THE VINDICATION OF HENDERSON OF GREENE
BALDWIN, the lobbyist, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and swaying with the train as it swung out on to the rocky ledge that paves the Valley of the Desplaines, contemplatively cut the end from a fresh cigar and said:
“But I’m not so sure, after all. My experience with the Bailey bill shook my faith in that proposition.”
The two other men in the salon looked up with startled eyes.
Baldwin had been driven over from his Michigan Avenue home and caught the Alton Limited when it made the station stop at Twenty-third Street, where he boarded the last of its curtained Pullmans. This coach was the political institution known to Illinois statesmanship as the Springfield sleeper, and Baldwin and his two companions, Jennings, the secretary of state, and Denny Healy, a canal commissioner, had the capsulated coziness of its smoking compartment all to themselves. Down by Dwight they had fallen into a desultory discussion of the old question as to whether or not every man has his price. The question could hardly interest these men long, for, after many years’ constant contemplation, under the gray dome of the state house, of the weaknesses of men, they had come to an acceptance of the doctrine now grown frank enough to have no lingering taint of cynicism. Jennings, indeed, had just dismissed the subject by declaring:
“All men aire fer sale, an’ most of ’em damn cheap.”
And so the subject might have lapsed had it not been for Baldwin’s heterodoxy. That George R. Baldwin of all men should doubt the first maxim of their profession was beyond comprehension. Though he played his part in life with a suite of law offices in a skyscraper as a background, his serious business was lobbying bills through the legislature. His friends, who were many, boasted that he always stood by them, right or wrong. Which he did, indeed, and as they were generally wrong, the value of such friendship, or his opinions on practical politics, could hardly be overestimated. The day had been a hot one in Chicago, but now a cold draft of smoky air was sucking in through the narrow window-screen, on which the cinders hailed as the Limited plunged southward.
Smoke and dirt had long since begrimed the dark and sweaty face of Jennings, who, with waistcoat opened in the comfort dear to the Egyptian, was sprawling his shanks on the cushion opposite him, while Healy, doomed by corpulence to an attitude more erect, sitting with his chubby knees far apart, as the fat will, his paunch resting on the edge of the seat he filled, now and then brushed a fat palm over his red scalp and sighed, as he puffed his domestic cigar. But Baldwin sat and smiled, showing his excellent teeth beneath his reddish mustache, and visibly expanded. They could hear, as an undertone to their talking, the dull roll of the Pullman’s paper wheels, and now and then they were interrupted by the whistle’s long and lonesome note at a country road-crossing. Out through the double windows, against which Healy sometimes pressed his forehead because the glass cooled it, the dark fields wheeled past in an endless belt of blackness, save where an occasional bunch of sparks from the engine burrowed under the right-of-way fence, and then, in the momentary glow of light, they could catch sight of a tossing plume of corn, which told them they were out on the prairies of central Illinois.
When the train paused for the Big Four crossing at Gardner, they heard in the sudden flood of silence the snoring of a sensible fare-paying passenger who had gone to bed. The strident noise of the crickets and the frogs outside was noted only as an effect of the silence. The three men had no thought of retiring until they reached Pontiac at two o’clock, for the lives they led were such that they could not sleep until that hour, and then not very well.
Baldwin had lighted his imported cigar, the superior aroma of which, perceptible even in an atmosphere choked with coal gases and the fumes of the domestic cigars Jennings and Healy were smoking, indicated faintly the height of cultivation to which he had brought his appetites, when Jennings, flecking his ashes on the floor of the salon just as he would have done on his own parlor carpet, said:
Baldwin settled his chin over the blue cravat with the white polka dots that was knotted over the immaculate collar—a collar, incredulous men from southern Illinois were sometimes told, that was actually made on the shirt—drew his creased trousers a little farther above the tops of his patent leather boots, and began:
“One session there was an old man named Henderson in the house, who had come up from Greene County; Henderson of Greene, everybody called him, to distinguish him from Tom Henderson, of Effingham. He was a queer figure, was Henderson of Greene, tall and gaunt, with a stoop in his shoulders. He always wore a hickory shirt, opened at a red and wrinkled throat, and his hair was just a stubble bleached by harvest suns. The old man was a riddle to everybody in Springfield that winter. He was always in his seat, even on Monday evenings, when no one else was there. He voted always with his party, and he voted consistently as well, like a good country member, against all the Chicago legislation. But he was a silent man, who stood apart from his fellows, looking with eyes that peered from under his shaggy, sunburned brows with an expression no one could fathom. He never made a speech, he never introduced a bill, he never offered a resolution, he never even presented a petition, and when the speaker made his committee assignments, he placed the old man on the committees on History, Geology and Science, and on Civil Service Reform, and he did not even look disappointed.”
The two politicians chuckled.
“As for me,” continued Baldwin, “I never spoke to him, and never knew any one who did. The speaker himself only addressed him—and then as the gentleman from Greene—when they were verifying roll-calls. No one ever knew where he boarded. The herd book gave him a paragraph, saying that he had been born in Indiana along in ’37, and moved to this state sometime in the fifties. Left an orphan early, with no education, he had been a day laborer all his life, working at anything he could get, mostly on farms. He never had held office before, and none knew how he broke into the legislature—the tidal wave, I suppose. Every one knew he never would come back again.
“Well, we got down to the last night of the session. The hands of the clock had been turned back in that vain old attempt to stay the remorseless hours, but its pale and impassive face was impotent as a gravestone to stay dissolution and oblivion. I know men who would have spent a fortune to give that legislature one day more of life, but it was sweeping on to its midnight death. Somehow, whenever I think of the legislature, I think of that legislature, and whenever my mind conceives the state house it isn’t pictured to me as standing there on the hill, stately in the sunshine, but as it appeared that night as I walked over from the Leland, with the clouds flying low over its dome. The lower floors were dark and still as sepulchres, and the messenger boys who came over from the Western Union, now and then, reminded me of ghosts as they went by, their heels dragging on the marble floors of the corridor. A light was burning in the governor’s office, though the old man himself, I knew, was over at the mansion, pacing the floor of the library and cursing with classic curses. We were going to try that night to pass the Bailey bill over his veto.
“But the third floor blazed with electric lights, and the big dome was full of noisy echoes. The senate kept its coat on—you know how they mimic decorum over there—but the house was in its shirt-sleeves, huddled like a pack of wolves around the speaker’s dais, with faces ripe with whisky, shaking its fists under the umbrella of cigar smoke. Every fellow was trying to get his bill passed in the last hour of the session—you know what it is, Hank?”
“Oah, yes,” replied Jennings, “but ’tain’t nothin’ to what ’t used to be under the ol’ constitution. We’d stack a pile o’ them ’ere private acts up on the clerk’s desk, an’ pass ’em all t’ oncet ’ith a whoop. Them ’as the days—but that ’as ’fore your time.”
“Those must have been good old days,” assented the lobbyist, “for the gang.”
“I reckon! A feller could ’a’ done business in them days! Ol’ John M.’d better left the ol’ constitution alone—it ’as good enough. But there ’as a passion fer change right after the war.”
The lobbyist politely nodded concurrence in this view and continued:
“Some of the members clambered on to their desks, filling the air with oaths, ink bottles, and hurtling books with rattling leaves. Sometimes an iron weight sheathed in paper whizzed by on a vindictive mission, and one man made an Egyptian nigger-killer with rubber bands. Some even hurled their copies of the revised statutes—it was the first use they had ever found for them. Once in a while some one would toss a batch of printed bills to the ceiling, where they set the glass prisms of the chandeliers jingling, and then fell like autumn leaves, a shower of dead pledges and withered hopes. And out of all the hubbub rose a steady roar—”
“Like at a lynchin’ bee,” assisted Jennings.
