Part 6

“Then we knew that the Bailey bill fight was on to a finish. We had had our first big battle with the reformers, and were down together in the last ditch. Whenever a bill with something in it is about to pass the legislature, a strange quality steals into the atmosphere, just as there does in the council chamber in Chicago when anything is to be pulled off--don’t you know? There is a forebodement, an apprehensiveness, that electrifies the nerves and oppresses the lungs. I felt it there that night. We had had a heavy fight to pass the bill in the first place, and now we had to override a veto! It’s hard enough to get the seventy-seven votes that constitute a majority, with the people against you--men are such cowards--but when it comes to rounding up two-thirds--a hundred and two--it’s an entirely different problem. We had been working quietly at the thing for days, for we knew the veto was coming, and that the old man would wait until the last night to send it in. We had a hundred and one tried and true men who would stick to the end. The hundred and second was Jim Berry. We had his promise, and believed he would stay in line--though he was afraid of his constits--for he was poor and in debt.

“Judge Hardin came and sat beside me that we might check them off for ourselves, and Hen began calling the roll:

“‘Allen!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Ambaugh!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Anderson!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Bartly!’

“‘Aye!’

“The leaders, Jamison over on the Republican side, and Riley on the Democratic, sat at their desks, with roll-calls, at which they thoughtfully blew the smoke of their cigars as they checked off the progress of the vote. They appeared as unconcerned as the correspondents. I never can forget the drollery of the wink Jamison gave me as he voted no--it was necessary to have some one who had voted with the majority to move a reconsideration of the vote in case anything happened. ’Zeke did not resume his seat during the roll-call, as the rules permitted him to do, but stood bending over his desk with an alert eye on the cadets. The vote up to this point was propitious, but ’Zeke knew, and Jamison and Riley knew, and Judge Hardin and I knew, and we were not so sanguine as the correspondents, who had already begun to toss sheets of copy to the frowsy telegraph boys, running to and fro between the press gallery and the Western Union. We were chiefly interested just then whether Berry would vote right or not. I was keeping an eye on him and noticed that he was beginning to fidget in his seat, and chew his cigar, and tear paper into little pieces. And the roll-call went on:

“‘Beel!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Bell!’

“‘No!’

“Bell, of course, was on the other side, and was standing back with George Herrick, keeping their fellows in line and cheering up the reformers from the Municipal League, but we knew his vote would have its effect on Berry, so I pulled the speaker’s coat-tail, and ’Zeke leaned over and whispered hoarsely to the clerk. Hen observed a lengthened pause and then began to call more slowly. Berry was the next name.

“‘Berry!’ Hen drawled.

“There was no reply.

“‘Berry!’

“There was no reply.

“Hen looked long at Berry, and the poltroon sat there with his eyes cast down, rolling his cigar around and around in his mouth, tearing up his little flakes of paper, and swinging from side to side in his chair. Then Hen called the next name:

“‘Briggs!’

“‘No!’ he voted, and Berry looked up for the first time since the bill had come over from the senate. ’Zeke rapped fiercely with his gavel, and Hen paused. Then ’Zeke said sharply:

