Senator Hanway, when he decided to pick out a House Speaker favorable to his hopes, had plenty of time wherein to lay his plans. The personnel of a coming House is known for over a year; the members are elected nearly thirteen months before they take their seats. These thirteen months of grace are granted the new member by the Constitution on a hopeful theory that he will devote them to a study of his country's needs. In this instance, as in many another, theory and practice wander wide apart; the new member gives those thirteen months to a profound study of his own needs, and concerns himself no more over the nation's than over wine-pressing in far-away Bordeaux. It is the glaring fault of every scheme of government, your own being no exception to the rule, that it seems meant for man as he should be rather than for man as he is.

Every member of the coming House, among matters of personal moment to himself, had given no little thought to what committees he would be placed upon; and this, in the nature of House things, likewise compelled him to a consideration of the Speakership and who should fill it. It was by remembering those committee hopes and fears of members, and adroitly fomenting them, that Senator Hanway expected to control the Speakership election.

But he must go warily to work. Coming from the Senate end of the Capitol, Senator Hanway, in his proposed interference in the organization of the House, must maintain himself discreetly in the dark. It was not a task to accomplish blowing a bugle. The House had surrendered its powers to the Speaker; but it had retained its vanity, and like all weak animals it was the more vain for being weak. The members, were it once known and parcel of the common gossip how they inclined to Senator Hanway's manipulation, would be compelled to rebel. They would be driven to oppose him as a method of preserving what they called their self-respect. Aware of this, Senator Hanway never came into the open, never appeared upon the surface. He secretly pitched upon a candidate among the older ones of the House and made his deal with him, working the wires of his diplomacy from below.

There was peculiar demand for effort on Senator Hanway's part. His man, when now he had selected him, would not find himself uninterrupted or unopposed in his march for that Speakership. There was another, and if native popularity were to count a stronger hand stretched forth to seize the gavel prize. Had it lain in the cards, Senator Hanway, who always sought his ends on lines of least resistance, would himself have pitched upon this stronger one. But such was beyond the question. The strong one claimed to be of that party clan which pushed the offensive Governor Obstinate for the Presidency; and this not only offered a perfect reason why Senator Hanway should make no alliance with him, but it multiplied the necessity for his defeat.

That member upon whom Senator Hanway settled for Speaker owned the biting name of Frost; it was an instance, however, when there was nothing in a name. Mr. Frost was a round, genial personage and only biting with occasional sarcasms; then, it is true, his sentences cut like a rawhide. He was big, breezy, careless, quick, and coming of an aquatic ancestry, oceanic in his sort; even his walk reminded one of a ground swell. And yet he was defective as a candidate. The House members liked him well, despite those verbal acridities which shaved the surface of debate as lawns are shaven by a scythe; but with the last word there existed no recognized House or party reason, whether of the past, the present or the future, why he should be made Speaker. In the lay of House topography he was on the wrong side of the river from the Speakership, and to land him within stretch of the gavel required that Senator Hanway either ferry or pontoon him across. This the latter gentleman set himself to accomplish by a series of intrigues and stratagems that would have brightened the fame of a Talleyrand.

The statesman opposed to Mr. Frost for the Speakership was a personage named Hawke. He stood possessed of honesty, intelligence, and energy; also he had been for long the leader of his party in the House, and given his name to a tariff measure. Without one gleam of humor, he was of a temper hot as that of any Hecla, and like his fellow volcano, being often in a state of eruption, he offered many reasons for being admired and none for being loved.

This should be a key to the man.

He had been a brave soldier during the Civil War, and when his men, most of whom were armed with shotguns—it being in the early hours of that strife and these men arming themselves—complained that their weapons were no match for the Enfields of the foe, rebuked them fiercely.

"General," said the spokesman of the soldiers; "these yere shotguns ain't no even break for them rifles the Yanks are shootin'!"

"They are a match for them," retorted the furious Mr. Hawke, "if you will only go close enough."

For all his soberness of humor and choleric upheavals, Mr. Hawke, because of his record as a House leader and a tariff maker—he had tinkered together that identical bill which, when Senator Hanway later revamped it in the Senate, produced the Obstinate One as a Governor—was the legitimate heir to the Speakership; and in the House, where tradition is something sacred and custom itself the strongest of arguments, his defeat for the place was thereby rendered well-nigh impossible. Senator Hanway had undertaken no child's task when he went about the gavel elevation of the popular, yet—by House usage—the illegitimate Mr. Frost.

Months before ever Senator Hanway was granted the honor of knowing Mr. Gwynn, he had been burrowingly busy about the Speakership. As a primary step he was obliged to suppress his ebullient brother-in-law. Mr. Harley, the moment a conquest of the House in the interests of Senator Hanway was proposed, waxed threateningly exuberant. He was for issuing forth to vociferate and slap members upon their backs and jovially arrange committeeships on the giffgaff principle of give us the Speakership and you shall become a Chairman. The optimistic Mr. Harley, whose methods were somewhat coarse and who did most things with an ax, was precisely of that hopeful sort who would advertise an auction of the lion's hide while it was yet upon the beast. Senator Hanway, with instincts safer and more upon the order of the mole's, forbade such campaigns of noise.

"You must keep silent, John," said he, "and never let men know what we are about. You are inclined, apparently, to regard a Speakership as you might a swarm of bees; you think one has only to beat a tin pan long enough or blow a tin horn loud enough in order to hive it according to one's wish. The Speakership, however, so far from being a swarm of bees is more like a flock of blackbirds, and the system to which you incline would prove the readiest means of frightening away our every chance. In short, you must work by my orders and meet no one, say nothing, except as I direct."

Then Senator Hanway sent Mr. Harley, much modified of his vigor, with a secret invitation to Mr. Frost; when that personage was brought to the privacy of the Harley house, he laid open to his ambition those gavel prospects which he, Senator Hanway, had already constructed in his thoughts.

There was no conflict of argument with Mr. Frost; he rose to the suggestion like a bass to a fly. Knowing himself to be of a genius too openly bluff and frank, and no one to conquer those elements which his campaign would require, he put himself in the hollow of Senator Hanway's hand to be controlled by him with shut eyes. This voluntary prompt submission on the part of Mr. Frost had a further subduing effect upon Mr. Harley. In imitation thereof he, too, began to speak in whispers and step with care, and ask his eminent relative for orders in all he went about.

Now when Senator Hanway had trained his partner and his candidate to come to heel he began to unravel his diplomacy. By his suggestion, Mr. Frost took into confidence two of his party colleagues in the House. These would on every occasion act as his agents or lieutenants. Senator Hanway and Mr. Harley were not to appear too obviously.

Senator Hanway, lying back in the dark, looked over the field and sent those two lieutenants variously to a score of members. These were sounded on the engaging topic of committee chairmanships, and one by one such coigns of congressional, not to say personal, advantage as the heads of Ways and Means, the Appropriations, the Foreign Affairs, the Naval, the Military and a number of other great sub-bodies were disposed of—bartered away on the contingency always of Mr. Frost's selection to be the Speaker. The entire House was laid off into lots like real estate and sold, the purchaser promising his vote and influence in the party caucus, taking therefor a verbal contract to give him the committee place he preferred.

This labor of an advance partition of the spoils and the linking of every possible faction with the campaign of Mr. Frost, was concluded about a fortnight prior to Mrs. Harley's dinner to Mr. Gwynn. As Senator Hanway ran his experienced eye over the list and counted the noses of Mr. Frost's array, he saw that it was not enough. The pontoon would not reach; there was still a wide expanse of water between his candidate and the coveted Speakership. As matters rested, and every morsel of House patronage disposed of to this hungry one or that, the enemy, Mr. Hawke—being doubly the enemy for that he was become an open supporter of Governor Obstinate and made no secret that his candidacy for the Speakership was meant to be a step towards making that gentleman President—would still rise victorious in caucus by full forty votes.

Senator Hanway's anxious wits were driven hard. He had drawn to Mr. Frost every splinter of power he could command by barter, and thrown in his own State delegation in the House by sheer stress of that machine which he had upreared for his own defense at home. It was not enough; even the subtraction of two State delegations from the standards of the foe, by the adroit scheme, applied to each delegation, of dragging one of its members forward to be a candidate for Speaker, was not enough. After ten months of labor, Senator Hanway went over the result and could read nothing therein save failure. And it was like an icicle through his heart; for aside from what advantage the control of the House might give his own ambitions, he knew beyond question that with the gavel in the fingers of a professed partisan of Governor Obstinate, the latter thick, yet fortunate, individual would occur as the next Presidential candidate of his party so surely as the sun came up on a convention morning.

Senator Hanway was in this valley of gloom when he heard of Mr. Gwynn. It was Mr. Harley, ever brisk in railway matters, who told him of that gentleman as the Colossus of the Anaconda Airline.

"He holds no offices in the management of the company," explained Mr. Harley, "but, being millions upon millions a majority shareholder his least word is Anaconda Airline law."

Senator Hanway did not have to be told of the influence of railways in the destinies of his country. He glanced up at a map on the wall; there he could see the nation caught like some great clumsy fish in a very seine of railways. He traced the black, thread-like flight, from seaboard to seaboard, of the Anaconda Airline. Then he made a calculation. The Anaconda Airline was the political backbone, first one State and then another, of forty House members, twenty-three of whom being of his own complexion of politics, would have a caucus vote. Of the twenty-three, luck upon good luck! twenty belonged to Mr. Hawke. If Senator Hanway might only get the Anaconda Airline to crack the thong of its authority over these recalcitrants, they could be whipped into the Frost traces. Not one would dare defy an Anaconda order; it would be political hari-kari. At this point our wily Senator Hanway began laying plans to bring Mr. Gwynn within his reach; it was in deference to those plans that our solemn capitalist found himself upon Mrs. Hanway-Harley's hospitable right hand on that evening of the dinner, with his severe legs outstretched beneath the Harley mahogany.

"I will see you to-morrow—with your permission," observed Senator Hanway, as he parted with Mr. Gwynn.

