XIV
IN the calm October days that followed, mysterious and subtle forces were at work all over the Thirteenth District. The green trees of the windbreaks changed to red and gold, the brown fields were tented with tepees of yellow corn; in and out among the stubble, and along the sides of the black roads, still dry and velvety from the summer’s warmth, brown prairie-chickens rustled covertly, and over all, over the fields, the woods, the roads and the scattered towns, the blue sky bent with a haze that had melancholy reminiscences of the lost spring, and the benediction of peaceful autumn.
Emily, sitting in the sunlight that streamed through the tall bay windows of her room, stitched away on her white wedding garments, dreaming in her smiles of the new life that was just opening to her, picturing Garwood, a great, strong man, fighting the battles of his country, just as his old mother, sitting with her knitting by her low window, wrinkling her brow as she lifted her eyes now and then over her spectacles to gaze on her withering flower-beds in the little yard, pictured him as a little boy, playing on the floor, charming her with his precocious speeches.
Amid all this beauty and mystery, men were fighting one another, bribing, deceiving and coercingone another, in order that the offices of the republic might be taken from one set of men and turned over to another set of men. This condition prevailed over all the land. Everywhere men left work to talk and shout of this great battle, all of them pretending, of course, that they did this for the good of those whom they were vilifying and hating and accusing; claiming that the country would be lost unless their own side won. For instance, Judge Bromley had laid aside his dignity and was traveling all over the counties that made up the Thirteenth Congressional District of Illinois, urging people to vote for him because Garwood, as he charged, while a member of the Legislature, had accepted a bribe. The judge did not know whether this was true or not, but he used all the powers he had cultivated in his four years in college, his three years in the law school, his lifetime at the bar and on the bench, to make people believe it was so; and he gave, though not so freely, of the money he had made by these same talents of persuasion and dissimulation, to organize clubs that would bind men to believe it.
At the same time Garwood was going up and down, urging people to vote for him because his opponent was the paid attorney of the same corporation which Bromley said had given the bribe; and using all his talents to make people believe him instead of Bromley. Much of this was said under the guise of discussing the tariff question; as to whether the people could be made the happier by taxing one another much or little; though neitherside could have had the happiness of the people at heart, for, in all the national turmoil, both sides were doing all they could to defeat and humiliate those who differed from them in opinion on little details of government.
Meanwhile a change as subtle and as mysterious as that of autumn was going on in the feelings of men over the outcome of this great conflict. In the Thirteenth District, from believing that Garwood would be elected, they began to believe that he would be defeated. No one could explain or analyze this change of sentiment, but his opponents were gladdened by it, and his adherents saddened by it; many of them wavered in their belief in him and in their adherence to him, being drawn by a desire to be on the winning side.
Rankin was one of the first to perceive this change. His political sensibilities were acute from long training, he could estimate public sentiment accurately, and early in the campaign he had warned Garwood that before election the day would come when they would feel that they were losing ground; he had hoped that it would come early in the campaign, but now that it had come, with but three weeks in which to overcome its effects, Rankin carefully kept the fact from Garwood. The letters that he wrote him, the telegrams he sent him, the advice he gave when Garwood came home for Sunday, tired and worn from his nerve-exhausting labors, were all to give him better heart to continue the struggle. Garwood himself, speaking nightly to crowds that cheeredhim, living and moving in an atmosphere of constant adulation and applause, fortunately could not recognize the condition that alarmed Rankin. It seemed to him, just as it seems to every candidate, that all the people were for him, because he never met any who were against him.
Bromley had opened his campaign in Grand Prairie with a meeting which, by its size, alarmed Rankin more than he would admit. He had his fun out of it, of course, saying that Bromley, like all the rich, would do better to let his money talk for him, and assuring Bromley’s party workers that the opening of his fountains of eloquence meant the closing of his barrel. He made the discovery, too, that the judge, while on his campaign tour, slept in silken pajamas, and he made much of this in appeals to the prejudices of the farmers, knowing how this symbol of the luxury of Bromley’s life would affect them. Rankin dubbed him “Pajamas” Bromley, and the stigma stuck, and yet he was too wise to believe that he could overcome the effect of Bromley’s money by mere words and names. This was why he made the trip over to Sullivan to see Sprague.
He found Sprague sitting in his law office, reading a newspaper in the idleness of a country lawyer, a cuspidor placed conveniently near. Sprague was a large man, with a tousled mass of gray hair, and a short, shaggy beard burnished by the red of its youth, though it was now lightened by gray. He wore, after the older professional ideal, a long, black frock coat, though that he did not go thoroughlyinto the details of sartorial effects was shown by the muddy tan shoes that cocked their worn heels on the edge of his desk.
Conrad Sprague had once been considered a clever man; when admitted to the bar he was one of those youths of whom it is said, “He has a bright future”; and, like many such, Sprague had mistaken the promise for the fulfilment, and had been content to use the superficial acquirements which had given him a place in the debating society of the Ohio college he had attended, before going out to Illinois to “locate,” as the phrase was, without strengthening them by newer studies. While waiting for a law practice, he had gone into politics, originally for the purpose of securing an acquaintance that would help him in his profession, and ultimately, when his political duties interfered so constantly with his legal duties that he could not attend to such practice as came to him, as a means of livelihood in itself. Thus his law office became in time but a background for his career in politics. He had been successful at first; he had gone to the Legislature and once to Congress. Now, in his defeat, with only the remnant of his loosely organized following left to him, he was undergoing the spiritual fermentation which disappointment works in weak natures, and gave promise of souring altogether.
