CHAPTER X
KENYON came to town to remind his Antioch friends and supporters that presently he would be needing their votes.
He was Ryder's guest for a week, and the Herald recorded his movements with painstaking accuracy and with what its editor secretly considered metropolitan enterprise. The great man had his official headquarters at the Herald office, a ramshackle two-story building on the west side of the square. Here he was at home to the local politicians, and to such of the general public as wished to meet him. The former smoked his cigars and talked incessantly of primaries, nominations, and majorities—topics on which they appeared to be profoundly versed. Their distinguishing mark was their capacity for strong drink, which was far in excess of that of the ordinary citizen who took only a casual interest in politics. The Herald's back door opened into an alley, and was directly opposite that of the Red Star saloon. At stated intervals Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Ryder, followed by the faithful, trailed through this back door and across the alley, where they cheerfully exposed themselves to such of the gilded allurements of vice as the Red Star had to offer.
The men of Antioch eschewed front doors as giving undue publicity to the state of their thirst, a point on which they must have been very sensitive, for though a number of saloons flourished in the town, only a few of the most reckless and emancipated spirits were ever seen to enter them.
Kenyon was a sloppily dressed man of forty-five or thereabouts, who preserved an air of rustic shrewdness. He was angular-faced and smooth-shaven, and wore his hair rather long in a tangled mop. He was generally described in the party papers as “The Picturesque Statesman from Old Hanover.” He had served one term in Congress; prior to that, by way of apprenticeship, he had done a great deal of hard work and dirty work for his party. His fortunes had been built on the fortunes of a bigger and an abler man, who, after a fight which was already famous in the history of the State for its bitterness, had been elected Governor, and Kenyon, having picked the winner, had gone to his reward. Just now he had a shrewd idea that the Governor was anxious to unload him, and that the party leaders were sharpening their knives for him. Their change of heart grew out of the fact that he had “dared to assert his independence,” as he said, and had “played the sneak and broken his promises,” as they said, in a little transaction which had been left to him to put through.
Personally Ryder counted him an unmitigated scamp, but the man's breezy vulgarity, his nerve, and his infinite capacity to jolly tickled his fancy.
He had so far freed himself of his habitual indifference that he was displaying an unheard-of energy in promoting Kenyon's interest. Of course he expected to derive certain very substantial benefits from the alliance. The Congressman had made him endless promises, and Ryder saw, or thought he saw, his way clear to leave Antioch in the near future. For two days he had been saying, “Mr. Brown, shake hands with Congressman Kenyon,” or, “Mr. Jones, I want you to know Congressman Kenyon, the man we must keep at Washington.”
He had marvelled at the speed with which the statesman got down to first names. He had also shown a positive instinct as to whom he should invite to make the trip across the alley to the Red Star, and whom not. Mr. Kenyon said, modestly, when Griff commented on this, that his methods were modern—they were certainly vulgar.