“Exactly,” assented Baldwin, who had never seen a lynching. “There were drunken howls and vacuous laughs, and yet we could hear through it all the hoarse voice of the clerk, his throat so heated that you could see the vapor of his breath, as you can an orator’s, or a wood-chopper’s in winter, rapidly intoning senate bills on third reading. The pages were growing heedless and impertinent. The newspaper correspondents, their despatches on the wires, puffed their cigarettes in professional unconcern, and awaited happenings worthy of late bulletins. The older members, who had been through the mill many times before, lounged low in their seats. One could see, above their desks, only their heads and heels. The speaker, old ’Zeke himself, was in the chair, suave as ever, but growing caustic. He had splintered his sounding-board early in the evening, and had taken to tapping perfunctorily his walnut desk with his little inadequate gavel. And yet he and the older members and the newspaper men would cast occasionally an anxious glance at the clock, and an expectant one at the big doors.
“As I sat there on the old, red lounge under the speaker’s flag-draped canopy, I noticed Henderson of Greene, standing away back under the galleries on the Democratic side, eying the proceedings with the same mysterious stare that had never left him since he had been sworn in. As I have said, I had never spoken to the fellow, but I had always felt a pity for him—he impressed me as a man who had been stunned by repeated raps of bad luck. Along toward the end of the session he had brought his wife up from Greene County to the capital. She had that tired look that country women have. Her face was seamed, her cheeks hollow; her back was bent in a bow, and she walked hurriedly, anxiously along in her flapping skirts beside her tall and somber husband. She had never been away from home before, and the boys had many a laugh over her wonder at the trolley-cars purring along under the maple trees, and her fear of the elevators in the state house—though, for my part, I could see nothing ludicrous in it all. She stayed three or four days and they went everywhere, out to Oak Ridge to see Lincoln’s tomb, over to Eighth Street to visit his old homestead, up to the Geological Museum where the moth-eaten stuffed animals are, and out to Camp Lincoln. They took many trolley rides, and even climbed to the top of the state house dome, whence, they say, you can see Rochester and the prairies for thirty miles around. He brought her over to the house one or two mornings, but not on to the floor as other members did their over-dressed wives; he sent her up to the gallery, where she sat peering down over the railing at the gang—and her husband, who took no part in all that was going on.
“The old woman’s interest in all these new things that had come into her starved life, her ill-concealed pride in her husband’s membership in such a distinguished body of law-givers, were touching to me, and as I looked at him that last night of the session, and thought of her, the wish to do something to lighten their lives came into my heart, but just then, suddenly, old ’Zeke started from his chair, grasped his gavel firmly, and leaned expectantly over his desk. At the same instant the older members dragged their feet down from their desks and sat bolt upright. The newspaper men flung away their cigarettes and adjusted their eye-glasses. The assistant clerk, who had been reading, looked up from the bill then under what I suppose they would have called consideration, and hurriedly gave his place at the reading-desk to the clerk of the house. I knew what was coming. I knew that the Bailey bill was on its way over from the senate. And I heard Bill Hill call:
“‘Mistah Speakah.’
“At the sound of that voice the uproar in the chamber ceased. It became so still that the silence tingled like a numbness through the body; stiller than it had been any time since nine o’clock that morning, when they had paused for the chaplain to say his prayer. The gang turned around and stood motionless, panting, in its shirt-sleeves, as though a flashlight photograph were to be taken. Half-way down the aisle stood Hill. You know how he would look at such a time, in his long black coat, his wide white shirt bosom with the big diamond, his rolling collar and black string tie, and his long black hair falling to his shoulders. You know how he would love such a moment—and it was his last chance that session. He stood there quietly a whole minute, and then putting a foot forward, said in his great bass voice:
“‘Mistah Speakah.’
“Old ’Zeke rose and said:
“‘Mister Doorkeeper.’
“‘A message from the senate, by its secretary.’
