XXI.
BRADLEY AND CARGILL CALL ON IDA
Bradley had come to like Cargill very much. He was very thoughtful in his haphazard way, but not at all like Radbourn. Bradley compared every man he met with Radbourn and Judge Brown, and every woman suffered comparison with Ida Wilbur.
He went down to meet Cargill on the night of the promised call. He found him seated on the small of his back, his hands in his pockets. His absurd little hat (that seemed to partake of his every mood) was rolled into a point in front, and pulled down aggressively over his eyes. He was particularly violent, and paid no attention whatever to Bradley.
"No, sir; I am not a prohibitionist. My position is just this: If we vote prohibition in Iowa, the government has no business to license men to sell contrary to our regulations."
"That's state's rights!" burst in the other man who was trembling with rage and excitement.
Cargill slowly rose, transfixing him with a glare. "Go way, now; I won't waste any more time on you," he said, walking off with Bradley. "Let me see, we were going to the club to-night." He looked down at his boots. "Yes, they are shined; that puts a dress suit on me." As he walked along, he referred to Miss Wilbur. "She is a great woman, but she is abnormal from my point of view."
"Why so?" inquired Bradley.
"Well, look at the life she leads. On the road constantly, living at hotels. A woman can't hold herself up against such things."
"It depends upon the woman," was Bradley's succinct protest against sweeping generalizations.
It was crisp and clear, and the sound of their feet rang out in the still air as if they trod on glass at every step. They talked very little. Bradley wanted to tell Cargill that he had already met Miss Wilbur, but he could not see his way clear to make the explanation. Cargill was unwontedly silent.
The Norwegian girl ushered them into a pretty little parlor, where a beautiful fire of coal was burning in an open grate. While they stood warming their stiffened hands at the cheerful blaze, Ida entered.
"Mr. Cargill, this is an unexpected pleasure."
"I wonder how sincere you are in that. This is my friend Mr. Talcott."
Ida moved toward Bradley with her hand cordially extended. "I think we have met before," she said.
"I call him my friend," said Cargill, "because he has not known me long enough to become my enemy."
"That is very good, Mr. Cargill. Sit down, won't you? Please give me your coats." She moved about in that pleasant bustle of reception so natural to women.
Cargill slid down into a chair in his disjointed fashion. "We came to attend the intellectual sit-down."
"Why, that doesn't meet to-night! It meets every other Friday, and this is the other Friday."
"Oh, is it? So much the better; we will see you alone."
Ida turned gravely to Bradley. "Mr. Cargill is not often in this mood. I generally draw him off into a fight on Mr. Howell's, Thackeray or Scott."
"She prefers me in armor," Cargill explained, "and on horseback. My intellectual bowleggedness, so to say, and my moral squint are less obtrusive at an altitude."
Ida laughed appreciatively. "Your extraordinary choice of figures would distinguish you among the symbolists of Paris," she replied.
This all seemed very brilliant and droll to Bradley, and he sat with unwavering eyes fixed upon Ida, who appeared to him in a new light, more softly alluring than ever – that of the hostess. She was dressed in some loose, rich-colored robe, which had the effect of drapery.
"When did you get back?" Cargill inquired, a little more humanly.
"Yesterday, and I am just in the midst of the luxury of feeling at home, with no journeys to make to-morrow. I have a friend I would like to introduce to you," she said, rising and going out. She returned in a few moments with a tall young lady in street dress, whom she introduced as Miss Cassiday.
In a short time Cargill had involved Miss Cassiday in a discussion of the decline of literature, which left Ida free to talk with Bradley. It was the most beautiful evening in his life. He talked as never before. He told her of his reading, and of his plans. He told her of his election to the legislature.
"Ah, that is good!" she said; "then we have one more champion of women in our State House."
"Yes, I will do what I can," he said.
"I will be here to hear you. I am one of the committee in charge of the bill."
The firelight fell upon her face, flushing its pallor into a beauty that exalted the young farmer out of his fear and reticence. They talked upon high things. He told her how he had studied the social question, since hearing her speak in Iowa City. He called to her mind great passages in the books she had sent him, and quoted paragraphs which touched upon the fundamental questions at issue. He spoke of his hopes of advancement.
