_ CHAPTER VIII
I came home one afternoon with a puckered brow.
"Has the Supreme Court decided another case against you?" asked Josephine, with solicitude.
I shook my head, and answered wearily: "Worse than that."
My wife regarded me in anxious silence, while manifestly she was cudgelling her brains to divine what could have happened. As she told me afterward, she imagined, from my doleful air, that I must at least have a seed in my little sac.
"They have asked me to run for Congress in this district," I finally vouchsafed to state.
Josephine dropped her fancy-work and sat upright with an air of satisfaction which was wholly out of keeping with my own dejected mien.
"Really, Fred! Who has asked you? The Governor?"
"The Governor does not usually go round on his bended knees asking candidates to run for Congress," I answered, with mild sarcasm.
"Well, the Mayor then?"
I have labored for years to make plain to Josephine the ramifications of our National, State, and Municipal Government; but just as I am beginning to think that she understands the matter tolerably well, she is sure to break out in some such hopeless fashion as this, which shows that her conceptions are still crookeder than a ram's horn. And the strangest part is that she can tell you all about the English Parliament and Home Rule, and whether any given statesman is a Liberal or a Liberal Unionist, and about M. Clemenceau and the relative strength of the Bonapartists and Orleans factions. But when it comes to distinguishing clearly between an Alderman and a State Senator, or a Member of Congress and a Member of the Legislature, she is apt to get exasperatingly muddled. I asked her once, in my most impressive manner, why it was that she did not take a more vital interest in the politics of her native country, and after reflecting a moment, she told me that she thought it must be because they were so stupid. On the other hand, with apparent inconsistency, she has many times expressed the hope that I would some day be conspicuously connected with them. I have been conscious for some time that it would suit her admirably to have me round off my professional career as Speaker of the National House of Representatives or Minister to the Court of St. James.
"Josephine," I said, in a tone of despair, "have I not explained to you time and time again that Members of Congress are the Representatives from the several States who are sent to Washington? How could the Governor, who is a State officer, or the Mayor, who is a municipal officer, have anything to do with the nomination of a Member of the National House of Representatives? Only think, dear, what you are saying."
Probably Josephine would have evinced more contrition in tribute to this harangue had not her ears been fascinated by my reference to the Capital of our country.
"It _was_ stupid of me, Fred. Do you mean to tell me, dear, they are going to send you to Washington? That would be perfectly delightful."
"I merely have been asked to accept the nomination for Congress in the Fourth District," I answered, dryly.
"And what did you tell them?"
"I said I would think it over."
"You must accept. Of course you will accept? It would be splendid, Fred. I would a great deal rather have you in Congress than go on our trip to Japan. I have often thought I should like to pass a winter in Washington."
By dint of economy and some shrewd investments I had managed to save up a vacation fund of more than normal size, by means of which Josephine and I were proposing to enjoy a jaunt to Japan. We had been looking forward to this excursion, which I felt that we had fairly earned by strict devotion to home and business ties for a long period of years.
"The district is hopelessly Republican, in the first place, my dear, and I, as you know, am a Democrat."
Josephine looked grave for a moment. "But a great many Republicans would vote for you, Fred. Oh, I am sure they would!" she added, eagerly, impressed by the plausibility of the idea. "Harry Bolles is a Republican, and I am certain he would vote for you; so would Dr. Meredith and Sam Bangs."
"They are three out of several thousand voters in the district, Josephine. You argue like the committee which waited upon me."
"They said a great many Republicans would vote for you, didn't they? And they thought you would be elected?"
"They were kind enough to state that I had a good fighting chance; which means, my dear, that I haven't the ghost of a show."
Josephine regarded me a moment distrustfully. "It doesn't seem to me there is any use in being too modest about such a matter as this, Fred. Somebody has to be elected, and it might as well be you as anybody. I have always hoped you would go into politics, you know. If they hadn't wanted you they wouldn't have asked you."
"The only certain thing about it is, that, if they had supposed I could possibly be elected, they wouldn't have offered me the nomination."
"What do you mean, Fred? I call that mock modesty, darling."
