunt" Martha Merrifield
that she didn't think it proper for a woman to go through her husband's
money with too sensitive a nose; she said that men must work and women
must weep, and that she for one would not make the work of her husband
any harder by criticising it with her silly morals.
As for Abner Handy, it would have made little difference to him then
whether she or anyone else had tried to check his career; for he was
cultivating a loud tone of voice and a regal sweep to his arms. He
always signed himself on hotel registers Senator Handy, and the help
about the Topeka hotels began to mark him for their hate, for he was
insolent to those whom he regarded as his inferiors. But Colonel
Morrison used to say that he wore his vest-buttons off crawling to those
in authority. He took little notice of the town. He referred to us as
"his people" in a fine feudal way, and went about town with his cigar
pointing toward his hat brim and his eyes fixed on something in the next
block. He became the attorney for a number of crooked promotion schemes,
and the diamond rings on his wife's fingers crowded the second joint. He
had telegraph and express franks, railway and Pullman passes in such
quantities that it made his coat pocket bulge to carry them. Often he
would spread out these evidences of his shame on his office table, to
awe the local politicians, and in so far as they could influence the
town opinion, they promulgated the idea that if Ab Handy was a
scoundrel--and of course he was--he was a smart scoundrel. So he came to
think this himself.
[Illustration: Went about town with his cigar pointing toward his
hat-brim]
Mrs. Handy threw herself into the work of the City Federation with
passionate zeal. Also she kept up her lodge connections, and explained
to the women, whom she considered of a higher social caste than the
lodge women, that she was "doing it to help Mr. Handy." She did a little
church work for the same reason, but her soul was in the Federation, for
it insured her social status as neither lodge nor church could do. So
she put herself under the protecting seal-lined wing of Mrs. Julia Neal
Worthington who on account of her efforts to clean the streets we at
the office had been taught by Colonel Morrison to know as the Joan of
the trash-cans. And Miss Larrabee, our society reporter, told us that
Mrs. Handy was the only woman in town who did not smile into her
handkerchief when Mrs. Worthington, who had trained down to one hundred
and ninety-seven pounds five and three-eighths ounces, gave her course
of lectures on delsarte before the Federation.
It was Mrs. Handy who encouraged Mrs. Worthington to open her salon. But
as there were lodge meetings the first three nights in the week, and
prayer-meetings in the middle of the week, and as the choirs met for
practice, and the whist clubs met for business the last of the week, the
salon did not seem to take with the town, and so was discontinued. Then
Mrs. Worthington and Mrs. Handy sought other fields. And the first field
they stumbled into was the court-house square. For fifty years the
farmers near our town had been hitching at the racks provided by the
county commissioners. But Mrs. Worthington decided that the time had
come for a change and that the town was getting large enough to take
down the hitching-racks. So, as chairman of the Municipal Improvement
section of the City Federation, Mrs. Worthington began war on the
hitching-racks. At the Federation meetings for three months there were
reports from committees appointed to interview the councilmen; reports
of committees to interview the county commissioners--who were obdurate;
reports of committees to lease new ground for the hitching rack stands;
reports of the legal committee; reports of the sanitary committee, and
through it all Mrs. Worthington rose at every meeting and declared that
the hitching racks must be destroyed. And as she was rated in
Bradstreet's report at nearly half a million dollars, her words had much
force.
The town was beginning to stir itself. The merchants were with the
women--because the women bought the dry goods and groceries--and we
forgot about the farmers. To all this milling among the people Handy was
oblivious, for he was stepping like a hen in high oats, with his eyes on
a seat in Congress. Matters of mere local importance did not concern
him. The railroads were for him, and the stars in their courses seemed
to him to be pointing his way to Washington. He knew of the
hitching-rack trouble only when he had to go with Mrs. Handy to the
dinners at the Worthington home given to the councilmen and their wives,
who were lukewarm on the removal proposition.
In the spring before the election of 1902 Mrs. Worthington had a
majority in the council, and one Saturday night the hitching-racks were
taken down by the street commissioner. And within a week the town was on
the verge of civil war, for the farmers of the county rose as one man
and demanded the blood of the offenders. But Abner Handy knew nothing of
the disturbance. The county attorney had the street commissioner and his
men arrested for trespassing upon county property; farmers threatened to
boycott the town. But Abner Handy's ear was attuned to higher things.
