4 After the First Gun

Guthrie, like the members, felt excitement, and a busy afternoon and evening lay before him. In open session of the House a charge of gravest import had been made against the Speaker, and it would be news of keen interest to every man—even in the remotest country district. This is a State that takes its politics as the great business of life, and so conspicuous a figure as the Speaker of the House could not be assailed without arousing discussion and feeling at half a million hearths. There would be an important despatch for him to write, and it would be a difficult matter to write it correctly.

He wished to follow Mrs. Dennison’s party out of the building, and he saw Clarice Ransome linger a moment and glance at him, as if half-suggesting that he come. Almost any other man would have gone, but the sense of duty was so strong in Guthrie that he stayed. He looked after them regretfully as they went down the circular stairway, and then turned aside to a little room that opened from the outer hall. This was a private apartment, set aside for the Speaker, and the door was closed; but Guthrie, with the freedom of long habit and uniform welcome, pushed it open and went in unannounced.

The Speaker was sitting on a little sofa by the window, his eyes downcast, his face gloomy, his mind yielding to a momentary depression very rare in him. Jimmy Warfield was in the room trying to cheer his friend, and Jimmy’s presence was always a tonic, whether or not his words were logical. Two others were there, Henry Raynor, the Clerk of the House, and Allen, a country member.

“It’s a scandalous attack, but it’s just hot air!” Warfield was saying. “It’s so preposterous that it defeats itself! This State knows you too well, Phil, to believe such a thing of you.”

But Guthrie knew that Carton was thinking not alone of his political reputation and future, but also of something else, perhaps dearer, that was bound up with this issue.

“There’s a lot back of it,” said Raynor, the Clerk, a man with a strong, thin face. “They’re hitting at you over Pursley’s shoulders, Carton.”

Carton nodded and when he saw Guthrie he assumed a more cheerful look.

“Well, Billy,” he asked, “what are you going to write about it for the Times? I suppose you will have to spread the story all over the State?”

“Of course,” replied Guthrie. “That is one of the burdens of the press. We have to write about our friends as well as our enemies, but you know well enough, Mr. Carton, that any reader of my despatch will see that the writer of it considers this charge ridiculous.”

“That’s so, Billy,” replied the Speaker warmly. “You are a true friend and in advance I want to thank you. If only all were like you!”

Other correspondents were now coming in, and the Speaker was bound to say something for the press. Every newspaper in the State would want to print his statement in the morning. Now Mr. Carton began to show indignation. The depression passed and the fighting spirit was aroused.

“You can quote me to the people as denouncing the statement in all the terms I know,” he said. “It is made out of whole cloth. It is true that I have held the bill back, but it is because I believed it a bad bill, a bill in the interest of its incorporators, and not in the interest of the public. It was my duty to the city and the State to hold it back. Any one who says or intimates that I have a personal interest in beating the bill, tells an unmitigated falsehood. You can elaborate on that as much as you please.”

“I wish he hadn’t put in that admission about holding the bill back!” whispered one of the correspondents to Guthrie. “It looks bad.”

“Oh! that’s all right,” replied Guthrie, but in his heart he knew the assertion to be true. Carton’s action could be misrepresented readily, and in cold print at a distance it would look much worse than in the House where such action was understood.

The little room was now crowded with members who had come, some to hear Carton’s statement to the press, some to offer him their personal sympathy and support, while one or two came to rejoice in his trouble.

Guthrie left quietly, because there was one person whom he wished to see before the departure of the afternoon train for the metropolis, due now in a quarter of an hour. He was sure that his man would go on that train and he hastened to the station. To the eastward the engine was whistling and a light cloud of smoke rose over the hills. In a secluded corner of the station Guthrie saw Mr. Harlow, a small valise in his hand and a meditative but guileless look on his face. Guthrie approached him, and Mr. Harlow looked up.

“Are you going to the city too, Mr. Guthrie?” he asked.

“No,” replied Guthrie, “I came here to interview you, Mr. Harlow.”

“To interview me! Why, I am a private citizen dealing only with private citizens. How can any view of mine interest the public? Truly, Mr. Guthrie, the press is becoming wonderful in its enterprise!”

The mild face of Mr. Harlow expressed much surprise.

“It is reported that you are interested in the ‘United’,” said Guthrie, “and it is reported, too, that you, or those behind you, have armed Pursley for the attack upon the Speaker, who is the chief obstacle to the passage of the bill. Are you willing to say anything on the subject for publication?”

