XIII
GENERAL BARRETT, hearing from Pekin that his county’s delegation had taken pardonable liberties with his name at the convention, arrived on an evening train, and though his quiescent absence would have suited his supporters better, they welcomed him at the old station with as much enthusiasm as they could generate on so short a notice. The general drove to the hotel in a carriage, and when he entered the office bowed seriously, playing well the part of the distinguished and respectable leader whom the voice of the people had summoned. To Cowley, who interviewed him when his headquarters had been opened, he said solemnly that he was in the hands of his friends, that he considered this a fair field and an open contest, and esteemed his own opportunities to be as favorable as those of either of the other distinguished and able candidates.
All through the hot night the rooms of the three candidates blazed. Delegates hung about them as the nocturnal bugs wheeling in on heavy wing from the darkness outside fluttered around the coal oil lights, though not all of them stuck as closely to the flame that had brought them thither as did those hapless insects whose tragic fate matted their wings at last to the oily glass bowls of the lamps. The general remained in his room, democratically, where all could see him and grasp his hand, and doubtless derived as much satisfaction from these little levees as if he were holding larger and more significant ones. Both Sprague and Garwood had other rooms opening off those where the public were invited to gather and participate freely in the distribution of campaign cigars that stood in boxes on the center tables.
Garwood sat on the tumbled bed in his inner room, pale and haggard. A cigar fumed constantly in his teeth. A tray of whisky glasses lay on the table. With Garwood were Rankin and Bailey. They had gone over the situation again and again. Delegate after delegate had been led in to interview the congressman, every argument, every persuasion, every threat that the three men could devise had been used. But they made no appreciable headway. They had seventy votes and they felt that they could hold them, for Rankin vouched for the twenty-two men from Polk, the Singed Cat was calmly certain of his eighteen votes from Mason, and Hale scouted the idea of any one of the thirty Tazewell fellows failing. The remaining voles were so evenly divided between Garwood’s opponents that each would hesitate to go to the other. Any coalition with the Sprague men was impossible; they were as determined as Garwood’s own. They must look for strength to the Barrett following. They considered Pusey, and the twenty-three votes he controlled.
“Can’t you see him, Jim?” Garwood suggested to Rankin.
The big man spat and shook his head.
“It ’uld do no good fer me to see him. I’d hate to speak to the little cur, anyway.”
“Well, look here, Jim, you mustn’t let any personal feeling stand in the way of our success,” Garwood snarled. He was growing peevish from the heat, the strain, the anxiety. Rankin laughed, as if at the whim of a child.
“Don’t worry ’bout me, Jerry,” he said. He had dropped back into his own old way of calling Garwood by his familiar name since the contest for renomination had brought the congressman down to the hard earth again. “I’ll play my end of the game. Let Zeph here see him.”
They considered in turn the twenty-four men from Logan County. O’Malley was sent for, and came, half fearfully, reporting that his hands were tied by the exigencies of affairs in his own county. He was half afraid to be seen at Garwood’s headquarters, lest suspicion stab him, though a combination by which Garwood, when he knew his own chances were gone, would throw his strength to Barrett was the one practical thing to do.
With such manœuvering the night wore away. Garwood could reach no agreement with the Barrett men. Bailey saw Pusey, but the little editor was wily, he was playing some strange game of his own, and he sent word that if Garwood wished to see him, to come himself. What his game was none of them could find out; they did not think him at all sincere in his support of Barrett, and hourly feared that he might draw Barrett’s forces into the Sprague column. Meanwhile, Pusey’s political attitude was that of one who had simply taken refuge in the peaceful eddy that swam in the wake of Barrett’s utter respectability and availability, until some definite turn should be taken by the current. Towards morning some of the tired delegates declared truces, and arranged poker games. Their clicking chips could be heard on all that second floor of the hotel. And some of them went out under the purple sky of a summer night, a sky studded with brilliant stars. Leo was low in the west, the moon swam in a sea of silver along the horizon. They heard the calming voice of insects, they felt the breeze of the night on their brows.
The morning came, with its brazen sky. Once more the white clouds mounted in the west as if trying again for rain, and the day wore on like the one before, without change. The sun blazed on high, seeming to shrink in its own fierce dazzling concentration as it flashed its rays into that hot court room where the convention sat and balloted, one ballot after another, until a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, had been taken, until the floor was strewn with paper and discolored by tobacco, the air heavy with smoke, the feculence of all their breathing, the acrid smell of perspiration. The sky darkened, and those tired men sighed for rain. The thunder rolled down the valley of the Illinois, and then ceased. The sky cleared, and the heat increased. And all the while the ballots which Hale announced were the same:
| Garwood | Sprague | Barrett | |
| DeWitt | 18 | ||
| Logan | 24 | ||
| Mason | 18 | ||
| Moultrie | 15 | ||
| Piatt | 15 | ||
| Polk | 22 | 23 | |
| Tazewell | 30 | ||
| — | — | — | |
| Totals | 70 | 48 | 47 |