I did not consider that I was called upon to unfold more particularly to my wife the cynical estimate of the case which I entertained in my secret soul, especially in view of the fact that the committee which had waited upon me comprised not merely politicians, but some of our best citizens. Although a man who is invited to run for Congress in a district hopelessly hostile is likely to cherish secret suspicions as to the sincerity of those who offer him the nomination, the bait of self-sacrifice for the public good has lured many a cleverer man than I to his destruction. Besides, a fighting chance invariably seems more prodigious to the one who is said to have it, than to anyone else. There were certainly weak joints in the armor (an analogy supplied me by the committee) of my opponent, who was a dyed-in-the-wool politician, and indisputably I had a great many friends. Could I afford to disregard the piteous, eloquent argument of the spokesman, Honorable David Flint, that the sacred cause of Reform demanded me as its champion, and that victory was possible only under my banner? I had promised to think it over, which was a coy way of stating that I would accept. Having made up my mind to run, I was obliged to tell Josephine that this would mean good-by for many a long and weary month to our jaunt.
"If you're elected, Fred, I shall be only too glad to postpone it. And if by any chance you don't get in, we'll forget all about it in dear Japan."
"You do not quite understand the situation, pet. We stay at home in any case, election or no election. The expenses will eat up my savings for a rainy day in Japan. I shall have to contribute handsomely to everybody and everything. It's an outrage, but one of the painful results of having greatness thrust upon one."
Thereupon Josephine flung her arms around my neck and informed me that I was not only a dear, noble hero, but that Japan or no Japan, she would not begrudge one copper of any sum I might be obliged to spend in order to defeat that odious wretch, Mr. Daniel Spinney. A few days later, after my letter of acceptance was published, she said that she did not see how anyone who had the least respect for the sacred right of suffrage could hesitate between us.
"Spinney is not such a bad fellow at bottom," I replied, albeit touched by the warm partisanship of my wife.
"Didn't I read in the newspaper this morning that he is a notorious spoilsman?"
"Very likely, dear. Spinney has always called Civil Service Reform a humbug."
"And he is all wrong on the tariff."
"We think so."
"Well, then, how can you say that he isn't a bad fellow at bottom?"
"I mean, Josephine, that apart from politics he is a very decent sort of person. I couldn't help thinking while I was chatting with him yesterday that there was something quite attractive about him. He isn't exactly the kind of man I should hold up as a model to my sons, but, as I said before, he is by no means a bad fellow."
Josephine had been looking at me aghast ever since the opening sentence of this speech. "You don't mean to tell me, Fred, that you stopped and chatted with that wretch?"
"Indeed I do. We happened to meet, and so we hobnobbed for five minutes on the street corner and drew each other out in the friendliest sort of fashion as to our mutual prospects. He says he has a walk-over, and I told him that he isn't in it."
"I'm glad you showed a little spirit, anyhow."
"What would you have had me do? Make a fell assault upon his hair and eyeballs? As it was, I perpetrated a deliberate falsehood in the good cause. He knows that I know I am beaten from the start."
"Nonsense," said Josephine. "You provoke me, Fred, when you talk in that fashion. What was the use of accepting if you didn't intend to win if you could?"
"So I do intend, but I can't."
"You can't certainly if you hobnob with the rival candidate and call him a good fellow."
"You ought to have been a politician, Josephine."
"No, I'm only crazy to have you win, Fred, and I'm convinced you can win if you only think so yourself and pitch in as if you thought so. I dare say Mr. Spinney may be well enough apart from politics, but it is politics we are interested in at present, and it seems to me it is your duty to hate him--until the election is over, anyway. If you defeat him, you may ask him to dinner, if you like."
Her eyes sparkled like diamonds, and there was a dangerous look in them which would have boded ill for Mr. Spinney or any other Republican had he happened to thrust his head inside our doors just then. As for me, I felt a little sheepish at my lack of courage, I must confess, and I cried with genuine ardor:
"Hurrah for Reform! You're right, my dear," I added, "I must pitch in. I haven't been quite so pusillanimous, however, as it would seem, for I have got Nick Long to superintend my campaign."
You may remember that Nicholas Long, or Nick Long, as we always speak of him, has never stood high in Josephine's good graces on account of his unorthodox habits regarding church-going. He has an unpleasant way of encountering us on our way to the sanctuary in the toggery of a man who is going to take a day off in the country. He has, however, a cool, analytical mind, and his name has been associated for some years with reform politics. In obtaining his services as a manager I felt that I had done well and wisely. Josephine looked a little sober, as though she was not altogether gratified at my selection, but realizing, very likely on second thought, that the children's habits were formed, she contented herself by remarking:
"I shall keep my eye upon him and make sure that he doesn't get you into any mischief."
