something like resentment. When the tumult at last subsided, and he saw
that he was expected to make a speech, he grew very red, and grasped his
chair desperately.
The reporters were back in their places, leaning nervously forward.
This was Senator Harrison's chance to say something worth putting into a
panel by itself with black lines around it--and they were sure he would
do it.
But he did not. He stood there like a schoolboy who had forgotten his
piece--growing more and more red. “I--I think,” he finally jerked out,
“that some of us have been mistaken. I'm in favour now of--of giving him
his chance.”
They waited for him to proceed, but after a helpless look around the
Chamber he sat down. The president of the Senate waited several minutes
for him to rise again, but he at last turned his chair around and
looked out at the green things on the State-house grounds, and there
was nothing to do but go ahead with the second calling of the roll. This
time it stood 50 to 12 in favour of the boy.
A motion to adjourn immediately followed--no one wanted to do anything
more that afternoon. They all wanted to say things to the Senator from
Johnson; but his face had grown cold, and as they were usually afraid of
him, anyhow, they kept away. All but Senator Dorman--it meant too much
with him. “Do you mind my telling you,” he said, tensely, “that it was
as fine a thing as I have ever known a man to do?”
The Senator from Johnson moved impatiently. “You think it 'fine,'” he
asked, almost resentfully, “to be a coward?”
“Coward?” cried the other man. “Well, that's scarcely the word. It
was--heroic!”
“Oh no,” said Senator Harrison, and he spoke wearily, “it was a clear
case of cowardice. You see,” he laughed, “I was afraid it might haunt me
when I am seventy.”
Senator Dorman started eagerly to speak, but the other man stopped him
and passed on. He was seeing it as his constituency would see it, and
it humiliated him. They would say he had not the courage of his
convictions, that he was afraid of the unpopularity, that his judgment
had fallen victim to the eloquence of the Senator from Maxwell.
But when he left the building and came out into the softness of the
April afternoon it began to seem different. After all, it was not he
alone who leaned to the softer side. There were the trees--they were
permitted another chance to bud; there were the birds--they were allowed
another chance to sing; there was the earth--to it was given another
chance to yield. There stole over him a tranquil sense of unison with
Life.
III
FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS
“Sure you're done with it?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the girl, the suggestion of a smile on her face, and
in her voice the suggestion of a tear. “Yes; I was just going.”
But she did not go. She turned instead to the end of the alcove and sat
down before a table placed by the window. Leaning her elbows upon it she
looked about her through a blur of tears.
Seen through her own eyes of longing, it seemed that almost all of the
people whom she could see standing before the files of the daily papers
were homesick. The reading-room had been a strange study to her during
those weeks spent in fruitless search for the work she wanted to do, and
it had likewise proved a strange comfort. When tired and disconsolate
and utterly sick at heart there was always one thing she could do--she
could go down to the library and look at the paper from home. It was not
that she wanted the actual news of Denver. She did not care in any vital
way what the city officials were doing, what buildings were going up, or
who was leaving town. She was only indifferently interested in the fires
and the murders. She wanted the comforting companionship of that paper
from home.
It seemed there were many to whom the papers offered that same sympathy,
companionship, whatever it might be. More than anything else it perhaps
gave to them--the searchers, drifters--a sense of anchorage. She would
not soon forget the day she herself had stumbled in there and found the
home paper. Chicago had given her nothing but rebuffs that day, and in
desperation, just because she must go somewhere, and did not want to go
back to her boarding-place, she had hunted out the city library. It was
when walking listlessly about in the big reading-room it had occurred to
her that perhaps she could find the paper from home; and after that when
things were their worst, when her throat grew tight and her eyes dim,
she could always comfort herself by saying: “After a while I'll run down
and look at the paper.”
But to-night it had failed her. It was not the paper from home to-night;
it was just a newspaper. It did not inspire the belief that things would
be better to-morrow, that it must all come right soon. It left her as
she had come---heavy with the consciousness that in her purse was eleven
dollars, and that that was every cent she had in the whole world.