“‘A message from the senate by its secretary,’ repeated ’Zeke, and then Bill had to give way to Sam Pollard, who stepped forth and said:
“‘Mr. Speaker, I am directed to inform the house that the senate has passed senate bill No. 106’—I never shall forget the number of that bill, after all the sleepless nights it caused me, and the anxious mornings scanning the calendar to see if its black figures were there—‘Senate bill No. 106. A bill for an act to amend an act entitled: An Act concerning the exercise of the right of eminent domain, notwithstanding the objections of the governor’—you know the lingo.
“Then, as the speaker said, ‘The clerk will read the message,’ Hen Harvey, who was clerk of the house, stretched his arm over the narrow desk and took the file from the page. The old man was mad when he wrote that veto message, and he gave both houses the devil. I never knew the legislature to get such an unmerciful lamming in my life; it was outrageous, for it was a good bill, and—”
“Ought ter pass,” interjected Jennings, repeating the trite phrase sententiously.
“But nobody heard it, for when Hen began to read, the gang took a deep breath and began to howl. From both sides of the chamber broke forth a clamor of ‘Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker,’ until in the din even these words were lost, and there was just that long, heavy roar. The boys came over from the senate, for they had done their duty and had done it nobly, in the face of a great storm of criticism, combined with the abuse of the Chicago papers, and they wanted to help lift in the house. And with them came the crowd of reformers from the Municipal League, and stood about with George Herrick, the old man’s private secretary. The reformers, as George pointed out members here and there, and whispered in their ears, supposed that they were doing great things in the fight against the bill, but that was only another time when they deluded their precious selves. They did their reforming chiefly at banquets, but George and the old man knew a thing or two about politics themselves, and George, standing back by the Democratic cloak-room, smoking his little cigarettes, was directing that fight with the party lash in his hand, and some of the best men on the floor of the house to do his bidding. He was the only private secretary I ever knew who could set an army in the field.
“But through it all old ’Zeke stood there, game as ever, with a hard, cold smile on his face, and you could hear the sharp, monotonous rap of his gavel, rap, rap, rap, neither fast nor slow. The tumult did not die during the reading of that scathing message, and when Hen’s ruined voice ceased, and he rolled the message up again and thrust it in his desk, ’Zeke smashed his gavel down and I heard him say:
“‘Will the house be in order?’
“And it was in order, for ’Zeke knew how to compel order in that bear-pit when he wanted to, and he never raised his voice to do it either, only his eye, and the gavel. And so, when they were quiet, he said: ‘The question is: Shall the house concur with the senate in the passage of senate bill No. 106, notwithstanding the objections of the governor?’
“The house tried to break away from him again, but he held it in his gavel fist, drawing the curb tight, and turned to recognize old Long John Riley, who was standing like a tall tree beside his desk, with his hand upraised.
“‘The gentleman from Cook!’
“‘Mr. Speaker,’ said Riley, ‘I move the previous question.’
“There was another roar, but ’Zeke’s gavel fell, and his eyes blazed black again, and he said:
“‘The gentleman from Cook moves the previous question, and the question is: Shall the main question be now put? Those in favor of this question will say aye’—there was a roar of ayes—‘and those opposed will say no.’ There was a heavier roar of noes, and then came the old cry: ‘Ayes and noes, ayes and noes, Mr. Speaker, ayes and noes, damn you, don’t you dare to shut off debate!’ But ’Zeke only smiled and his gavel cracked—and they were still. Then in the stillness he said:
“‘Gentlemen are as familiar with the rules as is the chair. They are well aware that the chair is powerless to order a roll-call after a viva voce vote, unless he is in doubt as to the result, the demand for the yeas and nays not having been preferred before the question had been put to the house. In this instance’—and the splendid old fellow swung his gavel to his ear, and the smile flickered out of his face—‘in this instance the chair is not in doubt. The ayes seem to have it, the ayes have it, and the main question is ordered.’ The hammer fell like a bolt, and then calmly leaning on it, his eye traveled around over the turbulent mob, until it lit on George Herrick and his little band of dazed reformers—and I knew he was thinking of the old man over in the mansion whom he hated with an Indian’s hate—and as he looked George in the eye, the cold smile came back, and he said:
“‘The question is: Shall the house concur with the senate in the passage of senate bill No. 106, notwithstanding the objections of the governor. Upon this question those in favor of the bill will vote aye, and those opposed will vote no, when their names are called, and the clerk will call the roll.’ The gavel fell, and the speaker, holding it where it had fallen, leaned half his length over his desk and motioned to Hen Harvey. Hen had taken off his coat and vest and collar—he would call that roll himself—and as he unbuttoned his cuffs, inclining his head toward the speaker, ’Zeke yelled in his ear:
“‘Now, Hen, damn it, call that roll to beat all hell.’