"You seem to forget," I said, "that he is a leading reformer."
Josephine smiled incredulously. "Fred," she continued presently, with a pensive air, "I wish it were the custom here, as it is in England, for a candidate's wife to go about and buttonhole people and beg votes and kiss babies for him, and all that sort of thing. I'm not so young as I was, I know, but I dare say I should appear quite as well as Mrs. Daniel Spinney, whoever she may be. I really think I could make a fairly respectable speech just on the strength of my conjugal devotion and righteous indignation against that villain of a man. 'Ahem: Fellow Democrats, I beseech you in the name of common sense and decency, in the name of the Goddess of Liberty, and of good government and order, and as you love your cradles and your firesides, not to vote for that dyed-in-the-wool Republican and spoilsman, Daniel Spinney, but to vote early and often for that talented, noble, self-sacrificing, upright citizen and Democrat, Frederick ----'"
"_E pluribus unum_! Let her go, Gallagher! Erin go bragh! rah! rah! rah! Harvard!" I cried, as I seized the lovely orator in my arms and hugged her to my breast, thereby, to adopt her own words, squeezing out of her the little breath which she had left. "Bravo, Josephine! If you were to take the stump it would be I and not Mr. Spinney who would have a walk-over."
"At any rate, Fred," she continued, after she had regained her breath and recomposed her ruffled hair, "I can put in a word to help you here and there among our friends. It was on the tip of my tongue yesterday to call Rev. Bradley Mason's attention to the fact that you were a candidate, in the hope that he might make just a slight allusion to it from the pulpit. Not directly by name, of course; he couldn't do that very well; but he might speak of the importance of aiding those who were battling for the noble cause of pure government, so that people could guess what he meant. I didn't do it," she added, a little ruefully, "because I was afraid you might possibly not like it, and there was plenty of time in which to give him the hint."
"Thank goodness you didn't say a word on the subject," I answered. "It wouldn't have done at all."
For the next six weeks our house was a veritable bureau of political activity. Although Josephine lived up to her threat of keeping an eye on Nicholas Long, she admitted before many days had passed that he was what my boys call a thorough-going hustler, and that he was determined to leave no portion of my Congressional acreage unsown with Democratic seed. This farming metaphor was borrowed from Nick, who had many others at his command suited to the various classes of constituents he wished to reach. His brain fairly buzzed with fertile expedients devised to catch this and that portion of the popular vote. He was a great believer in documents. As he expressed it, the territory must be plastered with statistics and other printed matter, which were much more serviceable nowadays than in the past. He said that formerly the average voter flung everything into the waste-basket and went to the polls simply on the strength of party prejudice fortified by the glamour of a torchlight procession, but that now he read and thought, and refused to support the party candidate merely because he was the party candidate. He deluged the community with copies of my letter of acceptance, and three days later overwhelmed the postal service with a batch of circulars embodying a short, pithy description of my personal virtues and talents, interwoven with sound doctrine. Although he confided to me that torchlight organizations were moribund factors in political warfare, he advised me to supply uniforms and torches, and a promise of abundant cigars, ice-cream, and ginger-beer for the cementation of a band of youthful warriors eager to call themselves the "Fourth District Reform Cadets." "There is not more than one voter in twenty among them," said Nick, "but it will please their fathers, and do no harm in any event, especially as your wife and I have devised a costume for them that will drive the Spinney Guards under cover with jealousy."
