“Seems popular in his district, doesn’t he?” whispered Garwood.
“Popular! No one can beat the old blatherskite. Wish he had to run in my district once!” Milton spoke out of the bitterness the fierce contests of a close district had worked in him. Just then a number of reporters, moving in a body like a committee, came to interview Colonel Warfield.
The colonel was thoughtful for a moment, and then, smiling, he said: “You probably know more than I about it, but you can say for me that at eleven o’clock”—he looked at his watch—“basing my calculations on incomplete returns from seventy-five counties in the state, I claim the election of Governor Chatham and the entire state ticket by thirty-three thousand majority.”
“These others have scored already,” said Anthony, the secretary of the committee, waving at General Williams, at Milton and at Newman the corn-cob pipe for which he was famous all over the state, “all except Garwood there; he’ll be in after while.”
Outside the noise was growing louder. They could hear cheering from the rotunda, and in the streets the crowds pouring out of the theater added to the din. The noise had a new quality of wildness in it that comes with the approach of midnight. Schreiber, who had been put on the state ticket for auditor because of his German name, had long ago claimed his own election by a safe majority, and had made many trips down to the bar. He was a fat man, plainly a connoisseur of Rhine wines; and you might almost have said he was humid, so moist was his rosy skin. He did not emit a German “Hoch!” as would have befitted his personality, but he continually boomed forth pleasantries, congratulating the other successful candidates. But from these general felicitations Garwood was excluded. For an hour his hopes had been sinking. Rankin had promised to telegraph as soon as he had anything definite, but no word had come from him. Though the returns from down the state were coming in rapidly those from his own district had been meager, and from what he already knew he was convinced that he was running behind the head of the ticket, both national and state. It seemed to be well established by midnight that his party had swept both the state and the nation, and he seemed to be the only one thus far left out. He pitied himself, he began to feel that the open triumph of the successful ones about him was indelicate and in bad taste; he felt that they should show him more consideration. But they seemed to have forgotten him in the realization of their own joy, and Garwood could only smile grimly at the irony of it all.
At midnight whistles blew all over the city, as if it were New Year’s, and just then Larry O’Neil came in, crying:
“We’ve got ’em, Cook County’s ours by fifty thousand. Beats hell, don’t it?”
“How are they feeling down at the Grand?” asked Anthony. The headquarters of the other committee were at the Grand.
“Oh, they’ve shut up down there,” said the man, “and gone home. They seen it ’as no use.”
“Yes,” said Warfield, laying down his pencil as if he had no further need for it, “it’s a landslide.”