The President Part 6

Every member of the coming House, among matters of personal moment to himself, had given no little thought to what committees he would be placed upon; and this, in the nature of House things, likewise compelled him to a consideration of the Speakership and who should fill it. It was by remembering those committee hopes and fears of members, and adroitly fomenting them, that Senator Hanway expected to control the Speakership election.

But he must go warily to work. Coming from the Senate end of the Capitol, Senator Hanway, in his proposed interference in the organization of the House, must maintain himself discreetly in the dark.

It was not a task to accomplish blowing a bugle. The House had surrendered its powers to the Speaker; but it had retained its vanity, and like all weak animals it was the more vain for being weak. The members, were it once known and parcel of the common gossip how they inclined to Senator Hanway's manipulation, would be compelled to rebel.

They would be driven to oppose him as a method of preserving what they called their self-respect. Aware of this, Senator Hanway never came into the open, never appeared upon the surface. He secretly pitched upon a candidate among the older ones of the House and made his deal with him, working the wires of his diplomacy from below.

There was peculiar demand for effort on Senator Hanway's part. His man, when now he had selected him, would not find himself uninterrupted or unopposed in his march for that Speakership. There was another, and if native popularity were to count a stronger hand stretched forth to seize the gavel prize. Had it lain in the cards, Senator Hanway, who always sought his ends on lines of least resistance, would himself have pitched upon this stronger one. But such was beyond the question. The strong one claimed to be of that party clan which pushed the offensive Governor Obstinate for the Presidency; and this not only offered a perfect reason why Senator Hanway should make no alliance with him, but it multiplied the necessity for his defeat.

That member upon whom Senator Hanway settled for Speaker owned the biting name of Frost; it was an instance, however, when there was nothing in a name. Mr. Frost was a round, genial personage and only biting with occasional sarcasms; then, it is true, his sentences cut like a rawhide. He was big, breezy, careless, quick, and coming of an aquatic ancestry, oceanic in his sort; even his walk reminded one of a ground swell. And yet he was defective as a candidate. The House members liked him well, despite those verbal acridities which shaved the surface of debate as lawns are shaven by a scythe; but with the last word there existed no recognized House or party reason, whether of the past, the present or the future, why he should be made Speaker. In the lay of House topography he was on the wrong side of the river from the Speakership, and to land him within stretch of the gavel required that Senator Hanway either ferry or pontoon him across. This the latter gentleman set himself to accomplish by a series of intrigues and stratagems that would have brightened the fame of a Talleyrand.

The statesman opposed to Mr. Frost for the Speakership was a personage named Hawke. He stood possessed of honesty, intelligence, and energy; also he had been for long the leader of his party in the House, and given his name to a tariff measure. Without one gleam of humor, he was of a temper hot as that of any Hecla, and like his fellow volcano, being often in a state of eruption, he offered many reasons for being admired and none for being loved.

This should be a key to the man.

He had been a brave soldier during the Civil War, and when his men, most of whom were armed with shotguns--it being in the early hours of that strife and these men arming themselves--complained that their weapons were no match for the Enfields of the foe, rebuked them fiercely.

"General," said the spokesman of the soldiers; "these yere shotguns ain't no even break for them rifles the Yanks are shootin'!"

"They are a match for them," retorted the furious Mr. Hawke, "if you will only go close enough."

For all his soberness of humor and choleric upheavals, Mr. Hawke, because of his record as a House leader and a tariff maker--he had tinkered together that identical bill which, when Senator Hanway later revamped it in the Senate, produced the Obstinate One as a Governor--was the legitimate heir to the Speakership; and in the House, where tradition is something sacred and custom itself the strongest of arguments, his defeat for the place was thereby rendered well-nigh impossible. Senator Hanway had undertaken no child's task when he went about the gavel elevation of the popular, yet--by House usage--the illegitimate Mr. Frost.

Months before ever Senator Hanway was granted the honor of knowing Mr.

