Chapter 26

An Unpremeditated Speech

As the three entered the crowded chamber where the joint assembly had been once more called to order, they passed Mr. Burroughs, his wife and daughter. They had come from Butte to witness his triumph. Surely the wife would congratulate, the daughter be proud of her father.

Moore was left at the rail which separated the legislators from the spectators, but Senator Blair's sister went with him and found a seat at his side. Charlie's face was ghastly, and the doctor, surprised beyond measure at sight of him, kept guard with a watchful eye.

Blair's entrance into the chamber with its atmosphere of suspense drew every nerve taut. Senator Danvers saw him and his heart sank. His efforts had been in vain! He bowed to Winifred, though he had not seen even his own sister, far in the rear of the hall--there were no galleries for spectators.

It was a moment long remembered by that breathless crowd. Men, drowning, see their whole lives as in a flashlight's glare. So did Danvers see his past. He was again a boy, embarking on the _Far West_, and he breathed the wet spring air, blowing over prairie and river. He was with the men on the upper deck, and noted their glances of curiosity. Their youth seemed never to have faded, as he remembered the delicate face of the joyous Latimer, the kind glance of the doctor, the western breeziness of Toe String Joe and the quieter manner of Scar Faced Charlie; while the debonair arrogance of Sweet Oil Bob stirred his fighting blood afresh. Eva Thornhill's beautiful face came, bewitching in its youth, and little Winnie's trusting smile again reached his heart. Even Fort Benton, a busy port of entry, as he first saw it, and Wild Cat Bill's drunken animosity, leaped out as the searchlight of recollection swept the past.

Then Memory's moving picture brought the same faces, shaded or illumined as each temperament exposed its impulse; changed and moulded by hidden thoughts, unexploited forces of character and assimilated environment. Came a sigh for Arthur Latimer, asleep after life's bright beginning and shadowed close. A thought of Eva, broken and undone; of Winifred----

Every thought and act of his life led up to this moment. Could he let this plot be consummated? Not while the blood so pounded in his veins. He must speak--no one else would. Outraged decency demanded. The honor of the state demanded.

He forgot that he was an alien by birth--that he must expose many of his friends; it did not occur to him that he had never made a public speech, that his denunciation would ruin his political future and would be altogether futile. The disgraceful contest had killed his dearest friend--driven the wife into retirement to avoid the glare of scandal, and it was likely to lose him Winifred.

His hand went up, and the President of the Senate recognized him. He rose.

"Mr. President: I rise to a point of personal privilege."

"The Senator from Chouteau," announced the presiding officer of the joint assembly, surprised but courteous. Philip Danvers was not one to be ignored, no matter how inopportune the time. As he stood there for the moment silent, he conveyed the impression of perfect poise, and the honesty and sincerity of his purpose was patent to all.

"Mr. President: In the struggle to elect a United States senator which has lasted this entire session of our legislative assembly, the party with which I have the honor to be affiliated, ever since I foreswore allegiance to my native country, has, unfortunately, never been able to fix on a caucus nominee; and I have been forced, unwillingly, to lead the minority of my party against the man whose name led all others in the last ballot. As a result of the division, the election of a senator has descended to a contest of one individual, with the known antagonism of not only the best element of his party, but the ill will of the whole State, irrespective of party.

"The shameless condition that this has fostered is now familiar to every man in the United States. When that politician, ravenous for his spoil, could not get enough supporters from his own party, he went into the highways and byways of Democrats, Populists and Laborites; he gathered not only the poor and needy, but some few men hitherto possessing apparent respectability, and good standing at home and abroad.

"Personal reasons have kept me silent on the floor of this house, however much I may have worked in other ways against this crime. But the time has come when I must put aside all thought of self in the greater interest of the reputation of Montana.

"Gentlemen: A most outrageous crime is being committed upon this State! I can keep my seat no longer while the very walls reek with bribery! Yes, bribery! No one has dared to voice that sinister word in this Assembly, but we all know that in every hotel corridor, on every street, in every home in this State that damnable word is handed from mouth to mouth as claim and counterclaim, that certain men have been purchased like cattle in open market, and that they would deliver themselves to a certain candidate when called upon. They have been called upon to-day! That is why this room is filled to overflowing! The curious, the sensation-seeker want to look upon those men, so lost to decency that they will rise here, and with no blush of shame, tacitly admit that they have been bought with a price. Even the open enemies of this candidate have voted for him, as the last ballot shamelessly proclaimed. How one senator, opposed to the candidate in every walk of life, has been debauched, we can imagine as well as though we saw the thousands counted out to him by the money-changer who has had charge of the bartering of votes."