The costume in question was a pattern of garish ingenuity: white bearskin caps with red, white, and blue pompons; bright blue blouses dashed with white, and white leather belts, and red zouave knickerbockers. Their torches were encased in fantastic glass lanterns alternately red, white, and blue. On the occasion of their first parade, when they drew up before the house to receive their transparency, adorned on one side with a villainous portrait of myself superscribed by the motto, "Our Fathers Fought For Freedom, We Are Fighting For The Right," and on the other a cut depicting the rival candidate up to his armpits in the bog of Civil Service Reform, described as "Spinney's Walk-Over" (a happy blending, as Nick called it, of serious principle and humorous suggestion), I appeared on the door-steps and delivered a few halting sentences of gratitude and augury for success, which were received with loud plaudits and the rattle of the drum corps. Thereupon I invited the battalion to enter and partake of a little simple hospitality, which they hastened to do to the number of two hundred, including a dozen ward heelers in citizens' raiment, and three or four nondescripts whom nobody knew, but whom Nick said it would be impolitic to offend by exclusion. A hearty supper was ready for them in the dining-room, presided over by Josephine and her daughters, whose presence seemed at first to abash my warriors of the torch. But only for a few moments. Realizing presently that these Goddesses had apparently but one aim in life, to wit, to help them to salad, oysters, and ice-cream, diffidence disappeared like fog before the morning sun, and with it the viands down the throats of my red, white, and blue supporters. In the liquid line Josephine gave a choice of hot coffee and chocolate, thereby joining issue for the first time with my manager on the subject of methods. Nick was in favor of champagne, on the score that the Spinney Guards had been regaled with beer and sherry, but my darling declared that even if it were the turning-point of the election, she would not consent to win votes by playing Hebe to beardless youths. A political aspirant who is forced to decide between his manager and his wife has need of all the philosophy at his command.
To atone for this obduracy, Josephine had a pleasant little surprise ready in the shape of a basket of silken badges emblematic chiefly of myself, and more remotely of the Presidential candidate and our party principles. She and her daughters, despite my blushes, fastened these one by one to the blue blouses of the members of the Fourth District Reform Cadets after everything to eat and drink in the house had vanished. Not only then, but henceforth until the end of the campaign, it was embarrassing to me to note how subordinate a position every other candidate held in Josephine's regard. One would have supposed that I was the party nominee for the chief magistracy of the nation, instead of the leader of a forlorn contest for a congressional seat in a hopelessly Republican district. On the occasion of the torchlight parade two miles long, whereby the enemy sought to carry the city by storm, and which passed close to our front door, our house was as dark as Erebus. Josephine insisted even that the lights in the front hall and in the basement should be extinguished, and she drew the drawing-room curtains over the window-shades so that we need not seem to furnish our foes with one pale ray of comfort. Induced by curiosity to peep out at the passing show, she limited her strictures to scornful but tranquil denunciation of the campaign rhetoric blazoned on the transparencies, until the Spinney Guards arrived, headed by a magnificent mulatto bearing a delineation of the Reform Candidate submerged in a huge soup-tureen with an appropriate tag beneath. For an instant she stared, then she gasped as though some one had struck her, and she fiercely started to raise the window.
"What are you trying to do, Josephine?"
"Let me go, Fred. I will, I will. How dare they?"
"Pooh, dear! All is fair in politics. It's no worse than the Swamp of Civil Service Reform," I said, as I tore away her vindictive grasp from the window which she had succeeded in opening a foot or two, and shut it hastily.
"How dare they? You had no right to prevent me from hissing, Fred. I should like to fling something at them too. It's an outrage making you look like that, and--and in the soup, too."
Not all the enthusiasm generated by our rival procession, which took place forty-eight hours later, nor indeed the long flattering list of my supporters published by Nick Long in the newspaper for two days prior to election day, sufficed entirely to obliterate from Josephine's soul the bitterness of this insult. As she expressed it, was it not cruel to flaunt such a thing in the faces of children who had been used to think of their father as the most dignified of men, one with whose personality no one would dare to tamper or trifle? It nerved her, however, to more desperate efforts in my behalf. She ventured even on holding up our beloved pastor, the Rev. Bradley Mason, in the street, and capturing his signature to the list of leading citizens who supported me. This ought, she declared, to outweigh sixty soup-tureens.
Before the votes were counted I knew well enough that I had been defeated, but for Josephine's dear sake I allowed her to prepare a victor's banquet, on the assumption that my friends would be pouring in upon me with congratulations. It was she who drove me from my evening paper, to which I was settling down like a philosopher after dinner, to go to my headquarters and ascertain the result. She was sure I was elected. If not (and here her voice melted) the people were not fit to have such a pearl offered to them. I went, and it was half-past ten when I returned. She heard my step, and rushed down to meet me at the front door. I was calm and smiling.
"Defeated by one hundred and fourteen votes, dear. A close fight, wasn't it?"
"Ah, Fred, defeated! You poor, poor boy."
"I can stand it if you can, Josephine," I answered, as with my arm wound around her waist I led her into the dining-room, where the stalled ox and truffled turkey and a glittering array of glass confronted us.