It was hard to hold back the tears as she dwelt upon the fact that it
was very little she had asked of Chicago. She had asked only a chance to
do the work for which she was trained, in order that she might go to the
art classes at night. She had read in the papers of that mighty young
city of the Middle West--the heart of the continent--of its brawn and
its brain and its grit. She had supposed that Chicago, of all places,
would appreciate what she wanted to do. The day she drew her hard-earned
one hundred dollars from the bank in Denver--how the sun had shone that
day in Denver, how clear the sky had been, and how bracing the air!--she
had quite taken it for granted that her future was assured. And now,
after tasting for three weeks the cruelty of indifference, she looked
back to those visions with a hard little smile.
She rose to go, and in so doing her eyes fell upon the queer little
woman to whom she had yielded her place before the Denver paper.
Submerged as she had been in her own desolation she had given no heed
to the small figure which came slipping along beside her beyond the bare
thought that she was queer-looking. But as her eyes rested upon her now
there was something about the woman which held her.
She was a strange little figure. An old-fashioned shawl was pinned
tightly about her shoulders, and she was wearing a queer, rusty little
bonnet. Her hair was rolled up in a small knot at the back of her head.
She did not look as though she belonged in Chicago. And then, as the
girl stood there looking at her, she saw the thin shoulders quiver, and
after a minute the head that was wearing the rusty bonnet went down into
the folds of the Denver paper.
The girl's own eyes filled, and she turned to go. It seemed she could
scarcely bear her own unhappiness that day, without coming close to the
heartache of another. But when she reached the end of the alcove she
glanced back, and the sight of that shabby, bent figure, all alone
before the Denver paper, was not to be withstood.
“I am from Colorado, too,” she said softly, laying a hand upon the bent
shoulders.
The woman looked up at that and took the girl's hand in both of her
thin, trembling ones. It was a wan and a troubled face she lifted, and
there was something about the eyes which would not seem to have been
left there by tears alone.
“And do you have a pining for the mountains?” she whispered, with a
timid eagerness. “Do you have a feeling that you want to see the sun
go down behind them tonight and that you want to see the darkness come
stealing up to the tops?”
The girl half turned away, but she pressed the woman's hand tightly in
hers. “I know what you mean,” she murmured.
“I wanted to see it so bad,” continued the woman, tremulously, “that
something just drove me here to this paper. I knowed it was here because
my nephew's wife brought me here one day and we come across it. We took
this paper at home for more 'an twenty years. That's why I come. 'Twas
the closest I could get.”
“I know what you mean,” said the girl again, unsteadily.
“And it's the closest I will ever get!” sobbed the woman.
“Oh, don't say that,” protested the girl, brushing away her own tears,
and trying to smile; “you'll go back home some day.”
The woman shook her head. “And if I should,” she said, “even if I
should, 'twill be too late.”
“But it couldn't be too late,” insisted the girl. “The mountains, you
know, will be there forever.”
“The mountains will be there forever,” repeated the woman, musingly;
“yes, but not for me to see.” There was a pause. “You see,”--she said it
quietly--“I'm going blind.”
The girl took a quick step backward, then stretched out two impulsive
hands. “Oh, no, no you're not! Why--the doctors, you know, they do
everything now.”
The woman shook her head. “That's what I thought when I come here.
That's why I come. But I saw the biggest doctor of them all today--they
all say he's the best there is--and he said right out 'twas no use to do
anything. He said 'twas--hopeless.”
Her voice broke on that word. “You see,” she hurried on, “I wouldn't
care so much, seems like I wouldn't care 't all, if I could get there
first! If I could see the sun go down behind them just one night! If I
could see the black shadows come slippin' over 'em just once! And then,
if just one morning--just once!--I could get up and see the sunlight
come a streamin'--oh, you know how it looks! You know what 'tis I want
to see!”
“Yes; but why can't you? Why not? You won't go--your eyesight will last
until you get back home, won't it?”
“But I can't go back home; not now.”
“Why not?” demanded the girl. “Why can't you go home?”