“Then we knew that the Bailey bill fight was on to a finish. We had had our first big battle with the reformers, and were down together in the last ditch. Whenever a bill with something in it is about to pass the legislature, a strange quality steals into the atmosphere, just as there does in the council chamber in Chicago when anything is to be pulled off—don’t you know? There is a forebodement, an apprehensiveness, that electrifies the nerves and oppresses the lungs. I felt it there that night. We had had a heavy fight to pass the bill in the first place, and now we had to override a veto! It’s hard enough to get the seventy-seven votes that constitute a majority, with the people against you—men are such cowards—but when it comes to rounding up two-thirds—a hundred and two—it’s an entirely different problem. We had been working quietly at the thing for days, for we knew the veto was coming, and that the old man would wait until the last night to send it in. We had a hundred and one tried and true men who would stick to the end. The hundred and second was Jim Berry. We had his promise, and believed he would stay in line—though he was afraid of his constits—for he was poor and in debt.
“Judge Hardin came and sat beside me that we might check them off for ourselves, and Hen began calling the roll:
“‘Allen!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Ambaugh!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Anderson!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Bartly!’
“‘Aye!’
“The leaders, Jamison over on the Republican side, and Riley on the Democratic, sat at their desks, with roll-calls, at which they thoughtfully blew the smoke of their cigars as they checked off the progress of the vote. They appeared as unconcerned as the correspondents. I never can forget the drollery of the wink Jamison gave me as he voted no—it was necessary to have some one who had voted with the majority to move a reconsideration of the vote in case anything happened. ’Zeke did not resume his seat during the roll-call, as the rules permitted him to do, but stood bending over his desk with an alert eye on the cadets. The vote up to this point was propitious, but ’Zeke knew, and Jamison and Riley knew, and Judge Hardin and I knew, and we were not so sanguine as the correspondents, who had already begun to toss sheets of copy to the frowsy telegraph boys, running to and fro between the press gallery and the Western Union. We were chiefly interested just then whether Berry would vote right or not. I was keeping an eye on him and noticed that he was beginning to fidget in his seat, and chew his cigar, and tear paper into little pieces. And the roll-call went on:
“‘Beel!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘No!’
“Bell, of course, was on the other side, and was standing back with George Herrick, keeping their fellows in line and cheering up the reformers from the Municipal League, but we knew his vote would have its effect on Berry, so I pulled the speaker’s coat-tail, and ’Zeke leaned over and whispered hoarsely to the clerk. Hen observed a lengthened pause and then began to call more slowly. Berry was the next name.
“‘Berry!’ Hen drawled.
“There was no reply.
“‘Berry!’
“There was no reply.
“Hen looked long at Berry, and the poltroon sat there with his eyes cast down, rolling his cigar around and around in his mouth, tearing up his little flakes of paper, and swinging from side to side in his chair. Then Hen called the next name:
“‘Briggs!’
“‘No!’ he voted, and Berry looked up for the first time since the bill had come over from the senate. ’Zeke rapped fiercely with his gavel, and Hen paused. Then ’Zeke said sharply:
“‘The chair is compelled again to call the attention of gentlemen to rule three, which prohibits smoking in the hall of the house. The chair dislikes to be compelled to repeat this admonition so frequently, and trusts that gentlemen will observe the injunction without additional suggestion. The clerk will proceed with the calling of the roll.’ And he smashed the broken sounding-board again with his gavel. We needed time. Some of the members laughed, but that only gave ’Zeke a chance to gain more time by rapping for order. We feared the effect, however, on discipline. Then he called Brisbane, one of our fellows, and he didn’t vote. I grew uneasy, and Judge Hardin was squirming there beside me on the lounge. When I thought of Berry I grew mad, and wondered if we could save the bill without him. At that instant my eye happened to light upon Henderson of Greene. He was standing under the gallery just as he had been standing all evening. He seemed not to have moved. He had his hands clasped awkwardly behind him, and was chewing his tobacco contemplatively. And here was my chance! I thought of the pathetic biography in the house directory. I thought of his wife as I had seen the poor old thing going around town with him the week before. I thought of the way he had worked and toiled for her and all those children, and how little life held for him. If I could get him for the bill in Berry’s place, the Chicago people, I knew, would be liberal with him, and he could go back home better off in a financial way than when he came. And so I motioned to Burke, and when he came up I told him to ask the gentleman from Greene to meet me at once in the speaker’s room, and I retired to await him. Presently, in his clumsy way, he shuffled in. He came close up to me, and when I had given the poor devil a cigar he bent over to hear what I might have to say. I asked him how he was going to vote on the bill, and he said he thought he would vote against it, inasmuch as the governor had said it was a bad piece of legislation. Well, there was no time to discuss that phase of the question.
“‘Look here, comrade,’ I said, ‘this is a bill that concerns Chicago alone—it does not affect and can not affect you or your constituents one way or the other, can it?’
“‘No,’ he said; ‘reckon not.’
“‘They don’t even know down in Greene County that there is such a bill, do they?’
“‘Reckon not,’ he said, ‘leastways I hain’t heerd ary one say nothin’ ’bout it.’
“‘Of course you haven’t,’ I said, ‘and what’s more, you never will. Now, see here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be quite frank with you, for I like you’—he cast a strange, sidling glance at me, distrustful, like all farmers—‘for I like you,’ I said, ‘and I want to do something for you. The men who are promoting this legislation have exactly enough votes to pass it over the governor’s veto, and it’s going to pass. On this ballot they will have just ninety-one votes—one of their men will vote against it to move a reconsideration if necessary, and about ten will not vote. When the absentees are called, these ten will vote for the bill, and on the verification, you’ll see others tumbling into the band-wagon. Now, your vote is not needed, as you see, and, cast for the bill or against it, can have no appreciable effect upon the result. The bill will pass without your vote, and you can not defeat it, for the hundred and two will stand firm in the end. One of them, however—it is Berry, I don’t mind telling you—is trying, at the last minute, to force us into raising his price. You can take his place, you can have his price of the easy money with his raise added, if you will go out there and vote for the bill.’
“He stood looking at the floor, ruminating.
“‘I know, Henderson,’ I continued, ‘that you are a poor man, that you have a large family, that you have to work hard for a living. You are going home to-morrow, maybe not to come back here any more, and you can go if you wish, with three thousand dollars clean, cold cash in your pocket. What do you say?’
“The old man turned his face away and began to fumble with his horny fingers at his chin. His hand trembled as with a palsy. We could hear the roll-call going on outside:
“‘Donavin!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Donnelly!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Evans!’
“‘Finerty!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Fitzmeyer!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Flanigan!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Hear them?’ I said. ‘It’s nearly up to you—what do you say?’
“The old man’s lips quivered, and his calloused fingers grated in his beard. He opened his lips to speak, but his jaw moved helplessly. And we heard Hen’s voice back there in the house calling—calling so that you could have heard him over in the Leland bar-room:
“‘Geisbach!’