Gwynn, he had been burrowingly busy about the Speakership. As a primary step he was obliged to suppress his ebullient brother-in-law. Mr.

Harley, the moment a conquest of the House in the interests of Senator Hanway was proposed, waxed threateningly exuberant. He was for issuing forth to vociferate and slap members upon their backs and jovially arrange committeeships on the giffgaff principle of give us the Speakership and you shall become a Chairman. The optimistic Mr. Harley, whose methods were somewhat coa.r.s.e and who did most things with an ax, was precisely of that hopeful sort who would advertise an auction of the lion's hide while it was yet upon the beast. Senator Hanway, with instincts safer and more upon the order of the mole's, forbade such campaigns of noise.

"You must keep silent, John," said he, "and never let men know what we are about. You are inclined, apparently, to regard a Speakership as you might a swarm of bees; you think one has only to beat a tin pan long enough or blow a tin horn loud enough in order to hive it according to one's wish. The Speakership, however, so far from being a swarm of bees is more like a flock of blackbirds, and the system to which you incline would prove the readiest means of frightening away our every chance. In short, you must work by my orders and meet no one, say nothing, except as I direct."

Then Senator Hanway sent Mr. Harley, much modified of his vigor, with a secret invitation to Mr. Frost; when that personage was brought to the privacy of the Harley house, he laid open to his ambition those gavel prospects which he, Senator Hanway, had already constructed in his thoughts.

There was no conflict of argument with Mr. Frost; he rose to the suggestion like a ba.s.s to a fly. Knowing himself to be of a genius too openly bluff and frank, and no one to conquer those elements which his campaign would require, he put himself in the hollow of Senator Hanway's hand to be controlled by him with shut eyes. This voluntary prompt submission on the part of Mr. Frost had a further subduing effect upon Mr. Harley. In imitation thereof he, too, began to speak in whispers and step with care, and ask his eminent relative for orders in all he went about.

Now when Senator Hanway had trained his partner and his candidate to come to heel he began to unravel his diplomacy. By his suggestion, Mr.

Frost took into confidence two of his party colleagues in the House.

These would on every occasion act as his agents or lieutenants. Senator Hanway and Mr. Harley were not to appear too obviously.

Senator Hanway, lying back in the dark, looked over the field and sent those two lieutenants variously to a score of members. These were sounded on the engaging topic of committee chairmanships, and one by one such coigns of congressional, not to say personal, advantage as the heads of Ways and Means, the Appropriations, the Foreign Affairs, the Naval, the Military and a number of other great sub-bodies were disposed of--bartered away on the contingency always of Mr. Frost's selection to be the Speaker. The entire House was laid off into lots like real estate and sold, the purchaser promising his vote and influence in the party caucus, taking therefor a verbal contract to give him the committee place he preferred.

This labor of an advance part.i.tion of the spoils and the linking of every possible faction with the campaign of Mr. Frost, was concluded about a fortnight prior to Mrs. Harley's dinner to Mr. Gwynn. As Senator Hanway ran his experienced eye over the list and counted the noses of Mr. Frost's array, he saw that it was not enough. The pontoon would not reach; there was still a wide expanse of water between his candidate and the coveted Speakership. As matters rested, and every morsel of House patronage disposed of to this hungry one or that, the enemy, Mr.

Hawke--being doubly the enemy for that he was become an open supporter of Governor Obstinate and made no secret that his candidacy for the Speakership was meant to be a step towards making that gentleman President--would still rise victorious in caucus by full forty votes.

Senator Hanway's anxious wits were driven hard. He had drawn to Mr.

Frost every splinter of power he could command by barter, and thrown in his own State delegation in the House by sheer stress of that machine which he had upreared for his own defense at home. It was not enough; even the subtraction of two State delegations from the standards of the foe, by the adroit scheme, applied to each delegation, of dragging one of its members forward to be a candidate for Speaker, was not enough.