“Why, there ain't no money, my dear,” she explained, patiently. “It's a
long way off--Colorado is, and there ain't no money. Now, George--George
is my brother-in-law--he got me the money to come; but you see it took
it all to come here, and to pay them doctors with. And George--he ain't
rich, and it pinched him hard for me to come--he says I'll have to wait
until he gets money laid up again, and--well he can't tell just when 't
will be. He'll send it soon as he gets it,” she hastened to add.
“But what are you going to do in the meantime? It would cost less to get
you home than to keep you here.”
“No, I stay with my nephew here. He's willin' I should stay with him
till I get my money to go home.”
“Yes, but this nephew, can't he get you the money? Doesn't he know,” she
insisted, heatedly, “what it means to you?”
“He's got five children, and not much laid up. And then, he never seen
the mountains. He doesn't know what I mean when I try to tell him about
gettin' there in time. Why, he says there's many a one living back in
the mountains would like to be livin' here. He don't understand--my
nephew don't,” she added, apologetically.
“Well, _someone_ ought to understand!” broke from the girl. “I
understand! But--” she did her best to make it a laugh--“eleven dollars
is every cent I've got in the world!”
“Don't!” implored the woman, as the girl gave up trying to control the
tears. “Now, don't you be botherin'. I didn't mean to make you feel so
bad. My nephew says I ain't reasonable, and maybe I ain't.”
The girl raised her head. “But you _are_ reasonable. I tell you, you
_are_ reasonable!”
“I must be going back,” said the woman, uncertainly. “I'm just making
you feel bad, and it won't do no good. And then they may be stirred up
about me. Emma--Emma's my nephew's wife--left me at the doctor's office
'cause she had some trading to do, and she was to come back there for
me. And then, as I was sittin' there, the pinin' came over me so strong
it seemed I just must get up and start! And”---she smiled wanly---“this
was far as I got.”
“Come over and sit down by this table,” said the girl, impulsively, “and
tell me a little about your home back in the mountains. Wouldn't you
like to?”
The woman nodded gratefully. “Seems most like getting back to them to
find someone that knows about them,” she said, after they had drawn
their chairs up to the table and were sitting there side by side.
The girl put her rounded hand over on the thin, withered one. “Tell me
about it,” she said again.
“Maybe it wouldn't be much interesting to you, my dear. It's just a
common life--mine is. You see, William and I--William was my husband--we
went to Georgetown before it really was any town at all. Years and years
before the railroad went through, we was there. Was you ever there?” she
asked wistfully.
“Oh, very often,” replied the girl. “I love every inch of that country!”
A tear stole down the woman's face. “It's most like being home to find
someone that knows about it,” she whispered.
“Yes, William and I went there when 'twas all new country,” she went
on, after a pause. “We worked hard, and we laid up a little money. Then,
three years ago, William took sick. He was sick for a year, and we had
to live up most of what we'd saved. That's why I ain't got none now. It
ain't that William didn't provide.”
The girl nodded.
“We seen some hard days. But we was always harmonious--William and
I was. And William had a great fondness for the mountains. The night
before he died he made them take him over by the window and he looked
out and watched the darkness come stealin' over the daylight--you know
how it does in them mountains. 'Mother,' he said to me--his voice was
that low I could no more 'an hear what he said--'I'll never see another
sun go down, but I'm thankful I seen this one.'”
She was crying outright now, and the girl did not try to stop her.
“And that's the reason I love the mountains,” she whispered at last. “It
ain't just that they're grand and wonderful to look at. It ain't just
the things them tourists sees to talk about. But the mountains has
always been like a comfortin' friend to me. John and Sarah is buried
there--John and Sarah is my two children that died of fever. And then
William is there--like I just told you. And the mountains was a comfort
to me in all those times of trouble. They're like an old friend. Seems
like they're the best friend I've got on earth.”
“I know what you mean,” said the girl, brokenly. “I know all about it.”
“And you don't think I'm just notional,” she asked wistfully, “in pinin'
to get back while--whilst I can look at them?”
The girl held the old hand tightly in hers with a clasp more responsive
than words.
“It ain't but I'd know they was there. I could feel they was there all
right, but”--her voice sank with the horror of it--“I'm 'fraid I might
forget just how they look!”