“‘No!’
“‘He is one of those who will change,’ I said.
“‘Giger!’
“There was no response. ‘He’ll be all right when they call the absentees,’ I said.
“‘Gordon!’
“‘No!’
“‘Griesheimer!’
“‘Hear them?’ I asked. The H’s came next, and the old man, still fumbling with his chin, and without turning his head began to talk:
“‘Baldwin,’ he said, ‘you’re right. I am a poor man. I have a wife an’ eight children. To-morrow I’m goin’ back home, an’ o’ Monday I’m goin’ to hunt a job—hunt a job in the harves’ field. I’ve worked hard all my life. I ’spect to work hard all my life. I’ll keep on huntin’ jobs in the harves’ fields. I’ll probably die in the poor-house. I’ll be buried in the potter’s field. God knows what’ll become of that woman and them children.’
“He nodded his head as in assent to an indisputable proposition, and his eyes widened as if in fright. They were looking down the barren years before him, and I felt in that moment glad of my power to brighten them.
“‘Hallen!’ we heard Hen call.
“‘No!’
“‘Henderson of Effingham.’
“‘Aye!’
“The old man straightened out his long, lank figure, and then suddenly he turned and looked me in the eyes.
“‘But, Baldwin,’ he said, ‘I come here last January an honest man, and to-morrow I’m goin’ back, back to ol’ Greene, back to my people, back to that woman an’ them children, an’ Baldwin’—he gulped the word—‘Baldwin, I’m goin’ back an honest man.’
“‘Henderson of Greene!’ Hen’s voice called, and the old man stalked into the corridor and thundered ‘No!’ in a trumpet note.”
The lobbyist ceased. The train had stopped at Chenoa, and they could hear the breathing of the engine, breathing as a living thing when it rests. The noise ceased presently, and the silence of the wide country night ensued. They heard only the notes that came from the throats of frogs, and the stridulent drumming of the cicadæ. Baldwin looked at the two politicians, expecting some comment. The oscitant Healy looked out of the window, into the vast darkness brooding over the prairie town. Jennings sat meditatively pulling at his moist mustache, an expression of perplexity in his countenance, the wrinkles of increasing concentration of mind gathering in his brow. Presently, without a word, he rose and left the compartment. When he returned he was treading in his stockings, his coat and waistcoat and collar had been removed, his suspenders were hanging at his hips. He was evidently preparing for his berth. Baldwin meanwhile had pressed a button, and sent Gentry, the aged porter, now in white jacket, for his bag, and laid out on the seat beside him his pajamas, and a traveler’s case filled with silver toilet articles. Jennings lifted his own big valise to his knees, and from its depths drew a bottle, wrapped heavily in a newspaper. He held one of the heavy little glasses under the faucet of the water-cooler, and allowed the water to trickle into it. Then, peeling back the paper from his bottle, he took a long pull from its naked neck, and passed it to Baldwin. As he did so, his brows still knotted in perplexity, he asked:
“What’d you say that feller’s name was?”
“Henderson.”
“Henderson of Greene, eh?”
“Yes.”
Jennings threw back his head and tilted the water, deadly cold from the ice and tasting of smoke, into his throat, and when he had rinsed his mouth, he said, with the happy expression of a man who has resolved a doubt:
“Oah, yes, John Henderson, of Greene. He lived out at Rabb’s Corners. Yes, that’s him; the governor ’p’inted him public administrator of Greene County right after that session.”
The train lurched, and Jennings, bracing himself, wrapped up his bottle and stowed it carefully away in his valise. And swinging the valise in one hand and with the other hitching up his trousers, now beginning to drag at his heels, he stepped away in his stockinged feet to his berth.
Baldwin began to wind his watch, and the Limited, with its three hundred tons, and its tossing heads full of the schemes of politics, went careering away on its paper wheels toward the capital of Illinois.