A Spoil of Office Part 29

"I'm very well. I don't suppose you remember me, but I'm Brad Talcott."

Radbourn rose with great cordiality. "Well, well, I'm glad to see you,"

he said, his sombre face relaxing in a smile, as he seized Bradley by the hand. "Sit down, sit down. I'm glad to see an old cla.s.s-mate."

"Don't let me interrupt your work. I was interested in hearing you talk into that thing there."

"Oh, yes, I was just getting off my syndicate letter for this week. Sit down and talk; you don't interrupt me at all. Now tell me all about yourself. Of course I have heard of your success, State Legislature and Congress and all that, but I would like to have you tell me all about it."

"There aint very much to tell. I had very little to do with it," said Bradley.

They took seats near the window, looking out upon the square, and upon the vast, squat, Egyptian, tomb-like structure, that rose out of the centre of the smooth, snow-covered plat, across which the sun streamed with vivid white radiance.

There was a little pause after they sat down. Radbourn leaned his head on his arm, and studied Bradley earnestly. He seemed older and more bitter than Bradley expected to see him. He asked of the old friends in a slow way, as if one name called up another in a slowly moving chain of a.s.sociation. They talked on for an hour thus, sitting in the same position. At last Radbourn said--

"How far I've got from all those scenes and people! and yet the memory of that little old town and its people has a powerful fascination. I never'll go back, of course. To tell the truth, I am afraid to go back; it would drive me crazy. I am a city man naturally. I am gregarious. I like to be in the centre of things. It'll get hold of you, too. This city is full of ruined young men and women, who came here from the slow-moving life of inland towns and villages, and, after two or three years of a richer life, find it impossible to go back; and here they are, struggling along on forty-five cents a day at hash-houses, living in hall bedrooms, preferring to pick up such a living, at all kinds of jobs, than to go back home. I'd do it myself, if I were"--

He broke off suddenly, and looked at Bradley in a keen, steady way.

"And so you're a congressman, Talcott? Well, I'm glad of your success, because it shows a man _can_ succeed on the right lines--in a measure, at least."

"Well, I've tried to live up to most of your principles," smiled Bradley. "I've read all the things you've sent me."

"Well, you're the wildest and most dangerous lunatic that ever got into Congress," Radbourn said, gravely. "Do you expect to talk any of that stuff on the floor?"

"Well, I--I hoped to be able to say something before the session closes."

"If you do, it will be a miracle. The House is under the rule of a Republican Czar, and men with your ideas or any ideas are to be shut out remorselessly. Let me tell you something right here; it will save time and worry: You want to know the Speaker, cultivate him. He's the real power. That's the reason the speakership becomes such a terrible struggle. It decides the most tremendous question. In his hand is the appointing of committees, which should be chosen by the legislators themselves. The power of these committees is unlimited, you'll find.

They can smother bills of the utmost importance. Theoretically they are the servants of the House. Actually they are its autocrats."

"I didn't realize that."

"I don't suppose it is realized by the people. This appointing of the committee is supposed to save time, and yet the speakership contest consumes weeks, sometimes months. It will grow in ferocity."

"Can't something be done?"

"Try and see," he said rising. "Well, suppose we got out and walk about a little. I infer you're on to see the town. Where are you stopping?"

Bradley named the hotel with a little reluctance. He knew how cheap it was; and since he had discovered that congressmen were at a premium in boarding-houses, he saw that he must get more sumptuous quarters than he had hitherto occupied. They went out into the open air together. The sun was very brilliant and warm. The eaves were running briskly. The sky was gentle, beautiful, and spring-like. The fact that he was in Washington came upon Bradley again, as he saw the soaring dome of the capitol at the head of the avenue.

"What you want to do is to get on good social terms with the so-called leaders," Radbourn was saying. "Recognition goes by favor on the floor of the House. We might go up to the capitol and look about," Radbourn suggested.

They walked up the steps leading to the west front of the building.

Everywhere the untrodden snow lay white and level.

"This is the finest part of the whole thing," Radbourn remarked, as they reached the level of esplanade. "It has more beauty and simple majesty than the main building itself, or any structure in the city."

It was magnificent. Bradley turned and looked at it right and left with admiring eyes. It gleamed with snow, and all about was the sound of dripping water, and in the distance the roll of wheels and click of hoofs. The esplanade was a broad walk extending the entire width of the building, and conforming to it. It was bottomed with marble squares, and bordered with a splendid wall, breast-high on one side, and by the final terrace running to the bas.e.m.e.nt wall on the other. Here and there along the wall gigantic brazen pots sat, filled with evergreens, whose color seemed to have gradually dropped down and entered into the marble beneath them. The bronze had stained with rich, dull green each pedestal and irregular sections of the marble wall itself.