“‘The chair is compelled again to call the attention of gentlemen to rule three, which prohibits smoking in the hall of the house. The chair dislikes to be compelled to repeat this admonition so frequently, and trusts that gentlemen will observe the injunction without additional suggestion. The clerk will proceed with the calling of the roll.’ And he smashed the broken sounding-board again with his gavel. We needed time. Some of the members laughed, but that only gave ’Zeke a chance to gain more time by rapping for order. We feared the effect, however, on discipline. Then he called Brisbane, one of our fellows, and he didn’t vote. I grew uneasy, and Judge Hardin was squirming there beside me on the lounge. When I thought of Berry I grew mad, and wondered if we could save the bill without him. At that instant my eye happened to light upon Henderson of Greene. He was standing under the gallery just as he had been standing all evening. He seemed not to have moved. He had his hands clasped awkwardly behind him, and was chewing his tobacco contemplatively. And here was my chance! I thought of the pathetic biography in the house directory. I thought of his wife as I had seen the poor old thing going around town with him the week before. I thought of the way he had worked and toiled for her and all those children, and how little life held for him. If I could get him for the bill in Berry’s place, the Chicago people, I knew, would be liberal with him, and he could go back home better off in a financial way than when he came. And so I motioned to Burke, and when he came up I told him to ask the gentleman from Greene to meet me at once in the speaker’s room, and I retired to await him. Presently, in his clumsy way, he shuffled in. He came close up to me, and when I had given the poor devil a cigar he bent over to hear what I might have to say. I asked him how he was going to vote on the bill, and he said he thought he would vote against it, inasmuch as the governor had said it was a bad piece of legislation. Well, there was no time to discuss that phase of the question.

“‘Look here, comrade,’ I said, ‘this is a bill that concerns Chicago alone--it does not affect and can not affect you or your constituents one way or the other, can it?’

“‘No,’ he said; ‘reckon not.’

“‘They don’t even know down in Greene County that there is such a bill, do they?’

“‘Reckon not,’ he said, ‘leastways I hain’t heerd ary one say nothin’ ’bout it.’

“‘Of course you haven’t,’ I said, ‘and what’s more, you never will. Now, see here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be quite frank with you, for I like you’--he cast a strange, sidling glance at me, distrustful, like all farmers--‘for I like you,’ I said, ‘and I want to do something for you. The men who are promoting this legislation have exactly enough votes to pass it over the governor’s veto, and it’s going to pass. On this ballot they will have just ninety-one votes--one of their men will vote against it to move a reconsideration if necessary, and about ten will not vote. When the absentees are called, these ten will vote for the bill, and on the verification, you’ll see others tumbling into the band-wagon. Now, your vote is not needed, as you see, and, cast for the bill or against it, can have no appreciable effect upon the result. The bill will pass without your vote, and you can not defeat it, for the hundred and two will stand firm in the end. One of them, however--it is Berry, I don’t mind telling you--is trying, at the last minute, to force us into raising his price. You can take his place, you can have his price of the easy money with his raise added, if you will go out there and vote for the bill.’

“He stood looking at the floor, ruminating.

“‘I know, Henderson,’ I continued, ‘that you are a poor man, that you have a large family, that you have to work hard for a living. You are going home to-morrow, maybe not to come back here any more, and you can go if you wish, with three thousand dollars clean, cold cash in your pocket. What do you say?’

“The old man turned his face away and began to fumble with his horny fingers at his chin. His hand trembled as with a palsy. We could hear the roll-call going on outside:

“‘Donavin!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Donnelly!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Evans!’

“‘No!’

“‘Finerty!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Fitzmeyer!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Flanigan!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Hear them?’ I said. ‘It’s nearly up to you--what do you say?’

“The old man’s lips quivered, and his calloused fingers grated in his beard. He opened his lips to speak, but his jaw moved helplessly. And we heard Hen’s voice back there in the house calling--calling so that you could have heard him over in the Leland bar-room:

“‘Geisbach!’

“‘No!’

“‘He is one of those who will change,’ I said.

“‘Giger!’

“There was no response. ‘He’ll be all right when they call the absentees,’ I said.

“‘Gordon!’

“‘No!’

“‘Griesheimer!’

“‘Aye!’

“‘Hear them?’ I asked. The H’s came next, and the old man, still fumbling with his chin, and without turning his head began to talk:

“‘Baldwin,’ he said, ‘you’re right. I am a poor man. I have a wife an’ eight children. To-morrow I’m goin’ back home, an’ o’ Monday I’m goin’ to hunt a job--hunt a job in the harves’ field. I’ve worked hard all my life. I ’spect to work hard all my life. I’ll keep on huntin’ jobs in the harves’ fields. I’ll probably die in the poor-house. I’ll be buried in the potter’s field. God knows what’ll become of that woman and them children.’