Sprague did not rise when Rankin entered, nor even remove his feet from his desk. But he did lay his paper in his long lap, then slowly taking the black-rimmed eye-glasses from his nose, and danglingthem at the end of their tangled and knotted cord, he said:
“Howdy, Jim; where’d you come from?”
“Just landed in,” replied Rankin, pulling up a cane-seated chair and dropping his heavy body into it.
“Come on business?”
“Yes, I did,” said Rankin, rocking back and forth, “damned important business.”
“That so?”
“Yes, that’s so.”
Sprague, moved by the snapping tone, twisted his body and looked squarely at Rankin. He made a movement of his legs as if he would take his feet down.
“Yes, that’s it,” Rankin went on, “and you’re the man I come to see.”
Sprague dropped his feet to the floor, swung his chair half around on one of its legs, and as it came down he brought it into a position directly facing Rankin. He looked at his caller almost angrily for an instant, but adopting the more peaceful tone in which he would have addressed a new client, he said:
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Rankin, “since that’s what I come fer. You can get out and do something to help land Garwood.”
Sprague puckered his lips, turned his head away and whistled reflectively. The whistle was a series of low, tuneless notes, and was irritating to Rankin,who, though a fat man, developed nerves at times.
“Well, Jim,” said Sprague at last, “you know that I haven’t been taking any active interest in this campaign.”
“No, that’s just the trouble,” said Rankin, “you haven’t. But some o’ your fellers has, an’ I want you to call ’em off.”
Sprague stopped whistling and looked at Rankin.
“Of course, Jim,” he said, “what some of my friends may be doing I don’t know. They seem to think, some of them, that they have cause for dissatisfaction in the way I was treated at the Clinton convention.”
“Oh, come off, now,” said Rankin. “You know that won’t go ’ith me, Con. You know how much chance you ever had at the Clinton convention, and you know jus’ what I told you there in the Gleason House that night before we met. So don’t try to come any o’ that old gag on me, ’cause I won’t stand fer it.”
“Well—” Sprague began, in a voice that indicated a want of conviction on his part, lifting his brows to add to the effect of the tone. He ended by spitting at his convenient cuspidor.
“But I don’t care ’bout me,” said Rankin; “go in an’ abuse me all you want. Ther’ ain’t nobody’ll believe you, anyhow. Everybody knows’t I never broke a promise in my life, an’ that I al’ays stood pat fer my friends—which you wasn’t oneo’ them, so long’s I can remember—but that don’t cut any figur’ here ner there.”
“I always supposed we were friends, Jim,” Sprague complained.
“Oh, that’s all right—in politics, I mean. I hain’t nothin’ ag’in you pers’nally, course, but in politics we’ve al’ays been ag’in each other, an’ ther’ ain’t no use tryin’ to ignore that now. You’ve been sore ever since the convention, of course, an’ I don’t know’s I blame you fer it, but we beat you fair an’ square, an’ I come over here to tell you that we expect you to get out an’ support the ticket.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Sprague, with half a smile.
“Yes, I did,” said Rankin.
“Well,” said Sprague, deliberately stopping to spit again, “I supposed that after the Clinton convention I might consider myself out of politics.”
“Yes, youmight,” Rankin rejoined, “but the trouble is, youdon’t, an’ your fellers right here in Moultrie County is out with the’r knives fer Jerry.”
“Well, if they are,” said Sprague, “I’m sure I didn’t know it.”
“Oh, hell, now, Con,” expostulated Rankin, disgustedly, “don’t fer God’s sake use that ’ith me. Maybe it goes down to Washin’ton, I don’ know, but it don’t go here, not ’ith me, ’t any rate. You know what they’re doin’, an’ so do I. An’ I’ll just tell you this,” Rankin leaned over and laid his hand on the edge of Sprague’s desk, while Spragueeyed him with disfavour, “that if you expect to be in politics any more they’ve got to stop it, an’ stop it now, an’ if they don’t——”
“Well, if they don’t?” Sprague interrupted in an ugly, defiant note.
“If they don’t, why, don’t ever dare stick your head up out o’ your crab-hole ag’in; an’ what’s more——”
“What’s more?” repeated Sprague, nodding.
“This is a game two can play at. We’ve got a few knives over in Polk County, and, while they’re a little rusty an’ out o’ use, they’re long, an’ they’re deadly, an’ we’ll get ’em out at once an’ run ’em into that brother-’n-law o’ yourn about that fur——”
Rankin measured off the sickening distance on his left arm, with his right hand at the elbow.
“An’ turn ’em round,” and Rankin twisted his fist savagely. In illustrating the vengeful deed he had allowed some of his excitement to master him, and he rose now and stood hanging over Sprague with a menace in the droop of his shoulders and the stretch of his neck.
“Now you know the business that brought me here, Con Sprague,” Rankin went on. “I come over to tell this to Wilson, but I thought it ’uld be fair to tell you first. I’m goin’ over to tell him, an’ then I’m goin’ back home. Now, if your brother-’n-law wants to go to the Legislature, just you get out an’ make a few speeches fer Garwood, an’ declare y’urself, an’ you an’ him put y’ur fellers over here to work, an’ you do it in two days. I’ll watchyou an’ if you don’t do it, I’ll say ‘plunk,’”—Rankin used the word which the Illinois politicians, doubtless in their distrust of anything British, have substituted for the Englishman’s “plump”—“an’ the boys’ll plunk—an’ fer the first time in our history we’ll send a minority representative to Springfield, an’ it won’t be your brother-’n-law, either.”
Sprague’s face blackened. He knew that dangerous possibility in cumulative voting, but he said nothing.
“I don’t ask you fer any answer,” said Rankin. “But I’ve served notice on you. You can do just as you damn please.”
And then Rankin went away. He made his call on Wilson, By night he was back in Grand Prairie.