"I want to succeed," he said, "in order that I may teach the new doctrine of rights. I want to carry into the party I have joined the real democracy. I believe a new era has come in our party."
"I am afraid not," she said, looking at the fire. "I begin to believe that we must wait till a new party rises out of the needs of people, just as the old Free-soil Party rose to free the slaves. Don't deceive yourself about your party in this State. It is after the offices, just the same as the party you have left. They juggle with the tariffs and the license question, because it helps them. They will drop any question and any man when they think they are going to lose by retaining him. They will drop you if you get too radical. I warn you!" she said, looking up at him and smiling with a touch of bitterness in her smile; "I am dangerous. My counsel does not keep men in office. I belong to the minority. I am very dangerous."
"I'm not afraid," he said, thrilling with the intensity of his own voice. "I will trust human reason. I'm not afraid of you – I mean you can't harm me by giving me new thoughts, and that's what you've done ever since that day I heard you first at the picnic. You've helped me to get where I am."
"I have?" she asked, in surprise. His eyes fell before hers. "It will be strange if I have helped any one to political success."
Bradley was silent. How could he tell her what she had become to him? How could he tell her that she was woven into the innermost mesh of his intellectual fibre.
"You've taught me to think," he said, at last. "You gave me my first ambition to do something."
"I am very glad," she replied, simply. "Sometimes I get discouraged. I speak and people applaud, and I go away, and that seems to be all there is to it. I never hear a word afterwards; but once in a while, some one comes to me or writes to me, as you have done, and that gives me courage to go on; otherwise I'd think people came to hear me simply to be amused."
She was looking straight into the fire; and the light, streaming up along her dress, transfigured her into something alien and unapproachable. The easy flex of her untrammelled waist was magnificent. She had the effect of a statue, draped and flooded with color.
Cargill's penetrating voice cut through that sacred pause like the rasp of a saw file. He had been listening to his companion till he was full of rebellion. He was a bad listener.
"But what is success? Why, my dear young woman" —
"Don't patronize us, please," Ida interposed. "I speak for poor Miss Cassiday, because she's too timid to rebel. Nothing angers me more than that tone. Call us comrades or friends, but don't say 'My dear young woman!'" She was smiling, but she was more than half in sober earnest.
Cargill bowed low, and proceeded with scowling brow and eyes half-closed and fixed obliquely upon Ida. "Dear comrades in life-battle, what is success? You remember the two lords in Lilliput who could leap the pack thread half its width higher?"
"Don't drag Swift into our discussion," Ida cried. "Mr. Cargill's a sort of American Swift," turning to Bradley. "Don't let him spoil your splendid optimism. There is a kind of pessimism which is really optimism; that is to say, people who believe the imperfect and unjust can be improved upon. They are called pessimists because they dare to tell the truth about the present; but the pessimism of Mr. Cargill, I'm afraid, is the pessimism of personal failure."
There was a terrible truth in this, and it drove straight into Cargill's heart. Bradley was pleased to see Ida dominate a man who was accustomed to master every one who came into his presence. There was a look on her face which meant battle. She did not change her attitude of graceful repose, but her face grew stern and accusing. Cargill looked at her, wearing the same inscrutable expression of scowling attention; but a slow flush, rising to his face, showed that he had been struck hard.
There was a moment's pause full of intense interest to Bradley. The combatants were dealing with each other oblivious of every one else.
"I admire you, friend Cargill," Ida went on, "but your attitude is not right. Your influence upon young people is not good. You are always crying out against things, but you never try to help. What are you doing to help things?"
"Crying out against them," he replied, curtly.
Ida dropped her glance. "Yes, that's so; I'll admit that it has that effect, or it would if you didn't talk of the hopelessness of trying to do anything. Don't feel alarmed," she said, turning to the others, "Mr. Cargill and I understand each other very well. We've known each other so long that we can afford to talk plain."
"This is the first time she ever let into me so directly," Cargill explained. "Understand we generally fight on literature, or music, or the woman question. This really is the first encounter on my personal influence. I'm going home to stanch my wounds." He rose, with a return to his usual manner.