“He nodded his head as in assent to an indisputable proposition, and his eyes widened as if in fright. They were looking down the barren years before him, and I felt in that moment glad of my power to brighten them.

“‘Hallen!’ we heard Hen call.

“‘No!’

“‘Henderson of Effingham.’

“‘Aye!’

“The old man straightened out his long, lank figure, and then suddenly he turned and looked me in the eyes.

“‘But, Baldwin,’ he said, ‘I come here last January an honest man, and to-morrow I’m goin’ back, back to ol’ Greene, back to my people, back to that woman an’ them children, an’ Baldwin’--he gulped the word--‘Baldwin, I’m goin’ back an honest man.’

“‘Henderson of Greene!’ Hen’s voice called, and the old man stalked into the corridor and thundered ‘No!’ in a trumpet note.”

The lobbyist ceased. The train had stopped at Chenoa, and they could hear the breathing of the engine, breathing as a living thing when it rests. The noise ceased presently, and the silence of the wide country night ensued. They heard only the notes that came from the throats of frogs, and the stridulent drumming of the cicadæ. Baldwin looked at the two politicians, expecting some comment. The oscitant Healy looked out of the window, into the vast darkness brooding over the prairie town. Jennings sat meditatively pulling at his moist mustache, an expression of perplexity in his countenance, the wrinkles of increasing concentration of mind gathering in his brow. Presently, without a word, he rose and left the compartment. When he returned he was treading in his stockings, his coat and waistcoat and collar had been removed, his suspenders were hanging at his hips. He was evidently preparing for his berth. Baldwin meanwhile had pressed a button, and sent Gentry, the aged porter, now in white jacket, for his bag, and laid out on the seat beside him his pajamas, and a traveler’s case filled with silver toilet articles. Jennings lifted his own big valise to his knees, and from its depths drew a bottle, wrapped heavily in a newspaper. He held one of the heavy little glasses under the faucet of the water-cooler, and allowed the water to trickle into it. Then, peeling back the paper from his bottle, he took a long pull from its naked neck, and passed it to Baldwin. As he did so, his brows still knotted in perplexity, he asked:

“What’d you say that feller’s name was?”

“Henderson.”

“Henderson of Greene, eh?”

“Yes.”

Jennings threw back his head and tilted the water, deadly cold from the ice and tasting of smoke, into his throat, and when he had rinsed his mouth, he said, with the happy expression of a man who has resolved a doubt:

“Oah, yes, John Henderson, of Greene. He lived out at Rabb’s Corners. Yes, that’s him; the governor ’p’inted him public administrator of Greene County right after that session.”

The train lurched, and Jennings, bracing himself, wrapped up his bottle and stowed it carefully away in his valise. And swinging the valise in one hand and with the other hitching up his trousers, now beginning to drag at his heels, he stepped away in his stockinged feet to his berth.

Baldwin began to wind his watch, and the Limited, with its three hundred tons, and its tossing heads full of the schemes of politics, went careering away on its paper wheels toward the capital of Illinois.

SENATE BILL 578

He was a page in the Illinois legislature--“House Page No. 7,” the bright metal badge on the lapel of his little coat said--and all day long he heard nothing but “Here, boy!” from city members, or “Hey, bub!” from country members, or “Hi, there, kid!” from the other pages, or “Get a move on you, Seven!” as the chief page snapped his fingers at him in his lordly way. His real name was James, but he never heard that, now that his father was dead. His mother called him Jamie.

Jamie was kept very busy and yet he enjoyed his legislative duties. He felt that it was a big thing to help, even in his humble little way, to make laws for all the people in the state. It was pretty important, for instance, to carry a paper from some member up to the clerk’s desk, for after the clerk had read it, on three different days, and the house had voted on it and passed it, and after it had been read on three different days and passed by the senate, and after the governor had read it and thought over it as he walked back and forth between the executive mansion and the state house, and had written his name on it, it became a law, and everybody in the state had to obey it or go to jail.

The people were called constituents, they seemed to be divided up among all the members of the legislature; everybody in the state house had his constituents. Jamie felt that, as a legislator, he should have some constituents, but he couldn’t decide who his constituents were, and he didn’t like to ask anybody. But finally he thought of his mother, and when he told her that she was his constituent she took his little face between her two hands and kissed him and pressed her cheek to his. Her cheek was moist with tears.

If everybody in the state house had been as good to his constituents as Jamie, Illinois would have been a very happy place in which to live. When his father died, Jamie’s mother had to take in sewing and to work hard to keep things going. She was sad much of the time, and always looked tired, and this made Jamie sad. He longed to help her, but he did not know what to do. Then a friend of theirs, Mr. Woodbridge, said he could get Jamie a place in the house as a page boy--they always say “page boy” in the legislature--and one morning Jamie’s mother dressed him in his Sunday suit and sent him up to the state house with Mr. Woodbridge.

And so he became a page. He was paid a dollar and a half a day. Every twenty days the payrolls were made out, and Jamie would go down to the treasury, sign his name in a big, round hand, “James Horn,” and then proudly take home to his mother thirty dollars in fresh, crisp, green bills! His mother had wished him to stay in school, but, of course, being a page was better than going to school. There were no books to study, and then you got out so much earlier every day! And more than all, you couldn’t take home money from school!

The house met every morning at ten o’clock, and after the speaker had taken his place under the canopy where the beautiful flag was draped, and had rapped for order, and the chaplain had prayed, the clerk would call the roll for the introduction of bills. This was Jamie’s busiest time. Everybody would have bills to introduce or petitions from his constituents to present, and for an hour Jamie would be scampering up and down the aisles between the members’ desks and the clerk’s desk. But after that he had a breathing spell, and could sit on the speaker’s steps and whisper to the speaker’s page, or look about over the house and watch the members. There were grave members from the country districts with long whiskers and steel-bowed spectacles, there were city members with fancy vests and diamonds, there were Irish members and German members, there was a Polish member named Kumaszynski, and there was a negro member, who sat away back on the Republican side almost under the galleries, and was very quiet, and wore black clothes and gold eye-glasses.

But there was one whom Jamie liked above all the others. He was tall, with smiling blue eyes that saw everything, and though his black hair was patched with gray at the temples, his face was that of a young man, clean-shaven and ruddy. He was a Chicago member and the most fashionably dressed man in the house--he wore a different suit of clothes every day. He was a lawyer and his name was Bronson Meredith. Jamie loved him the first time he ever saw him, and whenever Mr. Meredith clapped his hands Jamie would spring to his side before any other page had started, and if by chance Mr. Meredith ever gave a resolution or a bill to any of the other boys Jamie felt a twinge of jealousy at his heart.

Sometimes he would loiter an instant beside Mr. Meredith’s desk, and a smile from him made Jamie happy all that day. Jamie longed to touch him with his hand, but dared not. The only thing he could do was to pat Mr. Meredith’s overcoat, with its soft, silken lining, as it hung on its hook in the cloak-room. At night, lying in his bed, Jamie would close his eyes and see Mr. Meredith standing beside his desk, his lips slightly parted in a smile, showing his white teeth and replying so sharply to members who interrupted him that they would shoot down into their seats with red faces and all the other members would laugh, while Mr. Meredith, raising his hand, would go on with his speech, saying:

“Now, Mr. Speaker, as I was about to remark when I yielded to the perplexing question of the distinguished gentleman from Pike--”

Mr. Meredith was not often on his feet, as they say in legislative bodies, but when he took part in a debate all the other members kept still and listened with their hands behind their ears, which they didn’t do when any one else spoke. Mr. Meredith was a leader--many called him a reformer. Jamie decided that when he grew up he would be a lawyer, a leader and a reformer.

