A Spoil of Office Part 31

XXVI.

CONGRESSIONAL LIFE.

He found Washington less lonely for him on his return. There were many new members, and they sought each other socially and soon managed to have a good deal of talk among themselves, notwithstanding the studied slights of the old members. One member, Clancy, who grew profane at times, said, "These old seeds think they're h.e.l.l's captains, but I guess we can live if they don't shake hands."

Most of the members were married and lived with their families in rented houses, but others, who were too poor to bring their families or who were bachelors like Bradley, lived in boarding houses. Bradley secured a room and board in a house near the capitol, because he seemed to be nearer the centre of things when he could look out upon the dome.

It surprised him to learn how humbly most of the congressmen lived.

They were quite ordinary humans in all ways. Of course some of the senators of great wealth lived in fine houses, but they were the exception, and the poorer members did not conceal their suspicion of these great men.

"It aint a question of how much a man's got," Clancy of Iowa said, "but how he got it. I've simmered the thing down to this: Living in a hash-house aint a guarantee of honesty any more than living in a four-story brown-stone is a sure sign of robbery, but it's a tolerably safe inference."

These rich senators and representatives, owners of vast coal tracts, or iron mines, or factories, rode up to the capitol with glittering turn-outs, their horses' clanking bits and jingling chains, warning pedestrians like Clancy and Talcott, to get out of the way. For the first time in his life Bradley met great wealth with all of its power.

It shocked him and made him bitter.

He took little interest in the organizing of the house. His experience in Des Moines taught him to sit quietly outside the governing circle.

He accepted a place on one of the minor committees and waited to see what would develop.

His life was very quiet. Nothing was done before the holidays but organize, and he found a great deal of time to study. Radbourn came back during the early weeks of the session and resumed his work.

Clancy went to the theatre very often and attended all manner of shows, especially all that were free or that came to him as a courtesy.

"I've lived where I couldn't get these things," he said, "and I propose to improve each shining hour."

Attending Congress was quite like attending the legislature. Every morning the members went up to the great building, which they soon came to ignore, except as a place to do business in. They trooped there quite like boys going to school. It was the state legislature aggrandized--noisier, more tumultuous and confusing.

In a little while, Bradley ceased to notice the difference in gilding and jim-crackery between the senate and representative ends of the corridors. He no longer noticed the distances, the pictures, or the statues in the vaulted dome, but pa.s.sed through the vast rotundas with no thought of them. The magnificence of it all grew common with familiarity.

The vast ma.s.s, and roar, and motion of the hall itself soon ceased to confuse or abase him. In proportion to membership, he doubted whether there were more able men there than in the State legislature. They were more acute politicians; they were wilier, and talked in larger terms, manipulating states instead of counties--that was all. The routine of the day was of the same general character, and gave him no trouble.

Some of the more famous of the leaders he absolutely loathed--great, bloated, swaggering, unscrupulous, treacherous tricksters. "I'll lend you my _support_," they said, as if it were something that could be loaned like a horse. He often talked them over with Radbourn, whose experience in and about Congress as a newspaper correspondent had given him an intimate knowledge of men, and had rendered him contemptuous, if not rebellious.

"The men counted party leaders are manipulators, as a matter of fact.

They subordinate everything to party success. We've got to have another great political revolution to--to de-centralize and de-machinize the whole of our political method. Our system will break of its own weight; it can't go on. It is supposed to be popular, when in fact, it is getting farther and farther away from the people every year. Just see the departments. Do you know anything about them?"

"No, I don't," Bradley admitted.

"You're like all the rest. Every year the army of useless clerks increases; every year the numbers of useless buildings increases. The whole thing is appalling, and yet the people are getting apparently more helpless to reform it. Laws pile upon laws, when the real reform is to abolish laws. Wipe out grants and special privileges. We ought to be legislating toward equality of opportunity in the world, and here we go with McKinley bills, and the devil knows what else. By the way, to change the subject, what has become of Milton Jennings? He started out to be a great Republican politician."

"Well, he lives there yet; he's still in politics, but doesn't seem to get higher than a county office."

"He was a brilliant fellow, but he started in on the wrong side; there is no hope for him on that side in the West."

"He's married, lives just opposite the Seminary, seems to be reasonably contented."

Radbourn turned suddenly. "You are not married?"

Bradley colored. "No, I'm not."