Ida made no effort to detain them. "Come and see me again, Mr. Talcott, and don't let Mr. Cargill spoil you."
After leaving the house, the two men walked on a block in silence, facing the wind, their overcoats drawn up about their ears.
"There's a woman I like," Cargill said, when they turned a corner and were shielded from the bitter wind. "She can forget her sex occasionally and become an intellect. Most women are morbid on their sex. They can't seem to escape it, as a man does part of the time. They can't rise, as this woman does, into the sexless region of affairs and of thought."
Bradley lacked the courage to ask him to speak lower, and he went on. "She's had suitors enough and flattery enough to turn her into a simpering fashion-plate; but you can not spoil brains. What the women want is not votes; it's brains, and less morbid emotions."
"She's a free woman?" said Bradley.
"Free! Yes, they'd all be free if they had her brains."
"I don't know about that; conditions might still" —
"They'd make their own conditions."
"That's true. It all comes back to a question of human thinking, doesn't it?"
This seemed a good point to leave off the discussion, and they walked on mainly in silence, though two or three times during the walk Cargill broke out in admiration. "I never saw a woman grow as that woman has. That's the kind of a woman a man would never get tired of. I've never married," he went on, with a sort of confession, "because I knew perfectly well I'd get sick of my choice, but" —
He did not finish – it was hardly necessary; perhaps he felt he had gone too far. They said good-night at the door of the Windom, and Bradley went on up the avenue, his brain whirling with his new ideas and emotions.
Ida had rushed away again into the far distance. It was utter foolishness to think she could care for him. She was surrounded with brilliant and wealthy men, while he was a poor young lawyer in a little country town. He looked back upon the picture of himself sitting by her side, there in the light of the fire, with deepening bewilderment. He remembered the strange look upon her face as she rebuked Cargill. He wondered if she did not care for him.
XXII.
THE JUDGE PLANS A NEW CAMPAIGN
The first three or four weeks of legislative life sickened and depressed Bradley. He learned in that time, not only to despise, but to loath some of the legislators. The stench of corruption got into his nostrils, and jovial vice passed before his eyes. The duplicity, the monumental hypocrisy, of some of the leaders of legislation made him despair of humankind and to doubt the stability of the republic.
He was naturally a pure-minded, simple-hearted man, and when one of the leaders of the moral party of his State was dragged out of a low resort, drunk and disorderly, in company with a leader of the Senate, his heart failed him. He was ready to resign and go home.
Trades among the committees came obscurely to his ears; hints of jobs, getting each day more definite, reached him. Railway lobbyists swarmed about and began to lay their cajoling, persuasive hands upon members; and he could not laugh when the newspaper said, for a joke, that the absent-minded speaker called the House to order one morning by saying: "Agents of the K. C. & Q. will please be in order." It seemed too near the simple fact to be funny. The School Book Lobby, the University Lobby, the Armour Lobby, each had its turn with him, through its smooth, convincing agent.
He reached his lowest deep one night after a conversation with Lloyd Smith, an ex-clerk, and a couple of young fellows who called upon him at his room. Lloyd noticed his gloomy face, and asked what the trouble was. He told them frankly that he was disgusted.
"Oh, you'll get used to it!" the ex-clerk said. "When I first went into the House, I believed in honesty and sincerity, like yourself; but I came out of my term of office knowing the whole gang to be thieves. My experience taught me that legislators in America think it's a Christian virtue to break into the government treasury."
The others broke out laughing, believing him to be joking; but there was a ferocious look on his face, and Bradley felt that he might be mistaken, but he was not joking.
"They stole stationery, spittoons, waste baskets, by God! They stole everything that was loose, and at the end of the term, they seemed to be looking around unsatisfied, and I told 'em there was just one thing left – the gold leaf on the dome."
The others roared with laughter, and Bradley was forced to join in. But the face of the ex-clerk did not lose its dark intensity.
"Take salary grabbing. Why! they wanted me to certify to their demands for Sunday pay for themselves and their clerks, and I refused, and they were wild. I'm not an angel nor a Christian man, but I won't sign my name to a lie, and blamed if they didn't pass the order without my signature! Yes, sir; it's there on the record.