Merchants who had signed the petition asking the council to remove the
racks began to denounce the removal as an act of treason. But Abner
Handy conferred with State leaders on great questions, and the city
attorney, who was a candidate for county attorney that fall, did not
dare to defend the street commissioner. The council got stubborn, and
Colonel Morrison, before whom as justice of the peace the case was to be
tried, fearing for the professional safety of his three daughters in the
town schools and his four daughters in the county schools, took a trip
to his wife's people, and told us he was enlisted there for "ninety days
or during the war"; and still Abner Handy looked at the green hills
afar.
We are generally accounted by ourselves a fearless newspaper; but here
we admitted that the situation required discretion. So we straddled it.
We wrote cautious editorials in carefully-balanced sentences demanding
that the people keep cool. We advised both sides to realise that only
good sense and judgment would straighten out the tangle. We demanded
that each side recognise the other's rights and made both sides angry,
whereas General Durham, of the _Statesman_, made his first popular
stroke in a dozen years by insisting, in double leads and italics, that
the tariff on hides was a divine institution, and that humanity called
upon us to hold the Philippines. Charley Hedrick knew better than
anyone else in town what a tempest was rising. He might have warned
Handy, but he did not; for Handy had reached a point in his career where
he considered that a mere county boss was beneath his confidence. More
than that, Hedrick had refused to indorse Handy's note at the bank.
Handy needed money, and being a shorn lamb, the wind changed in his
direction in this wise:
In the midst of the furore that week, Mrs. Worthington gave an evening
reception for the Federation and its husbands at her mansion, fed them
sumptuously, and, after Mrs. Handy had tapped a bell for silence, Mrs.
Worthington rose in her jet and passementerie and announced that our
town had come to a crisis in its career; that we must now decide whether
we were going to be a beautiful little city or a cow pasture. She said
that beauty was as much an essential to life as money and that we would
be better off with more beauty and less trade, and that with the
court-house square a mudhole the town could never rise to any real
consequence. As the men of the town seemed to be moral cowards, she was
going to enlist the women in this war, and as the first step in her
campaign she proposed to hire the Honourable Abner Handy to assist the
city attorney in fighting this case, and as a retainer she would
herewith and now hand him her personal check for five hundred dollars.
Whereat the women clapped their hands, their husbands winked at one
another, and "there was a sound of revelry by night." The check was put
on a silver card-tray by Mrs. Worthington and set on a table in the
midst of the company waiting for Handy to come forward and take it.
After the town had looked at the check, Mrs. Handy seemed to cut his
leashes and Abner went after it. He was waiting at the Worthington bank
the next morning at nine o'clock to cash it--and all the town saw that
also.
Whereupon the town grinned broadly that evening when it read in the
_Statesman_ a most laudatory article about "our distinguished
fellow-townsman." The article declared that it was "the duty of the hour
to send Honourable Abner Handy to the halls of Congress." The
_Statesman_ contended that "Judge Handy had been for a lifetime the
defender of those grand and glorious principles of freedom and
protection and sound money for which the Grand Old Party stood." The
General proclaimed that "it shall be not only a duty, but a pleasure,
for our citizens to lay aside all petty personal and factional quarrels
and rally round the standard of our noble leader in this great contest."
If Handy ever went to the city attorney's office to look after Mrs.
Worthington's lawsuit, no one knew it. He smiled wisely when asked how
the suit was progressing, and one day John Markley--who during the life
of Ezra Worthington, hated him with a ten-horse-power hate and loaded it
onto his widow's shoulders and the Worthington bank which she
inherited--John Markley called Handy into the back room of the Markley
Mortgage Company, and, when Handy passed the cashier's window going out,
he cashed a check signed by John Markley for a thousand dollars on which
was inscribed "for legal services in assisting the county attorney in
the hitching rack case."
Handy had arrived at a point where he feared nothing. He seemed to
believe that he lived a charmed life and never would get caught. He
bought extra copies of the _Statesman_, which was booming him for
Congress, and sent them over the Congressional District by the
thousands. He went to Topeka in his high silk hat and his New York
clothes, gave out interviews on the causes of the flurry in the money
market, and, desiring further advertisement, gave a banquet for the
newspaper men of the capital which cost him a hundred dollars. So he
became a great man. At home he assumed a patronising air to the people
about Charley Hedrick. And one night in Smith's cigar store, just to be
talking, he said that he didn't get so much of Mrs. Worthington's money
as people thought, for part of it had to go to "square old Charley
Hedrick." Hedrick was John Markley's attorney, and he had taken an
active part in helping the county attorney prosecute the street
commissioners. Naturally Handy's remark stirred up the town. It was two
weeks, however, in getting to Hedrick, and when it came the man turned
black and seemed to be swallowing a pint of emotional language before he
spoke. And there Abner Handy's doom was sealed; though Hedrick did not
make the sentence public.