The guileless eyes of Mr. Harlow opened wider.

“Dear me, Mr. Guthrie,” he said, “you take me off my feet! I scarcely know Mr. Pursley, who, by the way seems an honest and able man, a worthy representative of our city. Really, I am at a loss; how can I say anything on a subject with which I am totally unfamiliar?”

“Then I shall state in my despatch that after Pursley’s attack you left the capital at once, refusing to be interviewed?”

“Why speak of me at all?” said Mr. Harlow with an aggrieved air. “Cannot a private citizen come here and look on for a day or two to see how they make the laws under which he lives without having his name put in the papers in all sorts of irrelevant ways?”

At that moment the train with a rush and a roar pulled into the station, and Mr. Harlow with a parting smile pulled himself aboard.

“He’ll go down to the city and hide where our reporters can’t find him, but at any rate I can say that he refused to talk,” was Guthrie’s thought.

Then he strolled back toward the centre of the town, busy in thought. He would wait until the last moment before sending his despatches in order to make them as complete and informing as possible, and the state of public opinion at the capital was not the least of the things that he was expected to describe.

He went to the large hotel in the heart of the city through which, as has been said, all the life of the little capital flows. In its ample offices and halls members of the Legislature and visitors meet in easy informality and talk, and here many an important measure is born or dies. It is an unorganised club and it has its conveniences, because one who does not wish to say anything or commit himself upon current events can stay away until the first desire for expression has passed.

Guthrie found the lobbies of the hotel crowded with people and humming with talk the burden of which was always Carton. Already men were taking sides. Jimmy Warfield, fiercely declaiming, was surrounded by a group. He charged that the attack upon Carton was made for a purpose by the people interested in this bill, whoever they were, and for that reason the assault was so vicious. In another corner Pursley also declaimed to his followers. He had not wished to impugn the Speaker’s motives, he disliked aspersing the actions of a man who had risen to the honourable position of Speaker, but Carton had forced him to play his hand. There was the bill, there was Carton’s obvious interference with it, and people were compelled to draw their own conclusions. In another corner Zedekiah Pike, taller, thinner, and stronger of feature than ever, talked in a low voice to half a dozen mountain members who hung closely about him, plainly intimating to all who might come that they did not wish any one else to enter their circle or hear what was being said by their leader.

And from group to group flitted the correspondents, eager to get opinions from the more prominent men or to determine the temperature of the Legislature by means of this infallible thermometer, and Guthrie devoted some attention to the same subject. There are two kinds of correspondents; those who collect news and those who absorb it. Guthrie fell within the latter class, which is by far the abler of the two, because the former are machine-made, while the latter are born, and know instinctively just what things are worth. Moreover, they do not go to people for news, because people come to them with it and gladly tell it.

So Guthrie wandered about in the lobbies, apparently seeking nothing but finding much. He confirmed here his first impression that the bulk of sentiment was against Carton. The Speaker had been too fastidious in his tastes and companionships. He had offended inferior men by a lack of consideration for their opinions, and in this Carton had not been tactful, because he ignored a universal trait of the human race—the jealousy with which the commonplace regard those of higher talents. “I wish that he wasn’t quite so stiff!” was Outline’s thought, because he truly liked and admired Carton.

Moreover, there was a real and honest feeling in the Legislature against monopolies, and it seemed to the majority of the members that Carton’s action had been in favour of them, although they had been loath to believe him dishonest.

It made Guthrie sick at heart. A great fight, pushed by secret but powerful agencies, was to be made on Carton, and in its train would come consequences, innumerable and ruinous. It would create a split in the party—it was bound to do so, and Guthrie’s mind revolted at the thought. He was a Democrat by long inheritance, association, training and belief, and never could be otherwise. The State was regularly Democratic, too, but lately the majority had been narrowing and ten thousand votes shifted the other way would give the victory to the Republicans.

It grieved Guthrie to think of such a change, but a long fight over Carton with its resulting bitterness was almost sure to cause it.

He met Wharton, the correspondent of the chief Republican daily of the State—and in this State a legislative correspondent is supposed to be not only a narrator of news, but in an indirect way an agent of his party, too. Wharton was exultant, and he clapped his hand cheerfully upon Guthrie’s shoulder.

“Billy, old man,” he exclaimed, “you Democrats are up against it this term. If you come out of this fight on Carton with all your feathers left, then I’m mightily mistaken!”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Wharton,” replied Guthrie frankly. “What are you going to write about it?”