When Mr. Gwynn returned from Mrs. Hanway-Harley's he stood in the middle of the floor, and told Richard, word for word, all that had taken place. The latter young gentleman was in a prodigious good humor. For the first time in his life he had done a day's work, being the twenty-five hundred word story written and dispatched to the Daily Tory, and that was one reason for joy. Besides, there was the manager's wire of praise—and Richard thought it marked a weakness in him—that, too, had warmed the cockles of his heart. Being in good humor, he listened without interrupting comment to the rasping, parrot tones of Mr. Gwynn while that gentleman, without inflection or emphasis or slightest shade of personal interest, told the tale of the night's adventures, from Mrs. Hanway-Harley's flattery and Mr. Harley's song, to Senator Hanway's last handclasp and that parting promise of a call.

"And that is all, sir," said Mr. Gwynn, at the close, coughing apologetically behind his palm as though fearful of criticism.

"You did well," was Richard's response. "When Senator Hanway calls to-morrow, introduce me to him at once. After that, I shall talk and you will acquiesce. You may go."

"Thank you, sir. Very good, sir!" said Mr. Gwynn.

Mr. Gwynn received Senator Hanway in his library; Richard was present, considering the world at large from a window.

"And first of all," said Mr. Gwynn, after greeting Senator Hanway, "and first of all, let me introduce to your notice Mr. Storms. I may say to you, sir, I have confidence in Mr. Storms; I act much by his advice." And here Mr. Gwynn looked at Richard as though appealing for corroboration.

Senator Hanway, from whose nimble faculties nothing escaped, noted this appeal. He thought the less of it, since Mr. Harley had given him some glint of the measureless millions of Mr. Gwynn, and he deduced from this stiff turning towards Richard, this brittle deference, nothing save a theory that Mr. Gwynn, by virtue of his tremendous riches, had grown too great to do his own listening and thinking. It was as plain, as it was proper, that he should hire them done, precisely as he hired a groom for his horses or a valet to superintend his clothes. Senator Hanway, himself, was at bottom impressed by nothing so much as money, and was quite prepared to believe that one of the world's wealthiest men—for such he understood to be the case of Mr. Gwynn—would prove in word and deed and thought a being wholly different from everyone about him. Wherefore, his heaped millions accounted in Mr. Gwynn for what otherwise might have been considered by Senator Hanway as queernesses.

To add to this, Mr. Gwynn was of a certain select circle of English exclusives; Senator Hanway had learned that much from his sister, Mrs. Hanway-Harley. It was to be expected then that he would have someone about him to furnish brains for his deliberations, and to make up his mind as a laundress makes up shirts. Senator Hanway, knowing these things of Mr. Gwynn, was in no wise surprised that he possessed in his service one who was hearer, talker, and decider, just as ancient kings kept folk about whose business was to make witty retorts for them and conduct sparkling conversations in their stead, they themselves being too royal for anything so much beneath that level of exalted inanity, which as all men know is the only proper mark of princely minds. Something of this raced hit or miss through Senator Hanway's thoughts, as Mr. Gwynn presented Richard and then relapsed—hinge by hinge as though his joints were rusty with much aristocratic unbending—into a chair.

Richard gave him no space to dwell upon the phenomenon. He came forward with a little atmosphere of deference; for Richard had his own deep designs. Then, too, Senator Hanway was white of hair and twice his age, to say nothing of being a certain young lady's uncle.

"Mr. Gwynn has told me of you," said he. Then pushing straight for the point after methods of his own, he continued: "What is it the Anaconda Airline can do? Mr. Gwynn is quite convinced, from what he has been told of those positions you have from time to time assumed in the Senate, that his own interest with that of every railway owner lies in following your leadership. Indeed, I think he has decided to adopt whatever suggestion you may make." Richard glanced towards Mr. Gwynn, and that great man gave his mandarin bow.

Senator Hanway, while smitten of vague amazement at Mr. Gwynn's acquiescent spirit, accepted it without pause. However marvelous it might be, at least he himself ran no risk. More than that, on second thought it did not occur to him as so peculiarly unusual; a Senator in a measure becomes inured to the wondrous.

Senator Hanway did not reply directly to Richard's query. Direct replies were not the habit of this practiced one. He made a speech full of flattering generalities. He spoke of Richard's connection with the Daily Tory, and expanded upon the weight and influence of that journal. Also, with a beaming albeit delicate patronage which Richard stomached for reasons of his own, he intimated complimentary things of Richard himself and seemed to congratulate the Daily Tory on the services of one so keen, so sure, so graphic; which last was the more kind, since Senator Hanway could have known no single reason for assuming anything of the sort. He told Richard that he hoped to see him personally every day. Here Richard broke in on the Senatorial flow to ask if he might wait upon Senator Hanway every morning at eleven.

"For I am warned by Mr. Gwynn," explained Richard, with an alert mendacity which would have done honor, to Senator Hanway himself, "that he will hold anything short of calling upon you once a day as barefaced neglect of his interests."

"Certainly, sir; most barefaced!" creaked Mr. Gwynn, giving the mandarin bow.

Senator Hanway would be graciously pleased to see Richard every morning at eleven. Also, he would aid him, as far as was proper, with a recount of what gusts and windy currents of news were moving in the upper ethers of government.

Then, having been polite, Senator Hanway got down to business and stated that Mr. Frost, if Speaker, would favor a certain pooling bill, much desired by railways, and particularly dear to the Anaconda Airline. On the obdurate other hand, Mr. Hawke was an enemy to pooling bills and railways. Mr. Gwynn's interest was plainly with Mr. Frost.

"Not that I care personally for the success of Mr. Frost," remarked Senator Hanway, "but I know how the railways desire that pooling bill, and how that pooling bill is a darling measure with Mr. Frost."

"Which brings us back," observed Richard, who never took his eye off a question, once put, until he saw it mated with an answer, "to Mr. Gwynn's first interrogatory: What can the Anaconda Airline do?"

Senator Hanway explained. The Anaconda Airline could press down the weights of its influence upon those twenty-three members. The Anaconda influence might better be exerted through its President and General Attorney, and perhaps what special attorneys were local to the congressional districts of those twenty-three.

"Mr. Gwynn," observed Richard, "anticipated something of the kind, and I think is prepared to request those officers you name to come to Washington."

"They shall be requested, sir; certainly, sir," rasped Mr. Gwynn. Richard's words seemed ever to reverberate in Mr. Gwynn's noble interior as in a cavern, and thereafter to issue forth by way of his mouth in the manner of an echo. "Certainly, sir; they shall be requested," repeated the cavernous Mr. Gwynn.

"Now this is highly gratifying," said Senator Hanway. "And you will have them call upon me, too, I've no doubt. You should wire them at once; the caucus, you know, isn't ten days away; Congress convenes on the first Monday of next month."

Senator Hanway, being of a quick intelligence, had by this time found his rightful line. He divided himself fairly; for he gave his entire conversation to Richard while he conferred upon Mr. Gwynn his whole respect. In good truth, the less Mr. Gwynn said and the less he seemed to hear and understand, the more Senator Hanway did him honor in his heart. The rigid witlessness of Mr. Gwynn fairly came over him as the token and sign of an indubitable nobility, and it was with a feeling treading upon reverence for that wonderful man that Senator Hanway arose to go.

"I am much refreshed by this interview," said he, taking Mr. Gwynn's hand and shaking it pump-handlewise. "Your help should insure Mr. Frost's success. With Mr. Frost Speaker, railway interests will be safe-guarded. And," continued Senator Hanway, quoting from one of his Senate speeches, lifting his voice the while, and falling into a fine declamatory pose, "he who safeguards the railroads, safeguards his country. Patriotism cannot count the debt the nation owes the railroads. Had it not been for the knitting together of the country by the railroads, bringing into closer touch with one another the West and the East, the South and the North—the wiping out of sectionalism—the annihilation of special interests by making all interests general—all done by the railroads, sir!—this country, broken across the knee of mountain ranges and sawed into regions by great rivers, would ere this have been frittered into fragments; and where we have now the glorious United States—a free and unified people—Europe, who envies as well as fears us, would be gratified by the spectacle of four and perhaps a half dozen different and differing countries, each alien and, doubtless, each hostile to the others." Senator Hanway had reached the door. "And that this condition of disseverment does not exist," cried he, as he bowed with final grace to Mr. Gwynn, who approved stonily, "is due to you, sir; and to gentlemen like you; and to those railways which, like the Anaconda Airline, form the ties that bind us safe against such dismembering possibilities and give us, for war or for peace, absolute coherency as a commonwealth."



CHAPTER V

HOW RICHARD WAS TAUGHT MANY THINGS

Richard went every day at eleven for a brief conference with Senator Hanway. The latter was no wise backward in his use of the columns of the Daily Tory. There are so many things concerning both men and measures that statesmen want said, and which, because of their modesty, they themselves hesitate to say, that Senator Hanway, when now through Richard he might tell this story of politics or declare that proposal of state, and still keep his own name under cover, discovered in the Daily Tory a source of relief. So much, in truth, did Senator Hanway, by way of Richard and the Daily Tory, contribute to the gayety of the times, that the editor-in-chief was duly scandalized. He aroused himself on the third evening, killed Richard's dispatch, and rebuked that earnest journalist with the following:

"Send news; nothing but news. No one wants your notion of the motives of representatives in fight over Speakership."

This led to a word or two between Richard and Mr. Gwynn, the upcome being a wire from Mr. Gwynn to the editor desiring him on all occasions and without alteration or addition to print Richard's dispatches. The editor in retort reminded Mr. Gwynn that the Daily Tory had a reputation and a policy: also there were laws of libel. Mr. Gwynn declined to be moved by these high considerations, and reiterated his first command. After that Richard in each issue gave way to an unchecked column letter, which was run sullenly by the editor and never a word displaced.

This daily letter, signed "R. S.," brought Richard mighty comfort; he read it fresh and new each morning with mounting satisfaction. Richard, like other authors, found no literature so good to his palate as his own; and while his stories looked well enough when he wrote them, the types never failed in uncovering charms that had escaped his ken. These were complacent days for Richard the defective; ones to nourish his self-love.