After ten months of labor, Senator Hanway went over the result and could read nothing therein save failure. And it was like an icicle through his heart; for aside from what advantage the control of the House might give his own ambitions, he knew beyond question that with the gavel in the fingers of a professed partisan of Governor Obstinate, the latter thick, yet fortunate, individual would occur as the next Presidential candidate of his party so surely as the sun came up on a convention morning.

Senator Hanway was in this valley of gloom when he heard of Mr. Gwynn.

It was Mr. Harley, ever brisk in railway matters, who told him of that gentleman as the Colossus of the Anaconda Airline.

"He holds no offices in the management of the company," explained Mr.

Harley, "but, being millions upon millions a majority shareholder his least word is Anaconda Airline law."

Senator Hanway did not have to be told of the influence of railways in the destinies of his country. He glanced up at a map on the wall; there he could see the nation caught like some great clumsy fish in a very seine of railways. He traced the black, thread-like flight, from seaboard to seaboard, of the Anaconda Airline. Then he made a calculation. The Anaconda Airline was the political backbone, first one State and then another, of forty House members, twenty-three of whom being of his own complexion of politics, would have a caucus vote. Of the twenty-three, luck upon good luck! twenty belonged to Mr. Hawke. If Senator Hanway might only get the Anaconda Airline to crack the thong of its authority over these recalcitrants, they could be whipped into the Frost traces. Not one would dare defy an Anaconda order; it would be political hari-kari. At this point our wily Senator Hanway began laying plans to bring Mr. Gwynn within his reach; it was in deference to those plans that our solemn capitalist found himself upon Mrs. Hanway-Harley's hospitable right hand on that evening of the dinner, with his severe legs outstretched beneath the Harley mahogany.

"I will see you to-morrow--with your permission," observed Senator Hanway, as he parted with Mr. Gwynn.

When Mr. Gwynn returned from Mrs. Hanway-Harley's he stood in the middle of the floor, and told Richard, word for word, all that had taken place.

The latter young gentleman was in a prodigious good humor. For the first time in his life he had done a day's work, being the twenty-five hundred word story written and dispatched to the _Daily Tory_, and that was one reason for joy. Besides, there was the manager's wire of praise--and Richard thought it marked a weakness in him--that, too, had warmed the c.o.c.kles of his heart. Being in good humor, he listened without interrupting comment to the rasping, parrot tones of Mr. Gwynn while that gentleman, without inflection or emphasis or slightest shade of personal interest, told the tale of the night's adventures, from Mrs.

Hanway-Harley's flattery and Mr. Harley's song, to Senator Hanway's last handclasp and that parting promise of a call.

"And that is all, sir," said Mr. Gwynn, at the close, coughing apologetically behind his palm as though fearful of criticism.

"You did well," was Richard's response. "When Senator Hanway calls to-morrow, introduce me to him at once. After that, I shall talk and you will acquiesce. You may go."

"Thank you, sir. Very good, sir!" said Mr. Gwynn.

Mr. Gwynn received Senator Hanway in his library; Richard was present, considering the world at large from a window.

"And first of all," said Mr. Gwynn, after greeting Senator Hanway, "and first of all, let me introduce to your notice Mr. Storms. I may say to you, sir, I have confidence in Mr. Storms; I act much by his advice."

And here Mr. Gwynn looked at Richard as though appealing for corroboration.

Senator Hanway, from whose nimble faculties nothing escaped, noted this appeal. He thought the less of it, since Mr. Harley had given him some glint of the measureless millions of Mr. Gwynn, and he deduced from this stiff turning towards Richard, this brittle deference, nothing save a theory that Mr. Gwynn, by virtue of his tremendous riches, had grown too great to do his own listening and thinking. It was as plain, as it was proper, that he should hire them done, precisely as he hired a groom for his horses or a valet to superintend his clothes. Senator Hanway, himself, was at bottom impressed by nothing so much as money, and was quite prepared to believe that one of the world's wealthiest men--for such he understood to be the case of Mr. Gwynn--would prove in word and deed and thought a being wholly different from everyone about him.

Wherefore, his heaped millions accounted in Mr. Gwynn for what otherwise might have been considered by Senator Hanway as queernesses.