"Take nepotism. The members bring their wives and daughters down here, put them in as pages and clerks, or divide the proceeds when they have no relatives. Every device, every imaginable chicanery, every possible scheme to break into the State money box, is legitimate in their eyes, and worthy of being patented. Public money is fair game; and yet," he said, with a change of manner, "we have the fairest, purest and most honorable legislators, take it as a whole, that there is in the United States, because our State is rural, and we're comparatively free from liquor. Our legislature is a Sunday School, compared to the leprous rascals that swarm about the Capitol at Albany or Springfield."
"What is the cure?" asked Bradley, whose mind had been busy with the problem.
"God Almighty! there is no cure, except the abolition of government. Government means that kind of thing. Look at it! Here we enthrone the hungry, vicious, uneducated mob of incapables, and then wonder why they steal, and gorge and riot like satyrs. The wonder is they don't scrape the paint off the walls."
"Oh, you go too far; a legislator wouldn't steal a spittoon."
"No, but the fellow he recommends for clerkship does."
"My idea is that there are very few men who take money."
"I admit that, but they'll all trade their job for another job. Honesty is impossible. The Angel Gabriel would become a boodler under our system of government. The cure is to abolish government."
This conclusion, impotent to Bradley, was practically all the savage critic had to offer. Either go back to despotism or go ahead to no government at all.
After they went out, Bradley sat down and wrote a letter to Judge Brown, embodying the main part of this conversation: "It's enough to make a man curse his country and his God to see how things run," he said, at the end of writing out the ex-clerk's terrible indictment. "I feel that he is right. I'm ready to resign, and go home, and never go into politics again. The whole thing is rotten to the bottom."
But as the weeks wore on, he found that the indictment was only true of a certain minority, but it was terribly true of them; but down under the half-dozen corruptible agents, under the roar of their voices, there were many others speaking for truth and purity. The obscure mass meant to be just and honest. They were good fathers and brothers, and yet they were forced to bear the odium that fell on the whole legislature whenever the miscreant minority rolled in the mire and walked the public streets.
There was one count, however, that remained good against nearly all of the legislators: they seemed to lack conscience as regards public money. Bradley remembered that this dishonesty extended down to the matter of working on the roads in the country. He remembered that every man esteemed it a virtue to be lazy, and to do as little for a day's pay as possible, because it "came out of the town." He was forced to admit that this was the most characteristic American crime. To rob the commonwealth was a joke.
He ended by philosophizing upon it with the Judge, who came down in late February to attend the session during the great railway fight.
The Judge put his heels on the window sill, and folded his arms over the problem.
"Well, now, this thing must be looked at from another standpoint. The power of redress is with the voter. If the voter is a boodler, he will countenance boodling. Here is the mission of our party," he said, with the zeal of an old-fashioned Democrat, "to come in here and educate the common man to be an honest man. We have got a duty to perform. Now, we mustn't talk of resigning or going out of politics. We've got to stay right in the lump, and help leaven it. It will only make things worse if we leave it." The Judge had grown into the habit of speaking of Bradley as if he were a partner.
Bradley, going about with him on the street, suddenly discovered that the Judge's hat was just a shade too wide in the brim, and his coat a little bit frayed around the button-holes. He had never noticed before that the Judge was a little old-fashioned in his manners. No thought of being ashamed of him came into his mind, but it gave him a curious sensation when they entered a car together for the first time, and he discovered that the Judge was a type.
When Bradley made his great speech on the railroad question, arraigning monopoly, the Judge had a special arrangement with a stenographer. He was going to have that speech in pamphlet form to distribute, if it took a leg. He was already planning a congressional campaign.
Ida sat in the balcony on the day he spoke for woman's suffrage, and he could not resist the temptation of looking up there as he spoke. Everything combined to give great effect to his speech. It was late in the afternoon and the western sun thrust bars of light across the dim chamber which the fresh young voice of the speaker had hushed into silence. Ida had sent a bunch of flowers to his desk and upon that bouquet the intrusive sun-ray fell, like something wild that loved the rose, but as the speaker went on it clambered up his stalwart side and rested at last upon his head as though to crown him with victory.