Now, when the session was about over there was a bill in the house which almost all the Chicago members hoped to see made into a law; but Mr. Meredith was against it. The country members, too, for the most part, were against the bill, and Jamie noticed that when it first came over from the senate there was a stir in the house, and that every time it came up, after that, all the members would rush in from the cloak-rooms, or the lobbies, or the supreme court library, or the rotunda of the state house, to speak about it and to vote on it.

Jamie did not understand the bill, or know what it was for; he only knew that it was something about a franchise in Chicago, and that every week a party of rich-looking gentlemen would come down to Springfield and stand about in the house, or sit on the big red lounge behind the speaker’s chair, and whisper and try to get men to vote for it.

And Jamie knew, too, that it was called senate bill No. 578; he impressed that number firmly on his mind and could never forget it. He soon observed that on any day when he saw S. B. 578 on the calendar--which is a kind of program printed every morning to tell what bills are coming up--Mr. Meredith would be on his feet and make motions and speeches, and that the gentlemen on the speaker’s red lounge would scowl at him and the other city members try to answer him. And Jamie noticed that Mr. Meredith always succeeded in having the bill referred back to some committee, or did something to keep it from becoming a law.

Jamie read the newspapers now and then. He always turned first to the base-ball news--the season was just opening--and then to the legislative news, although he never read that as carefully as he did the base-ball news. Often he saw Mr. Meredith’s name in the types--the papers said he was making a gallant fight against the franchise grab. Jamie hoped with all his soul that Mr. Meredith would win in that fight; not, of course, that he cared about the franchise grab--he had, like many older persons, very hazy ideas about that--but he always wished to see Mr. Meredith win.

The spring had come, and as the legislature usually ends early in June, and the work was piling up, the house was meeting at nine o’clock in the morning. The house adjourned every Friday at noon, in order that the members might go home over Sunday, and it didn’t meet again until Monday afternoon at five o’clock, and then only for a few minutes. The members who had gone home did not get back until Tuesday morning, and there were never many there Monday afternoon, not even a quorum, and it was always understood that nothing was to be done at that session. The chaplain prayed, the journal of Friday’s session was read and approved, and the house adjourned until Tuesday morning.

But one Monday afternoon when Jamie reached the hall of the house he was surprised to find a big body of members there--almost all the Chicago members except Mr. Meredith. Those rich gentlemen were there, too, sitting on the speaker’s red lounge. Jamie looked for Mr. Meredith--he was not there. He thought instantly of senate bill 578--something was up! They were going to try to pass senate bill 578--that was why the gentlemen were there on the speaker’s red lounge; that was why the Chicago members had come down to Springfield on the Monday afternoon train instead of waiting for the Monday night train. Jamie was worried.

It was a balmy spring day with a sky blue and tender, and a soft wind that wafted strange sweet country smells about, smells that filled Jamie with dreamy longings and a kind of pleasant sadness. The speaker gently tapped with his gavel; the good old chaplain rose and spread out his white hands.

“O Lord,” he prayed, “we thank Thee that the winter is past, that the rain is over and gone, that the flowers appear upon the earth, that the time of the singing of birds is come.”

The words stole sweetly in upon Jamie’s soul. He sat on the steps, looking out of the open windows at the tender young leaves of the maple trees--it was just the way he used to look out of the open windows in school before vacation came, when he thought of the swimming-hole out at Sycamore and of going barefooted. It was all so calm and peaceful. But with the chaplain’s “Amen!” the speaker’s gavel cracked and the buzzing noise peculiar to the house began again. And Jamie awoke from his reveries with a start. He had heavier things to think of now; he was almost a man; he was in the legislature. Senate bill 578 was on its third reading, the gang was present, and Mr. Meredith had not come. Jamie was troubled, and sighed. He must attend to his duties--he must do something.

Jamie looked over all the faces before him; nowhere could he find one man he could trust as a friend of Mr. Meredith.