The session wore along monotonously at
least to those who like Bradley took no interest in
the bitter partisan wrangling and suddenly
it came upon him that spring was near. There
came a couple of sunny days after three days of warm
rain and the grass grew suddenly green. A robin
hunting worms on the lawn laughed out audaciously one
morning as Bradley went across the path. There
seemed to be a mysterious awakening thrill in every
plant and animal. The distant hills grew soft
in outline.
A few days and the Spirea Japonica
flamed out in yellow, the quince in the hedges showed
its rose-colored tips of bursting blooms and on the
red buds grew wonderful garnet-colored fists soon to
open into beautiful palms of flowers. The gardeners
got out with rakes and wheel-barrows and lazily plodded
to and fro upon the beautiful seamless green of the
lawns, or spaded about the flowers beds in the countless
little parks of the city.
A few days later and the old white
mule and darkey driver came out upon the springing
grass with the purring mower, and it made Bradley’s
blood leap with recollections of the haying field.
The air began to grow sweet with the odor of flowers.
The sky took on a warm look. The building took
on a deeper blue in its shadows and the north windows
became violet at noon. Bradley longed for the
country, but the orange-colored mud of the suburbs
kept him confined to the sidewalks.
On Easter Sunday the girls came out
in their delicious dresses, looking dainty and sweet
as the lilies each church displayed. New hats,
new grasses and springing plants announced that spring
had come. The “leaves of absence”
indicated spring in the House.
As June came on, the question of re-election
began to trouble some of the members. They began
to get “leave of absence on important business,”
and to go home to fix up their political fences.
There was no sign of adjournment. It was the
policy of the Republicans to keep the Democrats out
of the field.
The profane Clancy was one of the
first to go. He came to Bradley one day, “Say,
Talcott, I wish you’d ask for indefinite leave
for me, my fences are in a hell of a fix and besides
I want to see my wife. I’m no earthly use
here though you needn’t state that
in your request.”
“What’ll I say?”
“Oh, important business or
sickness the baby’s cutting a tooth just
as you like. It all goes.”
“I guess I’ll try important
business. The other is too much worn.”
“All right. It does beat
hell the amount of sickness there is on pension bill
nights and on convention week.”
Clancy was a type of legislator whose
idea of legislation was to have a good time and look
out for re-election. Bradley, however, did not
worry particularly about his re-election until he
received a letter from the Judge asking him to come
home and attend the convention.
“It’s just as well to
be on the ground,” the Judge wrote; “there
is a good deal of opposition developing in the north-west
part of the district. Larson wants the nomination
for the Legislature, and he is trying to swing the
Scandinavians for Fishbein. They are making a
good deal of your attitude on the pension bill, and
that interview on the oleo business where you
go back on your legislative vote is being circulated
to do you harm.”
This letter alarmed Bradley, and at
once showed him what a fight the Judge was making.
Suddenly he woke to the fact that defeat would be
unwelcome. Congress had come at last to have a
subtle fascination, and he loved the city and its
noble buildings, its theatres, and its libraries.
Since that fatal letter from Ida he had been forced
to go more often to the theatres and concerts.
They seemed now like necessities to him, and the thought
of going back to private life was not at all pleasant.
He therefore got leave of absence, and took the train
for Rock River.
He did not see so much of the outside
world on this return trip. His trouble came back
upon him, mixed, too, with something sweet which lay
in the fact of a return to the West. He caught
a thrill of this as the train dipped and swung round
a peak on the west slope of the Alleghanies, and for
a single instant the sea of sun-illumined swells and
peaks of foliage broke upon the eyes and then was lost,
and the train dropped down into the rising darkness
of the valley.
It came to him again the next afternoon
as he rode away over the wide, low swells of the prairies
between Chicago and the Mississippi. It was a
beautiful showery June day. A day of alternate
warm rain and brilliant sunshine, and the rushing
engine plunged into trailing clouds of rain only to
burst forth into sunshine again with exultant shrieks
of untamed energy, and listening to it one might have
fancied it a living thing with capability to snuff
the glorious west wind, and eyes to reflect the cool
green swells of pasture.
It was a magnificent thing to step
off the Chicago sleeper into the broad morning at
Rock River. Soaring streamers of red and flame-color
arched the eastern sky like the dome of a mighty pagoda.