“Five thousand words at least. Why, this is a sensation sure enough—a corker!”

“I mean what, not how much.”

“Oh, well! As for that—I’m a Republican, you know, Billy, but I don’t have to do any colouring or altering of the perspective here. I merely state the charges and the facts and the people draw their own conclusions. I like Carton and I’m confoundedly sorry for him, but news is news and politics is politics.” “I don’t believe that Carton has any interest either directly or indirectly in defeating that bill,” said Guthrie defiantly.

“Neither do I,” said Wharton, “but it will be deucedly hard to prove it to the satisfaction of the great American public, which is ready to believe in the wickedness of any man in office.”

Guthrie lived in the same hotel in a quiet room on the third floor, and feeling that he had learned enough for his purpose, he retired to it and wrote carefully for three hours. On this occasion he had no hesitation in “colouring” his own despatches, that is, to indicate throughout them his belief in Carton’s innocence, in such a way as to incline the reader to the same point of view. He felt that he had a right to do this because he did not think corruption in Carton possible.

But he sighed when he read over the despatch. It did not look so well for Carton, after all. He filed it at the telegraph office, marking at the end: “More to come,” which meant that he would add something, later in the night. Then he put on his evening clothes and went forth again. His destination was the governor’s house, a low, roomy old building erected early in the history of the State for the use of its governors and full of comfort and comfortable associations. Here the young governor and his wife, yet younger, had gathered around them a brilliant little group for the winter. The session of the Legislature is always the special season in the capital, and this year, owing to the youth of the governor and his wife, it had a finer social bloom than any other in many years. The house was full of guests and Clarice Ransome and Mary Pelham were among them.

Guthrie paused before the governor’s house with his hand upon the gate. He was always welcome there, and he knew it. And he liked the old house, too, for its own sake. It seemed to him with its dark woods, its wide halls and its lack of ostentation, to be so full of democratic dignity and simplicity. There was no attendant on guard, no livery, but any one who chose might ring the bell at the governor’s door and he would be answered according to his mission.

Lights were shining from all the windows and fell in bars of silver across the grass which the touch of winter had turned brown on the lawn. Guthrie thought he heard the faint sound of voices within. He opened the gate, entered the grounds and rang at the door.

Paul Hastings, the governor, met him in the hall, after he had been shown in by the servant.

“Billy,” he said, as he shook hands, “I’m glad to see you, but I was thinking it might be somebody else.”

“Carton?” said Guthrie, intuitively.

“Yes, Carton. This is an awfully unpleasant thing, and I’ve been trying to guess whether he’d shut himself up for a few days or boldly face the public at once.” Guthrie glanced at the governor’s face, but he read nothing there. If Carton were a guest in that house, then people might attack the governor, too, as the Speaker’s friend, and the governor himself, in the course of time, would want more from the public. Could Paul Hastings be moved by any such selfish or timid impulse and hope that Carton would stay away? Guthrie could not tell and he replied:

“I think Carton will face the public boldly—even defiantly. You know his nature, governor.”

“That’s so,” said Mr. Hastings, “but come in; the ladies are here.”

He led the way to the drawing-room, whence floated the sound of voices. It was an old-fashioned apartment, very large, all in dark oak and at one end in a vast fireplace burned a great heap of hickory logs. It was this rather than the gas-lights in the chandelier that illuminated the room, the sparkling flames casting a crimson glow over the floor and the walls.

It was all wonderfully cheerful and within Guthrie saw Mrs. Hastings, Mrs. Dennison, Miss Ransome, Miss Pelham, Senator Cobb, Jimmy Warfield and half a dozen others. They made him welcome both for his own sake, and because he was known socially as one of the governor’s group.

Lucy Hastings came forward to meet him. She was a woman of gentle manner, who rarely said an unpleasant thing, never mistaking cutting words for wit; consequently she made few enemies for herself and none for her husband, which was important, although she did not think of it.

Then Guthrie saw that she welcomed him with genuine pleasure and it made him feel at home, all the more so because Clarice Ransome glanced at him rather coldly—he had not followed from the Capitol when she half invited him to come. Yet he wished to make apologies and presently, when he was with Miss Ransome, he said incidentally:

“It has been a busy day for me, but not of the kind I like. We correspondents always want news, but I take no pleasure in that which I have had to write to-day!”