Being his first work, and performed under his own tolerant mastery, with none to molest him or make him editorially afraid, it stood scant wonder that he went about the subject of his own sleepless self-congratulations. What Richard needed—and never knew it—was dismissal in rapid succession from at least four newspapers; such a course of journalistic sprouts would have set his feet in proper paths. Under the circumstances, however, this improving experience was impossible; missing the benefits thereof, Richard must struggle on as best he might without a bridle.

It was fortunate, when one remembers his blinded ignorance, a condition aggravated by his own acute approval of himself, that Richard had a no more radical guide than was the cautious Senator Hanway. While that designing gentleman—the Daily Tory turning the stone—grinded many a personal ax—note bene, never once without exciting the sophisticated wrath of the editor-in-chief—he was no such headlong temper of a man as to invite the paper into foolish extravagancies, whether of statement or of style. As the bug under the chip of the Daily Tory's Washington correspondence, Senator Hanway was neither a vindictive nor yet a reckless bug; and the paper, while it became the organ of his ambitions, made some reputational profit by the very melody of those guarded tunes he ground.

Richard, you are not to suppose, went unaware of those employments to which Senator Hanway put him in the vineyard of his policies. He realized the situation and walked therein with wide and willing eyes. It served his tender purpose; it would take him to the Harley house and throw him, perchance, into the society of Dorothy without that dulcet privilege being identified as the true purpose of his call.

One cannot but marvel that Richard should be at the trouble of so much difficult chicane. It is strange that he should so entangle what might have been the simplest of love stories; for you may as well know here as further on that, had Richard laid bare the truth of himself, Mrs. Hanway-Harley, far from fencing her daughter against him and his addresses, would have taken the door off its hinges to let him in. But Richard, as was heretofore suggested, had been most ignorantly brought up, or rather had been granted no bringing up at all. Moreover, in the sensitive cynicism of his nature, which made a laugh its armor and was harsh for fear of being hurt, our young Democritus had long ago bound himself with vows that he would accept no friendship, win no love, that did not come to him upon his mere and unsupported merits as a man. In his own fashion, so far from being the philosopher he thought, Richard was a knight errant—one as mad and as romantic as the most feather-headed Amadis that ever came out of Gaul; and so he is to make himself a deal of trouble and have himself much laughed at before ever he succeeds in slipping through the fingers of this history to seek obscurity with Dorothy by his side. For all that, it is Richard's due to say that his "R. S." letters attracted polite as well as political attention, and got him much respected and condemned. Also they lodged him high in the esteem of Senator Hanway, who discovered daily new excellencies in him; and this came somewhat to the rescue of Richard one day.

Senator Hanway had a room in a wing of the Harley house which Mrs. Hanway-Harley called his study. It was a sumptuous apartment, furnished in mahogany and leather, and a bookcase, filled with Congressional Records which nobody ever looked at, stood against the wall. Here it was that Senator Hanway held his conferences; it was here he laid his plans and brooded them. When Senator Hanway desired to meet a gentleman and preferred to keep the meeting dark, this study was the scene of that secrecy. In such event, the blinds were drawn to baffle what prying or casual eye might come marching up the street; for in Washington, to see two men conversing, is to know nine times in ten precisely what the conversation is about. Commonly, however, the blinds were thrown wide, as though the study's pure proprietor courted a world's scrutiny.

It was in this study that Richard was received by Senator Hanway. There was an outside door; a caller might be admitted from the veranda without troubling the main portals of the Harley house. To save the patience of that journalist, Senator Hanway called Richard's attention to the veranda door, and commissioned him to make use of it. Senator Hanway said that he did not wish to subject one whom he valued so highly, and who was on such near terms with his good friend, Mr. Gwynn, to the slow ceremony which attended a regular invasion of the premises.

Richard thanked Senator Hanway, although he could have liked it better had he been less thoughtfully polite. Richard would have preferred the main floor, with whatever delay and formal clatter such entrance made imperative. The more delay and the more clatter, the more chance of seeing Dorothy. It struck him with a dubious chill when Senator Hanway suddenly distinguished him with the freedom of that veranda door—a franchise upon which your statesman laid flattering emphasis, saying that not ten others had been granted it.

This episode of the veranda door befell upon the earliest visit which Richard made in his quality of correspondent of the Daily Tory. On that day, being admitted by way of the Harley front door, Richard had the felicity of coming in with the before-mentioned daily sheaf of roses. Richard and the blossom-bearing colored youth entered together, the door making the one opening to admit both; and by this fortunate chance—which Richard the wily had waited around the corner to secure—he was given the joy of seeing and hearing the beautiful Dorothy gurgle over the flowers.

"And to think," cried Dorothy, her nose in the bosom of a rose, "no one knows from whom they come! Mamma thinks Count Storri sends them. It's so good of him, if he does!"

Dorothy's head was bowed over the flowers. As she spoke, however, her blue eye, full of mischief, watched Richard through a silken lock of hair that had fallen forward.

"But you don't think it's Storri?" cried Richard dolorously.

"Oh, no!" returned Dorothy, shaking her head with wise decision, "I don't think it's Count Storri. But of course I wouldn't tell mamma so; she doesn't like to be contradicted. Still," and here Dorothy looked quite wistful, "I wish I knew who did send them."

Before Richard could take up the delicate question of the roses and their origin, there arrived the word of Senator Hanway that he be shown into the study.

"Now that I'm a working journalist, Miss Harley," said Richard, "I shall be obliged to see your uncle every day."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Dorothy, with a fine sympathy; "how hard they drive you poor newspaper people!"

"Still, we go not without our rewards," returned Richard.

Then observing that Senator Hanway's messenger—who had not those reasons for loitering which made slow the feet of Richard—was already halfway down the hall, Richard took Dorothy's small hand in his, and, before she knew her peril or might make an effort to avoid it, rapturously kissed the fingers, not once, not twice, but five times. The very fingers themselves burned with the scandal of it! Following this deed of rapine, Richard went his vandal way; Dorothy's face turned a twin red with the roses.

Dorothy said nothing in rebuke of Richard, and it is to be assumed that, so flagrant an outrage left her without breath to voice her condemnation. That she was disturbed to the heart is sure, for she went instantly to her friend, the sibyl of the golden locks, for conference, confidence, and consolation.

"Wasn't he wretchedly bold, Bess?" said Dorothy in an awe-stricken whisper.

"Absolutely abandoned!" said Bess.

Then the two sat in silence for ten impressive seconds.

"Bess," remarked Dorothy tentatively, "suppose mamma were to forbid me loving one whom I loved——" Here she broke down, aghast.

"My dear Dorothy," cried the other, surprised into deepest concern, "your mother didn't see him kissing your fingers, did she?"

"Oh, no, Bess," said Dorothy hurriedly, "we were quite alone."

"You foolish girl," returned Bess. "You alarmed me!"

"But really, Bess," persisted Dorothy, "to put it this way: if your mamma insisted, would you give way and marry a man you didn't love?"

"You mean Count Storri," replied Bess. "Now, Dorothy, listen to me. In the first place, you are an arrant hypocrite. You pretend to be soft and powerless and yielding, and to appeal to me for counsel. And all the time you are twice as obstinate as I am, and much less likely to accept a man you don't love, or give up one whom you love."

"Well, Bess," said Dorothy defensively, a bit stricken of these truths, "really, I want your opinions on marriage."

"Oh, that is it! Then snap your fingers in the teeth of command, and marry no man whom you do not love!"

"But the man you love might not want you!" sighed Dorothy.

"The man you love will always want you," declared Bess with firmness.

"How sweet you are!"

"And as for parents making matches for their daughters," continued Bess, unmoved of the tribute, and speaking as one who for long had made a study of the world's domestic affairs, "it is sure to lead to trouble and divorce."

"Is it?" asked Dorothy, appalled.

"It is!" returned Bess with a sepulchral air, as though pronouncing doom. Then, mocking Dorothy's serious face with a little tumult of laughter, she went on: "There; it's all decided now the way you wished. You are to refuse Count Storri and marry Mr. Storms without bestowing either care or thought on what Mamma Harley or Papa Harley or Uncle Pat may say or do about it."

"Really, Bess, how much better you have made me feel. After all, there's nobody like a wise, dear, true friend!"

"The value of such a friend is beyond conjecture," returned the mocking Bess, reassuming her tones of the oracle.

The memory of Richard's kisses on her fingers never left Dorothy all that day and all that night. Those fortunate little fingers seemed translated into something rosily better and apart from herself. And brow and ears and eyes and cheeks and lips went envying those lucky fingers; and in the end the lips crept upon them and kissed them for having been kissed; perhaps with vague thoughts of robbing them of some portion of the blissful wealth wherewith they had been invested. Richard, being male, for his part thought the less about it, and went simply meditating future sweet aggressions. And that shows the difference between a man and a maid.

Richard, feeding his love with thoughts of Dorothy and his vanity with ink, and thereby gaining two mighty reasons for living, began to keep earlier hours. He turned out at nine o'clock instead of eleven and twelve, hours which had formerly matched his languid fancy. These energetic doings bred alarm in both Matzai and Mr. Pickwick, evoking snappish protests from the latter, who, being of a nocturnal turn, held that the day was meant for sleep. On the morning after he had been honored with the privilege of the veranda door, Richard was borne upon by something akin to gloom. This feeling went with him from bed to bath, and from bath to breakfast, and finally walked with him all the way to the Harley house. He was willing to sacrifice the Daily Tory and yoke himself personally to the mills of Senator Hanway's designs; but he must see Dorothy. That brightness was the bribe, unspoken and unknown to all save himself, that had brought him into Washington and these sundry and divers plots and counterplots of state. And now to be cheated through the polite blunderings of a gentleman who was so engaged in considering himself that he had neither time nor eyes for any other! Richard swore roundly in mental fashion at his contrary fate. And yet he saw no way to better the situation; and perforce, for this morning at least, he was driven to push the bell of the veranda door. He might have gone about the ceremony with more cheer had he known how he was to gain an ally in his troubles; one, moreover, whose aid was sure to prove effective.

As Senator Hanway's black messenger ushered Richard into that statesman's study, the radiant Dorothy, perched at the end of Senator Hanway's table, was the picture that greeted his eyes. Our radiant one sought to stifle her effulgence beneath a look severe and practical. This expression of practical severity was a failure, and served to render her more dazzling.