Birds were singing in the cool, sweet hush; roosters
were crowing; the air was full of the scent of fresh
leaves and succulent, springing grain. Bradley
abandoned himself to the spring, and his walk up the
quiet street was a keen delight. The town seemed
wofully small and shabby and lifeless; but it had
trees and birds and earth-smell to compensate for
other things.
There was no one at the station to
receive him, not even a ’bus. The station
agent said:
“Guess the Judge didn’t
know you was comin’ or he’d been down here
with a band-wagon.”
Mrs. Brown was in the kitchen bent
above a pan of sizzling meat. A Norwegian girl
with vivid blue eyes and pink and white complexion
was setting the table with great precision. She
smiled broadly as Bradley put his finger to his lips
and crept toward Mrs. Brown, who gave a great start
as she felt the clasp of his arm.
“Gracious sakes alive! Bradley Talcott!”
“Did I scare yeh?” he inquired, smiling.
“Where’s the Judge?”
She looked at him fondly as he held her a moment in
his arms.
“He’s out by the well I
think he’s at work at something, for I’ve
heard him swearing and groaning out there.”
Bradley found the Judge weeding a
bed of onions. He had a couple of folded newspapers
under his knees and was in his shirt-sleeves.
He looked like a felon condemned for life to hard
manual labor.
“Judge, how are you?” called Bradley.
The Judge looked up with a scowling
brow. “Hello, Brad.” He wiped
his hand on his thigh and rose with a groan to shake
hands. “I’m slavin’ again.
Mrs. Brown insists on my working on the garden.
How’s Congress?”
“Piratical as ever. Nothing
doing that ought to be done. How’s everything
here?”
The Judge put on his coat; “I
guess I’ll quit for this time,” he said,
referring to the onions. “Let’s wash
up for breakfast.”
They washed at the kitchen sink as
usual. Mrs. Brown watched Bradley with maternal
pleasure as he hung his coat on a nail and went about
in his shirt-sleeves scrubbing his face and combing
his hair.
“It’s good to see you around again, Bradley.”
“Well, it seems good to me.
Seems like old times to sit down here to your cooking
with the kitchen door open and the chickens singing.”
“We’re all right in this
county,” said the Judge, referring back to politics;
“but as I wrote you, it aint all clear sailing.
We’ve got work to do. I’ve called
the Convention at Cedarville, in order to keep some
useful people in the field. We’ll take dinner
with old Jake Schlimgen he’s a power
with the Germans.”
Bradley avoided political talk as
much as possible, but when on the street there seemed
nothing else to talk about. Councill and Ridings
assured him he was all right in the eastern part of
the county, and under their flattery he grew quite
cheerful. Their simple, honest admiration did
him good.
On the day named, Bradley and the
Judge drove off up the road in a one-horse buggy.
The Judge talked spasmodically; Bradley was silent,
looking about him with half-shut eyes. The wheat
had clothed the brown fields; crows were flying through
the soft mist that dimmed the light of the sun, but
did not intercept its heat. Each hill and tree
glimmered across the waves of warm air, and seemed
to pulse as if alive. Blackbirds and robins and
sparrows everywhere gave voice to the ecstasy which
the men felt, but could not express.
The Judge roused up, slapping the
horse with the reins. “It’s going
to be a fight; but Fishbein will be left on the first
ballot by twenty-five votes.”
Cedarville was wide-awake feverishly
so. The street was lined with knots of gesticulating
politicians. As he alighted Bradley’s friends
swarmed about him with “three cheers for the
Hon. Brad Talcott.” He shook hands all
round with unfeigned pleasure.
“Hurrah, boys, let’s all
go over to the Palace Hotel and have some dinner,”
said the Judge at last.
The rest whooped with delight.
“That’s the cooky, Judge.”
They swarmed in upon Jake like the
locusts into Egypt. They washed (some of them)
in the wash-room, out of tin basins, laughing and
talking in hearty clamor over the water and the comb.
Others flung their nondescript wind-worn hats upon
the floor, brushed their hair with their fingers and
went into the dining-room as if going into a farm-kitchen
in threshing time.
The girls were in a flutter of haste,
and giggled and bumped against each other trying to
serve the dinner to order
“Quick as the Lord’ll let yeh.”
Bradley’s constituents were
mostly farmers, clean-eyed and hearty. They all
felt sure of success and jeered the opposition good-naturedly.
When the Judge and Bradley rode home
that night, they were silent for another cause.
They had been defeated on the tenth ballot, and bitter
things had been said by both sides.
It was again beautiful around them,
but they did not notice it. The low sun flung
its level red rays of light across the flaming green
of the springing grain, and lighted every western
window-pane into burning squares of crimson.
The train carrying the successful Waterville crowd
passed them, and they waved their hats in return to
their opponents’ salute.
The Judge was as badly defeated as
Bradley. He took it very hard. It seemed
to give the lie to all his prophecies of Democratic
progress. It seemed to him a defeat of Jeffersonian
principle. He consoled himself by saying
“Those fellows don’t represent
the people. The thing to do is to bolt the convention”;
and then he went on planning an independent campaign.
Bradley maintained gloomy silence.
The comment of his friends hurt him more than his
defeat. Their tone of pity cut him, and left him
raw to the gibes of his opponents. The fact that
an honorable, honest man could have enemies in his
own party was borne in upon him with merciless force.
What had he done that men should yell in hell-like
ferocity of glee over his defeat?
This defeat cut closer into the Judge’s
life than anything that had come to him since the
death of his son. If Bradley had not been so
blind in his selfish suffering he would have seen how
the Judge had aged and saddened since the morning.
But the old man’s vital nature
would not rest under defeat. He almost forced
Bradley to issue a card to the public announcing his
independent candidacy for Congress. Bradley had
no heart in it, however. The energy of youth
seemed gone out of him.
The Judge gathered his forces together
for battle, but Bradley fled away from Rock River
to escape the comments of his friends as well as his
enemies. He was too raw to invite strokes of the
lash. He dreaded the meeting with his colleagues
at Washington, but there was a little more reserve
in their comment and there were fewer who took a vital
interest in his affairs.
He met Radbourn a few days after his return.
“Well,” Radbourn said,
“I see by the papers that your defeat in the
convention was due to your advocacy of ‘cranky
notions.’ I told you the advocacy of hérésies
was dangerous; I have no comfort for you. You
had your choice before you. You can be a hypocrite
and knuckle down to every monopoly or special act,
or you can be an individual and go out
of office.”
“I’ll go out of office,
I guess, whether I want to or not,” was his
bitter reply. He suffered severely for a few days
with the commiseration of friends and the thinly-veiled
ridicule of his political enemies, but each man was
too much occupied to hold Bradley’s defeat long
in mind. He soon sank back into quiet, if not
into repose.
As the hot weather came on, the city
became almost as quiet as Rock River itself.
Save taking care of the few tourists who drifted through,
there was very little doing. The cars ground along
ever more thinly until they might be called occasional.
The trees put forth their abundance of leaf, and under
them the city seemed to sleep. Congress had settled
down into a dull and drowsy succession of daily adjournments
and filibustering. The speaker ruled remorselessly,
“counting the hats in the cloak-room to make
up his quorum,” his critics said.
Nothing was doing, but vast accumulations
of appropriations were piling up, waiting the hurried
action of the last few days of the session. The
senators dawdled in and out dressed in the thinnest
clothing; the House looked sparse and ineffectual.
Bradley grew depressed, and at last
he became positively ill. He was depressed by
the incessant relentless attacks made upon him through
the Waterville Patriot, and by his apparently
hopeless outlook. The Patriot published
some of his radical utterances much garbled, of course,
and called him “an anarchist and a socialist,
a fit leader for the repudiating gang of alleged
farmers in Kansas.”
Radbourn became alarmed for him, and
advised him to get indefinite leave of absence and
go home. “Go back into the haying-field;
that’s what you need; they won’t miss
you here. Go home and go out of politics, and
stay out till the revolution comes; then go out and
chalk death on your enemies’ door.”
The advice to go home was so obviously
sound that Bradley took it at once. It seemed
as if the atmosphere of the city would destroy him.
As a matter of fact it was inactivity that was killing
him. He found it so hard to exercise except
by walking, and that did not rest his over-active
mind.