Now, it is well known in our county that the country people are slow to
wrath. They were two months finding out beyond a question of doubt that
Abner Handy had accepted Mrs. Worthington's money to act against them,
but when they knew this there was no hope for Handy among them. They are
a quiet people, and make no noise. For a month, only Charley Hedrick and
the grocers and the hardware men, with whom the farmers trade, knew the
truth about Handy's standing in the county. Hedrick bided his time. The
Handy boom for Congress was rolling over the district, and the
_Statesman_ italics were becoming worn, and its exclamation points
battered in the service, when one day Handy stalked up to Hedrick's
office, imperiously beckoned Hedrick into the private room, and blurted
out:
"Charley, I got to have some more money--need it in my business. Can't
you touch old John Markley for me again--say for about five hundred on
that hitching rack case? Sister Worthington is kind of wanting me to get
action on her case."
Hedrick was dumb with rage, but Handy thought it was acquiescence. He
went on:
"You just step down to the bank and say: 'John, I've noticed Ab Handy
actin' kind of queer about that hitching rack case.' That's all you need
say, and pretty soon I'll step in and say: 'John, I don't see how I can
help doin' something for Aunt Julia Worthington.' And I believe I can
tap him for five hundred more easy enough. I got an idea he is mightily
in earnest about beating her in that suit."
When Hedrick got his breath, which was churning and wheezing in his
throat, he cut Handy's sentence off with:
"You human razor-back shoat--you swill-barrel gladiator,
why--why--I--I----" And Hedrick sparred for wind and went on before
Handy realised the situation. "Ab Handy, I spat on the dust and breathed
into the chaff that made you, and put you on the mud-sills of hell to
dry, and I've got a right to turn you back into fertiliser, and I'm
going to do it. Git out of here--git out of this office, or I----"
And the hulking form of Hedrick fell on the bag of shaking bones that
was Handy and battered him through the latched door into the crowded
outer office; and Handy picked himself up and ran like a wolf, turning
at the door to show his teeth before he scampered through the hall and
scurried down the stairs. As Hedrick came puffing out of the broken door
his coat snagged on a splinter. He grinned as he unfastened himself:
"Well, the snail seems to be on the thorn; the lark certainly is on the
wing.
"_God's in his heaven.
All's right with the world!_"
And he batted his eyes at the group of loafing local statesmen in his
office as he viewed the wreckage, and went to the telephone and ordered
a carpenter, without wasting any words on the crowd.
We decided long ago that the source of Hedrick's power in politics was
what we called his "do it now" policy. All politicians have schemes.
Hedrick puts his through before he talks about them. If he has an idea
that satisfies his judgment, he makes it a reality in the quickest
possible time. That is why the fellows around town who hate Hedrick call
him the rattlesnake, and those who admire him call him the Wrath of
God. When he put up the telephone receiver he reached for his hat and
bolted from the office under a full head of steam. He went directly to
John Markley's back office, got the check that Markley had given to
Handy, dictated a letter in the anteroom of Markley's office to a Kansas
City plate-maker, inclosed fifty dollars as he passed the draft counter,
and, as he swung by the post-office he mailed the Handy check with
instructions to have ten photographic half-tone cuts made of the check
and mailed back to Hedrick in four days.
Then he went to Mrs. Worthington, told her his story, as a lawyer puts
his case before a jury--had her raging at Ab Handy--and got an order on
the bank for the check she had given to Handy. This also he sent to the
plate-maker, and in an hour was back at his desk dictating a half-page
advertisement to go into every Republican weekly newspaper in the
district. He sent that advertisement out with the half-tone cuts Monday
morning, and it appeared all over the district that week. The
advertisement was signed by Hedrick, and began:
"Browning has a poem made after visiting a dead house, and in it he
describes the corpse of a suicide, and says 'one clear, nice, cool
squirt of water o'er the bust,' is the 'right thing to extinguish lust.'