"I have made up my mind," quoth Dorothy, the moment Richard was inside the door, and speaking in the loud, dead-level monotone which she conceived to be the voice for business conversations as against the giggling, gurgling ups and downs of conversations purely social, "I have made up my mind to come in every morning and help Uncle Pat. I'm tired of being a useless encumbrance."

Delivering which, Dorothy wore the resolved manner of a new Joan of Arc who had come seeking fields of politics rather than those of war.

"And I have been of use to you, haven't I, Uncle Pat?" demanded Dorothy.

"Of measureless use, dear," said Senator Hanway. Then, turning to his secretary, who had taken a score of letters shorthand and was about to seek his own quarters and run them off upon the typewriter: "Have those copied by three o'clock and bring them here for signature."

Senator Hanway had no more than given Richard good-morning when Senator Loot was announced.

"He won't stay long," said Senator Hanway; "but while he's here, dear, won't you take Mr. Storms into the library?" This request was preferred to Dorothy.

"Yes," began Dorothy, when she and Richard found themselves in the library, and nothing to interrupt them but the distant slumbrous rumble of Senator Loot. "Yes, I'm going to help Uncle Pat. And I'm going to learn how to be a newspaper woman, too. I think every girl should be capable of earning her own living. Not that I expect to be obliged to do so; but it is best to be prepared." Dorothy's face was funereal, as though disasters, clawed and fanged, were roaming the thickets of the future to spring upon her. "So I shall learn the newspaper trade; go in and be a writer as you are—only not so brilliant—and then, if it were necessary, I could earn my own way."

Now Richard knew these industrious resolutions to be the veriest webs of subterfuge. Their duplicity was apparent, and they were spun for him. Dorothy owned no thought of missing his morning calls, and had met Senator Hanway's courtesies of the veranda door with a move in flank. The news cocked up the spirits of Richard excessively, and gave to his Farnese shoulders an insolent swing as he strutted up and down the library. He had expected Dorothy to reproach him for the soft violence done her fingers; but she made no mention of it. Whereupon—in such manner do unchecked iniquities multiply upon themselves—Richard turned towards her with a purpose of again outraging those little fingers with the burden of a fresh caress. The little fingers, grown wary, however, were in discreet retirement behind Dorothy, as, with her back to the window, she stood facing him. Defeated in his campaign against the fingers before it had begun, Richard was driven to discuss Dorothy's work-a-day resolves.

"Newspaper work? Do society, I suppose?"

Richard had gotten hold of the idioms of the craft, and spoke of "doing society" as though reared among the types.

"No, not society," and Dorothy shook her head. "I'd pick 'em to pieces, the minxes; and the papers don't want that. No, I'm going to learn about politics with Uncle Pat. I shall write politics. You must teach me."

Richard said he would.

"Only you should know," said he, "that I need a deal of teaching myself."

"But you can write!" cried Dorothy, her hands emerging from their retreat to clasp each other in a glow of admiration. "I've read your letters. They remind me of Carlyle's 'French Revolution.'"

This staggered Richard; was his idol laughing at him? A glance into her eyes showed only a darkened enthusiasm; whereat Richard puffed and swelled. Perhaps his Daily Tory letters did have the rhetorical tread of the Scotchman's masterpiece. In any event it was pleasant to have Dorothy think so. Before he could frame his modesty to fit reply, the cumbrous retreat of Senator Loot was overheard.

"Now we must go back," said Dorothy.

"May I have a rose?" asked Richard, pointing to his blushing consignment of that day, where they luxuriated in a giant vase.

"Don't touch my hands!" cried Dorothy fiercely, whipping them behind her.

Richard gave his humble parole that he would not touch her hands. Being reassured, Dorothy pinned a bud in his lapel. The little fingers were so fondly confident of safety that they made no haste in these labors of the bud. Their confidence went unabused; Richard adhered to his parole and never touched them.

"I'm glad you can keep your promise!" said Dorothy, pouting from pure delight.

Later, the pair made love to one another with their eyes across the dignified desk of Senator Hanway, while that statesman told Richard matters to the detriment of Mr. Hawke's canvass for a Speakership and Governor Obstinate's claims upon a Presidency, of which, through the medium of the Daily Tory, he believed the public should be informed.

"My dear Dorothy," observed the sibyl of the golden locks, when the other related how faithfully Richard had kept his compact concerning her fingers, "you ought never to make a man promise the thing you do not want. They are such dullards; besides, they have a passion for keeping their word."

The President and General Attorney and thirty-two underling attorneys of the Anaconda Airline, in accord with Mr. Gwynn's request, descended upon Washington. The thirty-two underling attorneys, coming to town by twos and threes, were amazed when they found a gathering of the Anaconda Airline clans. They collected in groups and clots at the Shorcham, the Arlington, and Willard's to discuss their amazement.

The President and General Attorney, if they were smitten of wonder, concealed it, and within the hour after their arrival rang the doorbell of Mr. Gwynn. They were ushered into a room the tamed splendors of which told the thorough taste that had conceived it. Then their cards went up to Mr. Gwynn.

Word came back that Mr. Gwynn was deeply engaged. Would the President and the General Attorney of the Anaconda Airline call again in an hour? The President and General Attorney had for long harbored a theory that Mr. Gwynn was the greatest man on earth. Now they knew it; the fact was displayed beyond dispute by his failure to instantly see them. The President and General Attorney withdrew, silent in their awe, and Mr. Gwynn dispatched Matzai to find Richard.

On the hour's even stroke, the President and General Attorney were again at Mr. Gwynn's. That personage was still unable to meet them; however, he sent Richard with written excuses for his absence and the suggestion that Richard, speaking in his place, would put them in possession of his wishes.

"Mr. Gwynn desired to say," observed Richard, "that Anaconda Airline interests deeply depend upon Mr. Frost for Speaker."

"What we've said from the beginning!" remarked the President to the General Attorney.

"Precisely what we've said!" observed the General Attorney.

They had said nothing on that point; but they were too well drilled in their own interests to fail of complete coincidence with a gentleman who could call a special shareholders' meeting, elect a new directory, and revise the entire official family of the Anaconda Airline within any given thirty days.

"Mr. Gwynn asks you, then," said Richard, "since you and he agree on the propriety of Mr. Frost for Speaker, to consult with Senator Hanway."

And now the Anaconda Airline was in the war for the House gavel. Under the supervision of Senator Hanway, it brought its whole smothering weight to bear upon the Hawke twenty of those twenty-three whose districts it dominated. The Hawke twenty wriggled and writhed, but in the end gave way—all save a rock-ribbed quartette. They must stay by the standards of Mr. Hawke.

"Our constituents will destroy us if we don't," said they.

"The Anaconda will destroy you if you do," was the blunt retort of the General Attorney.

The four stood firm, and were blacklisted for slaughter at the polls a year away, at which time they were faithfully knocked on the head. Sixteen of the twenty went over to Mr. Frost; the President of the Anaconda Airline came out in an interview in the Daily Tory and said that the shift of the excellent sixteen was a popular victory.

It was two days before the caucus. The line-up of forces, Frost against Hawke, Hanway against Obstinate, under able captains went vigorously forward. It pleased Senator Hanway to hear that the Frost fortunes were being unexpectedly served by the volcanic Mr. Hawke himself. That gentleman had fallen into a state of indignant eruption; his best friends could not approach him because of the smoke and flame and lava which his rage cast up.

"The most scoundrel thing I ever saw in Washington is that I am made to fight for the Speakership!" cried the eruptive Mr. Hawke; and this fashion of outburst does not help any man's cause.

To steal a simile from a dead gentleman who stole from others in his day, Mr. Hawke went into the final battle of the caucus much after the manner wherewith a horse approaches a drum, that is, with a deal of prance and but little progress, and, for the most part, wrong end foremost. Even then the count of Senator Hanway—a cold-blooded computation—gave that gavel to the violent Mr. Hawke. So much for being a House leader, a tariff monger, and a friend of Governor Obstinate.

On the afternoon before the caucus, Senator Hanway took a last look at the array. Besides Mr. Hawke and Mr. Frost, there were two other candidates, Mr. Patch and Mr. Swinger. These latter had been sent into the lists by the diplomacy of Senator Hanway to hold the delegations from their States, a majority whereof, if released, would fly to Mr. Hawke. With all four names before the caucus, Mr. Frost would lead Mr. Hawke by two, without having a majority. Eliminate Mr. Patch and Mr. Swinger, however, and Mr. Hawke would be chosen by a majority of seven. And, while the battle might be made to stagger on through forty ballots, in the end Mr. Patch and Mr. Swinger must perforce withdraw. They could give no excuse for holding on forever in a fight shown to be hopeless. Some method must be devised to break the Hawke alignment or in a last solution of the situation Mr. Frost would lose.

Senator Hanway made ready to play his last card—a card to which nothing short of the desperate turn of events would have caused him to resort. He made a list of eighteen of Mr. Hawke's supporters; he picked them out because they were nervous, hysterical souls whom one might hope to stampede. Senator Hanway then got the names, with the home addresses, of a score of the principal constituents of each of these aspen, hysterical gentlemen.

A telegraph operator, one close-mouthed and of a virtuous taciturnity, sat up all night with Senator Hanway in his study—the night before the caucus. There was none present but Senator Hanway and the wordless telegraphic one; the former, deeming the occasion one proper for that cautious rite, drew the blinds closely.

At Senator Hanway's dictation, the taciturn one who had been so forethoughtful as to bring with him envelopes and blanks, wrote messages to each of the hysterical eighteen, about twenty to a man, signing them with the names of those influential constituents. The messages were letter-perfect; in each instance, the message for signature bore the name of one upon whom the member who would receive it leaned in his destinies of politics. No two were worded alike, albeit each commanded and demanded the Speakership for Mr. Frost. When they were done, nearly four hundred of them, the taciturn one endowed them with those quirleyques and symbols and hieroglyphics which belong with genuine messages, and finished by sealing each in an envelope properly numbered and addressed. Then the taciturn one made a delivery book to match the messages.