“Oh, but you won't,” the girl assured her. “You'll remember just how
they look.”
“I'm scared of it. I'm scared there might be something I'd forget. And
so I just torment myself thinkin'--'Now do I remember this? Can I
see just how that looks?' That's the way I got to thinkin' up in the
doctor's office, when he told me there was nothing to do, and I was so
worked up it seemed I must get up and start!”
“You must try not to worry about it,” murmured the girl. “You'll
remember.”
“Well, maybe so. Maybe I will. But that's why I want just one more look.
If I could look once more I'd remember it forever. You see I'd look to
remember it, and I would. And do you know--seems like I wouldn't mind
going blind so much then? When I'd sit facin' them I'd just say to
myself: 'Now I know just how they look. I'm seeing them just as if I had
my eyes!' The doctor says my sight'll just kind of slip away, and when I
look my last look, when it gets dimmer and dimmer to me, I want the last
thing I see to be them mountains where William and me worked and was
so happy! Seems like I can't bear it to have my sight slip away here
in Chicago, where there's nothing I want to look at! And then to have a
little left--to have just a little left!--and to know I could see if I
was there to look--and to know that when I get there 'twill be--Oh, I'll
be rebellious-like here--and I'd be contented there! I don't want to be
complainin'--I don't want to!--but when I've only got a little left I
want it--oh, I want it for them things I want to see!”
“You will see them,” insisted the girl passionately. “I'm not going to
believe the world can be so hideous as that!”
“Well, maybe so,” said the woman, rising. “But I don't know where 'twill
come from,” she added doubtfully.
She took her back to the doctor's office and left her in the care of the
stolid Emma. “Seems most like I'd been back home,” she said in parting;
and the girl promised to come and see her and talk with her about the
mountains. The woman thought that talking about them would help her to
remember just how they looked.
And then the girl returned to the library. She did not know why she
did so. In truth she scarcely knew she was going there until she found
herself sitting before that same secluded table at which she and the
woman had sat a little while before. For a long time she sat there with
her head in her hands, tears falling upon a pad of yellow paper on the
table before her.
Finally she dried her eyes, opened her purse, and counted her money. It
seemed that out of her great desire, out of her great new need, there
must be more than she had thought. But there was not, and she folded
her hands upon the two five-dollar bills and the one silver dollar and
looked hopelessly about the big room.
She had forgotten her own disappointments, her own loneliness. She was
oblivious to everything in the world now save what seemed the absolute
necessity of getting the woman back to the mountains while she had eyes
to see them.
But what could she do? Again she counted the money. She could make
herself, some way or other, get along without one of the five-dollar
bills, but five dollars would not take one very close to the mountains.
It was at that moment that she saw a man standing before the Denver
paper, and noticed that another man was waiting to take his place. The
one who was reading had a dinner pail in his hand. The clothes of the
other told that he, too, was of the world's workers. It was clear to the
girl that the man at the file was reading the paper from home; and the
man who was ready to take his place looked as if waiting for something
less impersonal than the news of the day.
The idea came upon her with such suddenness, so full born, that it made
her gasp. They--the people who came to read the Denver paper, the people
who loved the mountains and were far from them, the people who were
themselves homesick and full of longing--were the people to understand.
It took her but a minute to act. She put the silver dollar and one
five-dollar bill back in her purse. She clutched the other bill in
her left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed the
petition: “To all who know and love the mountains,” and she told the
story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and the
directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. “And so I
found her here by the Denver paper,” she said, after she had stated
the tragic facts, “because it was the closest she could come to the
mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going blind. It is
breaking because she may never again look with seeing eyes upon those
great hills which rise up about her home. We must do it for her simply
because we would wish that, under like circumstances, someone would do
it for us. She belongs to us because we understand.
“If you can only give fifty cents, please do not hold it back because
it seems but little. Fifty cents will take her twenty miles nearer
home--twenty miles closer to the things upon which she longs that her
last seeing glance may fall.”