Below them the city was outspread. Radbourn pointed out the Pension Office, the White House, the Treasury, and other princ.i.p.al buildings with a searching word upon their architecture. The monument, he evidently considered, required no comment.

As they entered the dome, they pa.s.sed a group of men whose brisk, bluff talk and peculiar swagger indicated their character--legislators from small country towns.

"Some of your colleagues," Radbourn said, indicating them with his thumb. As they paused a moment in the centre of the dome, one of the group, a handsome fellow with a waxed mustache and hard, black eyes, gave a stretching gesture, and said, "I'm in the world now."

His words thrilled Bradley to the heart. He was in the world now. Des Moines and its capitol were dwarfed and overshadowed by this great national city, to which all roads ran like veins to a mighty heart. He lifted his shoulders in a deep breath. It was glorious to be a congressman, but still more glorious to be a citizen of the world.

They pa.s.sed through the corridors in upon the house floor, which swarmed with legislators, lobbyists, pages, newspaper men and visitors.

Radbourn led the way down to the open s.p.a.ce before the speaker's desk, and together they turned and swept the semi-circular rows of seats.

"Everywhere the visitor abounds," said Radbourn. "Western and Southern men predominate. It's surprising what deep interest the negro takes in legislation," he went on, lifting his eyes to the gallery, which was black with their intent and solemn faces. "See this old fellow with his hat off as if he were in the midst of a temple," he said, nodding at a group before the speaker's desk.

Bradley looked at the poor, bent, meek, old man with a thrill of pity.

He observed that many of the negroes were splashed with orange-colored clay.

Members began to take their seats and to call pages by clapping their hands. The cloak-rooms and barber-shop resounded with laughter.

Newspaper men sauntered by, addressing Radbourn and asking for news.

And here and there others, like Radbourn, were acting as guides to groups of visitors.

In the midst of the growing tumult a one-armed man entered the speaker's desk and called out in snappy tenor--

"Gentlemen, I am requested by the door-keeper to ask all persons not ent.i.tled to the floor to please retire."

Bradley started, but Radbourn said, "No hurry, you have fifteen minutes yet. As a member-elect you have the courtesy of the floor anyway. Do you want to meet anybody?"

"No, I guess not. I just want to look on for to-day."

"Well, we'll go up in the gallery."

Looking down upon the floor and its increasing swarm of individuals, Bradley got a complete sense of its vastness and its complexity and noise.

"It makes the Iowa legislature seem like a school-room," he said to Radbourn.

At precisely noon the gavel fell with a single sharp stroke, and the speaker called persuasively, "The house will _please_ be in order." The members rose and stood reluctantly, some of them sharpening their pencils, others reading while the chaplin prayed sonorously with many oratorical cadences, taking in all the departments of government in the swing of his generous benediction.

Instantly at the word "Amen," like the popping of a cork, the tumult burst out again. Hands clapped, laughter flared out, desks were slammed, papers were rattled, feet pounded, and the brazen monotonous clanging voice of the clerk sounded above it all like some new steam calliope whose sounds were words.

"You see how much prayer means here," said Radbourn.

A good deal of the business which followed was similar in character to the proceedings at Des Moines. Resolutions were pa.s.sed with two or three aye votes and no noes at all, while the rest of the members looked over the Record, read the morning papers, or wrote on busily.

The speaker declared each motion carried with glib voice.

At last a special order brought up an unfinished debate upon some matter, and the five minute rule was enforced.

"You're in luck," said Radbourn. "The whole procession is going to pa.s.s before you."

As the debate went on he pointed out the great men whose names suggested history to Bradley and whose actual presence amazed him.

There was Amos B. Tripp, whom Radbourn said resembled "a Chinese G.o.d"--immense, featureless, bald, with a pout on his face like an enormous baby. The "watch dog of the house," Major Hendricks, was tall, thin, with the voice and manner of an old woman. His eyes were invisible, and his chin-beard wagged up and down as he shouted in high tenor his inevitable objection.

An old man with abundant hair, blue-white under the perpendicular light, arose at the back part of the room, making a fine picture outlined against the deep red screen. His manner was courtly, his ruddy face pleasing, his voice musical and impa.s.sioned.