"There!" exclaimed Senator Hanway, when at four in the morning the taciturn one tossed the last forged message upon the pile and said that all were done; "that's finished. Now at two o'clock put on a messenger's uniform and come to the Capitol. It's 4 a. m. now, and this is Saturday; the caucus convenes at two o'clock sharp. It will be held in the House chamber. There will be ten ballots; I have arranged for that, and Patch and Swinger will not withdraw before. The ten ballots will consume two hours and a half—fifteen minutes to a roll call. After they have gone through four roll calls, begin to send in these messages; the caucus officer on the door will sign for them. Send first one to each member; then two; then four; then five; then all you have. Give about fifteen minutes between consignments. Have you got my plan?"

The taciturn one nodded.

"Here is a one-hundred-dollar bill," observed Senator Hanway, "for your night's work. Four more wait for you when Mr. Frost is declared the caucus nominee."

Saturday afternoon; and the caucus met behind locked doors. It was a mighty struggle; now and then some waifword reached the outside world of what Titan deeds were being done. There were speeches, and roll calls; men lost their heads and then their reputations. The sixteen threatened of the Anaconda Airline, with the fear of political death upon them, voted for Mr. Frost. Messrs. Patch and Swinger held fast through ballot after ballot, keeping their delegations together, while the Hawke captains pleaded and begged and promised and threatened in their efforts to make them withdraw and release their followings to the main battle. Through roll call after roll call the tally never varied. With two hundred and ten members voting, the count stood: Frost, ninety-two; Hawke, ninety; Swinger, fifteen; Patch, thirteen. Of the twenty-eight who voted for Messrs. Patch and Swinger, it was understood that Mr. Hawke would take three-fourths upon a breakaway. For this reason the Hawke captains labored and moiled with Messrs. Patch and Swinger to withdraw and cast those twenty-eight votes into the general caldron.



On the touch of three, and while the fourth roll-call was in progress, the first of Senator Hanway's prepared messages were received and signed for at the caucus door. Ten minutes later, and something like forty more were given entrance. During the sixth roll-call sixty messages came in, and a rickety little representative, with a beard like a goat and terror tugging at his heart, arose and changed his vote to Mr. Frost. The rickety little man had been for Mr. Hawke, and this sudden turning of his coat provoked a tempest of cheers from the Frosts and maledictions from the Hawkes. A dozen men of both factions crowded about the little rickety man, some to hold him for Mr. Frost and others to drag him back to Mr. Hawke. The rickety little man was well-nigh torn in two. Kingdoms and thrones were being gambled for and the players were in earnest.

In the height of the uproar over the rickety little man, two more of the flock of Hawke arose, and with faltering lip stated that, by the demands of constituents whom they were there to represent and whose wishes they dared not disregard, they would also change their votes to Mr. Frost. The cheers of the Frosts and the curses of the Hawkes were redoubled; but the Frosts drowned the Hawkes, since it is one of the admirable arrangements of Providence that men can cheer louder than they can curse.

And now a bevy of full one hundred of the Hanway messages came through the door. The stampede which started with the rickety, goat-bearded little man, to include the duo chronicled, upon a seventh roll call swept five more Hawkes from their perches and gave them over to Mr. Frost. More messages, more changes; and all to finish in a pandemonium in which Messrs. Patch and Swinger were withdrawn, and Mr. Frost was landed Speaker by the meager fringe of three. Speaker Frost it was; and everyone conceded that a staggering blow had been dealt the Presidential hopes of Governor Obstinate. Senator Hanway, waiting at the Senate end for news, sighed victoriously when word was brought him. It would be Speaker Frost; and now, with House and Senate his, he for the first time felt himself within sure and striking distance of a White House.



CHAPTER VI

HOW STORRI HAD A VIVID IMAGINATION

Storri had no more of moral nature than has a tiger or a kite. He was founded upon no integrity, would keep faith with no one save himself. Storri was not a moral lunatic, for that would suppose some original morality and its subversion to insane aims; rather he was the moral idiot. At that, his imbecility paused with his morals; in what a world calls business he was notably bright and forward.

Storri was of education, had traveled wide and far, as ones of his predatory stamp are prone to do, and with a Russian facility for tongues spoke English, German, French, and half the languages of Europe. The instinctive purpose of Storri's existence was to make money. To him, money was a prey, and stood as do deer to wolves; and yet, making a fine distinction, he was rapacious, not avaricious. Avarice includes some idea of a storekeeping commerce that amasses by buying for one dollar and selling for two. Storri would have failed at that. He was rapacious as the pirate is rapacious, and with a gambler's love for the uncertain, he balked at anything whereof the possible profits were cut and dried. He wanted to win, but he was willing to lose if he must; and above all he distasted the notion of a limit. Like every wild thing, Storri shied at a fence and loved the wilderness. While Storri knew nothing of honesty, he preferred his gold on legitimate lines. This leaning towards the lawful came not from any bias of probity; Storri simply wanted to be safe, having a horror of chains and bolts and cages and striped garments.

When Storri arrived in Washington, he came from Canada by way of New York. The year before he had been in Paris, and was something—not for long—of a figure on the Bourse. He had been in every capital of Asia and Europe, and all the while his restless eye sleepless in its search for money.

Gifted with an imagination, Storri evolved a scheme. Starting in moderation, it grew with his wanderings until, link upon link, it became endless and belted the earth. Storri's imagination was like a tar barrel; accident might set fire to it, but once in the least of flame it must burn on and on, with no power of self-extinguishment, until it burned itself out. Or it was like him who, given a halter, straightway takes a horse.

It is the theory of Europe that Americans are maniacs of money. European conservatism draws a money-line beyond which it will not pass. When any man of Europe has a proposal of business too big for the European mouth—wearing its self-imposed half-muzzle of conservatism—that promoter and his proposal head for America. It was this which gained Washington the advantage of a visit from Storri; his stop in Canada—being a six-months' stay in Ottawa—was only preliminary to his coming here.

While his own people of Russia drew back from those enterprises which Storri's agile imagination had in train, the government at St. Petersburg, in what was perhaps a natural hope that he might find Americans more reckless, endowed him as he came away with a guarded pat on the back. The St. Petersburg government advised its representatives in America to introduce without indorsing Storri.

Storri was by no means wise after the manner of a Franklin or a Humboldt or a Herschel; but he did possess the deep sapiency of the serpent or the fox. He owned inborn traits to steal and creep upon his prey of money. Being in Washington, and looking up and down, he was quick to note the strategic propriety of an alliance with Mr. Harley. Mr. Harley had connections with American millionaires; most of all, he was the alter ego of a powerful congressional figure. Storri could talk with Mr. Harley; Mr. Harley could talk with Senator Hanway. Since Congress would be required for the success of Storri's plans, this last was to be of prime importance.

Because Mr. Harley made it his affectation to be boisterously frank and friendly upon short acquaintance, Storri met no vexatious delays in coming to an understanding with him. You are not to assume that Mr. Harley was truthful because he was boisterous or his frankness went freighted of no guile. It is commonest error to believe your frankest talker, your greatest teller of truth; whereas, in a majority of instances, the delusive garrulity is a mask or a feint, meant only to cover facts and screen designs of which the victim's first notice is, snap! when they pin him like a steel-trap. Still, Storri entertained no risks when he broke into confidences with Mr. Harley. It was Mr. Harley who listened and Storri who talked; besides, Storri, in any conflicting tug of interest, could be as loquacious as Mr. Harley, and as false. It was diamond cutting diamond and Greek meeting Greek. Only, since Storri was a Count, and Mr. Harley one upon whom a title went not without blinding effect, Storri had a fractional advantage.

Storri and Mr. Harley enjoyed several casual talks; that is, Mr. Harley thought them casual, although every one was planned by Storri. In none did Storri unpack his enterprises; these talks were feelers, and he was studying Mr. Harley. Storri was gratified to find Mr. Harley, by native trend, as rapacious and as much the gambler as himself. Also, he observed the licking satisfaction wherewith Mr. Harley listened to every noble reference; with that, Storri contrived—for his conversation—a fashion of little personal Kingdom on the Caspian, tossed himself up a castle, and entertained therein from time to time about half the royal blood of Europe; all to the marvelous delight of Mr. Harley, whom Storri never failed to wish had been a guest on those purple occasions.

At this seductive rate, it was no more than a matter of ten days before Mr. Harley went quoting his friend Storri; he had that titled Slav to dinner, when the latter became as much the favorite with Mrs. Hanway-Harley as he was with her ruder spouse.

Storri saw Dorothy; and was set burning with a love for her that, if the flame were less pure, was as instant and as devouring as the love to sweep over Richard upon the boot-heel evening when he caught her in his arms. Storri forgot himself across table, and his onyx eyes were riveted upon Dorothy as though their owner were enthralled.

Dorothy felt at once flattered and repelled. She was interested, even while she shuddered; it was as though she had been made the object of the sudden, if venomous, admiration of a king-cobra.

"My friend," purred Storri, one afternoon when he and Mr. Harley were alone, "my good friend, I will no longer refrain from taking you into my confidence; and when I say that, you are to understand, also, into the confidence of my Czar."

Storri rested his head in his hand a moment, and seemed to ponder the propriety of what he was about. Mr. Harley said nothing, but sat a-fidget with curiosity. It is not given every American to be taken, via a Count with estates on the Caspian, into the confidence of a Czar.

"Yes, into the confidence of my Czar," repeated Storri. "See now, my friend, I will lay bare my soul to you. I am resolved you shall be with me in my vast adventure. With you—who are practical—who have business genius—my dreams will become realities. Without you, I—who am a mere poet of finance—an artist of commerce—would fail. I have genius to conceive; I cannot carry out. But you—you, my dear friend, are what you call executive."

Mr. Harley felt profoundly flattered, and showed it; Storri pushed on, watching the other with the tail of his eye. The slant survey was satisfactory; Mr. Harley showed half upon his guard and wholly interested.

"I have conceived projects so gigantic they will stagger belief. And yet they are feasible; you will make them so. You will take them and girdle the earth with them as Saturn is girdled by his rings. Observe now! These, my designs, have the good wishes of my Czar; and next to him you are that one to whom they are first told. Why do I come so far with my dreams? I will tell you; it was by command of my Czar.