“You like Mr. Carton?”

“As I would a brother.”

“Senator Cobb, who seems to me an honest man says that he has done wrong,” and she nodded toward the other corner of the room where Senator Cobb was sitting.

“Senator Cobb not only seems to be an honest man, but he is one,” replied Guthrie. “Nevertheless, I am convinced that he is often mistaken. Still, I suppose you don’t want to talk of politics.”

“On the contrary, I do,” she said with animation. “Will the men never learn that women are interested in the things that seem to be within the peculiar province of men? Perhaps that is why we are—it is the mystery that attracts us.”

Beholding her interest and convinced that it was real, not assumed, Guthrie undertook to explain the situation, telling how his party in a way, must support its Speaker, yet he was afraid the feeling in regard to corporations would prove too strong; there had been for a long time in the State a growing sentiment against them, some of it just, some of it unjust, but whether just or unjust, it was very powerful and must be recognised. And then he told her of all the wheels within wheels; it was a State of very strong feelings, and consequently strong local jealousies existed; the mountains were nearly always arrayed against the lowlands; if the lowlands were for a measure, the mountains considered it their duty to be against it. In fact, there were in habit, association and point of view two different races within the State.

“And I am by inheritance?” she said.

“A lowlander, of course.”

“But I do not dislike that Mr. Pike, the mountaineer; I saw much in him that was attractive.”

“And much also that was different from us. Nor does it follow because we are lowlanders, that the lowlanders are always right and the mountaineers always wrong. The nearest approach to our mountaineers, I think, were the Scotch Highlanders of two hundred years ago, only ours, I am confident, are a better people.”

Then he told of journeys into the mountains with the militia to put down the feuds, of nights on the peaks, lone trails along the cliffs, and hidden marksmen, and he interested her like a new Othello. She had piqued him from the first by her indifference to her native land, her educated thought that all that was old must be picturesque and all that was new must be raw and dull; and now when he saw that he could arouse and interest her in her own, he felt intense satisfaction. “You tell of life in much variety,” she said at last. “Yes,” he replied, and he intended his words specially for her, “it has always seemed to me that life is so much more interesting here than it is in Europe, for instance, except for a very few. There a man is numbered and ticketed the day he is born, and assigned to his place on a shelf in a row of shelves, be the shelf high or low; while here every man is free to pursue his chosen career to the end, without let or hindrance, and that is what makes life worth living.”

Guthrie paused. His face was flushed and his eyes shining. Clarice noticed the light in his eyes and the eagerness of his tone, and despite herself she thrilled with sympathy. But she would not show it.

“And you, of course, have an ambition, Mr. Guthrie,” she said. “Are you loath to tell it?”

Guthrie laughed a little.

“Mine doesn’t count for much,” he replied lightly. “The only thing that I have ahead for which I am working is our Washington bureau. Our man there is getting old—he’s had it thirty years—and as he has saved plenty of money, he may retire soon. If he does, I want to get it. Washington, it seems to me, is the grandest arena in the world for the work of a newspaper man.”

“I hope you will get the post, Mr. Guthrie,” she said with real sympathy, and Guthrie looked his thanks.

But Mrs. Hastings told him something a little later that made him regret part of what he had said to Miss Ransome.

“They say she is to be married to a continental nobleman, a man whom she met in Brussels, I think, Count Raoul d’Estournelle,” said Mrs. Hastings. “It was her mother that arranged it, I hear. You know Mr. Ransome has made a great deal of money, and Mrs. Ransome is very anxious for them to live abroad and for Clarice to make what she calls a grand marriage.”

“And for the prospective Countess d’Estournelle to be thoroughly miserable!” said Guthrie with some heat.

Mrs. Hastings looked keenly at him but said nothing. For continental noblemen he had a hatred and contempt partly inherent and partly cultivated. Perhaps he had been unfortunate in the specimens he had seen, but whenever he saw one, he thought involuntarily of the bitter description of them given by his friend, Senator Cobb—“Half man, half monkey.” And with their little pointed beards, their curled hair, their perfume and above all, the suspicion of that awful thing, hair-oil, they aroused all his enmity.

“I take it that such men merely come here as fortune-hunters,” he said.

“Let us hope not, in this case, at least,” said Mrs. Hastings. “Ah! there is some one else.”

They heard the bell ring, and a moment later the tall form of Mr. Carton stood in the doorway of the drawing-room.

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