As Danvers looked straight at Senator Hall, the bribe-taker half rose, then sank back in his degradation. One thought sustained him. His revenge on Burroughs was nearing its hour, and he felt that the mortification of this bold accusation could be endured, if that other matter was never traced to him. He knew too well what the enmity of Burroughs could compass to invite it openly, and he had become fearful of the results of his long-delayed scheme of vengeance.

Meantime the voice of the senator from Chouteau County went on, clear and distinct, creating consternation as might the voice from Sinai. In his earnestness he stepped nearer the speaker's desk, and faced the hushed audience, fearlessly. He made no pretence of oratory, but his words were terribly effective.

"In olden times, bribers were branded on the cheek with the letter B. If we had the time, I would suggest that we pass a law, before this session is over, to brand not only the bribers, but the bribed with a white-hot iron, so that the owner might identify his property. This brand should be burned into the political mavericks who, since the convening of this Assembly, have run with every herd, and openly sought the highest bidder for their worthless carcasses. For these cattle of unknown pedigree I have only words of contempt.

"Mr. President: The state in which we find ourselves on this, the last night of the session, should make us pause. We are apt to be dim-sighted to our own failings, and clear-sighted to the faults of others; but I ask you in all candor, do the men who have so nearly elected a United States senator believe that he is the choice of the State for that high office, or that he would be considered by that legislative body if it were not for the influence of his wealth? We would better be unrepresented in Congress than misrepresented, and I ask you, gentlemen," turning again to the legislators, "if you are going to vote again as you did in the last ballot, and allow a sick man to cast his vote for Robert Burroughs and thus elect him? I know," he added with impressive slowness, "whereof I speak! That we are Democrats or Republicans, Labor or Fusion, should not figure in this contest. Instead, each man should consider whether we, a young State, shall enter Washington tarred with the ineradicable pitch of bribery or shall we send a man who will show the elder States that Montana is proud of her newly acquired statehood, and that no star in the Northwest firmament shines more pure?

"To those who have allowed themselves in this fiery ordeal to swerve from their duty to their State, through the temptation of personal gain, let me say that they will be branded and dishonored, despised at home and abroad; that they will be political pariahs forever, unless they reconsider their votes while yet there is time. They have been clay, moulded on the potter's wheel of the political manipulator behind whom the leading candidate has worked his nefarious will. Because a man is rich shall we condone his base acts? A poor man is as likely to commit crime as a rich one; but he would do so for very different reasons. The rich man in politics, sins for his own self-gratification; the poor man, to better himself or his family, often not comprehending the enormity of his crime.

"So long as I possess the faculties of a man, I purpose to fight against the election of Robert Burroughs to a seat in Congress. I do not want it said that I was a State senator in a Legislature which seated a man so notoriously lost to a sense of political decency as he. I would rather go back to the Whoop Up Country to spend my days in toil and obscurity, and be able to hold up my head and look the world in the face."

For a moment he paused. The awed, sullen, furious faces before him seemed individually seared on his soul as he swept the crowded room. Many a man sat in a cold sweat of fear, with haunted eyes and compressed lips that proclaimed his guilt with deadly certainty.

For the first time Philip became aware that his sister was present, and had heard his denunciation of her husband. But it was too late to retract, and he would not if he could. Truth-telling, like the cauterizing of the snake's bite, must sometimes be done, no matter what the immediate suffering. His eyes sought Winifred's, misty with apprehension, admiration, love. And Charlie? His temple pulse beat visibly in his effort to control his nerves. His face was fixed as the face of one dead. Could any appeal snatch him from being the keystone of that elaborate structure builded by Burroughs and Moore--so nearly completed? If he refused to become that apex, even for this one ballot to be called as soon as Danvers finished speaking, there was a faint hope that the apparently inevitable could be averted. Stepping nearer his colleagues in his vehemence, Senator Danvers brought his unpremeditated speech to an end.

"For God's sake, are there not men enough in this body to help me to drive out corruption and fraud and dishonor, and establish integrity and justice? I ask in the name of women and children, wives and sweethearts, pioneers and posterity! Let us not become a disgrace to the nations of the world! We can clean these Augean stables by one concentrated effort, even as England cleaned her corrupt borough elections of a century and a half ago. Let us fix on one man who will stand for civic purity, virtue and honor, no matter what his party. Let us elect a United States senator who is above reproach, above the taint of gaining a victory by the downfall of his fellow men! In the next ballot, let us each vote as his conscience dictates!"

It was said. Senator Danvers stepped back to his seat amid a buzz of blended approval and hisses, which came to his brain as the sound of swarming bees. He felt sick and weak. His appeal seemed hopelessly futile. But he sat erect, with no sign of discouragement, and looked fixedly at Senator Blair in the hope of seeing some inkling of change from his declaration that if he came to the capitol he should vote for Burroughs. But Blair would not look his way.