To add to this, Mr. Gwynn was of a certain select circle of English exclusives; Senator Hanway had learned that much from his sister, Mrs.

Hanway-Harley. It was to be expected then that he would have someone about him to furnish brains for his deliberations, and to make up his mind as a laundress makes up shirts. Senator Hanway, knowing these things of Mr. Gwynn, was in no wise surprised that he possessed in his service one who was hearer, talker, and decider, just as ancient kings kept folk about whose business was to make witty retorts for them and conduct sparkling conversations in their stead, they themselves being too royal for anything so much beneath that level of exalted inanity, which as all men know is the only proper mark of princely minds.

Something of this raced hit or miss through Senator Hanway's thoughts, as Mr. Gwynn presented Richard and then relapsed--hinge by hinge as though his joints were rusty with much aristocratic unbending--into a chair.

Richard gave him no s.p.a.ce to dwell upon the phenomenon. He came forward with a little atmosphere of deference; for Richard had his own deep designs. Then, too, Senator Hanway was white of hair and twice his age, to say nothing of being a certain young lady's uncle.

"Mr. Gwynn has told me of you," said he. Then pushing straight for the point after methods of his own, he continued: "What is it the Anaconda Airline can do? Mr. Gwynn is quite convinced, from what he has been told of those positions you have from time to time a.s.sumed in the Senate, that his own interest with that of every railway owner lies in following your leadership. Indeed, I think he has decided to adopt whatever suggestion you may make." Richard glanced towards Mr. Gwynn, and that great man gave his mandarin bow.

Senator Hanway, while smitten of vague amazement at Mr. Gwynn's acquiescent spirit, accepted it without pause. However marvelous it might be, at least he himself ran no risk. More than that, on second thought it did not occur to him as so peculiarly unusual; a Senator in a measure becomes inured to the wondrous.

Senator Hanway did not reply directly to Richard's query. Direct replies were not the habit of this practiced one. He made a speech full of flattering generalities. He spoke of Richard's connection with the _Daily Tory_, and expanded upon the weight and influence of that journal. Also, with a beaming albeit delicate patronage which Richard stomached for reasons of his own, he intimated complimentary things of Richard himself and seemed to congratulate the _Daily Tory_ on the services of one so keen, so sure, so graphic; which last was the more kind, since Senator Hanway could have known no single reason for a.s.suming anything of the sort. He told Richard that he hoped to see him personally every day. Here Richard broke in on the Senatorial flow to ask if he might wait upon Senator Hanway every morning at eleven.

"For I am warned by Mr. Gwynn," explained Richard, with an alert mendacity which would have done honor, to Senator Hanway himself, "that he will hold anything short of calling upon you once a day as barefaced neglect of his interests."

"Certainly, sir; most barefaced!" creaked Mr. Gwynn, giving the mandarin bow.

Senator Hanway would be graciously pleased to see Richard every morning at eleven. Also, he would aid him, as far as was proper, with a recount of what gusts and windy currents of news were moving in the upper ethers of government.

Then, having been polite, Senator Hanway got down to business and stated that Mr. Frost, if Speaker, would favor a certain pooling bill, much desired by railways, and particularly dear to the Anaconda Airline. On the obdurate other hand, Mr. Hawke was an enemy to pooling bills and railways. Mr. Gwynn's interest was plainly with Mr. Frost.

"Not that I care personally for the success of Mr. Frost," remarked Senator Hanway, "but I know how the railways desire that pooling bill, and how that pooling bill is a darling measure with Mr. Frost."

"Which brings us back," observed Richard, who never took his eye off a question, once put, until he saw it mated with an answer, "to Mr.

Gwynn's first interrogatory: What can the Anaconda Airline do?"

Senator Hanway explained. The Anaconda Airline could press down the weights of its influence upon those twenty-three members. The Anaconda influence might better be exerted through its President and General Attorney, and perhaps what special attorneys were local to the congressional districts of those twenty-three.