THE KING HATH SUMMONED HIS PARLIAMENT

The Great Seal of the Hoosier Commonwealth, depicting a sturdy pioneer felling a tree while behind him a frightened buffalo gallops madly into oblivion, was affixed to a proclamation of the governor convening the legislature in special session on the 20th of November.  It was Morton Bassett’s legislature, declared, the Republican press, brought back to the capital to do those things which it had left undone at the regular session.  The Democratic newspapers proved conclusively that the demands of the state institutions said to be in dire need were the fruit of a long period of Republican extravagance, for which the Democratic Party, always prone to err on the side of frugality, was in no wise responsible.  The Republican governor had caused the legislative halls to be reopened merely to give a false impression of Democratic incompetence, but in due season the people would express their opinion of that governor.  So reasoned loyal Democrats.  Legislatures are not cheap, taken at their lowest valuation, and a special session, costing something like one hundred thousand of the people’s dollars, is an extravagance before which a governor may well hesitate.  This particular convocation of the Hoosier lawmakers, summoned easily enough by a stroke of the pen, proved to be expensive in more ways than one.

On the third day of the special session, when the tardiest member, hailing from the remote fastnesses of Switzerland County, was just finding his seat, and before all the others had drawn their stationery and registered a generous computation of their mileage, something happened.  The bill for an act entitled an act to lift the lid of the treasure chests was about to be read for the first time when a page carried a telegram to Morton Bassett in the senate chamber.

Senator Bassett read his message once and again.  His neighbors on the floor looked enviously upon the great man who thus received telegrams without emotion.  It seemed, however, to those nearest him, that the bit of yellow paper shook slightly in Bassett’s hand The clerk droned on to an inattentive audience.  Bassett put down the telegram, looked about, and then got upon his feet.  The lieutenant-governor, yawning and idly playing with his gavel, saw with relief that the senator from Fraser wished to interrupt the proceedings.

“Mr. President.”

“The senator from Fraser.”

“Mr. President, I ask leave to interrupt the reading of the bill to make an announcement.”

“There being no objection, the senator will make his announcement.”

Senators who had been smoking in the cloakroom, or talking to friends outside the railing, became attentive.  The senator from Fraser was little given to speech, and it might be that he meant at this time to indicate the attitude of the majority toward the appropriations asked by the governor.  In any event, it was always wise to listen to anything Morton Bassett had to say.

The senator was unusually deliberate.  Even when he had secured the undivided attention of the chamber he picked up the telegram and read it through again, as though to familiarize himself with its contents.

“Mr. President, I have just received the following message from a personal friend in Washington:  ’The Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield, United States Senator from Indiana, while on a hunting trip in Chesapeake Bay with a party of Baltimore friends, died suddenly this morning.  The death occurred at a point remote from the telegraph.  No particulars have yet been received at Washington.’  It is with profound sorrow, Mr. President, that I make this announcement.  Though Senator Ridgefield had long been my political antagonist, he had also been, for many years, a valued personal friend.  The Republican Party has lost one of its great leaders, and the State of Indiana a son to whom men of all parties have given their ungrudging admiration.  Mr. President, I move that the senate do now adjourn to meet at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

Even before the motion could be put, Bassett was passing about among the desks.  The men he spoke to nodded understandingly.  A mild, subdued excitement reigned in the chamber.  It flashed through the mind of every Democratic member that that death in the Chesapeake had brought a crisis in the war between Bassett and Thatcher.  In due course the assembly, convened in joint session, would mourn decorously the death of a statesman who had long and honorably represented the old Hoosier State in the greatest tribunal on earth; and his passing would be feelingly referred to in sonorous phrases as an untoward event, a deplorable and irreparable loss to the commonwealth.  To Republicans, however, it was a piece of stupendous ill-luck that the Senator should have indulged in the childish pastime of duck shooting at an inconvenient season when the Democratic majority in the general assembly would be able to elect a successor to complete his term of office.

When the gavel fell, adjourning the senate, gentlemen were already seeking in the Federal Constitution for the exact language of the section bearing upon this emergency.  If the Republican governor had not so gayly summoned the legislature he might have appointed a Senator of his own political faith to serve until the next regular session, following the elections a year hence.  It was ungenerous and disloyal of Roger B. Ridgefield to have taken himself out of the world in this abrupt fashion.  Before the first shock had passed, there were those about the State House who, scanning the newspaper extras, were saying that a secret fondness for poker and not an enthusiasm for ducks had led the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield to the remote arm of the Chesapeake, where he had been the guest of a financier whose influence in the upper house of Congress was notoriously pernicious.  This did not, however, alter the immediate situation.  The language of the Federal and State Constitutions was all too explicit for the Republican minority; it was only in recess that a governor might fill a vacancy; and beyond doubt the general assembly was in town, lawfully brought from the farm, the desk, the mine, and the factory, as though expressly to satisfy the greed for power of a voracious Democracy.

Groups of members were retiring to quiet corners to discuss the crisis.  Bassett had already designated a committee room where he would meet his followers and stanch adherents.  Thatcher men had gone forth to seek their chief.  The Democrats would gain a certain moral strength through the possession of a Senator in Congress.  The man chosen to fill the vacancy would have an almost irresistible claim upon the senatorship if the Democrats should control the next legislature.  It was worth fighting for, that dead man’s seat!

The full significance of the news was not wasted upon Representative Harwood.  The house adjourned promptly, and Dan hastened to write telegrams.  He wired Colonel Ramsay, of Aurora, to come to the capital on the first train.  Telegrams went flying that afternoon to every part of Indiana.

Thatcher read the evening papers in Chicago and kept the wires hot while he waited for the first train for Indianapolis.

One of his messages, addressed to Harwood, read: 

     “Breakfast with me to-morrow morning at my house.  Strictly private. 
     This is your big chance.”

Harwood, locked in his office in the Law Building, received this message by telephone, and it aroused his ire.  His relations with Thatcher did not justify that gentleman in tendering him a strictly private breakfast, nor did he relish having a big chance pointed out to him by Mr. Thatcher.  It cannot be denied that Dan, too, felt that Senator Ridgefield had chosen a most unfortunate season for exposing himself to the ravages of the pneumococcus.  He kept away from the State House and hotels that evening, having decided to take no part in the preliminary skirmishes until he had seen Ramsay, who would bring a cool head and a trained hand to bear upon this unforeseen situation.

He studied the newspapers as he ate breakfast alone at the University Club early the next morning.  The “Advertiser” had neatly divided its first page between the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield, dead in a far country, and the Honorable Morton Bassett, who, it seemed, was very much alive at the Hoosier capital.  A double column headline conveyed this intelligence: ­

     BASSETT IS HIMSELF AGAIN

Harwood, nibbled his toast and winnowed the chaff of speculation from the grains of truth in this article.  He had checked off the names of all the Bassett men in both houses of the assembly, and listed Thatcher’s supporters and the doubtful members.  Bassett would undoubtedly make a strong showing in a caucus, but whether he would be able to command a majority remained to be seen.  There were men among the doubtful who would be disposed to favor Thatcher because he had driven a wedge into the old Bassett stone wall.  No one else had ever succeeded in imperiling the security of that impregnable stronghold.  The thought of this made Harwood uncomfortable.  It was unfortunate from every standpoint that the legislature should be called upon to choose a Senator without the usual time for preparation.  Dan had already been struck by the general air of irresponsibility that prevailed among the legislators.  Many of the members had looked upon the special session as a lark; they seemed to feel that their accountability to their constituents had ended with the regular session.

The “Courier,” Dan observed, printed an excellent biographical sketch of the dead Senator, and its news article on the Democratic opportunity was seemly and colorless.  The state and federal statutes bearing upon the emergency were quoted in full, but the names of Bassett and Thatcher did not appear, nor were any possible successors to Ridgefield mentioned.  Dan opened to the editorial page, and was not surprised to find the leading article a dignified eulogy of the dead Senator.  Then his eye fastened upon an article so placed that it dominated the whole page.  It was the old “Stop, Look, Listen!” editorial, reproduced with minute citation of the date of original publication.

Dan flinched as though a cupful of ice water had struck him in the face.  Whatever scandalous knowledge touching Bassett’s public or private life Thatcher might possess, it was plain that Bassett was either ignorant of it or knew and did not fear exposure.  In either event, the republication of the “Stop, Look, Listen!” article was an invitation to battle.

It was in no happy frame of mind that Harwood awaited the coming of Ramsay.