And I desire this advertisement to be 'one clear, nice, cool squirt of
water' over the political remains of Honourable Abner Handy, to
extinguish if possible his fatal lust for crooked money." After this
followed the story of Handy's perfidy in the hitching rack case, a
petition in disbarment proceedings, and the copy of the warrant for his
arrest charged with a felony in the case sworn to by Hedrick himself.
But the effective thing was the pictures, showing both sides of the two
checks, each carefully inscribed by the two makers "for legal services
in the hitching rack case," and each check indorsed by Handy in his big,
brazen signature.
Hedrick saw to it also that, on the day the country papers printed his
advertisement, the Kansas City and Topeka papers printed the whole
story, including the casting out of Handy from Hedrick's office. It did
Handy little good to go to Topeka in his flashy clothes and give out a
festive interview asking his friends to suspend judgment, and saying
that he would try his case in the courts and not in the newspapers. It
was contended by the newspapers that if Handy had an honest defence, it
would lose no weight in court by being printed in the newspapers; and
his enemies in the Congressional fight pushed the charges against Handy
so relentlessly that the public faith in him melted like an April snow,
and when the delegates to the Congressional convention were named, our
own county instructed its delegates against Handy. The farmers opposed
him for taking the case against them, and the town scorned him for his
perfidy. No one who was not paid for it would peddle his tickets at the
primaries, so Handy, with his money all spent, went home on the night of
the local primaries a whipped dog. They said around town that all the
whipped dog got at home was a tin can; for it is certain that at
daylight Handy was down on Main Street viciously drunk, flourishing a
revolver with which he said he was going to kill Charley Hedrick and
then himself. They took the pistol from him, and then he wept and said
he was going to jump in the river, but no one followed him when he
started toward the bridge, and he fell asleep in the shade of the piers,
where he was found during the morning, washed up and sent home sober.
One of the curious revelations of society's partnership in crime was the
way the grocers and butchers who despised Ab Handy's method, but shared
his gains when he succeeded, stopped giving him credit when he failed.
At the end of the first year after the primary wherein he was defeated,
the Handys could not get a dime's worth of beefsteak without the dime.
And dimes were scarce. By that time Handy was wearing his flashy New
York clothes for every day--frayed and spotted and rusty. His
temperament changed with his clothes, from the oily optimism of success
to the sodden pessimism of utter failure; which inspired Colonel
Morrison, returning after the hitching rack case had been settled in
favour of the town, to remark, speaking of Handy, that "an optimist is a
man who isn't caught, and is cheering to keep up his courage, and a
pessimist is one who has been caught and thinks it will be but a
question of time until his neighbours are found out too."
Mrs. Worthington, who was a necessary witness in the disbarment
proceedings and the criminal proceedings against Handy, always went to
Europe when the cases were called; so rather than put a woman in jail
for contempt of court, the court dismissed the proceedings against Handy
and he was not allowed to be even a martyr. One morning about a year and
a half after Handy's defeat, when Hedrick opened his office door, he
found Handy there with his fingers clutching the chair arms and his eyes
fixed on the floor. The man was breathing audibly, and seemed to be
struggling with a great passion. Hedrick and Handy had not spoken since
they came through the panels of the door together, but Hedrick went to
the miserable creature, touched him gently on the shoulder, and motioned
him into the private office. There, with his eyes still on the floor,
Handy told Hedrick that the end of the rope had been reached.
"I had to come down without any breakfast this
morning--because--they--they ain't anything in the house for her to fix.
And there ain't any show for dinner. Next week, Red Martin has promised
me some money he's goin' to get from Jim Huddleson; but they ain't a
soul in town but you I can come to now"; and Handy raised his eyes from
the floor in canine self-pity as he whined--"and she's making life a
hell for me!" When Hedrick opened his desk and got out his check-book,
he smiled as he fancied he could detect about Handy's body the faint
resemblance of a wagging tail. He made the check for fifty dollars and
gave it to Handy saying, "Oh, well, Ab--we'll let bygones be bygones."
Handy snapped at it and in an instant was gone.
That afternoon Hedrick met Handy sailing down Main Street in his old
manner. His head was erect, his eyes were sparkling, his big, rough,
statesman's voice was bellowing abroad, and his thumbs were in the
armholes of his vest. He walked straight to Hedrick and led him by the
coat lapel into a dark stairway. There was an air of deep mystery about
Handy and when he put his arm on Hedrick to whisper in his ear,
Hedrick, smelling the statesman's breath heavy with whiskey and onions
and cloves and cardamon seeds and pungent gum, heard this: