Chapter XVII
“Dull rogues affect the politician’s part,And learn to nod, and smile, and shrug with art.”Congreve.
“Dull rogues affect the politician’s part,And learn to nod, and smile, and shrug with art.”Congreve.
“Dull rogues affect the politician’s part,And learn to nod, and smile, and shrug with art.”
“Dull rogues affect the politician’s part,
And learn to nod, and smile, and shrug with art.”
Congreve.
Congreve.
IT was the evening of the primaries and the opposing factions were lined up for the battle that would decide who was to be the party’s standard-bearer within the limits of the ward. The workers had made a door-to-door canvass, pleading eloquently with some, making a vague statement of principles to others, hinting at “prospective jobs” to more. A great deal depended upon the person, and the heelers were supposed to have the voters in their precincts gauged to a nicety.
Tim Burns was eating his supper of potatoes and eggs at the kitchen table, together with his wife and two children, when a knock came upon the door.
“Come in,” called Tim.
It was Gratten Haley, candidate for school director and—McQuirk!
“Hello Tim,” greeted Haley, cheerily, “feedin’ your face?”
“God bless uz an’ save us, Mr. McQuirk,” ejaculated Mrs. Burns, confused at the sight of the ward’s great man. “Here Xavier, git down wid yez at wanst, an’ give the gintleman yez sate.”
She dumped her eldest son unceremoniously from his chair and dusted it with her apron. But McQuirk re-seated the boy and shoved the chair back to the table.
“Pitch in, son,” advised he, heartily. He speared an egg with a fork and placed it on the child’s plate. “Go to work,” said he. He rumpled the youngster’s hair and turned to Mrs. Burns. “This must be a fast day,” remarked he.
“There’s two this week, so they give out from the altar on Sunday,” answered Mrs. Burns; “an’ a body’s lost widout the bit av mate, after workin’ all day.”
Mr. Haley stood in the background, near the range, pulling slowly at a fat black cigar, and gazing at his leader admiringly. “For star plays,” muttered hewith ecstasy, to himself, “run me against McQuirk. He’s a miracle!”
The feminine and juvenile side of the house surrendered without firing a shot; but Tim was made of different stuff and had a long memory. He glowered at his plate from under his brows and caused buttered wedges of bread and saucers of tea to disappear with startling rapidity.
“Got plenty to do, Tim?” McQuirk stood with his back to the range and tugged at the spike-like points of his moustache.
“Lots av it—now!” Tim put a great deal of emphasis on the last word so that the boss might not misunderstand.
“The delegates are named to-night,” interrupted the candidate for school director, hurriedly, “and the town will be jammed with conventions to-morrow, all the way from members o’Congress to,” modestly, “school director.”
“I know,” said Mr. Burns.
“I want your support!” said McQuirk, bluntly. “There’s a movement to wall me up in me own divisionby a gang o’ would-be reformers; and I want all me friends to stand by me.”
“So yez want me vote?” asked Tim, as he wiped his mouth on a corner of the table-cloth and pushed back his chair.
“Sure; you’ve voted with the party ever since you got out your papers, an’ you’re entitled to a say in the primaries.”
“Have a cigar,” invited Haley, as Burns got up.
“I’ll smoke me poipe,” said Tim. He took it down from a shelf and knocked out the “heel” on the edge of the range, then proceeded to cut a fresh charge from a plug of “Rough and Ready,” with his pocket knife.
“I’m a Dimmycrat,” said Tim, “an’ plaze God, I’ll always stay wan.”
The boss beamed approval. “Now look here,” said he, “you know McAteer, don’t you? Well this other crowd want to do him out of the nomination because he sticks like glue to the party, see? Old Owen Dwyer’s on the ticket, instructed for him; so give Owen your support, eh?”
“McAteer,” spoke Mr. Burns, “is an able man, an’Owen Dwyer, is a daysint wan, an’ a friend av my own.”
“So he is; you’re right, Tim! And then there’s Abrams for judge—Jimmie Hurley stands for him. Abrams is a sheeney, but he’s all right.”
“I’m agin no man because he sticks till what his father wur before him.”
“And there’s Kelly for select—a neighbour of yours; and here’s Haley for school director.”
“I knew yez father,” said Tim to Haley; “he wur a United man, an’ an A. O. H., so I’ll do what I can till give his son a boost. But for James Kelly—never!” Tim smacked his hands together loudly. “Gartenheim gits me vote; for he give me a job av work when the rist av yez passed me by!”
“Don’t let any o’ those young fellows jolly you, Tim; for they’re goin’ to git it in the neck, sure! Kelly’s the man! He’s the only one that can hold the workers, for he stands in with the mayor. He can git jobs.”
“I’ve heard that afore now,” remarked Tim, stubbornly. McQuirk touseled up the eldest boy’s head once more and also shook hands with the mother.
“Gartenheim’s name won’t be mentioned,” prophesied he as he buttoned up his light overcoat and paused at the door. “Stand in with the party, that’s the thing, eh, Mrs. Burns? The right kind o’ people never forgets who puts them in office. Do what’s regular, Tim, that’s all I ask, do what’s regular; vote to hold the organization together and keep the snide reformers out. And, remember, we’ve got a congressman to elect, the only one o’ the right stripe in the city.” He opened the door and stood aside while Haley stepped out. “Good night, Tim; I just thought I’d drop in and talk to you about the thing. No harm done?”
“Not a bit,” answered Mr. Burns, “Good night.”
And so it went from house to house, from alley to alley, from division to division through the ward. McQuirk did not trust himself in the hands of his workers; he saw the voters in person, raised the standard and appealed to the partisanship that is born in every man; and so if there was glory to be gained, he was the gainer; if there was a harvest of defeat to reap, it was not because of lack of personal attention on his part.
Politics had been McQuirk’s study for years, and hehad been an apt scholar. He knew nothing of the profundity of statesmanship, and cared less; he had never made a speech upon his feet, and could not had his life depended upon it. But what he did not know of practical politics, as his friend Moran was in the habit of saying, was not worth knowing. He possessed a genius for organization: in getting out the full vote he was unexcelled, and he dominated the freemen of his district by one of three things: Favour—the expectation of favour—the fear of disfavour.
There were people in the ward that had known him when he was a dump-cart driver, and others who remembered a later period when his only visible means of support was Sunday poker-playing in the parlours of social clubs. Then he became a political hanger-on; he fetched and carried for the powers that were and by his astuteness gained their favour. Little by little he rose in power, and at length, was sent, under orders, to represent his division in the ward committee. From that time he grew visibly; his name began to appear in the political columns of the Sunday papers and he took to wearing a silk hat. Then came the revolt of a clique of workers that presaged disaster to the wardmachine; McQuirk saw his opportunity, threw himself at the head of the insurgents and in a desperate battle of the ballots, came off victorious. His old benefactors were driven to the wall and ruthlessly knifed, and McQuirk stood at the head of the committee in the pivotal ward of the district.
With a solid phalanx of admirers and a chain of supporting social clubs behind him, he soon made himself manifest; controlling the most powerful subdivision of the organization, he held the balance of power and was courted and feared. He walked into his first ward convention with his breast pocket stuffed with proxies and dictated the nomination of his bitterest foe; then he threw his strength, in secret, with an independent movement and buried the said foe under an avalanche of ballots that effectually stripped him of his dangerous qualities. As Mr. Haley had remarked, McQuirk was a miracle.
James Kelly was sweating blood and spending money, provided by the Motor Traction Company, right and left, to accomplish his nomination. The back room of his saloon, turned into a campaign headquarters, had for weeks been a vortex of activity. Theair was never clear of cigar smoke, or the table of beer bottles. Kelly, aided by that rising young politician, Gratten Haley, Nobby Foley and his son, had canvassed the ward from end to end. This did him some good; but vastly greater than their combined exertions was the fact that the boss favoured him—that he was the choice of the machine.
“That mocaraw,” said McQuirk, on Tuesday morning as he stood in Moran’s “court,” “has queered the whole shooting match! He’ll have every voter out to-night, either for him or against him, and that’ll bring our other people into the fight.”
“He ain’t got no gumption,” remarked the magistrate tipping himself back in his office chair, and loosening the foil covering of a paper of fine cut. “The old way’s the best. Keep quiet and on the night of the primaries half of them will forget it, and the other half won’t bother their heads. Enough picked people to elect each delegate is all we want; when the whole crowd starts to chip in, it keeps you guessing.”
“That’s what! It’s time enough to make a hurrah and shoot off the sky-rockets when the convention’s over and your slate’s all to the good; you’re fresh for thefight, then; but when there’s a preliminary about who’ll carry the flag, it makes hard feelings; and a man who would turn out with the gang, with a torch dropping grease down his back, in the first place, wouldn’t show up in the second even if you promised to put him under a plug hat and on top of a horse ahead of the band.”
Moran nodded his approval of this piece of political sagacity; McQuirk buttoned up his coat.
“I’ve fixed it,” said the latter, “so that if anybody’s pinched they’ll be run over here in the wagon. Be sure you have somebody to bail them out if you can’t discharge them.”
“That’ll be all right. I’ll have Pete Slattery hangin’ around somewhere; he’ll do for a few more, yet.”
Here the magistrate laughed, but the boss looked glum.
“That young Murphy,” said he, “is bothering me some. I don’t like the way he is jumping into this thing. He’s sore on Kelly, eh?”
“I should say so! He’d give him the knife in a minute. Say,” continued Moran, suddenly, “ain’t you on the wrong track, McQuirk? You don’t want to make an enemy of Murphy, he’s growin’ up and beginningto take notice, don’t you know? Keep him in line; one young one’s as good as a half dozen old ones, and they do more and don’t ask as much. Ain’t that right?”
The boss looked at his watch, snapped the case shut, and dropped it into his pocket.
“I’m going down to the Precinct Club,” said he. “The committee holds a pow-wow there in half an hour, and I must make good.”
“But, say,” went on the magistrate tenaciously, “what’s the good word, Mac? Sling me a line on it, so’s I can put the boys next. Is it Kelly or nothin’? Or is it Kelly if we can?”
McQuirk cleared his throat and twisted his fingers among the links of his watch chain. He was not revolving a decision—that had been made weeks ago. He merely wanted his honour to draw his answer more from his manner than his words. He had seen political friendships broken before now; and he had also seen men’s words, quoted in fat type, posted upon fences.
“We’ll do what we can for Kelly,” said he, “yes, we’ll do all we can for him.”
Moran smiled when his visitor left, and caressed his dyed moustache.
“Just as foxy!” murmured he. “It’ll be a slick member that ever makeshimslip his hold, and that’s no dream. If Murphy draws the most water why Kelly gets entered among the also rans, that’s all.”
Not many members of the Aurora Borealis Club who had entered the political arena against Kelly had gone to work that day. Some were canvassing their divisions for votes or information, and others lounged about the club rooms, ready for anything that might turn up. Larry Murphy, wearing a deep black band about his hat, dropped in during the morning.
“We’re goin’ to do him,” said Larry, after a long talk with his friends. “If anybody ever needed a lickin’, it’s Mart Kelly. He wants it bad!”
“I heard Mary prayed for in church on Sunday,” said Jerry, with a glance at the mourning band.
“Sure,” said Larry. “But she don’t need it, though,” he added reverently.
“If we all stood as good as her,” remarked McGonagle, “we’d be all right. Me mother was makin’a novena for her when she died. She t’ought she’d get better.”
“Tell her I’m much obliged,” said Larry. “Your mother always liked Mary.” After a pause he said: “I’m goin’ out to see what’s doin’. Don’t loaf, gents, keep the t’ing goin’.”
After he had gone McGlory asked.
“Did any o’ youse fella’s hear the new one?”
“Bat it out,” requested McGonagle.
“One o’ Rosie O’Hara’s aunts was to see me mother last night, and it was the first time she was ever in our house, for her and me mother can’t hit it. I was out at the time—over to see Veronica, ye know—but I heard all about it at breakfast-time next mornin’.”
“Well, chop it off!” urged McGonagle, impatiently. “Don’t wait until I’m grey-headed. Bat it out.”
“Larry and Rose is goin’ to run double.”
“G’way!” Goose stared at his friend, amazedly. “It must be a roast. Murphy was a friend o’ Larkin’s; he wouldn’t play him dirt like that!”
“What’s Larkin got to do with it?”
“Why him an’ Rose was engaged—on the quiet, ye know.”
“Whew!” Jerry whistled through his teeth and frowned across the table at the other. “I’ll bet the best skate we’ve got in the stable that Murphy don’t know a thing about it.”
“But Rose does! She’s give Jimmie the ice-house laugh, that’s what she’s done; he’s only a sparrer, an’ Murphy’s got the money, see? I never put me lamps on a woman yet that wasn’t daffy after a guy what’s got a wad o’ rags.”
Danny Casey who sat by a window, emerged from behind his newspaper, took his feet from the sill, and observed:
“There seems to be lots o’ new t’ings chasin’ around. When I heard that Dick Nolan and Roddy Ferguson had made up, ye cud a-knocked me down with a straw; but when I seen them workin’ together against Kelly, why, say, I almost fainted.”
“Thatwasa funny t’ing,” agreed McGonagle. “I tried to pump Roddy, but he was dead dry. But, say, it’ll be a good snap for us all, eh? Nolan’s ace highwith Gartenheim, and if he kin coax him to step out, and give O’Connor a push, Kelly’ll be a dead cock in the pit.”
Casey shook his head doubtfully. He felt that Goose’s hopes were a trifle too roseate.
“Dick pulls some weight wit’ the old man,” admitted he; “but he can’t do all that. I tell youse Gartenheim’s too sore on O’Connor to turn in for him. Stick to Murphy’s lay-out; we’ve got the best chance there. When we spring it, take me word for it, the whole shootin’ match’ll stand up on their hind legs.”
“Youse might be right; I only hope ye are,” said Jerry. “Anyhow let’s go down the line; we ain’t doin’ no good holdin’ down chairs around here. I want to see old man Hoffer and a lot more guys; they’re friends o’ the old man’s and I want to sling ’em a breeze.”
When seven o’clock drew on the division houses were wide open; the special policemen and ward workers were clustered in the doorways and were aghast at the magnitude of the vote called out by the conflicting efforts of Kelly and his opponents; it was as heavy as that of a general election and stood unprecedented intheir experience. McQuirk, in a silk hat and with a cigar between his teeth, was going from division to division, in one of McGrath’s hacks; his subordinates worked zealously with the vote, feeling that their future weal depended upon the impression that they made.
Clancy came through McGarragles’ Alley and turned down the avenue toward the polling place of his division; his white apron was tucked up about his waist and he carried a ballot fluttering between his fingers. Murphy who stood by the curb, watching things, and sending out his aids to drag voters from their suppers, at once pounced upon the grocer.
“Just a second, Clancy!” besought he.
A stout man with a red face protested.
“Ah, let the man be!” requested he. “The polls’ll be closed in a little while. Go ahead and vote, Clancy!”
“Close yer face, will youse? I’m doin’ this.”
“An’ yer makin’ a mess of it, too. Youse people’ll split the ticket, and we’ll get it good and hard, like last time.”
“I take notice youse have all turned in for de guywhat licked youse; youse fellas would cap for McQuirk to beat yer own gran’father.”
Murphy was about to unmask his batteries and wither the red-faced man with sarcasm when Clancy interrupted him.
“What d’yez want av me?” asked he.
“Yer got a pink ticket there. Just open it and paste this sticker over Pete Slattery’s name.”
“Divil the bit! Sure, Slattery’s a friend av mine, an’ a customer.”
“But, say, he’s for Kelly! Ye ain’t goin’ to help that slob to lick us, are ye?”
“For Kelly! Begorry, they niver towld me that. Where’s yez sticker? Divil a boost’ll I give a man that’s for James Kelly.”
A deep murmur that swelled into a smothered roar came from the cigar store where the balloting was being held. A dense group of excited, gesticulating workers were gathered about the table; in their midst stood two men, their noses almost together, their faces pale, their voices high-pitched and angry.
“Ye don’t vote, see,” declared one. “Ye ain’t got no vote, here, and that goes.”
“I’m as good a Democrat as youse,” maintained the other, “you’re a mugwump, ye stiff!”
“You’re a liar!”
In an instant they had clinched and were making maddened efforts to strike. A policeman rushed in, tore them apart and hustled one out upon the sidewalk. Murphy desperately forced his way through the crowd; he saw a vote being lost to his faction, and the sight aroused all his combativeness.
“Let him go,” commanded he. “He didn’t do nothin’, Callahan!”
Officer Callahan turned with upraised club. “I’ll break your face!” growled he, “I’m dead onto you, anyhow.”
There was no telling to what extreme the young man would have gone, had not McGonagle and some others pulled him away.
“Youse must be daffy!” exclaimed Goose, “D’ye want to play right into their hands? Every copper around the booth’s a Kelly man and they’ll rope in us people if we look cross-eyed; and then we’ll get the wrong end of it, sure.”
“The wagon’s been out t’ree times in Tom Hogan’sprecinct,” said another, “they’re challengin’ all our people and t’rowin’ ’em down—an’ givin’ ’em a ride if they kick.”
“I know’d Hogan’d get the goose if he’d go against Daily alone. Somebody go down and help him out”; continued Murphy. “Hully Gee, we gotta’ hold ’em safe down there, it’s our strongest graft, and we can’t afford to be gold-bricked, gents.”
“It’s too late,” spoke McGonagle, looking at his open-faced watch; “the polls’ll be closed in a quarter of an hour.”
Jerry McGlory dashed up in his father’s falling-top buggy.
“Anything doing?” asked he.
“It’s all done,” answered Larry.
“How’s the vote?”
“Heavy as lead.”
“They’re doin’ us dirt,” said McGlory, bitterly. “They’re pullin’ our vote, an’ holdin’ ’em for a hearin’ in the mornin’. They took twelve out o’ Mason’s precinct since seven o’clock!”
“Move over,” said Larry. He and McGonagle jumped into the carriage beside Jerry, as he continued:“Now throw it into that old skate o’ yourn for all yer worth.”
“Which way?” asked McGlory.
“Up to Moran’s,” answered his friend. “He’s goin’ to do somethin’ damned quick, or the next guy he holds for a hearin’ ’ll have done somethin’ to be held for!”