After she had written it she rose, and, the five-dollar bill in one
hand, the sheets of yellow paper in the other, walked down the long room
to the desk at which one of the librarians sat. The girl's cheeks were
very red, her eyes shining as she poured out the story. They mingled
their tears, for the girl at the desk was herself young and far from
home, and then they walked back to the Denver paper and pinned the
sheets of yellow paper just above the file. At the bottom of the
petition the librarian wrote: “Leave your money at the desk in this
room. It will be properly attended to.” The girl from Colorado then
turned over her five-dollar bill and passed out into the gathering
night.
Her heart was brimming with joy. “I can get a cheaper boarding place,”
she told herself, as she joined the home-going crowds, “and until
something else turns up I'll just look around and see if I can't get a
place in a store.”
* * * * *
One by one they had gathered around while the woman was telling the
story. “And so, if you don't mind,” she said, in conclusion, “I'd like
to have you put in a little piece that I got to Denver safe, so's they
can see it. They was all so worked up about when I'd get here. Would
that cost much?” she asked timidly.
“Not a cent,” said the city editor, his voice gruff with the attempt to
keep it steady.
“You might say, if it wouldn't take too much room, that I was much
pleased with the prospect of getting home before sundown to-night.”
“You needn't worry but what we'll say it all,” he assured her. “We'll
say a great deal more than you have any idea of.”
“I'm very thankful to you,” she said, as she rose to go.
They sat there for a moment in silence. “When one considers,” someone
began, “that they were people who were pushed too close even to
subscribe to a daily paper--”
“When one considers,” said the city editor, “that the girl who started
it had just eleven dollars to her name--” And then he, too, stopped
abruptly and there was another long moment of silence.
After that he looked around at the reporters. “Well, it's too bad you
can't all have it, when it's so big a chance, but I guess it falls
logically to Raymond. And in writing it, just remember, Raymond, that
the biggest stories are not written about wars, or about politics, or
even murders. The biggest stories are written about the things which
draw human beings closer together. And the chance to write them doesn't
come every day, or every year, or every lifetime. And I'll tell you,
boys, all of you, when it seems sometimes that the milk of human
kindness has all turned sour, just think back to the little story you
heard this afternoon.”
* * * * *
Slowly the sun slipped down behind the mountains; slowly the long
purple shadows deepened to black; and with the coming of the night there
settled over the everlasting hills, and over the soul of one who had
returned to them, that satisfying calm that men call peace.
IV
FRECKLES M'GRATH
Many visitors to the State-house made the mistake of looking upon the
Governor as the most important personage in the building. They would
walk up and down the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of some of the
leading officials, when all the while Freckles McGrath, the real
character of the Capitol, and by all odds the most illustrious person in
it, was at once accessible and affable.
Freckles McGrath was the elevator boy. In the official register his
name had gone down as William, but that was a mere concession to
the constituents to whom the official register was sent out. In the
newspapers--and he appeared with frequency in the newspapers--he was
always “Freckles,” and every one from the Governor down gave him that
title, the appropriateness of which was stamped a hundred fold upon his
shrewd, jolly Irish face.
Like every one else on the State pay-roll, Freckles was keyed high
during this first week of the new session. It was a reform Legislature,
and so imbued was it with the idea of reforming that there was grave
danger of its forcing reformation upon everything in sight. It happened
that the Governor was of the same faction of the party as that dominant
in the Legislature; reform breathed through every nook and crevice of
the great building.
But high above all else in importance towered the Kelley Bill. From
the very opening of the session there was scarcely a day when some of
Freckles' passengers did not in hushed whispers mention the Kelley Bill.
From what he could pick up about the building, and what he read in the
newspapers, Freckles put together a few ideas as to what the Kelley Bill
really was. It was a great reform measure, and it was going to show the
railroads that they did not own the State. The railroads were going to
have to pay more taxes, and they were making an awful fuss about it; but
if the Kelley Bill could be put through it would be a great victory for
reform, and would make the Governor “solid” in the State.
Freckles McGrath was strong for reform. That was partly because the
snatches of speeches he heard in the Legislature were more thrilling
when for reform than when against it; it was partly because he adored
the Governor, and in no small part because he despised Mr. Ludlow.