"'Storri, you must go to America,' were his words. 'You would only stun Europe; you would not gain her aid. Go to America. There, and there only, will you find what you require. They, and they of all men, have the courage, the brains, the money, the enterprise, and—shall I say?—the honor!'"

Having quoted his Czar in these good opinions of Americans, Storri rapidly and in clearest sequence laid out his programmes. Before he was half finished, Mr. Harley went following every word with all his senses. Storri was lucid; Storri was hypnotic; Storri had his projects so faultlessly in hand that, as he piled up words, he piled up conviction in the breast of Mr. Harley.

Storri began with China. Being equipped for the conversation—which had not been so much the result of romantic chance as Mr. Harley might have supposed—he laid upon the table a square of yellow silk. It was written over with Chinese characters which, for all Mr. Harley knew, might have been inscriptions copied from a tea chest. As a matter of truth, they were genuine. The silk was the record of a concession by the Chinese Government. It gave Storri, or what company he might form, the privilege of building a railway across China from east to west. He might select his port on the Pacific, build his road, and break into Russia on the west and north at what point best matched the enterprise. Also, it granted a right to buy land wherever it became necessary, and to own what wharf and water rights were required. Incidentally, so Storri said, it permitted gold digging.

"You shall take it to the Chinese legation!" exclaimed Storri. "They shall translate for you. Yes; it gives gold rights. Gold? There is so much gold in China that your own California becomes laughable by comparison. See there," and Storri placed a little leathern pouch on the table. "There are three ounces. Do you know how they were obtained? I spread a blanket in the bed of a little stream, and weighted it with stones so that it lay flat. Then I took a stick, and tossed up the mud and the sand of that little stream, just above. The muddy water, thick as paint, flowed over the blanket. In thirty minutes I took my blanket ashore, and washed from the sediment it had caught and held this gold—three ounces! Bah! Gold? China is the home of gold! But China and these concessions are only the beginning."

Storri sketched a steamship line to connect his Chinese railway with Puget Sound. For this they ought to have a subsidy from the United States. From Puget they must have a railway to Duluth. On the Great Lakes, Storri would have a line of steamships.

"Only, we will improve upon those lakes!" cried Storri. "It was that to carry me to Ottawa."

Then Storri unrolled maps and reports from Canadian engineers which vouched the plausibility of a ship canal from a deep-water point on that eastern arm of Lake Huron called Georgian Bay to Toronto on Lake Ontario.

"It shall be two hundred feet wide," explained Storri, "and thirty feet deep. The distance is less than one hundred miles, and the fall less than one hundred feet. To dig it will be child's play; you may read the reports of the engineers; they show how advantage may be had of a Lake Simcoe, and of a little river. Here also are letters and guarantees from eminent men of Canada that their parliament will permit and protect the canal. Less than one hundred miles long; and yet that canal will cut off seven hundred."

Once in Lake Ontario at Toronto, Storri's boats, by way of the St. Lawrence—which might have to be dredged in places—were to make a straight wake for St. Petersburg, touching at English, French, and German ports. The ships were to clear in Duluth for St. Petersburg; and in St. Petersburg for Duluth. They were to fly the American flag; that, too, should mean a subsidy. Besides, there must be an American commission to confer with a Canadian commission touching the canal.

Once in St. Petersburg, Storri would have the aid of his own country in whatever might be necessary to carry him to the western terminus of his Chinese railway. He had writings in French from the Czar's government which set this forth. Only, the Russian assurances were made contingent upon a standing army of "Ifs." "If" Storri should throw a railway across China; and "if" he should launch a line of steamships across the Pacific—the same fostered by the Washington Government with a subsidy—and "if" all and singular the railway from Puget to Duluth, the Canadian Canal, and the line of steamships from Duluth to St. Petersburg—also with a subsidy—were once extant and in operation, then the Czar would step graciously in and see what might be done in forging those final Russian railway links required to unite the ends of this interesting chain.

"And you are to know," went on Storri, "that my government, the St. Petersburg Government, is paternal. It will give whatever, in the way of land rights and loans, is demanded by the exigencies of the project.

"And there," cried Storri in conclusion, as he shoved maps, papers, and concessions, Russian, Canadian, and Chinese, across to Mr. Harley, "is an idea the magnificence of which the ages cannot parallel! It is simple, it is great! We shall have three-score small companies—that is, small compared with the grand one I am to name. We shall have land and banking and lumber and mining and railway and steamship and canal companies. We shall have companies owning elevators and factories and stores and mills. Each will employ a capital of from two to two hundred millions of dollars. Over all, and to own the stock of those smaller ones, we must throw a giant company. Do you know what it will require? Do you realize what its capital must be? It will call for the cost price of an empire, my friend; it will demand full thirty billions! Think of the president of such a company! He will have rank by himself; he will tower above kings. What shall we call it? Name it for that mighty Portuguese who was first to send his ship around the globe; name it Credit Magellan!"

Mr. Harley wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was a day in October, one reasonably cool, and yet, when Storri ended with his Credit Magellan and came to a full stop, Mr. Harley was in a perspiration. It was those thirty billions that did it. Mr. Harley was no stoic to sit unmoved in the presence of such wealth, and the graphic Storri made those billions real.

When Storri had done, Mr. Harley gulped and gasped a bit, and then asked if he might retain the armful of papers for further consideration. He would like to go over them carefully; particularly those Canadian reports and assurances that related to the canal.

"My dear, good friend," cried Storri, with a magnificent wave of the hand, "you may do what you will!"

There are men, reckoned shrewd in business, whose shrewdness can be overcome by ciphers. It is as though they were wise up to seven figures. Mr. Harley was of these; he had his boundaries. His instincts were solvent, his policies sound, his suspicions full of life and courage, so that you went no higher than nine millions. Burdened beyond that, his imagination would break down; and since his instincts, his policies, and his suspicions rested wholly upon his imagination, when the latter fell the others must of need go with it. There is a depth to money just as there is to a lake; when you led Mr. Harley in beyond the nine-million-dollar mark he began to drown. When Storri—Pelion upon Ossa—piled steamship on railway, and canal on steamship, and banking and lumber and mining and twenty other companies on top of these, Mr. Harley was dazed and benumbed. When Storri concluded and capped all with his Credit Magellan, capital thirty billions, it was, so far as Mr. Harley is to be considered, like taking a child to sea. In the haze and the blur of it, Mr. Harley could see nothing, say nothing; his impulse was to be alone and collect himself. He felt as might one who has been staring at the sun. Storri's picture of an enterprise so vast that it proposed to set out the world like a mighty pan of milk, and skim the cream from two hemispheres, dazzled him and caused his wits to lose their way.

At the end of three days Mr. Harley had begun to get his bearings; he was still fascinated, but the fog was lifting. Step by step he went over Storri's grand proposals; and, while he had now his eyes, each step seemed only to take him more deeply into a wilderness of admiration. That very admiration filled him with a sense of dull alarm. He resolved to have other counsel than his own. Were he and Storri to embark upon this world-girdling enterprise, they must have money-help. He would take the project to certain money-loving souls; he would get their opinions by asking their aid.

Mr. Harley went to New York and called about him a quintette of gentlemen, each of whom had been with him and Senator Hanway in more than one affair of shady profit. Mankind does not change, its methods change, and trade has still its Kidds and Blackbeards. Present commerce has its pirates and its piracies; only the buccaneers of now do not launch ships, but stock companies, while Wall and Broad Streets are their Spanish Main. They do not, like Francis Drake, lay off and on at the Isthmus to stop plate ships; they seek their galleons in the Stock Exchange. Those five to gather at the call of Mr. Harley were of our modern Drakes. He told them, under seal of secrecy, Storri's programme, and put before them the documents, Russian, Canadian, and Chinese.

Mr. Harley felt somewhat justified of his own enthusiasm when he observed the serious glow in the eyes of those five. They sent to Mott Street, and brought back a learned Oriental to translate the Chinese silk. The Mott Street one, himself a substantial merchant and a Mongol of high caste, appeared wrapped in rustling brocades and an odor of opium. When he beheld the yellow silk he bent himself, and smote the floor three times with his forehead. More than anything told by Mr. Harley did this profound obeisance of the Mott Street Oriental leave its impress upon the five. They, themselves, bowed to nothing save gold; the silken document must record a franchise of gravity and money-moment to thus set their visitor to beating the carpet with his head! Having done due honor to the Emperor's signature, the Mott Street one gave Mr. Harley and his friends the silken document's purport in English. It granted every right, railway, wharf, and gold, asserted by Storri. Then Mr. Harley wired that nobleman to join them in New York.

Storri had not been informed of Mr. Harley's New York visit. But he had counted on it, and the summons in no wise smote him with surprise. Once with Mr. Harley and the adventurous five, Storri again went over his project, beginning at the Chinese railway and closing with Credit Magellan, capital thirty billions. Not one who heard went unconvinced; not one but was willing to commence in practical fashion the carrying out of this high financial dream.

It was the romance—for money-making has its romances—and the adventurous uncertainty of the thing, the pushing into the unknown, which formed the lure. Have you ever considered that nine of ten among those who went with De Soto and Balboa and Coronado and Cortez and Pizarro, if asked by some quiet neighbor, would have refused him the loan of one hundred dollars unless secured by fivefold the value? And yet the last man jack would peril life and fortune blindly in a voyage to worlds unknown, for profits guessed at, against dangers neither to be counted nor foreseen. Be not too much stricken of amazement, therefore, when now these cold ones, who would not have bought an American railroad without counting the cross-ties and weighing every spike and fish-plate, were ready to send millions adrift on a sightless invasion of Asia ten thousand miles away. Besides, as the five with Mr. Harley laid out their campaign, any question of Oriental danger was for the present put aside.

"The way to commence," said one of the five—one grown gray in first looting companies and then scuttling them—"the way to commence is by getting possession of Northern Consolidated. Once in control of the railroad, we have linked the Pacific with the Great Lakes; after that we can turn to the matter of subsidies for the two steamship lines, and the appointment of those commissions to consider the Canadian Canal." Then, turning to Mr. Harley: "You, of course, speak for Senator Hanway?"

Mr. Harley gave assurance that Senator Hanway, for what might be demanded congressionally, would be with him. Then they laid their plotting heads together over a conquest of Northern Consolidated.

Under the experienced counsel of the old gray scuttler of innocent companies, this procedure was resolved upon. Northern Consolidated was selling at forty-three. At that figure, over forty millions of dollars would be required to buy the road. There was little or no chance of its reaching a higher quotation during the coming ninety days; and ninety days would bring them into February with Congress in session over two months.

No, it was not the purpose of the pool to buy Northern Consolidated at forty-three; those gifted stock ospreys knew a better plan. They would begin with a "bear" movement against the stock. It was their belief, if the market were properly undermined, that Northern Consolidated could be sold down below twenty, possibly as low as fifteen. When it had reached lowest levels they would make their swoop. The pool would have enough profit from the "bear" movement to pay for the road. If they succeeded in selling Northern Consolidated off twenty points—and they believed, by going cautiously and intelligently to work, the feat was easy—the profits would equal the purchase sum required.

In "bearing" the stock and breaking it down to a point where the pool might seize upon the road without risk or outlay on its own intriguing part, the potent Senator Hanway would come in. At the beginning of Congress he must offer a Senate resolution for a special committee of three to investigate certain claims and charges against Northern Consolidated. That corporation had long owed the government, no one knew how much. It had stolen timber and stripped mountain ranges with its larcenies; also it had laid rapacious paw upon vast stretches of the public domain. It was within the power of any committee, acting honestly, to report Northern Consolidated as in default to the government for what number of millions its indignant imagination might fix upon. Who was to measure the road's lumber robberies, or those thefts of land? Moreover, the vandal aggressions of Northern Consolidated made a reason for rescinding divers public grants—the present values whereof were almost too high for estimation, and without which the road could not exist—that, in its inception as a railroad, had been made it by Congress.

Senator Hanway, under Senate courtesies, would be named chairman of the special committees. He would conduct the investigation and write the report. It was reasonable to assume, under the public as well as the private conditions named, that Senator Hanway's findings, and the Senate action he must urge and bring about, would knock the bottom out of Northern Consolidated. It must fall to twenty by every rule of speculation. Facing collection by the government of those claims for lands ravished and pine trees swept away, to say naught of losing original grants which were as its life-blood to Northern Consolidated, the value of the stock—to speak most hopefully in its favor—would be diminished by one-half.

The conspirators grew in confidence as they talked, and at the end looked upon Northern Consolidated as already in their talons. They named the old gray buccaneer to manage for the pool. The amount to be paid in by each of the eight members—for they counted Senator Hanway—was settled at five hundred thousand dollars. Four millions would be required to start the ball rolling; the "bear" movement in the beginning would demand margins. Once under headway, it would take care of itself. It would succeed like a barrel downhill.

Storri did not protest the suggestion of the old gray buccaneer that four millions be contributed to form a working capital for the pool. His share of a half-million meant fifty thousand more dollars than Storri at the time possessed, but he did not propose to have the others discover the fact. Somehow he would scrape together those fifty thousand; his note might do. Being, like every savage, a congenital gambler, Storri went into the pool with zest as well as confidence, and rejoiced in speculation that offered chances wide enough to employ his last dollar in the stake. Moreover, those four millions would not be asked for before the first of January. Other speculations might intervene, and provide those lacking fifty thousand.

Mr. Harley laid the Storri project, and the plans of the pool to seize Northern Consolidated, before Senator Hanway. That candidate for a Presidency knitted his brows and pondered the business. As with Mr. Harley and the pirate five, the mad grandeur of the idea charmed him. One element seemed plain: there could come no loss from the raid on Northern Consolidated. He might go that far with safety, and a certainty of profit; for in the Senate committee of investigation he, himself, would play the controlling card.

"The proposal," said Senator Hanway, when he and Mr. Harley conferred, "while gigantic in its unfoldment, seems a reasonable one. After all, it is the amount involved that staggers rather than what obstacles must be overcome. Taken piecemeal, I do not say that the entire scheme, even Credit Magellan, with its thirty billions, may not work through. The resolution naming a committee to look into the claims and charges against Northern Securities ought to help my Presidential canvass. It cannot avoid telling in my favor with thoughtful men. They will see that I am one who is jealously guarding public interests."

"And the resolution," suggested Mr. Harley, "appointing a commission for the Canadian Canal, and inviting the Ottawa government to do the same, ought also to speak in your favor. Consider what an impetus such a waterway would give our Northwestern commerce."

"Yes," replied Senator Hanway, "I think you are right. It will knock a third off freight rates on much of the trade between the oceans, and save heavily in time. Those subsidies, however, must go over until next session. Subsidies are not popular, and these must be left until after next November's elections. Then, of course, they may be safely taken up."

The various conferences over Storri's enterprise, and the consequent coming together of Storri and Mr. Harley, took place a few weeks prior to Richard's appearance in this chronicle. Both Storri and Mr. Harley were fond of stocks in their ups and downs, and now, being much together, they were in and out as partners in a dozen different deals. Mr. Harley attended to most of these; and Storri learned certain peculiarities belonging to that gentleman. Mr. Harley, for one solvent matter, was penurious to the point of dimes; also, Mr. Harley took no risks. Mr. Harley was willing to book a joint deal in both Storri's name and his own; or in his own for the common good of Storri and himself. But Mr. Harley would not give a joint order solely in Storri's name. Evidently, Mr. Harley would not trust Storri to divide profits with him where the case rested only upon that Russian's honor. No more would he draw his own check for Storri's margins; and one day our nobleman lost money because of Mr. Harley's cautious delicacy in that behalf. The market went the wrong way, and Storri could not be found when additional margins were called for. Whereupon Mr. Harley closed out his friend at a loss of seven thousand dollars.

Storri knitted his brows when he knew, but offered no comment. In fact, he treated the affair so lightly that Mr. Harley felt relieved; that latter speculator had been somewhat disturbed in his mind concerning Storri's opinion of what, to give it a best description, evinced niggard distrust of Storri, and cast in negative fashion a slur upon that gentleman.

Mr. Harley was too ready with his belief in Storri's indifference; that the latter, for all his surface stoicism, took a serious, not to say a revengeful, view of the business, found indication on a later painful day. The experience taught Storri that he might expect neither favor nor generosity from Mr. Harley; and this, considering how in all they must adventure in Credit Magellan Mr. Harley would have him in his power, filled Storri with an angry uneasiness. He decided that for his own security, if nothing more, he might better bestir himself to gain a counter-grip upon Mr. Harley. And thereupon Storri began to lie in ambush for Mr. Harley; and at a lurking, sprawling warfare that sets gins and dead-falls, and bases itself on surprise, your savage makes a formidable soldier.

Storri, wisely and without price, had one day aided a sugar company in securing Russian foothold in Odessa. That aid was ground-bait meant to lure the sugar favor. This sugar company made more profit on its stocks than on its sugar. It was in the habit, with one device or another, of sending the quotations of its shares up and down like an elevator. In requital of that Odessa good, the president of the sugar company, the week after, gave Storri a private hint to sell sugar stock. Storri responded by placing an order selling ten thousand shares.

Storri took no one into his confidence touching sugar. Going the other way, he urged Mr. Harley to buy on their mutual account two thousand shares, assuring him that he had been given word, from sources absolutely sure, of a coming "bull" movement in the stock.

Mr. Harley, who knew of that Odessa favor, believed. Storri, as further evidence of faith, gave Mr. Harley a check covering what initial margins would be required for his half of the purchase; and then to make all secure, he placed in Mr. Harley's hands two hundred shares of a French company worth that day fifteen thousand dollars.

"I don't want any argument to exist," laughed Storri, as he gave Mr. Harley the French securities, "for closing me out should a squall strike the market. Now I shall go to the club."

Mr. Harley also laughed, and took the French stock; acceptance always came easy with Mr. Harley.

Mr. Harley bought those two thousand sugar shares at eleven o'clock. Two hours later an extra was being cried about the streets. The sugar company had ordered half its refineries closed; some alleged loose screw in sugar trade was given as the reason.

With the order closing down the refineries, the stock began to tumble. Within thirty minutes it had slumped off six points. There came a call for further margins, and Mr. Harley offered Storri's French stock.

The security was undeniable, but a technicality got in the way to trip Mr. Harley. The French securities were original shares, issued in Storri's name. On the back, however, there was no Storri signature making the usual assignment in blank. The shares, in their present shape, would not be received. Mr. Harley flew to a nearby telephone and called up Storri.

"There is not time for me to get there!" cried that designing gentleman excitedly. He was a half-mile away. "Don't hesitate; clap my name on the backs of the certificates yourself. They don't know my signature; and no one will think of questioning it, coming through your hands."

There was no other way; thereupon Mr. Harley, in a ferment with tumbling prices, picked up a pen, and, with the best intentions in life, forged Storri's name. Then he hurried to the broker's and got up the margins.

It was not a squall, it was a storm, and sugar was broken off at the roots, falling twenty points. Storri, on his private deal, made two hundred thousand, while Messrs. Harley and Storri, on their joint account, lost forty thousand dollars—twenty thousand for each. In the clean-up, Storri paid his losses and got back his French shares. He smiled an evil smile as he contemplated Mr. Harley's attempts to mock his signature.

"He loses twenty thousand," commented Storri, "and that should more than offset those seven thousand lost by me when he refused to protect my deals. As for these," and here Storri ran a dark, exultant glance over his imitated signatures, "every one of them makes a reason why my good friend, Mr. Harley, must now please me and obey me in everything he does. After all, is it a destiny beneath his jowlish fat deserts, that an American pig should become slave to a Russian noble?"



CHAPTER VII

HOW RICHARD GAINED IN KNOWLEDGE

Congress came together at noon upon the first Monday in December, and obedient to the mandate of the caucus Mr. Frost was made Speaker Frost. The eruptive Mr. Hawke wore an injured air, and when the drawing for seats took place, selected one in a far back row, as though retiring from public life. Mr. Hawke subsequently refused to serve as chairman of the triangular committee named to notify the President that the House had convened, and his declination was accepted by Speaker Frost, who calmly filled the place with a member whom Mr. Hawke despised. Then the House swung into the channel, and went plowing ahead upon the business of the session, and in forty-eight hours, Mr. Hawke, forgotten, had ceased to be important to any save himself. The whole of that first Monday night Speaker Frost put in with Senator Hanway, in the latter's study, revising committee lists and settling chairmanships with the purpose of advancing the White House chances of Senator Hanway and destroying those of Governor Obstinate.

Although Congress had begun its session, no change was made in those morning calls of Richard, who came religiously at eleven to listen to Senator Hanway and look at Dorothy. The latter young lady was never absent from these interviews; she had conceived a wonderful interest in politics, and gave her "Uncle Pat" no peace. Richard's call commonly lasted but a half-hour, for Senator Hanway must be in the Senate chamber at noon. Thirty heavenly minutes they were; Dorothy and Richard promised and again promised undying love to one another with their eyes. Senator Hanway never suspected this love-making, never intercepted one soft glance; for your politician is like a horse wearing blinders, seeing only the road before him, thinking of nothing but himself. One morning after Senator Hanway had departed, Dorothy took Richard across to meet the blonde pythoness. Dorothy said she wanted Richard to see Bess. This was fiction; she wanted Bess to see Richard, of whom she was privily proud.

The Marklins lived across the street from the Harley house. Mother Marklin was an invalid and seldom out of her own room. Father Marklin was dead, and had been these five years. When the situation promoted her to be the head of the Marklin household, Bess had taken on a quiet, grave atmosphere of authority that was ten years older than her age.

The Marklins were fair rich. Father Marklin had been a physician whose patients were women of fashion; and that makes a practice wherein your doctor may know less medicine and make more money than in any other walk of drugs. A woman likes big bills from a physician if the malady be her own; she draws importance from the size of the bills. When one reflects that there is nothing to some women except their aches and their ailments, it all seems rational enough. These be dangerous digressions; one might better return to the drug-dealing parent of Bess, who visited the fair sufferers in a Brewster brougham and measured out his calls by minutes, watch in hand. He heaped up a fortune for Bess and her mother, and then at one and the same moment quit both his practice and the world.

When Dorothy came in with Richard, they found Bess entertaining a caller. The caller was a helpless person named Mr. Fopling.

"Mr. Storms, permit me to make you acquainted with Mr. Fopling," observed Bess, after Dorothy had presented Richard.

When Bess named Richard to Mr. Fopling, she did so with a master-of-ceremony flourish that was protecting and mannish. Richard grinned in friendship upon Mr. Fopling, who shook hands flabbily and seemed uncertain of his mental direction. Richard said nothing through fear of overwhelming Mr. Fopling. Mr. Fopling was equally silent through fear of overwhelming himself. Released from Richard, Mr. Fopling found refuge in the chair he had quitted, and maintained himself without sound or motion, bolt upright, staring straight ahead. Mr. Fopling had a vacant expression, and his face was not an advantageous face. It was round, pudgy, weak, with shadows of petulance about the mouth, and the forehead sloped away at an angle which house-builders, speaking of roofs, call a quarter-pitch. His chin, acting on the hint offered by the forehead, was likewise in full retreat. Altogether, one might have said of Mr. Fopling that if he were not a delightful, at worst he would never become a dangerous companion. Richard surveyed him with a deal of curiosity; then he questioned Dorothy with a glance.

"Bess is to marry him," whispered Dorothy.

"What for?" whispered Richard, off his guard. Then, pulling himself together in confusion: "Of course, he loves her, I dare say. Your friend Bess is a beautiful girl!"

Richard brought forth the last with hurried unction. It was a cunning remark to make; it drew Dorothy's attention off Mr. Fopling, whom she was preparing to defend with spirit, and centered it upon herself. At Richard's observation, so flattering to Bess, she tossed her head.

"Is she?" said Dorothy, with a falling inflection, vastly severe.

The two were near a window and quite alone, for Bess had stepped into the hall to give directions to a servant. Mr. Fopling sat the length of the room away, wrapped in meditation. Richard looked tenderly apologetic, and Dorothy, after sparkling for a jealous moment, softened to be in sympathy with Richard.

And the strange thing was that neither had ever said one word of love to the other. They had begun to love at sight, taking each other for granted, worshiping frankly, sweetly, with the candid, innocent informality of barbarians to whom the conventional was the unknown. After all, why not? Isn't word of eye as sacred as word of mouth?

Bess returned to them from the hall.

"I say, Bess!" bleated Mr. Fopling anxiously.

"In a moment, child!" returned Bess, in maternal tones.

Mr. Fopling relapsed, while Richard was amused. Some corner of Richard's amusement must have stuck out to attract the notice of Bess. She met it finely, undisturbed.

"Some day, Mr. Storms," beamed Bess, as though replying to a question, "I shall talk to you on marriage and husbands."

"Why not on marriage and wives?"

"Because I would not speak of the philosopher and the experiment, but of the experiment and the result. Marriage is a cause; the husband an effect. Husbands are artificial and made by marriage. Wives, like poets, are born, not made. I shall talk to you on marriage and husbands; I have some original ideas, I assure you."

"Now I can well believe that!" declared Richard, much tumbled about in his mind. Bess's harangue left him wondering whether she might not be possessed of a mild mania on wedlock and husbands.

"You need have no misgivings," returned Bess, as though reading his thoughts; "you will find me sane to the verge of commonplace."

Richard's stare was the mate to Mr. Fopling's; he could not decide just how to lay hold on the sibyl of the golden locks. Perceiving him wandering in his wits, Dorothy took him up warmly.

"Can't you see Bess is laughing at you?" she cried.

"You know her so much better than I," argued Richard, in extenuation of his dullness. "Some day I hope to be so well acquainted with Miss Marklin as to know when she laughs."

"You are to know her as well as I do," returned Dorothy, with decision, "for Bess is my dearest friend."

"And that, I'm sure," observed Richard, craftily measuring forth a two-edged compliment, "is the highest possible word that could be spoken of either."

At this speech Dorothy was visibly disarmed; whereat Richard congratulated himself.

"To be earnest with you, Mr. Storms," said Bess, with just a flash of teasing wickedness towards Dorothy, "I go about, even now, carrying the impression of knowing you extremely well. Dorothy reads me your letters from the Daily Tory; she has elevated literary tastes, you know. No, it is not what you write, it is the way you write it, that charms her; and, that I may the better appreciate, she obligingly accompanies her readings with remarks descriptive of the author."

"Bess, do you think that fair?" and Dorothy's face put on a reproachful red.

"At least it's true," returned Bess composedly.

That morning Richard had been flattered with a letter from the editor of a magazine, asking for a five-thousand word article on a leading personality of the Cabinet. This helped him bear the raillery of Bess; and the raillery, per incident, told him how much and deeply he was in the thoughts of Dorothy, which information made the world extremely beautiful. Richard had waited until his thirtieth year to begin to live! He was brought back from a dream of Dorothy by the unexpected projection of Mr. Fopling into the conversation.

"The Daily Tory!" repeated Mr. Fopling, in feeble disgust. "I hate newspapahs; they inflame the mawsses."

"Inflame what?" asked Richard.

"Inflame the mawsses! the common fellahs!"

Mr. Fopling was emphatic; and when Mr. Fopling was emphatic he squeaked. Mr. Fopling's father had been a beef contractor. Likewise he had seen trouble with investigating committees, being convicted of bad beef. This may or may not have had to do with the younger Fopling's aversion to the press.

"Certainly," coincided Bess, again assuming the maternal, "the newspapers are exceedingly inflammatory."

"Your friend Bess," said Richard to Dorothy, later, "is a bit of a blue-stocking, isn't she?—one of those girls who give themselves to the dangerous practice of thinking?"

"I love her from my heart!" returned Dorothy, with a splendid irrelevance wholly feminine; "she is a girl of gold!"

"Mr. Fopling: he's of gold, too, I take it."

"Mr. Fopling is very wealthy."

"Well, I'm glad he's something," observed Richard.

"You hate him because he spoke ill of newspapers," said Dorothy teasingly.

"Naturally, when a giant hand is stretched forth against the tree by which one lives, one's alarm runs away into hate," laughed Richard.

Richard, now that the Daily Tory letters were winning praise, that is to say, were being greatly applauded and condemned, began to have in them a mightier pride than ever. Educated those years abroad, he felt the want of an American knowledge, and started in to study government at pointblank range. Nights he read history, mostly political, and days he went about like a Diogenes without the lamp. He put himself in the way of Cabinet men; and talked with Senators and Representatives concerning congressional movements of the day.

Being quick, he made discoveries; some of them personal to himself. As correspondent of a New York daily, those Cabinet folk and men of Congress encountered him affably; when he was not present they spoke ferociously of him and his craft, as convicts curse a guard behind his back, and for much a convict's reason.

It was the same at the club without the affability. Present or absent, there they turned unsparing back upon him. Richard's status as a newspaper man had been explained and fixed, and they of the club liked him less than before. The Fopling feeling towards the press predominated at the club, and although Richard was never openly snubbed—his shoulders were too wide for that—besides, some sigh of those hand-grips with Storri had gone about—the feeling was manifest. This cool distance pleased Richard rather than otherwise, and he went often to the club to enjoy it. It was parcel of his affected cynicism to like an enemy.

When Richard came to Washington it is more than a chance that he was a patriot. But as he went about he saw much to blunt the sentiment. A statesman is one who helps his country; a politician is one who helps himself. Richard found shoals of the latter and none of the other class. One day he asked Speaker Frost, whom he met in Senator Hanway's study, his definition of a statesman.

"A statesman," said that epigrammatist, "is a dead politician."

Richard frequented House and Senate galleries; it was interesting to watch the notables transacting their fame. The debates were a cross-fire of deceit. Not a member gave his true reasons for the votes he cast; he gave what he wanted the world to think were his reasons. Finance was on the carpet in that hour, and bimetallism and monometallism, silver versus gold, were in everyone's mouth. Richard saw that the goldbugs hailed from money—lending constituencies, while the silverbugs were invariably from either money-borrowing constituencies or constituencies that had silver to sell. And every man legislated for his district and never for the country; which Richard regarded as an extremely narrow course. Every man talked of the people's interest; every man was thinking of his own interest and striving only to locate the butter on his political bread.