"It was that horrid soup-tureen did it, I am convinced," she murmured, sitting down beside me on the sofa.
"Nonsense, dear. Everyone says I got a wonderful vote against such odds. They are talking about it down town as though I had won a victory. Nick is called a great manager."
"But that Spinney is elected all the same," she said, dejectedly.
"Yes, he is, Josephine. We can't escape from that. I tell you what, I'm going to have a glass of champagne," I said, entering the china closet and taking possession of one of the bottles which had been packed in ice for the refreshment of my friends. I filled a glass for each of us and drained mine to the philosophical toast, "Here's to peace and a quiet life, my dear."
"It would have been very nice to go to Washington," said Josephine, between her sips. "It might have been a stepping-stone to higher things. You know you would be pleased to be sent abroad as a foreign minister. It would have just suited you, Fred."
"It may be that the President, when he hears of the gallant fight I made, will reward me with something in that line," I answered, with a twinkle in my eye. "By the way, what egotists we are! I did not tell you, and you did not inquire, who had been elected President. We have won a glorious victory."
"I'm very glad, I'm sure," said Josephine, in a tone which was scandalously absent-minded considering the importance of the information. After a moment she remarked, coyly: "I should really think, Fred, there might be a chance of his giving you something when he hears."
"Not the slightest, you dear woman. I was only teasing you. I am a very humble figure in the politics of the country, I assure you, and even if the President is aware of my existence when he enters office, it will never occur to him to pick me out for preferment. Besides, I don't wish anything. I am perfectly content to sink back into the obscurity from which I was lured by the call of duty. It would have tickled my pride a little to defeat Spinney, but I am inclined to think I should have found it rather a bore to be only one Congressman among so many."
"Just think of it, one hundred and fifteen more votes would have given you the election. It seems hard to have missed it by so little. You mustn't think me a goose about you, Fred," she added, after a thoughtful pause. "I don't usually praise you to your face and make an undue fuss about you, do I, dear? I think I am disposed to be critical of you rather than otherwise. But you are so much superior to the men they generally put up, that I'm unable to reconcile myself to the idea that you're not to be anything distinguished after all. Of course I didn't really expect that you were going to be very great; and yet in politics one cannot always tell. Men no more remarkable than you have been elected President; though I'm not at all sure that I should have cared to have you in the White House."
"Yet you will not cease to love me now that I am doomed to be only a poor private citizen for the rest of my days?" I asked, fondly, as my arm stole around her waist, which, though no longer wisp-like as of yore, is shapely still. "Poor, too, in every sense," I added, unpleasantly reminded by the pressure of the check-book in my coat-pocket of my sadly diminished bank account.
"I am afraid I should continue to love you, Fred, even if you were bad--a Daniel Spinney or a Nicholas Long, for example," she answered, imprinting a kiss upon my cheek. "But you are an angel, dear."
It was worth being defeated for Congress in order to learn how much my wife appreciated me, and also to learn to appreciate her more thoroughly, philosophical deductions which I whispered in her ear with appropriate circumlocution. "But, Josephine," I added, "why do you include Spinney and Nick Long in the same category of wickedness?"
"Because they are both wicked."
"But Nick is a reformer, my dear."
"Hasn't he nearly ruined you?"
"I had to hand over a great deal of money to him, certainly," I answered, ruefully.
"What did he spend it for?"
"I didn't ask him for the details, but he always said he needed it for printing, dear. You know there was a great deal of printing done," I hastened to add, feeling a little nervous under the stress of cross-examination. "Then there were the uniforms and the torches and the supper for the cadets."
"I know what they cost exactly. Fred, what do you suppose he could have used all that money for?"
"Printing, I have told you, Josephine. There are all sorts of expenses in a campaign of this sort, the details of which one has to leave to one's manager. I have implicit confidence in Nick's good judgment," I continued, a trifle austerely. To tell the truth, I had been wondering myself where all the money had gone to. Josephine was thoughtful for several minutes, then she said: "Do you know, Fred, I have a feeling that if you had managed your own campaign without the aid of a reformer you would have got just as many votes--and--and we should have had money enough left to go to Japan."
If a woman has a prejudice against a man he might be spotless as the Archangel Gabriel, and she would be able to pick a flaw in him. _