But defeat came as usual. The legislators saw nothing in the sun-ray except a result of negligence on the part of the door-keeper. They all cheered the speech, but a majority tabled the matter as usual. The galleries cheered and the women swarmed about the young champion, Ida among them. Her hand-shake and smile was his greatest reward.
"Come and see me," she said. "I want to thank you."
The Judge was immensely proud of him. "A great speech, Brad; if I wasn't so old-fashioned and set – you'd have converted me. In private I admit all you say, but it ain't policy for me to advocate it just now."
"Policy! I'm sick of policy!" cried Bradley. "Let's try being right awhile."
The Judge changed the subject. He told the members at the boarding-house that it wouldn't hurt Bradley's chances. "People won't down a man on that point any more."
"Perhaps not in your county, but I don't want to experiment down in my county," said Major Root, of MacIntosh.
"I don't believe the people of Iowa will down any man for stating what he believes is right."
"Don't bet too high on that," said the Major in final reply.
The Judge dined with Bradley at the dining-room in the little cottage, and it gave Bradley great satisfaction to see that he used his fork more gracefully than the Supreme judge, who sat beside him, and better than the senator, who sat opposite. They had a most delightful time in talking over old legal friends, and the Judge was beaming as he came to pudding. He assured them all that the Honorable Talcott would be heard on the floor of Congress.
"We're the winning party now," he said. "We're the party of the future."
The others laughed good naturedly. "Don't be too certain of that." They all rose. "You surprised us sleeping on our arms," the general said, "but we're awake now, and we've got pickets out."
The Judge enjoyed his visit very much, and only once did he present himself to Bradley with a suspicious heaviness in his speech. He had reformed entirely since he had adopted a son, he explained to his old cronies.
On the day when the Judge was to return, as they walked down to the train together, he said, "Well, Brad, we'll go right into the congressional campaign."
"I don't believe we'd better do that, Judge."
"Why not?"
"Well, I could not be elected – that's one thing."
The Judge allowed an impressive silence to intervene.
"Why not? I tell you, young man, they're on the run. We can put you through. You've made a strong impression down here."
"I don't believe I want to be put through. I'm sick of it. I don't believe I'm a politician. I'm sick all through with the whole cursed business. I never'd be here only for you, pulling wires. I can't pull wires."
"You needn't pull wires. I'll do that. You talk, and that's what put you here, and it'll put you in Congress."
Bradley was in a bad mood.
"What's the good of my going there? I can't do anything. I've done nothing here."
"Yes, y' have. You've been right on the railroad question, on the oleo question, and the bank question. It's going to count. That speech of yours, yesterday, I'm going to send broadcast in Rock County. The district convention will meet in June early. Foster will pave the way for your nomination, by saying Rock County should have a congressman. We'll go into the convention with a clear two-thirds majority, and then declare your nomination unanimous. You see, your youth will be in your favor. Your election will follow, sure. The only fight will be in the convention."
"Looks like spring, to-day," Bradley said. It was his way of closing an argument.
"Well, good-by. You'll find the whole pot boiling when you come home," the Judge said, as the train started.
As February drew on and the snow fled, the earth-longing got hold upon Bradley. It was almost seed time, with its warm, mellow soil, its sweeping flights of prairie pigeons, its innumerable swarms of tiny clamorous sparrows, its whistling plovers, and its passing wild fowl. The thought came to him there, for the first time, that nature was not malignant nor hard; that life on a farm might be the most beautiful and joyous life in the world. The meaning of Ida's words at last took definite and individual shape in his mind. He had assimilated them now.
Bradley gave himself up to the Judge's plans. He went home in April with eagerness and with reluctance. He was eager to escape the smoke of the city and reluctant to leave behind him all chance to see Ida. This feeling of hungry disappointment dominated him during his day's ride. He had seen her but twice during his stay in Des Moines, and now – when would he see her again?
This terrible depression and sharp pain wore away a little by the time he reached home, and the active campaign which followed helped him to bear it. He still wrote to her, and she replied without either encouragement and without explicit displeasure. The campaign was really the Judge's fight. Bradley was his field officer. Victory in the convention only foreshadowed the sweeping victory in October. He resigned as legislator, to become a congressman.