Radbourn mused a little. "Seems to me, I remember some talk about your marrying that little--Russell girl?"

"Well, I didn't." Bradley had just a moment's temptation to tell Radbourn his whole secret, but he gave it up as preposterous.

Legislation was incredibly slow.

"Beats the devil how little we fellows amount to here," Clancy said one night after they had been sitting all day in their seats, while Brown of Georgia, Dixon of Maine, and others of their like had wasted hour after hour in all sorts of tedious discussions upon mere technicalities. "We can't even vote, by thunder! I'm going to make a great break one of these days and make a motion to adjourn."

Bradley laughed dutifully, for this was the ancient joke.

"It's an outrage," Clancy fumed. The speaker had refused to recognize him and he was furious. "The speaker's got everything in his hands.

Say, do you know that it's all made up the day before who's goin' to be recognized?"

"Yes, I found that out some time ago," said Bradley quietly.

"Well, I feel like making a great big kick."

"It wouldn't do any good."

"Yes, it would, it would relieve my feelings. It's a pretty how de do, to send a man here to represent his const.i.tuents and then put the whole power of the house into the hands of the speaker and the committee on rules."

Bradley's seat came between two of the old members, Samuels of Mississippi and Col. Maxwell of South Carolina, and they were constantly talking across Bradley's back or before his face, ignoring him completely. It wore on him so that he fell into the habit of sitting over beside the profane Clancy in Bidwell's seat. Bidwell occupied the leather-covered lounge behind the screen so industriously that no one else felt privileged to throw himself down there.

The drinking disgusted Bradley, and the obscene talk which he heard in s.n.a.t.c.hes as he went past sickened him. The same sort of att.i.tude toward the female clerks was expressed by a certain cla.s.s of the legislators.

He began to wonder if he were not abnormal in some way by reason of his repugnance to all this desolating derision of really holy things. He found that while he had less religion than these men, they had infinitely less reverence for the things which he considered sacred.

Some of the better cla.s.s of members invited him to their houses and he went occasionally, and if he found them uncongenial he never went again. He could not make calls out of duty. It seemed to him that they took very little interest in the higher side of politics and some of them he found were unaware of any higher side of life.

He could not help noticing that Washington was a city full of beautiful girls. His idolatry of Miss Wilbur could not prevent him from admiring them as they streamed along the walk to church. He sometimes looked wistfully at this flood of sunny laughing life that moved by him so near and yet so completely out of his reach. He knew at such times that he had missed something sweet out of his own lonely life.

But these moments were few. He realized that there was no place in the social life of the city for him, and the librarian knew him better than the butlers in the houses of rich senators. He attended one or two public receptions and was thoroughly disgusted with the crush, and felt the essential vulgarity of the whole thing.

His life at the capital was not entirely that of the politician. He had in him capabilities for appreciating art and literature, which most of his colleagues had not. He studied upon economic problems, rather than upon partisan politics, and tried to grasp the meaning of social change and social condition, and to comprehend economic causes and tendencies.

He spent many hours upon problems which were unconsciously unfitting him for partisan success.

His life was very full and happy, save for the dull hunger at his heart whenever he thought of Ida. He wrote to her still, but her replies still kept their calm, impersonal tone. One night, when he returned from the capitol, he found a letter from her enclosing some clippings.

"I have joined the Farmers' Alliance," she wrote. "I begin to believe that another great wave of thought is about to sweep over the farmers.

The _spirit_ of the grange did not die. It has pa.s.sed on into this new organization. The difference is going to be that this new alliance of the farmers will be deeper in thought and broader in sympathy. I never believed the grange a failure. It taught people by its failure. I'm going to Kansas to speak for them there. The alliance is very strong there. This order will become political. Its leaders are very enthusiastic."

She pa.s.sed on to write of other things, but Bradley was deeply affected by this news. He had heard of the alliance obscurely, but had felt that it was only an attempt to revive the old grange movement, and that it could not succeed. But her letter set him thinking.

He wrote away on a speech till nine o'clock, and then went out for his usual walk about the capitol and its grounds, which had never lost their charm, as the city itself had. He had grown into the habit of going out whenever he wished to escape the paltry decoration, the hot colors, the vitiated air, of his boarding-place and the importunities of his fellow-boarders. He went out whenever he wanted to think great and refreshing thoughts, or whenever he felt the need of beauty or the presence of life.