At one o’clock the telegraph instrument ceased its chatter and the telegraph operator began to unroll his little package of lunch. As the odor of the buttered bread and the cold meat he spread on a clean sheet of paper before him became perceptible in the room, the men there felt for the first time that night the pangs of hunger, and Colonel Warfield said:
“What do you say to our going down to the café and having a bite to eat?”
Down in the café, the men grouped themselves about two tables which Warfield told the head waiter to place end to end, and the meal he ordered soon became a banquet. As they sat there talking in excited tones, laughing at old stories of by-gone campaigns, laughing even at the defeats of by-gone campaigns, as they could afford to now, many men passing through stopped to congratulate Warfield, to slap him on the shoulder, and call him “Good boy!” as if he had done it all. And as he thought of the four years of that influence at Springfield his position as the chairman who had directed the campaign would give him, his inscrutable smile expanded into one of great content. They were happy at that table, all of them looking forward to days of power, all save Garwood, who sat gloomy and silent, drinking more than he ate, and drinking more than he felt he ought. Once Warfield noticed his despondency, and whispered to him in his kind-hearted way:
“Don’t give up, old man. You’ll pull through. And if you don’t, I’ll see that you’re taken care of.”
The sympathy of the chairman’s tone, more than the promise he made, touched Garwood, but down in his heart he felt a soreness. It was hard to see them all successful and be alone doomed to defeat. A place in the state administration, on some board, even on the board of railroad and warehouse commissioners, would hardly satisfy him now. He had longed to go to Congress, and then, the vindication he looked for meant more than all the rest. And Emily—he thought of her and could have wept. He felt himself more and more detached from the scene. The table, the mirrors, the lights of the café, the laughing men, the rushing waiters, the shuffle of the crowd in the lobby above, the cries in the street outside, the toots of tin horns, the companies of crazy men marching aimlessly around and around, howling the names of candidates, all sounded as remote and strange as if he had no more a part in it.
The night waned, the noise changed, but did not cease. It told of a decrease in the numbers in the lobby, but the sounds were wilder. Men were making a night of it. As in a dream Garwood heard some one say:
“There’s a little woman down in Rock Island who’d like to hear from me. I must wire my wife.”
And Garwood thought of a telegram he might have sent, had things gone differently. He thought of a girl down in Grand Prairie, but now—it was all so changed!
He stole away and sought his room. He went to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked down into Randolph Street. The rain had ceased, but still the big campaign banner flapped clumsily. The chill of dawn was in the air, a cold wind blew in from the lake. Across the way the court house and city hall loomed in the fog; in their shadow he saw the jaded horses at the cab stand drooping their noses to their crooked knees; the cable began to buzz in its slot; far over the gloomy roofs the sky was tinged with the pallor of coming day—then suddenly a long shaft of brilliant light striking across the sky startled him with a nameless terror. The shaft rose slowly until it pointed straight upward, then three times it swept a vast arc down to the eastern horizon. And Garwood remembered—it was the search-light which the Courier had announced would signal the success of Garwood’s party. He recalled the day at Lincoln. The great man and all the rest, as they went to bed in the dawn of that November morning, were safe in triumphant victory, while he alone—
He heard the heavy, mature voice of some early newsboy: