The President: A Novel

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Richard felt no interest beyond a willingness to be of service to Senator Hanway, and only put the question to show attention to his eminent friend.

"No, no owner," replied Senator Hanway; "but to be frank, since I know my confidence is safe, it will assist me in a certain political matter the name of which I think you can guess."

Senator Hanway's smooth face wore a smile which he intended should prove that he looked upon Richard as one possessing a rightful as well as an intimate knowledge of those White House plans which he cherished. Richard did not require the assurance; he was ready without it to come to the aid of Senator Hanway, whom he liked if he did not revere.

The next evening Richard's letter carried the story against Northern Consolidated. The afternoon of the day on which it was published, Senator Hanway arose in his place and requested that the article be read by the clerk. That done, he said he was pained and surprised by the publication of such a story, and asked for a committee of three to look into the truth of what was set forth.

"For," observed Senator Hanway, after paying a tribute to Richard and the Daily Tory, in which he extolled the honesty and intelligent conservatism of both the paper and its correspondent, "for it is only justice that the charges be sifted. The Daily Tory does not make them on its own behalf; it finds them in the mouths of others. They should be taken up and weighed. If there be aught due the government, we have a right to know and measure it. If the charges are without support—and I have reason to believe that such is the situation—then Northern Consolidated is entitled to the refutation of a calumny that, whispered in some quarters and talked aloud in others, has borne heavily upon its interests."

No one opposed, and Senator Hanway, with Senators Price and Loot, were selected to be a special committee. They were to send for men and papers, be open or secret in their sessions, and report to the Senate whenever they finished the inquiry. The affair excited no comment, and was forgotten within the hour by all except Storri and Mr. Harley and those others of the osprey pool.

After Richard left Senator Hanway upon the Northern Consolidated evening, he ran plump upon an incident that was to have a last profound effect upon this history. No one not a prophet would have guessed this from the incident's character, for on its ignoble face it was nothing better than just a drunken clash between a Caucasian, and an African triumvirate that had locked horns with him in the street. The Caucasian, moved of liquor and pride of skin, had demanded the entire sidewalk. He enforced his demands by shoving the obstructing Africans into the gutter. The latter, recalling amendments to the organic law of the land favorable to folk of color, objected. In the war that ensued, owing to an inequality of forces, the Caucasian—albeit a gallant soul—was given the bitter side of the argument. Richard came upon them as he rounded a corner; the quartette at the time made a struggling, scrambling, cursing tangle, rolling about the sidewalk.

Being one in whom the race instinct ran powerfully, and who was not untainted of antipathies to red men and yellow men and black men and all men not wholly white, Richard did not pause to inquire the rights and the wrongs of the altercation. He seized upon the topmost person of color and pitched him into the street. Then he pitched another after him. The third, getting some alarming notions of what was going on, arose and fled. None of the three came back; for discretion is not absent from the African, and those whom Richard personally disposed of felt as might ones who had escaped from some malignant providence which they did not think it wise or fitting to further tempt. As for number three, he was pleased to find himself a block away, and did all he might to add to it, like a miser to his hoard.

Negroes gone, Richard set the white man on his feet, and asked him how he fared. That gentleman shook himself and announced that he was uninjured. Then he said that he was drunk, which was an unnecessary confidence. It developed that he followed the trade of printer; also that he had just come to town. He had no money, he had no place to sleep; and, what was wonderful to Richard, he appeared in no whit cast down by his bankrupt and bedless state. He had had money; but like many pleasant optimistic members of his mystery of types, he had preferred to spend it in liquor, leaving humdrum questions, such as bed and board, to solve themselves.

"For," said the bedless one, "I'm a tramp printer!" And he flung forth the adjective as though it were a title of respect.